He could have had genuine feelings for Jessie when he met her. We know that he knows that she looks like Jessibelle (DP153). It would’ve been immediately obvious to him that she looks exactly like Jessibelle. She has a great time at the ball.Īfter leaving home, James applied to Pokémon school and met Jessie, who was also applying (Kanto 9, Kanto 48). He doesn’t enjoy it, but he doesn’t complain out loud, for Jessie’s sake. Even though he hates balls, because of Jessibelle, he manages to be Jessie’s date at a ball (a ball for regular people not aristocrats) (XY105). Fortunately, he’s quite sure that he is no longer in love with Jessibelle (Kanto 48, DP2, DP117, DP153). I think the other reason that he thought he loved Jessibelle is because he doesn’t (or didn’t in DP) know what love is. But, during DP, he still had PTSD from her abuse, so any ‘feelings’ for her after they first met would be Stockholm Syndrome. Curiously, when James sees Jessibelle for the first time in years (Kanto 48), a jazzy noir-sounding song plays that’s called “Hiya, Hot Stuff!” This makes me think that in DP, he thought that some part of him was still in love with her. When talking about this, his voice sounds like he’s going to cry, and he smiles when he recalls writing her a love letter. Physical harm was one thing but manipulating his feelings hurt much more. He says this was the primary reason that he left home (DP153). In the DP series, so like half-way through the Pokémon series, he says that he was in “love” with her (Japanese and dub versions say “love”) but she broke his heart. He got excited that someone noticed him for once and he thought she was pretty. James met Jessibelle at a ball abroad in his social circles.

(As for Jessie, she’s never fantasized about having kids.) In the Japanese version, James says to Jessie, “Such is the fate between parents’ relationships with their children.” I take that to mean that he doesn’t like the idea of having kids, because only two episodes later, Professor Burnett drops the hint to Professor Kukui that she wants kids and he blushes. That is, in SM46, Ash’s friend Lillie says that it’s unfair that her toxic mother expects her to bend over backwards for her. In my opinion, James seemed to imply that he doesn’t want kids, with anyone, because of his parents’ abuse. He collected bottle caps in secret, but his mother threw them away whenever she found them (XY85). His parents help her assault him because he’s only useful to them as someone who can produce heirs. We see her try to r*** him onscreen and she’s done it in the past (Japanese version: “This is… the same stuff… you used last time.” English dub: “This is just like… This is just like… last time.”). His ex-fiancée, Jessibelle, was emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive. His private tutors were physically abusive whenever he got something wrong or showed emotion (AG147). James grew up wealthy, but left home when he was around 10. James is a gangster who struggles with depression and has a paralyzing fear of commitment, but he’s a fighter.

Jessie team rocket funny face