Pokemon Scarlet and Violet - Team Star Grunt Battle / Penny | Reacting To Video Game Music!

This video apparently mentions spoilers ~~~

Here's a fun fact for you: Penny herself is actually from the Galar region (aka: Pokemon Sword/Shield), the region where gym battles take place in huge stadiums before massive audiences, generally as huge events, complete with absolutely bombastic music. This is, fittingly enough, one of the reasons why her theme is so high energy and just generally loud. It literally sounds like something that would play during a gym battle in the Galar region. A nice, subtle, music reference to where she's originally from.

Would you believe the first theme is for the regular, low-level fights with the rank and file of Team Star? It's in the name: Team Star Grunt. In Gen 1, the rank and file of Team Rocket were also called grunts, so yes, this really energetic and more-complex-than-usual track is for battles against grunts that probably only last for, like, a minute. Which means that in order to listen to this in its entirety each time, I have to just pause the fight and take everything in. This is one of those cases where the composer didn't have to go so hard on the theme, but they did anyway (and then some). This is my favorite grunt theme in the series, and it, along with the other Team Star themes, really contributed to making Team Star my favorite villain team. They aren't even much of a villainous force anyway, they're school delinquents (with a more involved story than it seems), but their aesthetic is cool, their boss' battles are tougher than the Pokemon standard, and each and every one of their themes go oh-so-very hard. Yeeeaah... even though the cat's basically out of the bag on Penny, I won't bother saying much on that other than that she is indeed related to Team Star. But her theme, like you said, is that crazy mix of happy and serious, and it fits her character pretty well. I don't think I've ever heard an electronic theme that aggressive in Pokemon before, and its uniqueness and catchiness and charm just make it the capper on one of the most memorable moments in the game for me.

In-universe, one of the Team Star bosses, Giacomo, is canonically the one who composed the battle themes for the team. He dresses like a punk rocker. I don't remember if he said this, or if it's the fan interpretation, but since he never met Cassiopeia, he must have composed Penny's theme on the fly. The duality in Penny's theme comes from the combination of 1) her shy personality and her choice of using cute Eeveelutions as her team, and 2) her incredible skill at hacking technology and, supposedly, her battle prowess. It's a fan favorite from this game. Honestly I love all of the Team Star themes, there's a couple more that are used for cutscenes and they're also really good. Teruo Taniguchi did such a great job composing all of these themes. SV players, if you haven't done the bonus tutoring session with Team Star that was added in the DLC, make sure you get back to the academy!

Cassiopeia is also the name of a real life constellation, a group of Stars. Each Sub Boss under her are leaders of groups that are also named after Stars that are found within that constellation.

The Team Star theme makes me feel sure that Team Star grunts really see themselves as the heroes even in their exile and while their conduct and code worsens. Penny's theme is intimidating, but then still has that tragic hero motif. Team Star are fallen heroes, vilified after retaliating against their oppressors and the school that allowed their mistreatment to go unnoticed.

Pokemon is still turn based, just like the old days! Now, they have done some engine tweaks to make the turns go faster, and the attack animations are more flashy and active, so even the much higher speed tracks dont feel out of place, at least to me.

I hear that colony 9 in the intro 👀 glad you're having fun with XB jesse!

Team Star is made up of five different squads throughout the region that the game takes place in. Their names and locations are named for the stars and positions of those stars that make up the "Cassiopeia" constellation, which is why she went with the name as their leader.

The Penny is Cassiopeia reveal is so obvious they pretty much make a joke of it in the game itself, so it is a spoiler but not one even the game takes seriously. The funny thing is Cassiopeia will contact you anonymously thru hacking your phone and then IMMEDIATELY AFTER Penny will pop up and be like "so yeah Cassiopeia said to give you these as a reward" even tho its her the whole time. So yeah its a bit silly but its also a lot of fun, I really enjoy the story of Team Star and Penny. And the Penny theme music might be my favorite in the series, though there is a surprising amount of great music in Pokemon. The basic story is Penny/Cassiopeia put together Team Star to "take down" some bullies but then Team Star got a reputation as bullies themselves. After some big event Penny was forced to study abroad as "punishment" and Team Star vowed to not go back to school until their "Big Boss" comes back. But they never knew who Penny was they just knew Cassiopeia the anonymous leader. The player's story starts pretty much the same day Penny comes back from her studies abroad and you save her basically from being bullied by Team Star grunts. Then you get contacted by Cassiopeia to join "Operation Starfall" to take down Team Star... which Penny is also a part of.

Yep, as you mentioned, Teruo Taniguchi was really only a sound designer on the Pokémon series prior to this. Scarlet and Violet wasn't his first time composing full themes for a game, but his most recent credits for music were 2019 arranging for Tetris-99 and composing for another game by the creators of Pokémon called Giga Wrecker in 2017. He ended up doing the 2 in this video, and most other themes relating to Team Star.

I couldnt believe they added hardstyle in to Pokémon, i was floored for a good 4 minutes at the start of the battle. Spoilers for SV: The juxtaposition of Penny's theme being terrifying and uplifting is basically a reflection how she decided to present herself as this mysterious boss of Team Star to even her teammates but by the end shows herself, and is accepted by the other members. It's pretty basic but I like when a character's theme can tell you what the jist of their arc is.

Man, I was not ready for Penny's theme when I first heard it, easily my favourite track in Scarlet/Violet. Been waiting for you to hear these since the first Team Star Boss theme, glad you did!

"Cassiopeia's" theme is arguably my favourite piece of music in the entire Pokémon franchise and in the in-game story behind it makes it kind of hilarious. It's revealed that one of the Team Star's bosses actually made and mixed the team's theme songs so it stands to reason he also wrote Cassiopeia's theme, but none of the bosses had every actually met her and just referred to them the "The Big Boss". So this group of outcasts turned delinquents make some banging theme music to seem more imposing with the main boss getting this hardcore, high energy, relentlessly aggressive theme only for the actual boss to be a shy, dorky, social anxious shut-in geek who couldn't be imposing even if she tried so when you finally face off against one of the meekest characters Pokémon has ever had she has both the least and most appropriate music imaginable.

Heeey! I was wondering when this would show up! xD Vee Casual here! Thank you for taking the time to listen to what is definitively my favorite Grunt theme in the entire Pokemon franchise. For clarification on the music itself, I really do feel there is a lot of storytelling in the theme itself. For instance, the beginning, more sinister feel of the theme at the start is only played once. When the song loops, it never returns to the sinister side. Any loop then replays starting at the more hopeful, and absolute bopping beat about thirty seconds in. Almost as if stating that the sinister beginnings are only skin-deep, or not real. Perhaps Team Star is not as bad on the inside as people think. =3 (Kinda avoiding spoilers in case you wanna play it.)

haha you started to put Xenoblade OST in the background. ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US!

The Team Star Grunt theme is really good. The intro is like "a basic evil team theme" and then the music change completely and became some sort of an heroic song. It signify that Team Star is maybe not the "evil theme" that we thought they were. It's very intelligent. It's probably my favorite Team Grunt theme of the series.

Pokemon (at least the mainline games) are still very much turn-based games. One of the things that Scarlet/Violet got right was the removal of the battle transition screen. (Even Sword/Shield still had one, except for battles that take place in the gym stadiums.) Any time you started a battle against a trainer or Wild Pokemon, you just send out your Pokemon and battle right then and there. You can even use the right stick to adjust the camera in battles, except against important trainers which uses a Dynamic Camera. Pokemon has always had good music to listen to, even back in Gen 1. Have you played Pokemon Stadium on the N64? The music in that game and its sequel, Pokemon Stadium 2, is fantastic and holds up well even to this very day.

Penny’s theme is such a banger. Never thought I’d ever hear hardstyle in a pokemon game.

My favorite thing about Jesse's channel is that by the time a request gets a video, enough time has passed since I played the game that it can now activate nostalgic memories seeing someone react to songs that absolutely enamored me when I played! Penny's battle theme is one of my absolute favorites in the whole series, which is saying a lot! A neat compositional detail about Penny's theme is that it actually subtly hints at where her family's from, in universe, due to it sonically resembling a song you've previously listened to! I'm being vague in case some would consider that tiny detail a spoiler, but I think it adds another level to what are already great songs!