Jessie

Jessica (aka Jessie) is a member of Team Rocket. She tends to be a drama queen and has a diabolical temperment. She works with James and Meowth. Their main goal is to steal Pokémon, preferably Ash Ketchum's Pikachu. She and James have rivalry with Butch and Cassidy. Jessie's name is sometimes spelled as Jesse, as her name comes from the infamous outlaw Jesse James.

Anime
Jessie was a poor girl with a cold past whose mother, Miyamoto, disappeared in an avalanche on an expedition with Team Rocket to capture the legendary Pokémon Mew. As a child, her foster mother (her real mother in the dub) cooked with a "base ingredient," the snow. So, Jessie enjoys eating snow. She would even go out of her way to get some and make some of her mother's old "recipes."

Not much is known about Jessie's past. In the chapter nine of the first season, Jessie talks about her bad memories of study in the Pokémon Technical Institute. At the time, she already knew James; they studied together for "a big test", but after getting the lowest grades in the school's history, they joined a bike gang in Sunny Town episodes later. Jessie went to Team Rocket after failing in her attempt to become a Pokémon nurse, partly due to the fact that the Pokémon nursing school she attended was only for Pokémon who wanted to be nurses (in this case, the Chansey), not for people. But she did not know that until graduation day.

More recently, it was learned that she was studying dance at a school with two friends, letting go of one of her first youthful loves in order to pursue her dream of being a star. However, she failed the test of dance and regrets not having accepted the invitation to accompany the boy to compete in Pokémon Contests. Not much is known of her former love life, but she said that has never been very lucky in love as her sweethearts have either treated her unfairly and/or abandoned her. She is later paired up with James, a rebellious rich-boy who doesn't want to follow his family wishes, and Meowth, a fast-talking Pokémon who has dreams of being on top. She is close friends with the two of them, even though she often behaves irritably towards them. She is shown to be very fond of James, as seen in Holy Matrimony!, when she was reluctant to leave him behind with his fiance. She is overjoyed when James returns and reveals his intentions to continue working with her and Meowth, despite the fact that he had to relinquish his family inheritence to do so.

As of her, James' and Meowth's promotion and transfer to Unova, Jessie has become a highly skilled stealth artist, an excellent athlete, and is often successful in many missions with her team mates, to the point of the trio becoming a serious enemy for Ash and co. The trio were key in Team Rocket's Meteorite plan, taking orders directly from Giovanni himself as well as his secretary. Jessie and her team-mates worked together with Pierce and met Doctor Zager.

Once the plan culminated, Jessie and her team-mates were asked to do as they please in Unova, so they continued working hard to do Team Rocket good and now worked closely with Zager. Ash had thus become less important to them but they would still antagonize him if he interfered in their plans.

In the games, Jessie and James are supposed to be the same age as Ash. However, according to a special CD available only in Japan, Jessie and James are in their 20's in the second episode of Anime. An episode of the season Master Quest, reveals an old woman who is 120 years old. Jessie amazed at the replica which is 10 times her age. As Jessie obviously has more than 12 years, Meowth asked her where she learned mathematics. She has a long going rivalry with fellow Team Rocket Member Cassidy.

In the episode "The Ultimate Test," while filling out an application she says aloud, "Age: 17, Profession: Diva." She was in disguise and therefore is probably lying about her age (as one should expect she would), but we can at least assume she would not claim to be older than she is because that would go against her character.

Contest Disguises
In Hoenn, Jessie began to compete as a Pokémon Coordinator, and although she was not successful, she continued to participate in each Pokémon Contest she could. At each contest, she disguised herself due to the notoriety of Team Rocket as a whole. Initially, she cheated, using technological assistance and intervention of James and Meowth, but then began to compete fairly. She often borrowed Pokémon from James for the contests, and has repeatedly used Meowth as one of her Pokémon. Despite losing in all contests in which she participated in Kanto and Hoenn, in the Sinnoh region, she won three ribbons herself, using her Dustox, Yanmega and Seviper, and obtained a ribbon after James won a contest in her place, as well as receiving one from Princess Salvia after she lost to her. Jessie then became eligible to participate in the Sinnoh Grand Festival, and made it to the semi-finals, but lost to Dawn. She also participated in Summer Camp Pokémon and got a diploma/credit for having studied (she was disguised Jessilina). Jessie was the leader of her ragtag group, and she was not afraid to show it. After the Sinnoh Grand Festival, Jessie abandoned the Jessilina alias.

Contest rankings

 * Rustboro Contest: Appeal Round
 * Fallarbor Contest: Top 4
 * Verdanturf Contest: Top 4
 * Lilycove Contest: Top 4
 * Pacifidlog Contest: Top 4
 * Saffron Contest: Top 8
 * Chrystanthemum Contest: Top 8
 * Mulberry Contest: Runner-up
 * Jubilife Contest: Runner-up
 * Unofficial Contest: Winner
 * Floaroma Contest: Top 8
 * Hearthome Contest: Top 8
 * Wallace Cup: Appeal Round
 * Solaceon Contest: Appeal Round
 * Chocovine Contest: Top 4
 * Sandalstraw Contest: Top 4
 * Brussel Contest: Unknown
 * Daybreak Contest: Top 8

Grand Festival ranking
Jessie placed in the following Grand Festival competitions:
 * Sinnoh Grand Festival: Top 4

Showcases
In Kalos, Jessie started to compete as a Pokémon Performer, and like in Sinnoh contests she was not very succesful, her main goal is to be Kalos Queen like Aria and take over the Kalos region. This time, she uses fair methods to participate in showcases.

Achievements

 * Beach Beauty and Pokémon Costume Contest: Unknown
 * P1 Grand Prix: Runner-up (with James)
 * Queen of the Princess Festival contest: Runner-up
 * Seaking Catching Day: Unknown
 * Grass Tournament: Disqualified (as "Eissej")
 * Sumo Conference: Disqualified (as "Jessiyaki")
 * Pokémon Orienteering: Unknown
 * Pastoria Croagunk Festival: Unknown (with James)
 * Pokémon Ping Pong Tournament: Disqualified (as "Jessielinlin")
 * Scalchop King Competition: Disqualified (with James as "Jesty" and "Jacen")
 * Grand Harvest Festival Pokémon Sumo Tournament - Top 16 (as "Jessicalinda")
 * Poké Puff Contest: Preliminary round (with James)
 * Pokémon Showcases
 * Coumarine Showcase (Rookie Class): Theme Performance (as "Jessilee")
 * Dendemille Showcase (Rookie Class): 5th place
 * Pokémon Sky Relay: Disqualified (with James)

Voice Actresses

 * Rachael Lillis (Seasons 1 - 8, Movies 1 - 8) (4kids)
 * Michele Knotz (Season 9 - present, Movie 9 - present) (PUSA/TAJ)
 * Megumi Hayashibara (Japanese)
 * Annelie Berg (Swedish)
 * Lena Meieran (Norwegian)
 * Hilde de Mildt (Dutch)
 * Scarlet Cavadenti (née Lubowski), Claudia Loessel (German)
 * Emanuela Pacotto (Italian)
 * Michaella Antoniou (Greek)
 * Lee Seon (Korean)
 * Ann Hjort (Danish)
 * Marina Vinyals (Catalan)

Trivia

 * Jessie's and James' English names derive from the notable outlaw Jesse James.
 * In Plant It Now... Diglett Later, an old woman says to Jessie that she is 120 years old and Jessie says that's 10 times her age, meaning that she is 12 years old. Because Jessie and James are described as idiotic, it could just be bad math on her part, or a typical case of a vain woman claiming to be younger than she really is, which would be within Jessie's character.
 * In some scenes Jessie is seen without lipstick. Most of these scenes were bloopers but few were on purpose. Examples would be of her as a child and when she was working out at the gym.
 * Despite her and James being major characters throughout the anime and manga, they have only appeared in the first Generation games.
 * Jessie is the only female main character to appear in all generations of the anime as Misty only appeared as a main character in 2 generations while May, Dawn, Iris and Serena have so far only appeared in 1 generation as a main character
 * In the official Cartoon Network site for Pokémon: BW Rival Destinies, it had a typo for Jessie that it did not have an "I" included in the character selection on the Title Header.
 * Out of her teammates, Jessie has the biggest appetite. as reveled in episodes: Choose it or Lose it, Lean Mean Team Rocket Machine, Doc Brock, and An Egg Scramble.
 * Originally, Jessie's hair was a pinkish shade of magenta that often would vary in a reddish shade of magenta; however, starting from "Here's Looking At You, Elekid", it became a purplish shade of magenta.