Burgundy: The C-Class Connaisseuse Who Judges but Never Wins

Her job is to tell other Trainers what's wrong with their team. Burgundy arrives in the Unova saga with the lowest rank in the Connoisseur profession, a self-assurance inversely proportional to that rank, and a personal grudge against Cilan. She's the rival the series builds entirely on her failures: three tournaments, three exits in the very first round.

Contents

• A C-Class Connaisseuse, and a Shop That Isn't Hers
• Striaton City, the Defeat That Set Her on Her Way
• Three Tournaments, Three First-Round Exits
• Put-On Contempt and the Sticker on the Badge
• Burgundy at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

A C-Class Connaisseuse, and a Shop That Isn't Hers

A Pokémon Connoisseur's job is to assess how well a Trainer and their Pokémon match, and the profession is ranked by letter grades. Burgundy holds C-class, the bottom rung of the profession. We first find her set up in a Connoisseur shop that nobody stops in front of — and that emptiness is exactly what makes Ash walk through the door.

The consultation is over quickly. She starts with a compliment on Pikachu, then, asked to weigh in on her visitor's Sewaddle, she tears the Pokémon apart, and it immediately answers her with a String Shot. She still insists on reviewing the whole team, and every species she examines hits back at her with an attack. Her final verdict: with partners like these, Ash won't get anywhere in the Unova League.

The facade collapses in a passing remark: confiding that she hopes to run her own shop one day, she admits this one doesn't belong to her. Ash draws the conclusion that hits the mark: a C-class Connoisseur has no business handing out that kind of diagnosis. She brushes off the objection, insisting that all her colleagues would say exactly the same thing — a generalization that Cilan, who is in the room, refuses to endorse.

Striaton City, the Defeat That Set Her on Her Way

The arrival of Iris and Cilan reveals where her character comes from. She has already battled him at the Striaton Gym, lost there, and claims that he made fun of her Pokémon at the time. That humiliation is what led her to become a Connaisseuse: to compete with him on his own turf, and one day pay him back in kind.

The plan has not aged well. When she returned to Striaton City for her rematch, she found the Gym without him — Cilan was no longer its Gym Leader and had left, which she takes badly. He does agree to a match, but warns that no Badge will be at stake. Along the way she lays claim to a win over Chili, while acknowledging that nothing will really count as long as she hasn't beaten Cilan.

The battle she finally gets shows the gap between them. She bets big — if she wins, she'll rebuild Ash's team herself, a bet Cilan accepts without consulting the person most concerned. Her Dewott gives way to Dwebble, then Sawsbuck falls very quickly to Pansage. She leaves vowing to come back with an S-class rank.

🔥 From Dewott to Darmanitan, her partners have their own shelf: see the Pokémon figures.

Three Tournaments, Three First-Round Exits

The rest of her journey comes down to a string of early eliminations. At the Club Battle in Nimbasa, she shows up with a new recruit, Stoutland, and it's Ash and his Palpitoad who knock her out. The pattern repeats: each reappearance brings a new Pokémon meant to change the game, and ends with the same result.

At the Clubsplosion, where each Trainer can enter only one Pokémon, she fields her Dewott and shows that she has worked on its training: she has taught it Ice Beam and Revenge. The draw pits her right away against Iris and her Excadrill, and the duel ends in a loss in that very first round.

The pattern comes full circle at the Junior Cup, where she pins her hopes on a Darmanitan that has only just joined her team, and is knocked out right away by the Serperior belonging to Trip. None of the Unova rivals has such a clear-cut record: she's the only one who never made it past a first round, and the only rival beaten by every member of the same traveling party — one loss to Ash, one to Iris, two to Cilan.

Put-On Contempt and the Sticker on the Badge

The character's tone never varies: haughtiness, disdain, cutting remarks about other people's Pokémon. Cilan himself isn't spared; she's quick to lump him in with the bad cooks. Above all, she has nerve: twice, she proposes as a match's stakes the right to rebuild the team of a Trainer who isn't the one she's facing.

Her grudge carries all the way into the stands, where she hopes to see Cilan lose every one of his matches at the Nimbasa tournament. Yet the tournament ends on a concession: she admits he truly is at A-class level. It's the only growth the series grants her — not a victory, but an admission.

The most revealing episode shows her cheating on her own rank. She puts a sticker on her Badge to pass herself off as an S-class Connaisseuse and finally be taken seriously. A Lillipup licks her Badge, the sticker comes off with it, and her wig follows in the scuffle — the imposture unmasked by a Pokémon, exactly like on day one.

Burgundy at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Burgundy in the Pokémon anime?
  A C-class Pokémon Connaisseuse met during the Unova saga. Her job is to assess how well a Trainer and their Pokémon match, and she sets herself up as Cilan's rival.
• Why does Burgundy hold a grudge against Cilan?
  Because she battled him at the Striaton Gym and lost. According to her, he made fun of her Pokémon on that occasion. She became a Connaisseuse in order to meet him on his own turf and get her revenge.
• Which Pokémon does Burgundy use?
  Four partners appear over the course of her story: Dewott, whom she keeps the longest and teaches Ice Beam and Revenge, Sawsbuck, then Stoutland and Darmanitan, each brought in for a tournament.
• Has Burgundy ever won a tournament?
  No. She's knocked out in the first round at Nimbasa, at the Clubsplosion and at the Junior Cup. She's the only Unova rival who never got past a single tournament round.
• Where does Burgundy's name come from?
  Her Japanese name is Cabernet, a reference to Cabernet Sauvignon, a French grape variety known around the world.

In short

Burgundy holds an uncomfortable and fairly rare place in the gallery of rivals: the series uses her to show what an expert opinion is worth without the expertise. She judges teams she can't beat, runs a shop that isn't hers, and ends up faking her own rank to get people to listen. Her only real progress fits in a single sentence let slip at the end of a tournament, when she concedes that Cilan has the skill she had been denying him. A character whose arc is measured in concessions, not victories.