Joe, Crown City Florist: The Grandfather Keeping Its Memory

The thirteenth movie in the series hands its big explanation scene to a florist. Joe runs a flower shop in Crown City, the city where the Zoroark movie takes place. He has no battle team and no adventurer's role: what he brings to the story is an entire life spent in the same place. Not to be confused with the other Joe in the series, the student at Pokémon Tech.

Contents

• A flower shop run by three
• A whole life in the same city
• The house where people come to hide
• Joe at a glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

A flower shop run by three

His profile can't quite decide on his trade: the header calls him a florist, but the story presents him as an old watchmaker and mentions his watchmaking shop. Joe runs his shop in Crown City, and he doesn't run it alone — his friend Tammy works there with him. The movie makes him neither a Trainer nor a fighter, and gives him no favorite Pokémon.

A third name completes the shop's crew, and it's a Pokémon: Tangrowth. Yet that's not the Pokémon the source ties most firmly to Joe: it lists Mightyena as his only known Pokémon, very loyal and able to use Odor Sleuth, which helps him in his watchmaking shop, lends Tangrowth a hand in catching Zorua and fights in the final showdown against Kodai.

That still doesn't give him a full team: his Mightyena battles only once, during the final showdown against Kodai, and nothing else is added. Joe belongs to that category of figures that Pokémon movies place in the background of a city, and whose usefulness only shows once the heroes need information nobody else has.

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A whole life in the same city

Joe has never left Crown City: he has spent his entire life there. It's that permanence, and that alone, that gives him a role in the movie devoted to Zoroark. When a story needs a witness, it turns to the person who was already there.

Two kinds of knowledge are credited to him. The first belongs to folklore: the legend surrounding the city's guardians, a story the residents pass down. The second is far more concrete — the disaster that struck Crown City twenty years earlier, which he knows in detail.

These two blocks of memory are exactly what the visiting heroes lack. Ash and his friends arrive in a city whose history they don't know, and Joe is the one who tells it to them. The opposing side has its own profile on our site: Goone, the bodyguard who watches over the secrets of the same movie.

The house where people come to hide

At the height of the plot, Joe's house turns into a shelter. Five characters take refuge there: first his grandson Karl, then Ash, Brock and Dawn, along with Rowena. The old florist thus moves from the scenery to center stage.

That's where he shares what he knows. The movie uses this stop to lay out all its exposition: Joe walks the refugees through what happened in the city long ago. The sequence calls for no battle, just someone who remembers.

He adds a revelation that ties him physically to Crown City: he helped build the countdown clocks installed around the city for Pokémon Baccer. So the shopkeeper had a hand in equipping the city, which writes him into its history in a way that goes beyond memory.

Outside the movie, Joe reappears in the manga adaptation of that same film. It's the only other appearance his profile credits him with: no video game, no season of the TV series and no trading card features him.

Joe at a glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Joe in the movie Zoroark: Master of Illusions?
  A florist from Crown City, the city where the thirteenth movie takes place. He runs his shop with his friend Tammy and a Tangrowth, and he is Karl's grandfather.
• Which Pokémon belongs to Joe?
  A Mightyena — named by the source as his only known Pokémon — which uses Odor Sleuth, helps Tangrowth catch Zorua and takes part in the final battle against Kodai. No favorite Pokémon is attributed to him, however.
• Why does Joe matter to the plot?
  Because he has spent his entire life in Crown City. He knows the legend of the city's guardians as well as the disaster that struck twenty years earlier, and he's the one who passes that past on to the heroes who come to hide at his place.
• Who takes refuge in Joe's house?
  His grandson Karl, then Ash, Brock, Dawn and Rowena. It's during this stop that Joe explains the city's past to them and reveals that he helped install the Pokémon Baccer countdown clocks.
• Is there another character named Joe in Pokémon?
  Yes. A student at Pokémon Tech has the same first name in the original series. He's an entirely separate character, unrelated to the Crown City florist.

In short

Joe fits into a few lines of a profile, and the movie asks no more of him: a shopkeeper with nothing to set him apart, except that he has always been there. His shop, his Mightyena, a Tangrowth and his grandson are enough to establish him; his memory does the rest. Crown City owes him its Pokémon Baccer clocks and the story of everything it has been through — for a florist, that's no small contribution.