Roxanne: the Rustboro Gym Leader who teaches before battling

Gym Leader by day, teacher the rest of the time. Roxanne runs the first Gym of the Hoenn League, in Rustboro City, and her specialty fits in a single word: Rock. A graduate of the Pokémon Trainers' School, where she's remembered as the top student of her class, she applies to her opponents exactly what she teaches her students.

Contents

• Rustboro City, the First Step of the Hoenn League
• The Top Student Turned Teacher
• Geodude, Nosepass and a Brand-New Iron Tail
• An Exam, a Badge, Then a War Between Teams
• Tournaments, a Mobile Game and a First Card
• Roxanne at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

Rustboro City, the First Step of the Hoenn League

The journey through Hoenn begins at her Gym. Roxanne is the first of the eight official Gym Leaders a Trainer has to beat, and the Stone Badge she awards starts a set you must complete before you can face the Elite Four in Ever Grande City.

Her specialty places her in a small family of mineral-minded Trainers, alongside Brock in Pewter City, Roark in Oreburgh City and Grant in Cyllage City. She's the only woman in this group: no other female Gym Leader in the series has claimed the Rock type.

Her name opens with a nod to rock, but her look never plays the mineral card: brown hair tied in two pigtails, brown eyes, a short black dress, red tights and ballet flats. An outfit for the classroom, not the quarry.

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The Top Student Turned Teacher

Before the Gym, there was school. Roxanne is a graduate of the Pokémon Trainers' School, where she made her teachers proud, and the mobile game that features her still introduces her that way: top of her school, drawn to minerals as much as to fossils.

The anime takes the idea all the way and gives her a teaching post. She teaches at the Pokémon Trainers' School, where young Trainers first learn to live alongside their Pokémon before battling with them, with the help of video lectures.

Her classes come before everything else. When Ash shows up to challenge her, she asks him to push the match back two days because she has class. And when Team Rocket comes to disrupt the school, she turns the incident into a group exercise, lets her students organize themselves and stays ready to step in.

Geodude, Nosepass and a Brand-New Iron Tail

The match eventually takes place, and Roxanne has her students film it so she can replay it in class. Her Geodude opens the battle and gets the better of Ash's Treecko, before falling in turn to Pikachu.

Her Nosepass then puts the electric mouse in serious trouble, and it's a freshly learned move that decides the battle: Pikachu wins thanks to Iron Tail. So the duel serves twice over, as a badge battle and as teaching material.

In the same stretch, the Gym Leader publicly supports the Coordinator ambitions that May has just chosen for herself. A promotional short later pits them against each other again in Rustboro City, Roxanne's Nosepass against her opponent's Mudkip.

An Exam, a Badge, Then a War Between Teams

The manga's Ruby & Sapphire arc gives her the same post but makes access tougher: Sapphire has to pass an exam before she's allowed onto the battlefield. She gets the top score, and the battle is granted.

Roxanne uses her Nosepass's Magnet Pull Ability to pin down the opposing Aron, then strikes from a distance with Rock Throw and Rock Slide by drawing on the Compass Pokémon's magnetic field. Aron still turns the tables, and the Gym Leader hands over her Stone Badge while explaining what it's for.

What comes next takes her out of her Gym. When the Gym Leaders meet to discuss Team Magma and Team Aqua, she joins the side that backs Team Aqua and objects to Sapphire getting involved. She then sets off with Brawly to hold back Groudon, which her Nosepass's Block manages to slow down, before being abducted by Courtney and defeated in a Lilycove City hotel for trying to protect tourists.

Tournaments, a Mobile Game and a First Card

Outside Hoenn, she turns up at the Pokémon World Tournament in Black 2 and White 2, both in the Type Expert Tournament and in the one reserved for her region's Gym Leaders. Her team there is deliberately unpredictable: the gender and Ability of her Pokémon change from one battle to the next, and she fields three in Single Battles, four in Double or Rotation Battles, and six in Triple Battles.

The mobile game built around Trainer-and-Pokémon duos has featured her since launch and gives her two looks. Her Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire outfit pairs her with a Nosepass that can evolve into Probopass; her seasonal costume gives her a Runerigus as a partner, whose very makeup is what intrigues this mineral enthusiast.

The card game, for its part, kept her waiting a long time: her first appearance came in the Sword & Shield—Astral Radiance expansion, released in France on May 27, 2022. And in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, once you've beaten her at the Gym, you can run into her again at the Fossil Maniac's — her passion doesn't stop at the badge.

Roxanne at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Where is Roxanne's Gym?
  In Rustboro City, in the Hoenn region. It's the first Gym on the journey, and it awards the Stone Badge, the first of the eight badges you need before challenging the Elite Four in Ever Grande City.
• Which Pokémon does Roxanne use?
  In the games, she fields a Geodude and a Nosepass in Ruby and Sapphire as well as in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, and two Geodude plus a Nosepass in Emerald; the anime gives her the same two species. The manga relies mainly on that same Nosepass, its Magnet Pull Ability and its Block move. The mobile game shows her with a Nosepass that can evolve into Probopass, and a Runerigus for her seasonal outfit.
• Why is Roxanne seen as a theorist?
  Because she comes from the Pokémon Trainers' School, where she graduated top of her class, and because the anime makes her a teacher at the Trainers' School who even has her own battles filmed so she can break them down in class afterward.
• Does Roxanne appear in the Trading Card Game?
  Yes, but late. Her first card is in the Sword & Shield—Astral Radiance expansion, released in France on May 27, 2022.
• What sets Roxanne apart from the other Rock-type Gym Leaders?
  She's the only female Gym Leader in the series to specialize in that type, unlike Brock, Roark and Grant.

In short

Roxanne is Hoenn's first hurdle, and also its most educational one: she teaches as much as she battles, to the point of turning a badge battle into a lesson. The manga adds a political dimension — a side chosen during the Team Magma and Team Aqua crisis, a Groudon slowed down, an abduction — while the games leave her where she's most useful: as the gateway to an entire League.