Rustboro City - Roxanne

Name: Roxanne

City: Rustboro City

Badge: Stone Badge

Favorite Type: Rock

Appearence:

Description: Roxanne is in charge of the Stone Badge, and resides in Rustboro City. She is an expert on Rock-type Pokémon, as shown from her name, which may be derived from the word rocks. Her name in Japanese language versions means azalea, but is also an allusion to the Japanese word meaning "throwing stone" (礫, tsubute?).

In Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, Roxanne and her Pokémon Gym serve much the same purpose as Brock's Gym in previous games. She is the first Gym Leader players encounter, and her team (a Geodude — two in Emerald — and a Nosepass), while durable, is weak against all three starting Pokémon (Torchic, when evolved, becomes Combusken, gaining the Fighting type, which is strong against Rock types) and is greatly lacking in offensive ability. Similarly, her Gym has few subordinate trainers (serving mostly to ward off any player who hasn't built up their team sufficiently) and no puzzles or complex mazes.

In the Pokémon Adventures manga, Roxanne is both the Rustboro City Gym Leader and an instructor at the Rustboro Trainer's School. She has appeared in "VS. Nosepass" Parts 1 & 2 (Ch.190 & Ch.191), "VS. Shiftry" (Ch.222) and "VS. Kyogre & Groudon X" (Ch.248), appearing as either the Gym Leader of Rustboro (where she supplements the traditional head-to-head challenge with written tests), or fighting against Team Aqua and Team Magma with the other Gym Leaders from Hoenn.

In the Pokémon anime, Roxanne is not only a Gym Leader, but also a teacher at the Pokémon Trainer's School in Rustboro City, teaching skills she learned as Professor Oak's star pupil. She teaches an introductory course on Pokémon to young children not old enough to be trainers. She appears in episodes 291 and 292, "Gonna Rule The School!" and "Winner By A Nosepass". While "Gonna Rule The School!" introduces Roxanne in passing, it instead focuses on members of her class; in "Winner By A Nosepass", Pikachu and Ash use a previously learned (and unreliable in the early anime) attack, "Iron Tail", which Pikachu later uses to defeat Roxanne's Nosepass in a battle for the Stone Badge.