Mossdeep City - Tate & Liza

Name: Tate & Liza

City: Mossdeep City

Badge: Mind Badge

Favorite Type: Psychic

Appearence:

Description: Tate and Liza are the twin gym leaders in the Hoenn region and reside in Mossdeep City; when defeated, they award the Mind Badge to the victor. It turns out that Tate is the slightly younger brother of Liza and slightly less experienced, ending up in constant teasing. Tate and Liza are experts on Psychic types. Their strategy is to Double Battle. In the games, Tate and Liza communicate with their Pokémon and each other telepathically in order to perfectly coordinate their attacks. This ability is not evident in the anime. When combined, their names sound like the word levitate. Their Japanese names can be interpreted as the Chinese "Feng" and "Lùan" respectively, complementing their appearances; additionally, the former translates to "wind" and is the first character in the art of feng shui, while "lùan"'s character is used in a pair of characters used to refer to confusion, a common technique of Psychic Pokémon.

Many players of the Pokémon video games initially believed that Tate and Liza were both girls; this belief stemmed from the fact that they dress in similar clothing, and Tate is not a very common boys' name. This was cleared up in the anime, however. It was probably thought because in the video games, one of the things shown on their profile was "Papa has trouble telling us apart sometimes".

In the Pokémon anime, Tate and Liza first appear at the Mossdeep Space Center, preparing to watch the shuttle launch, with the rest of their family. Their father, the astronaut, is going into space to find more space Pokémon, such as Lunatone and Solrock, Tate and Liza's Pokémon. After Max and Tate are kidnapped while fooling around on the shuttle, Team Rocket launches the shuttle, in an attempt to steal it and give it to their boss. Ash's Corphish accidentally also boards the shuttle, and defeats Jessie, James and Meowth, allowing Max and Tate to land the shuttle safely in Mossdeep, with the help of the family's many Baltoy.

Ash finally gets to battle Tate and Liza in the following episode, using Pikachu and Swellow in a double-battle with Solrock and Lunatone. However, Ash's Pokémon can't get past Tate and Liza's defense strategies, including using Light Screen and Psychic. Then Pikachu uses Thunder, launching it to the sky. The thunder strikes back from the ionosphere's layer above the clouds, and hits both Swellow and Pikachu. Both of them absorb the electric energy from the thunder and it turned into a form of armor, as both Pokémon contained so much power that both Lunatone's Light Screen and Solrock's Solarbeam were cut through, leading Swellow and Pikachu to strike down the cosmic pairing.

Tate and Liza learn a lot from the battle, and Ash wins his seventh Hoenn badge, the Mind Badge.