"Prepare for lunar trouble up at moon from outer space! And sunshine makes it double 'cause we're here to wreck the place! A moon of smelly cheese to cause the world's devastation! A sunny and awful day for all the peoples within our nation! To denounce by the light of the silvery moon the evils of truth and love! To extend our reach to the vast of flaming gas from up above! Jessie the Moon Maiden! James the Sun Dude!"
Score: 3/10
We begin in the gym, which consists not only of an arena like regular gyms, but giant prop planets hanging from the ceiling. Okay, guys, seriously, I know your father is an astronaut and I know you use space pokemon, I got it. You don't need to drive your theme home like this, the audience already understands. By the way, these giant prop planets are made out to be a huge deal, like they really affect the battle because you can use them during a fight, but they never actually come up.
Ash is told he'll be battling Solrock and Lunatone in a double battle, so he sends out Corphish and Grovyle, since both are strong against rock. No, I'm just screwing with you, he sends out Pikachu and Swellow. His strategy? Use quick attack and peck. He survives the first minute literally - literally - because Lunatone and Solrock get in each other's way and cause Tate and Liza to start bickering. Ash gets the upper hand because Tate and Liza keep arguing about nothing (I would complain, but I know from experience that real siblings do this all the time, I have literally argued with my sister about whether we were arguing about whether we arguing or not), but Team Rocket attacks with a song instead of a regular motto, and man, James' voice actor is way better at singing than Jessie's voice actress. He's distractingly better than her, I swear you have to hear it to understand.
They capture Solrock and Lunatone using cages made of unobtanium, which is literally the stuff they were mining for in Avatar. Team Rocket escapes in their balloon, and since Swellow is already out, Ash easily pops it using no it takes him like two minutes to remember that Swellow can fly. He frees the pokemon and usepsychicattackblastingoffaaaagaaain. They decide to complete their battle even though you would assume the battle being interrupted in such a way would void any results. And it's not a new battle, it's explicitly a continuation of the existing battle.
With the experience of Team Rocket behind them, Tate and Liza are far more in sync than they were before, making Ash realize that when his enemies work together, independent attacks like thunderbolt are useless. Thus, he has Pikachu hop on Swellow's back, but his strategy of "flying thunderbolt" fails as well. He tries double team-- wait, since when has Swellow known double team? That's always been the writers' tool to lazily make battles against people Ash should demolish difficult. I'm serious, like every third non-main character whom Ash fights has a pokemon with double team because it's the laziest way to create tension ever. Also, double team fails as well.
Eventually, Ash has Pikachu use thunder on itself and Swellow, which stores electricity in their bodies and uses... thunder armor?
For some reason this makes them completely immune to everything Tate and Liza can do, and they win with ease. Tate and Liza give him the Mind Badge, which is shaped like a heart for some reason. Maybe Tate and Liza are actually Egyptian.
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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005