time. It has its moments, and in general, I think it has some good visuals and decent voice acting, but the scripts are so bad, and the dialog is really cheesy, and this first episode is a really bad start to the series.If you forgot the premise of Battle Network, let this show's introduction remind you.
"It's the year 200X and it's almost like living in a video game. I'm Lan Hikari. Welcome to DenTech City, where the whole city is linked together through a cyber matrix that connects everything. My friends and I have these powerful handhelds called PETs that let us battle in a virtual world with our cyber warriors. They're called NetNavis and my NetNavi...is MegaMan! There's also an evil force, World Three, that wreaks havoc on the city by infecting the cyber matrix with computer viruses! Along with my friends and their personal net warriors, MegaMan and I are gonna delete these viruses and rid society of all chaos and crime!
Jack in!! MegaMan, power up!"
The first season of NT Warrior is not that bad. It's pretty light-hearted, colorful and funny. Everything start heading downhill in season 2 and turns to complete shit by Axess. After that, well things get truly god awful in Stream... but Beast is alright. I don't know enough about Beast+ to say anything one way or the other yet, but lets just say they cut the shows run time in half.
Plot Synopsis
Lan Hikari is a 5th Grade student at DenTech Elementary who enjoys Net Battling, but simply can't compete with the custom Net Navi's his friends use. He is down and depressed about it... because apparently he has no real problems, and one day his dad finally sends him the programming for a new net navi. This Net Navi turns out to be MegaMan.exe who is a bit smaller than what Lan had expected. MegaMan quickly proves himself however, when a fire breaks out from Lan's oven. MegaMan quickly contains the fire but notices a strange Net Navi making a run for it.
While at school, MegaMan is thoroughly thwomping GutsMan, the Net Navi of Lan's rival Dex when another fire breaks out at his friend Mayl's house. Dex and Lan run to the seen and Jack-In MegaMan and GutsMan to put a stop to the Navi causing the fire. The Navi is of course Fire... wait... TorchMan? What the hell? Was fire too sensitive a word for little kids? Not sure I understand this change...
Anyway, MegaMan beats FireMan and Lan rescues Mayl. She is taken to the hospital but seems to be in good condition. Lan and MegaMan compliment each other on their team work and MegaMan says he'll always be there for Lan. Lan says MegaMan can do his homework then, but MegaMan refuses and they argue while the screen fades out.
Critique
Good God, Lan is such a whiny cunt this episode. I absolutely hate his dialog. There is no episode where he gets on my nerves as much as this one and this one really makes me cringe. It's bad enough he says such "timeless" dialog as "doesn't that sound pretty tight?" and "Yo, check it." I don't mind these phrases, I just hate that they sound like a big company trying to sound "hip with the times."
Lan is completely unsympathetic this episode. All he does is whine about how terrible his Net Navi is for Net Battling, which when put into perspective is a pretty trivial concern. It would be like a kid getting upset his pokemon kept losing. When he tries to explain how important Net Battling is to him, he comes off as extremely pretentious. Then, he gets his new Net Navi Mega Man and just bitches further. All I want to do is smack him this episode, and I generally like this character normally.
The rest of the other points are good though. I love the visual styles of the show and the voice acting is top notch. Andrew Francis, the voice of MegaMan, is by far my favorite voice to portray the character yet. He sounds young, but not too young and he comes off as some one with a little bit of wisdom despite his relative inexperience. Comparatively to the voice of Mega Man of the Japanese version, I think he sounds much better. The Japanese voice is much more high pitched and sounds much closer to Lan's age. Lan in that version sounds much younger as well, although he does sound more of what I imagined he would before I had seen this show.
As a side note, this episode is a close resemblance to the first scenario of Mega Man Battle Network 1 where Mr. Match is going around setting people's ovens on fire. However, in the game, MegaMan and Lan have been together for some time, probably early on in Lan's life. Also I'm going to say this now that the entire "Hub, Lan's Brother" angle is dropped from NT Warrior, or that if it does apply to this series, it is never brought up. Probably for the better.
This episode just doesn't work for me, and considering it's the very first episode you'd think the writers would do a better job of making Lan more likable. Even after he's taken to Mega Man a bit, he already starts to become a cocky asshole about how much better a net battler he is. MegaMan himself seems a lot more over powered than he normally is too this episode, probably so he would have a better impression on Lan. MegaMan's role in every incarnation is the under dog, but here, hardly any weakness is shown and I think it really gives the wrong impression about the overall tone of the series. This is a bad way to start off your protagonists.
Rating: Thumbs Down
No comments:
Post a Comment