Plot Synopsis
DenTech city is engulfed in a heat wave, so to cool
everything down, a new gadget has been released, a personal air conditioning unit robotic penguin. The thing has been selling lot hot cakes, and just about everyone in the city has one, just as Grave had planned.Meanwhile, Yahoot has opened a curry restaurant in DenTech, with the WWW operatives as his employees. Maddy and Count Zap are lounging about, since no one is buying curry from the hot weather, and Yahoot didn't buy one of those penguins. That's when Mr. Famous walks in for some curry. This is the start of a sort of "double plot" idea. I'm not sure of the exact terminology here, but essentially this starts a subplot that becomes the main plot of the next episode, and this episode's plot becomes the subplot of the next episode, so the two plots are running concurrent with each other, with a different focus each episode to bring the entire plot into perspective. I wouldn't call it a Rashomon technique, since everything is more or less purported objectively without any contradiction, but I suppose that's a similar idea by taking multiple accounts into a full story.
Anyway, continuing the focus of this episode's plot, the penguins are actually being controlled by Grave, and one of their Navis, FreezeMan. FreezeMan uses the penguins to start a blizzard in the city, which freeze all of Lan's friends, and the penguins come after him. In addition to DenTech's blizzard, NetCity is also frozen in cyber-ice! Lan tries to find a place to jack in MegaMan into NetCity, but the whole city is frozen. Lan eventually ends up in the only place not frozen in the whole city, Yahoot's #1 Curry. Luckily for Lan, all of WWW has ran out of the restaurant chasing after something only a few minutes ago. Lan jacks MegaMan into NetCity.
While there, MegaMan runs into FreezeMan, and they have a battle. MegaMan fairs decently enough at first, but FreezeMan gets the upper hand and has MegaMan on the ropes. Just before MegaMan is about to go down, a fire based navi shows up and ambushes FreezeMan. The navi is HeatMan and he has sworn revenge against FreezeMan and Grave. FreezeMan doesn't seem to know what the hell HeatMan's talking about, but he doesn't have to find out as HeatMan starts fighting him. FreezeMan retreats, and HeatMan fries all the penguins, saving the city. MegaMan thanks HeatMan for his help, but HeatMan threatens MegaMan, saying the next time they meet, they'll be enemies. Lan doesn't know what the fuck, and then we see a scene of Mr. Match delivering curry, grinning smugly to himself.
Critique
There's something to be said for imagery, and an evil penguin robot is a bit of a humorous thing to see. There isn't anything flawed with this episode's story, I mean, aside from small ridiculous shit that no one expects you to take seriously, like how there's no way a group of penguin robots that size could freeze people in seconds, or the typical "why is the cyberworld coded to be so vulnerable" type of stuff in a typical episode. It's not like kids are going to care about that stuff, and this episode kind of has a "Ruby-Spears" Mega Man type of feel to it. Over the top, complicated cartoony destroy the city plot!
On the other hand, it's not all that good an episode. It's not terrible, but it doesn't really reach the potential it had. If the episode had more humor to it, I think it would have really done much more for it. FreezeMan is a pretty boring villain, in both looks and personality. He's really mild, and lacks any real qualities that make him interesting, like the insanity of Count Zap or WackoMan, or the drive and cutting edge of Mr. Match and TorchMan, or even just the average arrogance of your typical throw away navi. FreezeMan seems like the type of guy that collects stamps online while on break from his accounting job, he's just really bland. I like how there was a tie-in to the Ice Stage chip, which seems like a tough idea to translate, but that's the kind of thing only a fan of the games would pick up on and enjoy. I also liked that MegaMan actually had some difficulty in the fights, and even didn't win the day himself this episode (even though he should probably have no problem considering he's runner up in the N1 Grand Prix).
Then there's the "double plot" thing I was talking about. Without the next episode, there's a lot of seemingly Deus Ex Machina, and jumping between sections of the plot. HeatMan comes out of nowhere, although we're alluded to Mr. Match helping out at the end, but it still doesn't make much sense without the context of both episodes. Add to this that the next dubbed episode only aired in Canada, and there's even more problems with this episode.
Lastly, there is a really jarring jump cut in the middle of the episode, that my instincts tell me was done by the dubbers, but I'm not sure on that. In this sequence, Lan is surrounded by penguins, holding his PET. MegaMan tells him to run, then an establishing shot shows a bunch of penguins freezing the city. The very next shot, shows Lan far away from the penguins, but he's suddenly realized he dropped his PET and turns around to go get it.
What's missing here is what is called, cutting to continuity. It's a pretty simple technique, that you learn first day in film class, and is a global concept with films, tv, and cartoons. It's something that everyone is so used to seeing, that you probably know what it is from instinct, even if you don't know the proper name of it. Basically, show a series of shots in sequence, where important details are given to the audience, so they can fill in the blanks of what happened. A common example is a person going to work. They open their door, next shot they get in their car, next shot they start the engine and pull out of their driveway, next shot they are driving down the road, next shot the arrive at their destination. We don't show the entire trip, but you can fill in the blanks as to what happened. In the above sequence, we are missing some crucial data about how Lan gets away from the penguins and why or when he dropped his PET.
The sequence should have gone something like this. After MegaMan tells Lan to run, the next shot shows Lan taking off running. While running, we get a shot of a close up of the PET falling out of Lan's possession somehow, next shot, Lan is still running while the PET lays on the ground. We can then cut to the penguins attacking the city, and then cut back to Lan realizing he lost his PET somewhere. It's not like this killed the episode, it's just a weird idea to have the show stop and have Lan find his PET, when we never saw him lose it. My instinct tells me for some reason the dub felt it necessary to cut a scene somewhere here, as this isn't a very typical mistake anyone filming makes, even amateurs, and it seems to me that, in its full uncut form, that there would be some shots describing what I have stated above. I could be wrong though, and the original episode could very well be exactly as this episode is.
Overall this is a bland episode. It won't hurt to watch it, but there isn't a lot to get out of it either.
Rating: Thumbs down.
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