NT Warrior: Guess Who's Coming to NetBattle!

Plot Synopsis

Some guy is on a huge NetBattling winning streak, and Lan finally steps up to challenge them. Unfortunately though, their battle is interrupted, and wacky hijinx ensue. Don't just about half of the episodes of this show start this way? Anyway, the NetBattler's name is Whip, and he's running from some women in black suits. Lan gets Whip away from them, and finds out that he's a tourist. Whip offers to NetBattle Lan with his Navi, KnightMan, if Lan shows him around, and Lan agrees.

They wander around from place to place, and eventually come to a rest on a hill. There's television broadcasting the news, and it shows Princess Pride from Bright Land is releasing a new anti-virus program. This seems work up Whip, who quickly draws Lan's attention away from the monitor. Lan talks about how nice it must be for Princess Pride, but Whip says the Princess has a pretty miserable life filled with a lot of restrictions.

Finally, something fucking happens in the episode, and members of Grave show up to talk about taking out the new anti-virus. I can't believe I'm happy to see Grave by this point, and I hate Grave!

Then Lan and Whip spend a few minutes running from more of those women, and after they get away from them, they find themselves soaked in a fountain. When they go change, Lan sees Whip in a Kimono and realizes that Whip is a girl. They decide to finally have their NetBattle when ShadowMan interrupts it, and traps Lan in the stupidest god damned thing ever. Lan gets picked up by a giant claw game, and put inside a human sized, pop-ball-toy-holder-thing... you know, the stuff you get out of those quarter machines at the store. Whip has to smash the damn thing open with her bare hands, before Lan activates a style change on MegaMan and sends ShadowMan running.

Whip thanks Lan for his time, gives him a kiss, promises to come back or whatever and then goes to the women who were chasing her. We then find out she's really Princess Pride (although I'm fairly sure they didn't think we wouldn't figure it out by now), and she goes and gives a press conference about the anti-virus program. Lan's friends talk to him about Princess Pride, and Lan doesn't even figure out that he was spending the entire day with her.

Critique
ugh. ugh. uuuuuugh! This episode is fucking awful! It's so stupid, so cheesy, so cliched, and so fucking boring! A good chunk of the episode is just spent dicking around doing nothing! And the whole story of a rich girl trying to escape her boring, over-protective life style has been done way to many damn times, it's completely uninteresting.

I hate to give the games credit for any of their writing, but Princess Pride was a lot more interesting in Battle Network 2. At least she tried to kill Lan there! Also, what the hell is up with the way ShadowMan traps Lan? I mean, I know it's dumb to question some of the internet and computer stuff with this show, but why on Earth would you make a Pop-Ball thing so hard to open that you'd have to smash it with some blunt force? And if you put some science into it, shouldn't Lan have suffocated? Wouldn't the pressure of the ball being sealed make it impossible for Princess Pride to break it with her bare hands?

Also the battle scene is dumb too. MegaMan is completely trapped while Lan is, but as soon as Lan gets out, MegaMan frees himself without any help. Well just what the hell was the problem then? Also, the animation in this episode seems off, not the whole episode, but parts of it. And I know it's stupid to complain about the Anime style when watching an anime, but Jesus H. Christ, Mayl's eyes are fucking huge! She must go through a gallon of Clear Eyes with every use! Damn!

Let it be known, that this is easily the worst episode of NT Warrior up until this point in the show. I hate this episode. Some episodes are bad, but have a few saving graces, this one... not so much. They really just tacked on an action plot to a romantic comedy, but what we ended up with was a horror of a show.

Rating: Thumbs down.