NT Warrior: MegaMan Stolen!

Plot Synopsis
Lan and MegaMan are on a trip around the world for winning runner-up in the N1 Grand Prix. When Lan arrives in Netopia (Battle Network's take on generic American City) he happens to run into Chaud, who is blowing off a meeting with Netopia's mayor. Chaud warns Lan to stay away from Mayor Daryl as he leaves, and Mayor Daryl's assistant, noticing Lan is the second place winner of the N1 Grand Prix, invites Lan to a celebration in his honor.

Lan attends the rally, and stuffs MegaMan aside in his backpack while he hams it up with his fans. After the rally though, Lan finds his backpack is missing, and MegaMan is gone. He finds the backpack, but someone stole MegaMan! Mayor Daryl suspects it's the work of the local teenagers and their leader Raoul (who seems a little old to be hanging out with that many kids). Lan runs off in search of MegaMan.

Just as he's running low on energy, Lan spots some kids with his PET. He chases after them, and finally corners them. Raoul comes from around a corner, and explains that the guys who stole his PET thought Lan was working with the mayor, who is an evil corrupt jerk, that won't build a skate park or some shit. They give the PET back, and then Raoul challenges Lan to a friendly net battle against his navi, ThunderMan. Lan naturally accepts.

Meanwhile, Mayor Daryl devises an evil virus to wipe out those pesky teenagers, and starts spreading it to a bunch of construction machinery, which interrupts Lan and Raoul's net battle. Lan and Raoul jack in MegaMan and ThunderMan to stop the virus, which takes the shape of a dragon. Lan hits the win button, and activates a style change on MegaMan, wood shield style. The virus gets deleted, then the police show up and arrest Mayor Daryl, since now they have some evidence of his corruption or something, given to them by Chaud.

Also, there is a sub-plot involving Mr. Match following Lan so he can delete MegaMan for revenge, but unfortunately Mr. Match got a little bit behind Lan, and ended up in the island from the last two cut episodes.

Critique
A common plot element for this show is that Lan's hubris screws him up real bad, and not listening to MegaMan gets him in trouble, which is the basis for this episode. Sometimes it makes for a decent episode, but a lot of the time it's just a device to introduce the larger plot of the episode, like it is this time. There was a good chance to get a decent "character" episode out of this, but instead, we get a over simplistic view of politics.

Not that I expect little kids to bother with political motivations, or even villain motivations beyond, "hurr I'm evil!" but it's hard to sympathize with "the plight of the people," when they're thieves, whose biggest complaint, is that the mayor won't build them a skate park. I mean, there are plenty of ways to get an audience to sympathize with someone who commits a crime - the movie The Bicycle Thieves comes to mind - but I suppose comparing a kids show to fine cinema is a bit pretentious. That said, I just don't give a shit about the problems of any of the other characters until the mayor decides to go Tiananmen Square all over the kids asses.

Ignoring that, we have the net battle portions which are pretty ho-hum, and the new characters of ThunderMan and Raoul. Raoul is decent enough a character I suppose, a little bland, but I think the voice actor gave a decent performance. ThunderMan is boring and stupid looking, but that's a faithful adaption of the game I suppose. Another thing that bothers me a tiny bit is Chaud's involvement is really convenient and seems like the only purpose for him is to keep him in the show. If you think about it, his role has no purpose now that the N1 Grand Prix is over. In the game, he was basically a cop (don't ask how an 11 year old accomplishes that), and it made sense for Lan to run into him over and over. Except for only a handful of episodes this season, Chaud mostly just happens to be at the right place at the right time for his character to have any involvement in the show, and it won't be until Axess where his role will make more sense.

As for this episode itself, it's just pretty bland without anything outstanding about it to make it worth watching.

Rating: Thumbs down.