However, with the start of this episode, we're in full swing Battle Network 2 territory, as a new group comes to replace WWW, Gospel... er, Grave. This is kind of a weird name change I think, on different levels. In the Mega Man series, Bass's robo-dog's name is Treble, but in Japan, Treble's name is Gospel. In Battle Network 2, the group is called Gospel, although they are named after the beast they are trying to create which looks like Treble, but is called Gospel.
Of course in Japan, the group's name is Gospel also, and it is in the show as well, but in this dub, it's called Grave. I'm not sure why the name change though? Something to do with religious connotations of the genre of Gospel? Also, why Grave if other characters had their names toned down because of how "intense" the names could be to children, like how FireMan is TorchMan and BombMan is BlasterMan. I mean, doesn't Grave sound a bit more intense than Gospel? I don't know, I just think it's a strange change, and I wish I knew the reasoning behind it. Maybe they just called it Grave because the lip syncing was easier for that word or some shit?
Plot Synopsis
Lan is back from his world trip, and Mayl comes
to wake him up and show him the new world of Netcity, an artificial world where Navi's can travel around, shop, look at buildings, uh... exercise(?), and Net Battle. I don't know particularly why this idea sounds really new and innovative, after all, don't we have Second Life now? (Note: The author in no way endorses Second Life, and in fact, would encourage you to never unleash such horrors upon your computer)The first half of the episode, nothing really interesting happens as MegaMan and Roll tour Netcity, and Lan is introduced to new battle chip rules, that I don't think ever come up again. Also we see Bass.exe. Then MegaMan goes off and... hold up? Bass? Well then, things are about to get really interesting now! (Not really, Bass is the most butchered character of this show.)
Finally, the second half of the show starts, and something actually happens. Yai is taking a shower when some bad guy locks her in her room with his Navi AirMan, and the steam heats up and starts suffocating her. How did he know she was taking a shower???... I am very uncomfortable now...
Glyde gets a hold of Lan and Mayl, and Lan jacks in MegaMan to head down there, while he takes off on foot to Yai's house. MegaMan has to make use of the cyber-steam (this show is so cyber-stupid) and blast himself across gaps in the network. This is actually a reference to the actual stage of this scenario, so I guess that's kind of cool. MegaMan fights AirMan, who is being controlled by some dude named Arashi, who was just attacking Yai on behalf of Grave because her family was wealthy.
Lan breaks down the door to Yai's bathroom, and Mayl carries her out of the hot steam. Lan then gets back to MegaMan, and it looks like he can indeed defeat AirMan. Yai wakes up, some how not suffering from really bad burns, and is really glad that Lan wasn't the one to carry her out of there in a towel. In the game, she makes a joke about how he missed out on not seeing her nude, and the Japanese version of the anime she makes roughly the same joke. Luckily, someone at Viz Media though that kind of talk for an eight year old was PRETTY FUCKING INAPPROPRIATE, and changed it. Jesus Capcom!
Arashi is then arrested by Commander Beef and the Net Agents (he got off better this time considering in the game he is blow the fuck up!), and Commander Beef get's an ominous phone call, saying the whole thing was a distraction to get MegaMan out of Netcity, apparently so Grave could make it rain there? Uh, you know how much Net Navi's hate the rain?
Critique
The first half of this episode is boring and the second half has some uncomfortable content, but the entire episode looks like shit as far as animation. It looks like they fucking tweened this episode together in flash! There's a scene where Higsby is talking to Lan and Mayl for nearly five minutes, cycling between two frames of animation over and over again. They don't even animate the characters blinking it looks so shitty! And when Lan is roller skating to Yai's house, the animation is pretty lame as well. And then there's Aki, a character introduced in the episodes that were not dubbed, who is the shittiest looking piece of 3D animation ever constructed, and her dubbed voice and music ARE AWFUL! I don't know what her Japanese voice and music are, but the Dub is horrible. She's not a great character otherwise either, and they ended up dropping her from the series, thank god.
I also fucking hate Grave, they are such boring characters, especially their "leader" Kid Grave. They spend so much time making him all ominous and brooding, that they don't give him any time to be any sort of threat. The only interesting thing this episode is seeing Bass, and that's only if you're familiar enough with the series to recognize him. If you aren't, he's just some weird dude in a cloak. Even if you do recognize him, you'll be very disappointed with what they do with him. This is a cruddy episode.
Rating: Thumbs down.
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