Lan goes to his PET's recycle bin and finds
MegaMan.exe, right clicks the file and hits restore! The end!Ok, obviously that's not what happens, after all MegaMan is probably to big of a file to be moved to the recycle bin, I mean, he's gotta be at least 20 billion lines of assembly or something. Instead the episode opens up with members of SciLab trying to figure out the earthquake that happened and finding out about PharaohMan's escape, and Lord Wily wants him. So he takes BlastMan and StoneMan and literally copies and pastes him about a million times until he has a whole army of them to take on PharaohMan, as if that wasn't opening up a huge can of worms for future episodes, but don't worry it'll never come up again, even though it makes no sense as to why the bad guys would never have done this before or continue to do it afterwords...
The WWW agents however are pissed that Wily isn't using them anymore because they really suck at terrorism. Anyway, Tory, Mayl and Dex show up at Lan's house to cheer him up, I guess Yai doesn't give a fuck. They open the door, and Lan's cunt of a mother seems surprised to find out Lan is depressed. Yeah, I don't know about you, but an 11 year old having their best friend the equivalent of murdered right before their own eyes just might fuck them up a bit!
MegaMan's death is causing Lan to act out of character, and he gets up early, does his homework and takes off, probably trying to distract himself. This mirrors his response to MegaMan's death in Battle Network 3 and is actually a decent set of scenes. Lan is just short of breaking down into tears as he runs through the rain, his destination unknown to the viewer.
In the mean time, PharaohMan takes control of the entire cyber-network and uses all of the electronics in the world to cause all kinds of disasters. We're not talking Ruby-Spears style jumping toasters and flying hot dogs, but things like using satellites to attract locusts and sound waves to cause avalanches and shit. Maybe it's about the same level as possible, but it works well enough. Alright, are we all caught up on everything? We're a quarter of the episode in and it's been good enough, but then comes this steady stream of nonsense.
Ok, so Commander Beef informs the Net Agents that PharaohMan was created by Dr. Light... er Dr. Hikari, Lan's grandfather, to watch over the cyber-network, but SciLab quit trusting him and sealed him away in a microchip or something, and apparently they gave up on the idea of making a navi with that much power. Well when Lan and Chaud were fighting, the force of the double program advanced caused so much energy, PharaohMan woke up or something, and apparently he still has the power to control the cyber-network, and he hates humans.
You know, Battle Network has a history of SciLab making a gigantic fucking problem, and just basically locking it up with a horrible security system that fails in like 10 years. In fact, I think almost every problem in Battle Network is the fault of SciLab's negligence... I wonder if it's time for criminal charges?
Back to Lan, who is still depressed that MegaMan is gone. He goes to sleep when suddenly a golden ring appears on his PET and we hear the staticy voice of MegaMan call out Lan's name. Lan awakens and notices the PET's ring, he also hears the voice, but apparently the moron has forgotten what MegaMan sounds like after two fucking days. The golden ring has also appeared on Mayl, Dex, Tory, and Yai's PET's but they can't seem to move or get rid of it. Lan doesn't know what to make of it, but his mom tells him to come down for a phone call.
Chaud called up Lan and tells him to meet up with him in a park. Lan isn't of course suspicious and when Chaud doesn't address him right away, Lan is too fed up to deal with him and starts to walk away, but Chaud stops him. Chaud stumbles over his words a bit and tries to talk to Lan about MegaMan, and this pisses Lan off who thinks Chaud is trying to rub it in. Chaud calms him down though and finally gets out what he really wants to say. Chaud says he finally understands the relationship between Lan and MegaMan, and how Chaud has realized now that he thinks of ProtoMan as more than data just like Lan thinks of MegaMan. Chaud thanks Lan for him and MegaMan saving ProtoMan's life, and let's Lan know that if Lan needs his help, he'll be there for him. They then show a flash back of MegaMan getting deleted, again, the second time this episode... I GET IT, HE'S DEAD!
When Lan gets home, everyone is there waiting for him to ask about his PET with the rings. Mayl thinks it has something to do with MegaMan. Gee whatever gave her that idea? Could it be that the damn thing keeps screaming Lan's name in MegaMan's fucking voice? Glyde points out that the rings could be bits of MegaMan's data stored from all of the navi's interactions with him over the course of their friendships. They figure out to try and link all their PET's together to see if the rings will react somehow, and Lan wonders if maybe they can reassemble MegaMan. The rings assemble but all that appears is MegaMan's emblem, and NOW when it talks Lan magically recognizes his voice. Unfortunately they have no idea what to do next, when just then, in walks the other stupid asshole in Lan's life, his dad, back from who the hell knows. "Let's get MegaMan back!" he says.
Critique
If you're choking right now that's just because your having trouble swallowing the load of horse shit this episode is trying to cram down your throat. Why did MegaMan's data all of a sudden appear on the PET out of no where? If MegaMan can be brought back so easily, why is there so much stigma with Navi's being deleted. IF NAVIS CAN BE COPIED WHY THE HELL DOESN'T ANYONE BACK UP THEIR NAVIS? Also, PharaohMan? PharaohMan?
Am I over analyzing this? I mean, this entire episode is just the writers yakking on and on trying to setup how they are going to bring back MegaMan, and they spend most of this trying to justify how it all works. So they leave these big gaping holes in the that I think they're taking too seriously.
All of that said, if you look at the raw emotional outputs of this episode, it does pretty well. For once, Chaud's presence is a welcomed as his character finally shows development, and MegaMan's finest hour is Lan's finest performance. If you look at the bottom line, by now Lan should be a character you've warmed up to, and seeing him affected this way should carry some interest with you, if not impact you in some way. Of course if it doesn't, this episode does nothing for you, and all I can say is this series will not get any better for you this point forward, and you might as well back out now. It worked for me though, enough to recommend it despite its many flaws.
Rating: Thumbs up.
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