NT Warrior: Skullmania!

Plot Synopsis
Tory is having his first battle with IceMan when Miyu makes a prediction to Lan that Tory will be successful within a minute, and that the weather will suddenly become stormy on what is an otherwise clear day. Miyu is said to never make a wrong prediction and just like she says, Tory wins the match in less than a minute.

Lan is preparing for the match later when the weather changes to become stormy as well, just as Miyu had predicted. Lan runs into Higsby in the arena, who wants to thank Lan for his help in getting NumberMan under control again. As a gift, Higsby gives Lan about a half a dozen miniboomer chips, and extremely common and mostly useless battle chip. Lan feels ripped off.

Lan finally comes to the arena to face his opponent, and it turns out to be Miyu and SkullMan. Miyu makes a prediction that the match will be over in 5 minutes, and that she will be the winner. Lan is worried, but thinks she might be trying to psyche (GET IT!?) him out. The match begins and MegaMan just can't land a damn shot off on SkullMan, who is always a step ahead of him.

The battle is intense, and we finally get to see some strategy from Lan that makes him appear much more significantly gifted at Net Battling than all the other characters in the show. I mean, I guess Lan is supposed to be a prodigy genius at this sort of thing right? Just as things are about to get hopeless, Lan sets up a trap with the miniboomer chips, causing SkullMan to jump head first into an explosion of them. MegaMan opens fire and gets a hit off. SkullMan is angry and is ready to strike again, but Miyu jacks him out.

Lan is victorious, and even managed to impress Chaud. Later, Sal questions why Miyu jacked out even though she could have won the match. Miyu states that she got what she came for, which was to test Lan's ability to make himself a future Net Agent. Mr. Match is excited that Lan won, since he is Lan's next opponent, and Mr. Match wants to delete MegaMan himself!

Critique
A great episode with a lot of suspense and build up. The action is great and the use of Miyu's psychic power is a good device to keep Lan nervous the whole fight. I think this is really the first episode that is good for Lan's character development as we really see his net battling ability as skill more than luck. The use of Miniboomers is decent as well, especially for those who have played the game, and the players like me, who throw away these useless chips as soon as possible. I will point out though Lan's strategy would never work in the game due to it's limitations, but that's the benefit of a cartoon I suppose.

Rating: Thumbs Up!