Lan continues his world tour to Brand City, with
Mr. Match still lagging behind him. While out looking around MegaMan spots a purse that his mother has been wanting. Lan inquires about the price and it's way more than he can afford at $2000. I wonder what the conversion rate of Zenny to dollars is?Anyway, a mysterious man comes up to Lan and offers him a spot in a tournament called Survival Seven, where if Lan wins, he'll be granted any wish he desires -fabulous prizes, grand riches - but Lan wants the stupid bag. Way to aim low Lan!
Meanwhile, Chaud, who gets himself inserted into another episode by pure coincidence, is having a meeting with Ms. Millionaire (blame Capcom for that stupid name) over a contract negotiation, but Ms. Millionaire won't sign the contract unless he enters ProtoMan in the Survival Seven, which she is hosting. Chaud refuses to play, as he hates being her pawn, but Lan walks in willingly, not knowing what's coming.
SnakeMan.exe shows up to greet Lan and MegaMan, and explains the rules of the tournament. It's seven rounds against various navi's (who look like they were designed while smoking crack) without any rest in between, and if MegaMan wins, they'll get their prize. SnakeMan places a bracelet on MegaMan's wrist and starts the tournament. MegaMan clears each round, but when he reaches the end, the matches start over. Lan and MegaMan keep fighting, not sure what's going on.
Ms. Millionaire finally meets with Chaud who is getting really fed up, and notices she is watching MegaMan on a monitor. Apparently Ms. Millionaire is only entertained by watching Net Battles (and boring ones if you ask me) and she plans to keep MegaMan and Lan battling for her forever. She goads Chaud into fighting MegaMan, so Chaud jacks in and has ProtoMan tell MegaMan it's a trap.
SnakeMan then shows up pissed off and MegaMan starts fighting him. Lan hit's the instant win style change button, and SnakeMan goes down in a single shot. Lan and MegaMan leave without their prize, and Ms. Millionaire tells Chaud to "lighten up." Lan is disappointed he can't get the bag, but just then he gets an e-mail from his mother where she is showing him the same bag she just got from Lan's father, making the entire day a big waste of time... but MegaMan seemed to have fun.
Critique
So once Lan and MegaMan know that the tournament is bogus, why doesn't Lan just jack out? It's not like he has a gun to his head, and he leaves with no problem at the end of the episode. At first I thought it might have been due to the bracelet on MegaMan's wrist that was keeping him there... but he just breaks that off. Chaud also has no problem jacking out, so I don't get where the danger is coming from, other than Lan's pride or something.
On top of the rather weak elements of the story, the animation in this episode is a little sub-standard. Not nearly on the level of Curse of the Lion Men, but it has things like SnakeMan not moving his mouth to talk, a huge ton of recycled animation sequences repeated in the episode, and a lot of really slow pans over still images. I mean, there are some animated sequences that are fine, but good chunks of this episode are just chopped up and repeated. Also, Lan sort of looks weirdly drawn proportion wise the first few scenes. Mostly this is just another dull to mediocre episode though.
Rating: Thumbs down.
Extra: Hanging on the walls with the Survival Seven poster is some MegaMan.exe artwork, one of the posters even has Roll on it. It might be old promotional artwork put in as an easter-egg, though I haven't actually ever seen it outside this episode. Just something interesting to look at.
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