Ruby-Spears: Campus Commandoes

Guest Starring: Top Man and Snake Man

Plot Synopsis
Dr. Light has completed a university for robots to learn and study at, but Dr. Wily agrees with me that this is a stupid idea and attacks it. To keep Wily out, Dr. Light activates a force field around the campus, so Wily sends in Top Man to schmooze over Roll so they can copy her pass key and infiltrate the facility. Roll is apparently an idiot because she's forgotten who the hell Top Man is and swoons all over him.

Wily infiltrates the campus with his bots and serves the college robots microchips in their lunches(?) that gives him control of them. Only Roll and a hand full of other plucky one time characters don't eat the chips. Wily uses them to complete a new project Dr. Light was working on, an anti-gravity machine. Mega Man of course has been fighting them every step of the way, but nothing really significant until he arrives as they are finishing the anti-gravity machine. Top Man turns it on sending Mega Man flying and his hard hit to the ground terminates his processes. Dr. Light arrives to treat Mega Man as Wily flies off with the gravity machine.

Light isn't sure if he can fix Mega Man, but we know Mega Man isn't dead because Mega Man explodes when he dies, come on! Eddie shows up and revives Mega Man and he heads off to the city where Dr. Wily is trying to lift up City Hall to steal it. After a duel with Proto Man, Mega Man takes back the machine and puts City Hall back, and Wily escapes, defeated.

Critique
I went back and forth on this episode quite a bit. On the one hand, there's quite a bit of stupidity here and there and I question if the writers of this show even know what a robot is, but on the other side of things nothing is so outlandish that we end up with something as atrocious as the last episode. I mean, I suppose technically the idea of robots going to college and stuff is sound within the Mega Man canon if you consider some of the elements of ZX, but that's a bit over anaylsis when the real answer is probably that this show is for kids, who either don't know or don't care.

Even as is, it's not like the stupidity is par for the course for most of these episodes and there were quite a few times that I smirked or cracked a smile. There's actually a few clever exchanges between some of the characters here and there, but a great deal of this episode is mediocre, but not to the point of boredom.

So I basically said, "fuck it, if the show has something either really hilarious or awesome, I'll give it a thumbs up, otherwise it'll be a thumbs down." Ultimately this led to a kick ass jet pack battle between Mega Man and Proto Man. Of course Mega Man is stealthed, probably to save time by not coloring him. This sequence was enough to just barely push the episode into the thumps up category.

Rating: Thumbs up!