Everyone knows that the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon is not a good show. Even most fans would, at best, say the show is a guilty pleasure more than anything. The stories are not well constructed, the show consciously and quite seriously deviates from source material, and most of the characters are enjoyed more for their qualities of being a parody of their actual counterpart, more than the character themselves. We enjoy the episodes for the outlandishness of the plots, the great musical track with some really dumb lyrics, the performance of the voice actors such as Proto Man and Dr. Wily, and the occasional really well animated scene, such as the introduction to the show and a handful of other episodes.
Curse of the Lion Men isn't one of those episodes that's even enjoyable for being stupid. It's not enjoyable at all. If you've ever heard of the Mega Man cartoon, chances are you've heard of this episode that not even the most fanatic of Mega Man fans will defend. A lot of people are overly critical of this show, especially when you keep in mind the age demographic here, and those people tend to sound like self-important assholes (such as myself quite frequently). This episode pretty much deserves every piece of harsh criticism and insults it gets though.
Plot Synopsis
An asteroid passes over the Earth on it's normal
century old cycle, and the dust of the asteroid lands on an ancient tomb of mummies. The mummies awaken, rip off their bandages and are revealed to be Lion People. They decide they want to conquer the Earth, and Tar, their leader, begins marching them all around Hawaii. The Lion Men have the special ability to shoot lasers out of their eyes that turn other people into Lion Men, while also hypnotizing them to obey Tar. If you weren't on board with how stupid this episode is already, it gets better.Now of course the laser eyes don't work on robots, so Mega Man goes out to battle these Lion Men, but Dr. Wily decides to butt in and form an alliance with Tar to take over the world. Mega Man is overwhelmed by the Lion Men and Wily's bots so while he is immobilized, the creatures end up capturing Dr. Light who had just finished a Lion Eye Laser Lion Maker Reversal Device. The lion men turn Dr. Light into one of them, and then Tar, pissed off with Wily's ambition, turns him into a lion men too. Then he uses some sort of wave gun thing Wily was holding to reprogram all of Wily's bots and Roll into obeying him.
The rest of the episode is literally scene after scene of Mega Man attacking the Lion Men head on, then getting beaten, then trying again. I swear there is like 5 minutes of this uninterrupted with zero dialog. Eventually Mega Man reprograms Roll by reaching under her shirt and pushing two buttons over and over again and they go back to Dr. Light's hotel room to retrieve the device. But it doesn't work, and Mega Man has to fiddle with it while being shot at to get it to work. He turns all the Lion Men back to normal, so Wily uses his gun to reprogram his robots back and orders them to retrieve the machine to he can use it to conquer the world. Mega Man just blasts the robots in the most half-assed wrap up possible, then destroys the machine to so it can't be reversed engineered to be used for evil purposes.
Critique
I could comment on how stupid this story is, I mean, it's the worst story to ever come out of the entire Mega Man franchise, possibly even worse than those horrible hentai comics fans make of this show... maybe... What is there to be said though? The story speaks for itself, and it couldn't possibly get any worse. I don't even think the weirdest of yiffing furries could enjoy this episode, and that's saying something.
But no, I'm not going to bitch about the story, I'm going to bitch about the production. This episode is a mess, and the animation is the worst the series has ever produced. So many scenes are choppy, the frame rate jumps around all over the place from way too fast to really fucking slow. The characters' artwork is atrocious, and all of the colors are much duller, and theirs a distinct lack of shading. There's a bunch of scenes where characters speak without their mouths moving and the eye laser special effects look so fucking terrible. There's an actual segement where Mega Man and Rush turn transparent!
I've seen better animation from fan-made Mega Man flash cartoons, I've seen less choppy animation from stop motion cartoons, I've seen better animation from the fucking 8-bit NES Mega Man games! Not only is this episode stupid, but it looks like ass and is dreadfully painful to watch. This episode is bad by its own abysmally low standards. It's episodes like these that show why this show didn't last past the first episode of it's third season.
Rating: Thumbs Down.
Extra: Don't take my word for it, watch Diabetus "Let's Watch Mega Man" parts 1, 2 and 3 to see for yourself.
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