We're now on the Japanese episodes from this point forward, there are no more dubs. All the characters have their original Japanese names, but I'll be sticking to their localized names to avoid confusion, except Lyra Note, who I will now call by her game name of Harp Note.
The first thing you'll notice from this show is the change in the show's theme song. It's a electro J-pop mix. J-pop isn't exactly my thing, and I prefer the orchestral better, but I have heard a lot worse J-Pop music than this and I think the way this song is used is quite clever. Sonia actually sings the shows main theme and several times in a few episodes as well, and I thought it was a nice touch.
The next few things you'll need to know if you are watching the subtitles. Denpa is the Japanese version of the games word for "wave." I don't know exactly what Denpa itself is, but with regards to this show, substitute wave for denpa and you have the characters speaking normally. Secondly, with any Japanese anime, it helps to understand Japanese forms of address. For instance, we may call someone Mr. or Ms. or Sir or Madame or whatever the hell you have. In Japan they uses suffixes and use them for various things. I'm not going to explain the entire fucking system to you, as I barely know it enough to understand the show myself, but what I will say, is that Luna calls MegaMan "Rockman-sama" because she holds him in a higher than normal regard, and most people would not do that.
I need to point out that I do not speak Japanese and am going off of fan-subs here because there exists no official subtitles for this series. They seem well enough, but even I can see when they fuck up some contextual translations for literal ones. I can't complain because they are free, but for all I know, these translations are completely wrong, and MegaMan is actually more interested in cooking than fighting. These translations seem accurate enough though, so I'm giving DATS the benefit of the doubt here. Also, the Japanese voices interestingly enough sound pretty similar to the dubbed voice actors as well, with a few exceptions. The FMians on average sound much better (god Wolf has a terrible voice actor in the dub) and Geo sounds a bit younger and a little more natural. Honestly though, that's about it, and it's surprising how much Japanese Bud sounds like American Bud, and how American Luna sounds like Japanese Luna and so on and so forth.
Lastly, the episodes are only 10 minutes long, with one of those minutes being the intro theme. There's not much to say about this except "FUCK!"
Plot Synopsis
Tom Dubious has returned to Echo Ridge and he doesn't seem to friendly. He's still got Cygnus
with him, and it seems they've formed a bit of an amicable relationship. Geo is walking to school with Luna and everyone, with her primary concern being to find out who MegaMan is. Zack makes the suggestion that MegaMan must be someone they know because besides Bob Copper, they have run into him the most often. Luckily for Geo, Luna thinks Geo is too much of a wimp to be MegaMan. Geo suddenly gets a call from Aaron Boreal that Dubious has returned to AMAKEN. Omega-Xis tells Geo that Cygnus is still with him, so they better head down there.Dubious steals a mechanical part and kidnaps Aaron and takes him to the top of a sky scraper. Aaron tells Tom that he needs to stop listening to those FMian freaks, so Tom alludes that Geo is also one of "those freaks." This confuses Aaron, who is then dropped by Tom. Luckily, MegaMan shows up and rescues him. Aaron finally gets a good look at MegaMan and suddenly wonders "is he...?"
There isn't any time to think though as Cygnus Wing attacks. MegaMan and Cygnus Wing move to the wave world and fight while Pat watches, grinning in the distance. Omega-Xis points out to Geo that he isn't sure if Tom will survive if Geo beats him this time, because they have been merged together for so long. This scares Geo who becomes too hesitant to attack a human. Tom tells Geo that it's natural he can't attack him, and that Omega-Xis sees them as tools. He then reveals that Omega-Xis lead the FM raiding party on the Space Station Geo's father was on. Furthermore, he says that Omega-Xis killed Kelvin Stelar! Oh shiiiiii
Geo goes completely blank, devastated from what he is hearing, and Omega-Xis isn't able to hold on to the EM-Wave Change from Geo losing concentration. Cygnus Wing attacks, hitting Geo hard, and he falls several stories into a river. Omega-Xis continually yells to an unresponsive and unconscious Geo who floats down the river.
Critique
This is one of the best animated episodes of the entire series, and it makes use of so many camera movements and fast paced action. It's really well done. The plot twist is a great touch as well and really switches up the entire nature of the show up to this point. Of course if you've played the game you already know what's really going on (to the extent that the show hasn't changed that is) but the hit to Geo's heart can really be felt by the viewer.
If there was one thing that could fuck up Geo's recovery from his depression, it was hearing that Omega-Xis killed his father. Geo instantly goes from the great hero MegaMan, back into the scared child that Geo once was, all entirely with his eyes... his huge, dinner plate sized anime eyes. Going from comedy to serious drama is excruciatingly tough to do without annoying your audience; NT Warrior has a number of episodes that struggle with it, the Ruby-Spears Mega Man would just come off as stupid if it even tried it, and Sonic the Hedgehog complete fails at it. I think Star Force really pulled it off though. Great episode!
Rating: Thumbs Up!
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