Axess: The Cyber Garden of Doom!

Plot Synopsis
Some weird cyber vines are growing all across the network and taking navi's hostage. It's the work of a Darkloid named Plant... VineMan, and MegaMan and Lan are tasked with taking him down. Along the way, Mr. Match helps out, after having returned from some place else I guess. Why did every character take a vacation?

Anyway, WWW's navi's got captured by VineMan, as did Roll, and in one of the ensuing battles, VineMan damages HeatMan and retreats. Lan goes after him with MegaMan, while Mr. Famous helps recover HeatMan. In the process, Mr. Famous discovers that TorchMan's data is still inside HeatMan, and they manage to bring him back to life.

MegaMan has a lot of trouble against VineMan, who is now using the power of the dark chips, and even with the help of TorchMan, they still can't penetrate his dark barrier. In their desperation, suddenly TorchMan and MegaMan merge, giving MegaMan a new DoubleSoul, TorchSoul. MegaMan blasts away VineMan and frees up the network, and Mr. Match is grateful to have TorchMan back.

Critique
This one is kind of boring actually. I mean, there are highlights here and there, and there's no cross-fusion and some decent animation, but the characters just never stop talking! This whole episode is "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah," even during all the action sequences! Everybody just shut the fuck up for two seconds! God damn!

That said, TorchSoul is nice to see of course, and there are certainly worse episodes than this one. I don't like that Mr. Match is suddenly a friendly hero-type character, but at least at the very end of the episode they shine a bit of that insane villain personality. This episode could have gotten really bad (MegaMan and Roll tied up in vines? God save us from fanart), but it could have been a lot better too.

Rating: Thumbs down.