Axess: A Dangerous Bowling Game

Plot Synopsis
The new craze that's been sweeping DenTech city for the whole episode is bowling! Thanks to new bowling technology research, all new complicated mechanics can be added for something that seems really unnecessary to mess with! Higsby wins a couple of free bowling passes, so he decides to ask Ms. Mari out with him. Unfortunately for Higsby, Ms. Mari ends up accidentally inviting Lan and Mayl with them, turning it into a group activity.

Meanwhile, the Darkloids and their mysterious leader want to strike fear into the public by... attacking bowling alleys? Right... ShadeMan uses a darkchip on a custom Navi named BowlMan, which causes him to turn evil and, play the game more aggressively? I have no idea whats going on in this episode...

Since Higsby is terrible at sports, he sends NumberMan to cheat for him, but BowlMan catches him and starts attacking him. Lan sends in MegaMan, who he basically uses DoubleSoul RollSoul on for like twenty seconds, then a really cruddy looking dimensional area forms up, and Lan beats BowlMan with Cross-Fusion. Then Ms. Mari suggests that Higsby and everyone else go bowling again sometime soon.

Critique
Just look at BowlMan. He was stupid in Battle Network 3, he's stupid in Axess. Yeah, maybe it seems arbitrary as to why I think Vanishing Ganguroo is a great boss, and BowlMan and Wire Sponge are horrible ones, but seriously, BowlMan looks so stupid, and what the fuck are the darkloids hoping to accomplish this episode?

Granted, it's not like BowlMan is out of place. In the other game series, the robots are built for destructive purposes, but it would make sense that some bowling fanatic might customize their Navi towards their favorite sport, but he looks so fucking dumb! He shoots bowling pins as missiles and crap!

Let me not just fault the show for using one of Capcom's more stupid looking Net Navi's though, after all, there's plenty left to not like. The DoubleSoul and Cross-Fusion sequences are so lame, and MegaMan doesn't even attack in his DoubleSoul form. On top of that, I'd swear this episode only had like six animations total, as they reuse the same crap from this episode over and over. At one point, they even flip the image around so it looks different!

Lame story, lame characters, lame animations, everything in this episode is just lame. Higsby helps this episode a tiny bit with his antics, but it's not enough to save this episode this time.

Rating: Thumbs down.