NT Warrior: Mr. Wily's Legacy!

Plot Synopsis
The World Three is stuck in a rut, and serving Rush curry one day, when all of their members' PETs start acting up. A video plays from Lord Wily that says he's put all of his data on a secret chip, hidden away on a remote island for his followers to find, so that WWW would live on. WWW decides to go after the chip, so Rush runs off to tell Lan and the others.

With Grave already out of control, Lan and his friends can't deal with the revival of WWW so they head to the island, while WWW hijacks a helicopter owned by Mr. Gauss. When they finally get to the chip, Mr. Gauss lands his blimp on the island and makes WWW surrender the chip to him at laser point. He offers Count Zap a job with Grave, as Count Zap is Gauss's younger brother, and Count Zap seemingly accepts, but as Yahoot points out, he was only doing so to keep Gauss from firing on Yahoot, Maddy, and Mr. Match. As the blimp takes off, Lan, acting like the suicidal fool he is, jumps aboard it.

Count Zap challenges Gauss to an Electric Feedback Match for the chip, between ElecMan and MagnetMan. While they're fighting, Lan has MegaMan take out the security on the blimp. After a heated battle, Gauss admits that he has some respect for Count Zap, but it's too late as Lan has grabbed the chip. They take off after him and corner him on the top of the blimp. The blimp shakes and has some explosions and Lan is hurled over the side. Zap and Gauss grab him, but let go after they see he dropped the chip. Lan clings to the side for dear life and Zap and Gauss fight over the chip again.

The chip then goes flying overboard, lost into the sea, while Yai pulls up a submarine to save Lan. An explosion rocks the blimp, and WWW fears that Count Zap was killed, but actually he's just fine, arguing with Gauss on an ice berg.

Critique
I got a lot of praise for this episode, but let me get this out of the way first. The reason I hate the "Yai is rich" jokes, is they are a huge excuse for Deus Ex Machina. The characters constantly resolve every situation with Yai being really rich. It's almost no different from saying Yai can cast magic spells, and it gets really tiring. I also think it looks stupidly out of place for Lan and his friends to be driving giant drill machine things all the time. There's just a huge clash between the shows background when it tries for something you would see out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something. Those are minor details though, and I don't wanna hold this show to any real high standards as it is.

This is a Count Zap centric episode, featuring Mr. Gauss, so how can you go wrong? I'll admit though, Count Zap is a bit more subdued that usual, and he's much better being the cackling mad man, but he's still not bad here. The electric feedback match is pretty hilarious, although you have to wonder why Gauss has the whole thing setup and ready to go on his blimp. Rush also cracks me up in the beginning, demanding his curry while WWW is looking at Lord Wily.

Something this show occasionally does that I like, is take some tired cliche and throw it back in the audiences' faces. In this episode, Lan is falling off the blimp, and the villains catch him. Lan pauses and gives an amazed look and says, "you... saved me?" The cliche would have been the villains helping Lan up, and showing that they aren't willing to let their biggest rival die when the moment comes. Instead what happens is once they realize Lan doesn't have the chip, they both drop him, and that's just funny. There have been better episodes in this show than this one, but this is a pretty good one too.

Rating: Thumbs up!