NT Warrior: To the Moon!

Plot Synopsis
Something has cut off communication between Earth and its moon base, so Commander Beef is tasked with a mission to repair it. When he gets there, he gets cut off from the base, and his air supply starts to run out.

By complete coincidence, Lan and his friends find a video on the net of Commander Beef slowly suffocating, and Lan gets a phone call on his PET from Mr. Famous, telling him how to help. Mr. Famous leads Lan to rocket platform's HQ, and gives Lan a new tool called "The Extra Code." He tells Lan to only use it in a very dangerous situation.

Lan gets inside the base, and Black Rose and Mysteriyu let him help out. Lan jacks in MegaMan and they run into an evil Navi named PlanetMan who has taken over the base. Lan has trouble getting chips to MegaMan however, because there is a delay in the communications and the chips. They say it's the virus or something, but it would have made perfect sense if it was just the distance between Earth and the moon right?

Anyway, the delay screws up the fighting for MegaMan pretty bad, and the Program Advance becomes impossible to pull off. With no other answers available, Lan executes the extra codes, and that activates a new style change, Aqua Custom (a real mans style, I said it). MegaMan's power is much greater, and Lan discovers a new program advance in the process as well, Hyper Burst (Three Spreader Chips), and then adding another two spreaders makes an even more powerful PA called, Mega Burst. This wipes out PlanetMan, and MegaMan restores the base, allowing Commander Beef to make it in safely, but the Extra Codes take their toll on MegaMan, and he collapses from exhaustion.

The EX codes are powerful, but too dangerous for Lan to consider using them. Mr. Famous looks on into the night sky as the episode fades out.

Critique
I think the whole idea of a time delay between NetOp and Net Navi is actually a pretty good one, and it works well here in creating a new challenge for Lan and MegaMan. This is another episode that players of the game will get some bonuses out of, as it talks about the pros and cons of EX codes, which were introduced in Battle Network 3, although I don't think the code in this episode is a real code unfortunately. Just like this episode, EX codes power you up while simultaneously fucking you over. We also learn a couple new Program Advances, even though those PA's suck, and Custom Style is the only way you'll ever reliably pull them off, but it is nice to see bonuses for the game players.

You can tell the writers don't really know what to do with Mr. Famous's character early on. First he's helping WWW, then he's helping Lan, later he'll be commanding Lan as a Net Savior, and finally he'll end up at SciLab. In the game, Mr. Famous isn't really an important character, but he just kind of shows up everywhere, giving hints or cool Navi chips, and I think that's what they were going for at first. I don't think it's bad one way or the other, I just think it's mildly interesting.

I could nitpick this episode quite a bit, like how there aren't any guards at the rocket pad's HQ, how contrived it seems for Lan and his friends to just stumble on classified videos, or just how in general PlanetMan looks stupid (that's Capcom's fault though), but really there's nothing so wrong with this episode that keeps it from being enjoyable, and I do like watching Lan and MegaMan actually challenged in a fight. Decent episode.

Rating: Thumbs up!