Lan's dad is conducting some weird experiments
on the island of Jawaii, involving something called Dimensional Areas, which basically take data from the cyberworld and makes it into matter, kind of like how Rush can walk around and go from the real world to the cyberworld. Meanwhile, Lan himself is doing some of his own inventing and creates a wireless Jack In port for his PET. He then gets a startling phone call from Commander Beef.Lan's dad has gone missing, and somebody actually noticed! Lan and his friends, and Tory, head down to the mall that Yuchiro was working at to try and find him. When they get there, they find the place has been overrun with viruses, except not just in the cyberworld, but the real world under the dimensional area from the experiment! Lan and everyone jack in their Navi's but immediately lose contact with them afterwords. With no choice but to run from the viruses, they all take off.
MegaMan and the other navis get lost in a maze of tunnels, and eventually Aki, who I guess is there for no inexplicable reason, helps lead them to their NetOps. Meanwhile, Lan and everyone find out that the viruses take damage from water. They all load up on water guns at a nearby toy store and begin shooting the viruses left and right.
Eventually they make their way to the core of the dimensional area and find it is infested with the mother of all viruses, The Life Virus! They try attacking it, but there efforts are futile. Just before they're about to be killed, MegaMan reestablishes contact with Lan, and appears in the real world to fight off the virus. When the virus is deleted, the core returns to normal, and all the Navi's return to their PETs.
Just around the corner, they find Lan's dad sleeping, which they figure was caused by the ghost virus. But since the ghost virus can't do that, I'm just going with my theory that Lan's dad is an irresponsible asshole. My theory is confirmed because seconds after seeing Lan, Yuchiro jumps in a van-helicopter-thing and runs off. You are the worst father ever! Just then, Commander Beef gets a call from the other net agents, and a second dimensional area set up by Lan's father is also infested with viruses! Everyone groans as they prepare to head on over that way.
Critique
So this is the real season finale? Seriously? A ghost busters parody? Are you kidding me? It ain't a coincidence, as the title of this episode is exactly the same thing in Japan. This whole episode is just everyone running around from viruses until they figure out they're weak to water. What? Are the viruses from the land of Oz? What happens if Rush touches water, does he get deleted too? What about MegaMan? He was firing water from his arm cannon right?
Then you got Aki, who is so fucking poorly animated, holy shit! Ever heard of Mo-Cap XEBEC? Or at least increasing the amount of keyframes on Maya? Thankfully, this is Aki's last appearance, and these horrible 3D effects are going to be limited for a little while at least.
The Life Virus had potential to be a big time finale type fight, as it is the final boss of the first game, but I guess they thought it would be funnier to go with some jokes instead. I really don't understand why this episode, and all the other ones after "The End of the End" couldn't have just been done before finishing up the whole Grave arc. Yeah, there are some lead ins with the dimensional areas and wireless PETs that will play a part in Axess, but those events could have been summed up in a few sentences of the next season, or hell, just make all those episodes come in for Axess.
Then there's a weird gap at the beginning of the episode where everyone's on a plane to Jawaii, and then suddenly the plane is now a helicopter. Did they get in a helicopter, or did the plane just turn into one? Ever heard of cutting to continuity here?
If there is anything to like about this episode though, it's that we get to see a lot of viruses from the games that haven't been showcased before, and many of them true to their source material. We've got the drop down guys, the Aura head things, the zap rabbits, the hands the drop bombs, the quake viruses, all kinds of interesting stuff, and at least the life virus does make an appearance.
Mostly though, I just think this episode is disappointing. I don't see a lot of effort into this episode, and referential humor isn't all that great. So what if they look like the Ghostbusters? Is there anything else to this episode? The answer is no.
Rating: Thumbs down.
As we come to a close on the first series of NT Warrior, I have some final thoughts. For all the shit I give this series, I did genuinely enjoy it. It has its ups (the N1 Grand Prix, MegaMan's deletion, World Three in general), and downs (Grave, Princess Pride, Bass, PharaohMan), but I think I've given mostly positive reviews. A lot of episodes in this show are good enough to watch, not just as a Mega Man fan, but as genuine entertaining show.
I don't go into each episode expecting much, but I still look forward to seeing what happens, because the characters keep it interesting. I definitely think Star Force has stronger characters, hands down, but I like Lan and MegaMan to be sure, and NT Warrior has its own cast of strong support characters (Count Zap, Mr. Match, Higsby, Masa, Rush) and a few lame ones (Yai, Kid Grave, Chaud early on but he gets better).
NT Warrior is pretty inconsistent though. The episodes that are good are just waaaaaay better than the ones that are bad. Ratings are a pretty arbitrary thing, but this show is always walking the line of "so stupid its great," and "so stupid its stupid." When you see Count Zap cackling away while wailing on an electric guitar about stealing video games from children, you can't help but laugh. When you hear Lord Wily give a long contrived explanation about the origins of Bass, you just want to change the channel. This show generally works better when it doesn't take itself too seriously, although sometimes weak writing, like in the episode above, keeps the joke from being funny.
I'll tell you what isn't funny though. MegaMan NT Warrior Axess. Take everything positive I've said about this show: a few interesting stories, great supporting cast, not taking itself too seriously, and then just chuck that shit all out the window. Now you have Axess, which strives to prove that you can absolutely murder a show.
Maybe I'm just speaking as an ignorant American, since the show did do well in Japan, but to me, Axess is the death of this show. The melodrama here is off the charts, all the good characters are replaced by absolutely horrible ones, and they some how manage to destroy the entire dynamic of Battle Network that forms the basis for the whole damn scenario!
That's not to say every episode of Axess is bad, but most of them are. You think I don't like Kid Grave, wait till you hear my thoughts on Regal and Ms. Yuri, good god. In the US, Axess didn't do well enough to keep going, but in Japan it managed to stay afloat for a few more seasons. Although I haven't personally seen Stream, some of Beast, and most of Beast+, from what I understand, the shows just got progressively worse. After Stream, the show got it's season halved, and then it got it's time slot halved as well. Ouch!
From what I've seen of Beast, they tried to fix a few problems that Axess introduced, and Steam drilled into the fucking ground, but by then it was really too late, and to fix those problems, they had to make new, stupid ones. If you want a decent cartoon to kill a few hours with, you could do worse than the first series of NT Warrior, but if you want to keep going with the series, you probably shouldn't bother unless you're a die hard Mega Man fan. Axess is coming up next.
First time ever.
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