Plot Synopsis
Of course, things are pretty bad. Dimensional
area covering the whole world, millions of NetNavi's trapped and being messed up, and ShadeMan running amok! Oh hey, Dr. Regal just cross-fused and instantly killed ShadeMan! Well at least the darkloids are out of the picture.Except now, Dr. Regal has decided to have his master plan come to fruition. Cross-Fused with LaserMan using a lot of Dark Synchro chips, Regal increases his size to tower over sky-scrapers, and being destroying DenTech city! Not only that, but apparently there are other giant LaserMan's all over the world doing the same thing!
Everyone retreats back to SciLab for the time being. The goal is to take out Regal's tower, which is powering up the dimensional area across the Earth. If that goes down, Regal's cross-fusion should break. The power source is in the center of the tower, and using a series of deus ex machina information, fake techno-babble, and some just straight up bullshit, Dr. Hikari knows that there's some ultra firewall thing blocking their NetNavis from attacking, but he also knows what to do to get around it, maybe.
In any case, Regal is heading to SciLab, so Lan tries to stall for time by Cross-Fusing with MegaMan. He loads up five DoubleSouls, giving him Cross-Fused DoubleSoul Ultra Power Extraordinaire Super Duper! (Yeah, I made up most of that...) Even with this extra power, Lan can only really annoy Dr. Regal. Chaud awakens ProtoMan and runs to help out Lan, whose been exhausted so much, he can't even move.
Chaud continues to stall for time while Lan struggles about, unable to get to his feet. Raika meanwhile has arrived at the scene to deal with the power source and firewall. He's enlisted the help of the rest of the cast (Mayl, Tory, Dex, Yai, Shuko, Higsby) to deal with the viruses guarding it. Everyone jacks in, and then we roll the stock attack animations, oh yay? Also joining the fight are JunkMan, ThunderMan, and BubbleMan (looking for revenge for ShadeMan).
While this happens, Chaud is thrown down hard by Regal, and taken out of the fight. Regal continues advancing on SciLab, which futilely tries to protect itself with it's own dimensional area. Regal breaks through, and it looks like everyone is done for!
But wait! All the millions of NetNavis who have been captured begin cheering for Lan and MegaMan. In an act of true anime cliched fashion, they transfer all of their power to Lan's cross-fusion, and he goes super saiyan. His power levels (whatever the hell those are), are so high, they blow up Mr. Famous's computer. Lan gets up, and then puts the beat down on Dr. Regal, all without Battlechips or his Mega Buster. He just straight up beats the shit out of him with his hands and feet!
With Regal on the ropes, Lan fires a charged shot, just as SearchMan destroys the dimensional area generator. Regal gets blasted and lets out a villainous "Nooooooo!" and blows up. The dimensional area collapses, and everyone enjoys a party under the meteor shower. Regal is missing, but ah, who cares right? Just look at the size of that meteor! Oh yeah, and BubbleMan gives back Rush.
Then Ms. Yuri turns out to be alive looking at it, and says some ominous words while looking at the meteor. NOT THAT IT MATTERS! The show is dead, sorry folks!
Critique
As far as ridiculous goes, this episode pretty much tops the entire series. Like a finale, it's big big big, and if you've ever seen any anime, this is about as standard anime as you can get. There's a lot of things wrong with this episode, particularly with every scene involving Dr. Hikari, but the whole package is wrapped up nice enough to keep you from dwelling on it.
You've got all the major players of the season showing up, the big bad guys plan starting up, and all hope being lost until the main character fucks the villains up. The music is in the right spots, the animation is mostly well done, and the ending is satisfactory, if a little hamfisted. It's about what you'd want, and the setup for stream is too minor to really bring it into a lot of focus. There's really no reason to miss this episode.
Rating: Thumbs up!
And that's the end of Axess, and the entire dub. The show was never picked up after that, and later Mega Man dubs would also be completed mishandled by Time-Warner (see Mega Man Star Force). Time-Warner must have felt this series was such a disaster, it never even came out on dvd... ouch.
Axess has it's moments, but I feel it's inferior to the original series due to the complete tonal shift of the show. The break away from the Battle Network style, while still trying to keep a semblance of the original source story, disconnected the show for me. As a whole, I'd still say Axess is worth watching if you're a Mega Man fan, or even if you enjoyed NT Warrior, but I don't know how to gauge it against the other shows that were running at the time.
In Japan however, Rockman.Exe would continue for quite awhile, and transition into Star Force after that, without a break between seasons mind you. The show would continue with Stream, Beast, and Beast +, but after Stream, the show took some noticeable hits. The seasons were shorter, and then the time slot was cut in half. Last I heard though, the show is still airing in syndication over there.
As far as the US is concerned though, I wouldn't count on ever seeing the other seasons continued. In all likely hood, Time-Warner still owns the rights to airing Mega Man related media on television, and they have a history of not working with it. Viz Media did comment as recently as last year that something might happen with the NT Warrior series, but as to what is only speculation. In all likely hood, it'll be the dvd release of Axess, or if we're lucky, subtitles of the original shows, continued on to the episodes we didn't see.
Rebooting the show just isn't going to happen. Aside from the cast having moved on, the only people who care about the show are few and far between. First, you need to be a Mega Man fan, then you need to be a Battle Network fan, then you need to be a fan of the show. That's quite a niche audience if you ask me.
Even the idea of the dvd release is skeptical if Battle Network doesn't have some sort of renewed interest. Capcom is pushing for this with Operation Shooting Star, but if that doesn't hit the states, we're pretty much in the position we're at now. Without renewed interest from a new generation of fans, we're just not going to see more MegaMan.exe in the states.
Is there hope for those of us who don't speak Japanese but still want to see the rest of the show? Yes, and I'll detail that in my very last Mega Man cartoon post, coming up next!
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