Rockman.exe Program of Light and Dark

While I'd like to review Stream, Beast and Beast+, unfortunately those series lack complete subtitled translations as of yet. However, there is one last Mega Man cartoon which did get translated, a movie rather. This 50 minute movie from the Mega Man NT Warrior universe puts a final cap on the Dr. Regal saga, and retells the events of Battle Network 5... with quite a liberal use of creative license. For now, this will be my final Mega Man cartoon review.

A bit of background, Program of Light and Dark takes place sometime during the Stream series. Stream followed a story where cross-fusion became a bit more prevalent amongst the cast, and Lan and MegaMan ended up having to deal with a being from outer space named Duo, with the help of a new mysterious Navi named Colonel, whose mysterious operator hides his identity from Lan. Anyway, Bass decides he wants to take MegaMan's ultimate program (the junk from the end of the second season of NT Warrior) to make him self the ultimate navi. He attacks MegaMan a bit, then gets banished to the undernet by Duo's helper, Slur. Fast forward to the movie...

Plot Synopsis
We open up with some sort of cross-over between Rockman.Exe and some other anime series about card battling or some shit. Maybe this was part of a double feature or something. Anyway, once the movie begins proper, Bass is floating around the undernet when suddenly a giant monster thing appears. Then huge laser things start moving around the Earth and absorbing building and people and stuff, and forming strange glyphs in the landscape.

Lan and his friends are at an amusement park while this is going on, NetBattling to the Stream opening theme of "Be Somewhere," and he suddenly gets a call from his dad to go put a stop to it by blowing up some huge server or something at a building called TRINITY. As MegaMan arrives in the server to destroy it, Bass shows up and starts fighting him. Colonel also shows up in the nick of time to help out MegaMan, and distracts Bass while MegaMan blasts at the server.
It's not good enough though, because the strange entity of energy sucks up the data anyway and the monster Bass ran into shows up, who Bass identifies as Nebula Grey. The big laser beams show up again and start sucking up the city, along with all of Lan's friends. Lan is momentarily depressed when his dad picks him up, and tells him he has a plan how to get everyone back.

So basically these lasers aren't killing people, but actually the remains of a program called Spectrum, which is the combination of two programs by Tadashi Hikari (Lan's Grandfather) and Dr. Wily. Essentially, it makes it so people can materialize in the cyberworld, but the project got canceled when Dr. Wily went to work for the Netopian Army.

Anyway, apparently Nebula Grey was hidden in the program, and is trying to suck up the real world into the cyber world. MegaMan wonders if he's strong enough to stop it, and asks Lan if maybe they should give Bass MegaMan's ultimate program to stop it.
Just then, Dr. Regal appears out of nowhere, apparently having survived getting blown the fuck up in Axess. When LaserMan was taken out, his data was sent to the cyberworld, and Regal went with him. Then, Dr. Regal had enough time to find out about Nebula Grey, and grow a pretty wicked goatee. Anyway, he's fused with Nebula Grey and plans to take over the world, but in order to do that, he needs to kidnap Lan's father for some sort of access code with Tadashi Hikari's program. They teleport away, so Lan meets up with Chaud and Raika to form a plan.
Using Chaud's connections with the Netopian army, Chaud learns the location of base where Dr. Wily's program is stored, and presumably where Dr. Regal has taken Lan's father. Raika, Chaud, and Lan all Cross-Fuse with a SciLab dimensional area around the island and attack. They're surrounded by laser shooting mechs, which Raika and Chaud hold off, while Lan looks for his father.

Then Regal activates Spectrum, using the codes found in Dr. Hikari's fucking iris, and this somehow causes a temporal rift in time, which sends Baryl (Colonel's operator) to the future, and he rescues Lan from certain doom. They find the capsule where spectrum is functioning, and Jack MegaMan and Colonel in to stop it. Colonel holds off security while MegaMan goes to deal with Regal, who is jacked inside the machine.
Nebula Grey is starting to materialize in the real world, but luckily, Bass shows up to help fight him off, apparently pissed that Regal manipulated him somehow... I guess? MegaMan and Bass are strong, but not enough to stop Regal, who starts absorbing them in Nebula Grey. MegaMan figures his only hope is to give Bass his Ultimate Program to stop Nebula Grey, even if it means MegaMan's deletion.
Bass is all too happy to oblige MegaMan's request and begins absorbing his ultimate program... but wait a second, it looks like MegaMan is actually taking over Bass's ultimate program! MegaMan fuses with Bass into a Bass DoubleSoul, and then uses his new power to destroy Nebula Grey, and Dr. Regal once and for all.

The process of the Earth turning into the cyberworld stops, and the world is saved. But uh-oh! Regal was a load-bearing villain, and the whole island is blowing up! Also, MegaMan is too weak to escape and Lan can't jack him out. Bass breaks the DoubleSoul Cross-Fusion, and MegaMan is able to jack out while Bass is absorbed in the blast and presumed dead (he's not). Baryl returns to the past, and Lan and his team are picked up by the Net Police as the credits roll.

Critique
If you understood any of that, please explain it to me, because this whole fucking story is beyond comprehension, and is so convoluted and confusing, I can't really say if it's good or bad. This story makes no fucking sense, and I'm speaking as someone who actually is up on the Mega Man canon. Imagine if you were someone that didn't know Mega Man too well, this would be complete drivel to you! Stream isn't necessary to watch before seeing this movie, because it won't make it any less confusing. The plot is just a broken mess.

That aside, the animation, artwork, and music are all top notch. This is what you would expect from a bigger budget movie, and MegaMan has never looked better in this high quality. We also got to see a lot more of Bass in a role much less retarded than his previous ones, which is always a plus, and he actually fought MegaMan this time. This is definitely an eye candy event.

I did like that they cleverly threw away Lan's friends for most of the movie to keep the plot more action focused, because if you had any time to think about the plot, you wouldn't be looking at all the pretty animation. There's a lot of clever effects here, and I especially like the mosaic ending effect.

It's been a while since I've watched a subtitled episode of Rockman.exe, but there's quite a noticeable change of tone between the two shows. MegaMan and Lan both sound much younger, which I think works to their advantage some what, and the musical choices are completely different. The cross-fusion music in particular, which became sort of the theme of the Japanese show feels off when it's used, but it is catchy.

For as stupid as the plot is, I'm glad I watched the movie at the end of it. It looks nice, and as a Mega Man fan, I enjoyed it. I can't say I'd recommend this to anyone besides Mega Man fans, as I was lost enough knowing what was going on. I'd probably hate this movie any other way, but you can't deny the animation is good. I think Star Force carries on this level of quality with its animation in a lot of episodes though, with less of the retarded plot nonsense. As a Mega Man fan, I rate the movie a thumbs up.

Rating: Thumbs up!

And that's it for the Mega Man cartoons. I'd love to do Stream, Beast, and Beast + some day, but I won't touch them until an English subtitled release comes out. Beast is almost done, but that group updates slower than the continental drift, and Stream has been on indefinite hold by so many groups so many times. Right now there is a group working on subtitling the original audio for Axess, and they plan to do Stream and the others, but they just started and I wouldn't count on seeing that done to completion anytime soon, even within five years. Face it, fan projects suck with time tables, and there is surprizingly a lot of drama amongst self important subbers, so with that little egotistical trait they all seem to share, I wouldn't count on ever seeing me review any of the next few series. All well, at least I mostly enjoyed what time I had with Lan and MegaMan.
Next up, the last review (for a while) for Mega Man. The new game, Mega Man 10!

Axess: Dr. Regal's Rampage

This is it folks, the final episode of the American Dub of Rockman.Exe, Mega Man NT Warrior. It's the season finale to Axess, a season the departed from jumping into networks, and instead went for merging characters together to make super heroes. Whether you thought the show was better or worse for it, Time-Warner killed it. So how did the show go out?

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!

Axess: Dark Vs. Dark

Plot Synopsis
Chaud and ProtoMan are in need of a rest, but a band-aid is good enough for Lan. He'll need his strength, cause shit is about to hit the fan.

Dr. Regal and LaserMan have started to gather millions of NetNavi's with those UFO things from the second episode, and are powering up something big: a dimensional area generator large enough to cover the entire world!

In the meantime, ShadeMan has decided to capture Rush and convert him into his own synchro chip so he can enter the human world without a dimensional area. He goes off in search of Regal, after blowing up a few bits of SciLab. Since ShadeMan isn't exactly using discretion in what he destroys, Lan and MegaMan try to stop him with some dimensional areas of their own.

Lan is still no match for ShadeMan, as ShadeMan breaks his Cross-Fusion. Just as Lan is about ot meet his maker, Regal challenges ShadeMan at the top of his tower. The two have a stand off as the episode comes to a close.

Critique
About what you would expect for the second to last episode of Axess. Lots of buildup for the finale, though it feels like the dubbers cut out a few things, mostly with regards to Lan's injuries. That does little to affect the overall feel of the episode though.

I'm a bit miffed about the whole Rush Synchro chip thing. Rush gets introduced to do something no one else can, but we go along with it for a joke, and they never take it seriously. Well jokes on us, because now it's a major plot element. All well, whatever.

This is a satisfactory episode, but the real question is, are you ready for not only the season finale, but the series finale of Mega Man NT Warrior?

Rating: Thumbs up!

Axess: ProtoMan Returns

Plot Synopsis
SciLab finally has completed their own dimensional area generator, which presumably doesn't run off the souls of NetNavis, and they've also managed to complete the vaccine chip, a battlechip designed to reverse the effects of Dark Chips. With everything in place, it's time to get ProtoMan back.

The cast lay a trap for ProtoMan, knowing he'll show up to destroy SciLab's dimensional area generator for Nebula to retain their advantage. They lure ProtoMan out there, then trap him inside with Lan, who will use his Cross-Fusion to plant the vaccine chip on ProtoMan. Chaud also manages to sneak into the dimensional area before it goes up.

The plan works, almost, but the Dark Chip is regenerated in ProtoMan, and apparently much stronger than a normal chip. ProtoMan blasts Lan, but Lan and MegaMan take the shot dead on, trying to absorb ProtoMan's dark aura. Lan continually suffers the beating, draining off as much energy as he can. Chaud joins the frey, as he jumps straight into ProtoMan and Cross-Fuses with him. Now Lan has to deal with a dark chip corrupted Chaud, as Chaud and ProtoMan duke it out in their combined mind.

Memories have been sealed away in ProtoMan, from earlier times of Chaud and his past. ProtoMan tries to fight back against it, but Chaud is persistent. Chaud even takes direct blasts from ProtoMan, which phase him, but don't keep him down. Chaud gets close enough to ProtoMan, and hugs him, telling ProtoMan that, "no matter how dark your heart has become, you'll always be my NetNavi." This, combined with Lan draining more of ProtoMan's dark aura destroys the dark chip, and ProtoMan becomes free of it's grasp.

ProtoMan is back, although completely exhausted, along with everyone else, especially Lan, who is pretty fucked up from the ordeal. ProtoMan musters some strength to apologize and thank Chaud for saving him. Chaud thinks it's time for a vacation.

Critique
Some episodes in an anime are more anime than others. This episode is definitely a 10 on the anime scale. If you're not exactly sure what I mean, you might consider cutting down your anime intake just a bit. But lets not hold that against the episode. Let's also not hold the title, which is the fucking 5th episode to be titled "Soandso Returns," because at least this time it makes some contextual sense.

This episode doesn't really go out of it's way to make a hell of a lot of sense, but it doesn't dwell on anything like the last train wreck of an episode, and for once, the dimensional area doesn't look like ass. This is one of the key episodes of the season, so you would expect a bit of a higher quality for it than normal, and I think it delivers what it promises. Yeah, it goes off on the power of friendship trope a lot, but that's pretty standard for Battle Network in general. This is a good episode to watch though, and it brings resolution to the biggest story arc of Axess.

Let us bow our heads in a moment of silence though, for the loss of Evil ProtoMan. I've prepared a eulogy..., Ahem...

I knew Proto Man as that asshole in Mega Man 3, who would annoyingly get in my way between Shadow Man, Hard Man, and Magnet Man. I would forgive him though, for he had sunglasses and a scarf, which made him look at least three times cooler than Mega Man, and style matters quite a bit.

In Mega Man 5, Proto Man would stand with his trade mark smirk among eight new worthless robot masters. This Proto Man would turn out to be a phony, but the sentiment remained the same. In Mega Man 7, Proto Man thought it necessary to attack us in Shade Man's stage for the hell of it, but at least he gave us a present.

Proto Man then took his evilness to the next level in the Ruby-Spears production of Mega Man. Proto Man cast away his moral ambiguity for a more conspicuous stance, "being the bad guy is awesome." From his creation of just randomly smashing shit for the hell of it, to attempting to blast Abraham Lincoln, Proto Man reveled in his new found love for doing the wrong thing.

He had a soft spot though, he always tried to convince Mega Man to, "join the bad side bro." And Mega Man would one day reveal, that even Proto Man's awesomeness would not go unnoticed by him. "The truth is, I've always really wanted a brother relationship with you, Proto Man."

And who wouldn't? How many of us can say we've had a brother half as cool as Proto Man, even if he was evil? ProtoMan.Exe would then take stints in the Battle Network series, acting more like an asshole than straight up evil, but the corruption of the Dark Chip would bring back that smugness we all know and love to the role, delivering such memorable lines as, "Chaud, you mean nothing to me!"

Eventually, ProtoMan would cast aside his evil ways, and even actively help Mega Man as recently as Mega Man 10, and that's a damn shame. Evil Proto Man, we hardly knew ye, but at least we still got Bass... for now...

Rating: Thumbs up!

Axess: Ms. Yuri's Mission

Plot Synopsis
Ms. Yuri is out shopping one day when she runs into...umm... whats his face... cross-fusion guy? Oh, it's right on the tip of my tongue... oh yeah, Misaki. Mr. Unforgettable himself tries to arrest her, but she manages to elude him. In doing so, she runs into Ms. Mari, who is confused, and scared, and possibly grouchy, and wants to know if Ms. Yuri is her long lost sister. Misaki catches up, and Ms. Yuri then gets hit by a bus. Well, so far the episode is going fantastic!

Good thing we've got 15 minutes of exposition coming up to ruin it! Here's the gist, Ms. Mari had a sister, Ms. Yuri, who was in a plane crash with their father when a meteorite hit the plane. They never found there bodies. Ms. Yuri continues the story, by infecting the plot with the cancer that is growing on the Mega Man franchise, Duo. Sigh...

Duo is some extra terrestrial being, who turned Ms. Yuri into Wolverine for some reason, and also did something to Dr. Regal or whatever, and then they were raised by Dr. Wily. I really can't believe this is some how stupider than the actual plot of Battle Network 4, which is abysmally stupid to begin with.

Anyway, Ms. Yuri escapes for a bit, and Dr. Regal gives her a dark synchro-chip and tells her to assassinate Ms. Mari to prove her loyalty. She agrees, then hijacks Misaki's car with him in it, and tracks down Ms. Mari. She gets Ms. Mari at gunpoi... excuse me, "Neural Disruptor Point", but hesitates to fire. Misaki tries to grab her, but she throws him off, and cross-fuses with SpikeMan. Lan cross-fuses with MegaMan to try and stop her.

Impatient, ProtoMan shows up and demands Ms. Yuri finish her mission. Ms. Yuri can't do it, so ProtoMan goes to strike Ms. Mari. Ms. Yuri blocks the attack, so ProtoMan strikes her, breaking her cross-fusion. He hits a sonic-boom onto the bridge, causing both Misaki and Ms. Yuri to fall off into the drink. Ms. Mari screams "Nooooooo!" as we hear a news report announce that the two people who fell off the bridge have yet to be found.

Critique
You almost have a good episode here. Really you do. In fact, cut out about 15 minutes of this episode, and it's a winner. But Duo tends to kill everything he touches, and this episode just happens to be one of those things. I hope you like characters talking on and on and on about nonsense, then reiterating all of those points, because that's the majority of this episode.

Oh, and it had such a good build up too. Yuri tasked with killing her sister, her escape from police custody, the cross-fusion thing. Oh it could have been great! Instead, it's YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP!

There are elements that make this episode worth watching, that I won't deny, but most of this episode's baggage is a setup for Stream more than a finale for Axess, so these retarded plot points won't ever come to fruition in the dub anyway. You're almost better off not watching this episode to save yourself the frustration of how dumb the show gets. Sigh, and it was such a good idea too...

Rating: Thumbs down.

Axess: Get Dr. Regal

Plot Synopsis
The NetPolice now have a lock on Regal's position, and they try and blast him out of the atmosphere, but Regal has some of his own defenses, and takes out all their satellites. Lan goes against orders, and decides to handle Regal personally, through the use of Yai's rocketship.

Yai, Dex, Chisao, Mayl and Lan depart to space, but almost get caught up in a cluster of debris left over from JunkMan. To help out the problem, JunkMan and MegaMan DoubleSoul, and MegaMan is able to use JunkSoul to move the debris out of the way. This is also helpful, because MegaMan is also able to use JunkSoul to deflect the shots being fired at his NetOp by Dr. Regal's space station.

Regal says, "fuck it," and launches a dimensional area and fills the void with a bunch of viruses. He then invites Lan onto the station. Lan goes alone in Cross-Fusion (using Battle Chips for Oxygen) and meets up with Regal. Regal summons ProtoMan to fight him, and Lan tries to convince ProtoMan that there is still good within him. ProtoMan has none of it and continues the attack, but Lan grabs a hold of him, and MegaMan tries to siphon the dark aura out of ProtoMan. ProtoMan realizes what is going on, and breaks the hold. He goes to strike again, but Regal breaks the dimensional area.

Regal tells Lan that he'd rather, "see you crash into the Earth along with this station!" Regal ejects, and the air slowly drains out of the room. Luckily, Lan's friends have come along with a space suit to keep Lan from suffocating. Unluckily, Regal takes out their space ship, and sends the station that they're all on, plummeting towards Earth.

JunkMan sees this, and uses his debris to cover the ship, to protect it from the heat of reentry. Lan and company are saved (I wonder if Yai's maids are alright? Ah, they're extras, fuck em), but Regal's whereabouts are unknown. The episode ends like just about half of these episodes end, with Ms. Yuri driving off cackling like a hyena.

Critique
The last space episode was more silly than anything, and I'm willing to go along with episodes that are just crazy, but when we get an episode that tries to take the more insane aspects of the previous episodes seriously, it just doesn't sit well with me. Imagine if the next episode, they had Lan run to Netopia non-stop, just because he ran so far in the MistMan episode. That's what I'm getting at here, and sending the characters into space again just doesn't sit well with me.

That said, Yai actually has some funny lines outside her normal rich kid crap, and I still like JunkMan, and I like getting to see JunkSoul (I think we have only one more Soul left for the show, the most powerful one!!!).

Overall, I think this episode is pretty bland. What was the point really? We had the buildup of finding the space station for a while now, and after one episode, we're pretty much back to where we were before we went to look for it. Regal is missing again. The plot running around in circles like this is just irritating, and there isn't enough excitement in this episode to hold it together. Plus, Dr. Regal talks faster than a damn cassette recorder on fast forward.

Rating: Thumbs down.

Axess: The Great NetPolice Battle

Plot Synopsis
Are you ready to head towards the finale? Woo boy, does a lot of shit happen here.

So getting some data from Raoul, Chaud discovers Regal's secret base is a satellite orbiting the Earth. The damn thing is cloaked though, so they can't find it. Dr. Hikari suggest using the remaining Control X System (from about a million episodes ago) to track the satellite's orbit by noticing gravity disturbances among the satellites they can see.

The process is going to take some time though, and the NetPolice are sure Nebula will strike against them once they begin their tracking. Raika and Lan are called in as the first line of defense against Nebula, while Chaud and Anetta track the satellite. Nebula has gone all out in this attack though, and has rebuilt every single deleted darkloid since the season began for the attack! I guess the rest of the darkloids got deleted in episodes we didn't get to see.

What happens next is almost like the season in review, as Lan goes through just about every DoubleSoul in his inventory, and MegaMan and SearchMan start deleting darkloids left and right. Maybe the rebuilding process made the Darkloids weaker, maybe Lan and MegaMan have gotten stronger, or maybe Lan and MegaMan were just going easier on the darkloids last time, because they seriously go down in only a few shots.

Chaud and Anetta have nearly found the satellite, but a dimensional area forms around the Control X building, and ProtoMan shows up to destroy it. Meanwhile, Bass is watching from afar, and decides for the hell of it to go free ShadeMan.

Lan bolts for Control X to save Chaud and Anetta with Cross-Fusion, and gives them just enough time to track the satellite's orbit. It doesn't matter though, because as soon as they find it, ProtoMan smashes the system, deleting the data, and then takes off. But that doesn't matter doesn't matter, because Anetta remembers the orbital path from having seen it for all of two seconds. After that bit of Deus Ex Machina, ShadeMan vows revenge against Dr. Regal as the episode closes.

Critique
They squeeze quite a bit of plot amongst a really action oriented episode. It seems silly that MegaMan can fight off all these enemies at once and take them out so fast this way, but then again, have you ever played a Mega Man game? This is what we call a boss rush yo!

It's nice to see a lot of use of DoubleSoul, and even the couple of forms we missed, such as WoodSoul and WindSoul, which I've posted here for completion sake. The episode is pretty frantic, but it has that build up that makes you pumped up for the following episodes. I wouldn't call this a great episode, but it works well enough for what it's trying to do, without dwelling on the uninteresting details.

Rating: Thumbs up!

Axess: Cut Episodes Part 7

Finally, the last cut episode post I'll ever have to write about NT Warrior.

Rush Runs Away
Plot Synopsis Here
Some misunderstandings at home cause Rush to run off, then befriend a sheep virus. Also, BubbleMan stirs some shit up.

An episode featuring Rush could be a good episode, but I doubt it was very dialog heavy. Maybe Viz was looking out for their voice actors? Considering all the next six episodes are pretty essential, this one really looks out of place to me in the line up.

After this episode, Viz Media did not cut anymore NT Warrior episodes! That's because the show was canceled soon after! Ouch!

Axess: MistMan's Tower

Plot Synopsis
Lan is out with Mayl trying to catch bugs for a school project that he's waaaaaay behind on. He ends up spotting one and chasing after it for miles and miles until he and Mayl end up in the desert (they might be exaggerating Lan's ability to run this episode...). When a sand storm picks up, Mayl and Lan duck into a nearby tower for safety, where Lan, again, goes chasing bugs. One of the bugs is a golden scarab pushing around a gigantic diamond!

But the tower isn't safe, as deadly, or perhaps mildly annoying, traps litter the area. To make matters worse, Ms. Yuri and a couple of Darkloids are also scouting the tower, looking for the Net Navi in charge of the place, MistMan. MistMan is a strange, but powerful Navi, resembling a Djinn, and he'll only work for the person who holds his relic, in this case, an Aladdin inspired magic lamp.

As Lan and Mayl stumble upon this lamp, Ms. Yuri becomes frustrated with the traps in the tower, and activates a dimensional area. This causes FridgeMan and SwordMan to pop up to ambush Lan. One cross-fusion later, and the battle is on. MistMan also joins the frey, assisting MegaMan, because Mayl holds the magic lamp... for a few minutes anyway until Ms. Yuri grabs it and orders MistMan to fight MegaMan.

Ms. Yuri and Mayl fight over the magic Lamp, while Lan dodges MistMan and the darkloids attacks. MistMan continually switches sides until finally, Ms. Yuri falls in a pit, and Mayl keeps control of the lamp. MistMan assists Lan, and the darkloids log out. MistMan thanks Lan and Mayl, as apparently they've freed him from a life of imprisonment some how or something, and then the tower disappears, and Lan and Mayl walk home... until Lan spots that scarab and gives chase again!

Critique
This is a pretty good episode, showing NT Warrior at it's finest when the show doesn't take itself so seriously. We've got a little Aladdin homage, some good scenes for Lan and Mayl, and even Ms. Yuri doesn't irritate the shit out of me this episode. For once, she takes the pathetic villain role that the World Three members played so well, and it honestly helps me tolerate her so much more.

The story is pretty predictable, and the setup is cliched, but there isn't any glaring flaws besides some reeeeeally cheesy animations. But the episode is humorous, and besides The Mysterious Masked Navi, is the best of the lot of ten episodes that were chosen, and probably the best of the episodes that were skipped.

It does seem to me that MegaMan's lines were either edited or delivered incorrectly though, as it looks like his fear of ghosts and monsters is supposed to crop up again. It's hard to tell, but the animation and his expressions just seem to indicate different context to his words to me. I could be wrong though. In any case, good episode.

Rating: Thumbs up!

Axess: Cut Episodes Part 6

Following up from my last post about cut episodes, we have two more coming up that were skipped. My reasoning for them being cut remains the same, though I have some speculation as to why they weren't chosen compared to the episodes that were chosen.

Mayl's First Date
Plot Synopsis Here
Lan talks Mayl into trying to Cross-Fuse with Roll, but she just isn't in sync enough to pull it off. After the experiment at SciLab, Lan's dad gives them tickets to a theme park, which then comes under attack from darkloids.

As the title implies, this is an episode exploring Lan and Mayl's more romantic relationship. Young romance can, and has been done tastefully in childrens' cartoons before, but when we're dealing with foreign concepts of "taste," it's not surprising Viz Media decided to err on the side of caution by dancing around, and changing certain lines to tone it down some for US viewers. While I doubt there is anything in this episode really disturbing, the subject of 11 year olds dating each other is not a very comfortable subject for many US parents, and I think this episode was skipped over in favor of an episode that did make it to air, MistMan's Tower, which also explores Lan and Mayl's relationship in a more friendship oriented manner. Had the season been allowed to air in full, this episode might have made it in still.

Top and Grandchild
Plot Synopsis Here
Basically a retelling of a scenario featuring TopMan from Battle Network 4. Old guy Net Battles and builds tops. Wow, these episodes are really reaching for anything to kill time till the finale aren't they? Probably skipped over because of it's irrelevance to the main plot.

Axess: Allegro

Plot Synopsis
Something is kidnapping Net Navis one by one, and unfortunately, Lan is still stuck in Sharo at the moment. Chaud and Mayl are on the case however, and discover that all the missing Navi's had completed an arcade game before being taken.

They decide to have Roll play the game, and plant a tracking device on her. When she's captured, Roll ends up among the missing Navi's, all recuperating from wounds gained in delete battles, essentially battles to the death for Net Navis. Roll activates the tracking device, but is immediately called into battle, and her opponent isn't too keen on letting her walk away.

Just as Roll is about to become a Zeus Hammer Pancake, Mayl jacks her out just in time. Chaud swings open the door to the cause of all the problems, a little robot thing. Chaud is confused about the presence of robots in the Mega Man universe...

Anyway, the little robot panics, and unleashes a dimensional area and some viruses. Chaud takes them out with the battle chip gate, and he and Mayl make a run for it. The robot corners them, but finally Lan shows up cross-fused as Mega Lan, and holds the robot at sword point. Lan must have started taking interrogations from Jack Bauer, because after only a couple of questions, the robot bursts into tears.

Then, reminding us he's still in the show, Bass shows up in the Kid Grave body. He says he created the robot, Allegro, so he could learn how to make his own dimensional area, but then Allegro started kidnapping Navi's for fun. Bass's reaction is basically, "yeah, sorry bout that guys, mah bad," then he crushes Allegro into dust. Everyone seems to think that's a bit of a mild over-reaction, then ProtoMan shows up and asks Bass to join Nebula, but Bass tells ProtoMan to get lost, and collapses the dimensional area.

Also, Bass leaves, telling everyone that humans suck. Then the episode ends, with the audience extremely disappointed.

Critique
I said that this episode was some fan service to those of us who recognized Bass, and that is pretty much all this episode is. So if you like seeing Bass do nothing but babble for 1/10th an episode, there you go. The rest of us who'd like to enjoy the show miss out though.

The setup is okay, and Roll's fight sequence is alright, but the ending...ugh, it blows. It makes the whole episode feel pointless, and Bass's appearance feels like someone pulled it out of their ass, because we hadn't seen Bass in a while.

Bass is one of the best characters in the Battle Network games, and I always look forward to taking him down, even putting myself through the annoying lengths of Battle Network 4 to get that chance. In the show, however, Bass is easily the most underutilized and weakest character. All build up, no delivery. This is Bass's last appearance is the dub, warning us that he hates humans, and has a dimensional area.

Spoiler alert for those of you who can't watch the rest of the series, this doesn't go anywhere. In the first episode of Stream, Bass gets sucked away to another cyber space or something by Duo, and then he shows up in the animated movie for a bit. I think that's his last appearance, though I haven't seen all of Stream or all of Beast+, so don't quote me on that. In any case, Bass's storylines just run in circles and don't go anywhere, and that's a damn shame.

Rating: Thumbs down.

Axess: Underground Hero

Plot Synopsis
On a typical snowy day in Sharo, some miners are caught off guard when a dimensional area swallows up the mine, and their little dog too! There's only one person in the world that can get in there, and he's gorging himself on free samples at the local supermarket. After being escorted by Net Police out of there, Lan finds himself on a plane trip to Sharo to help out with the problem. There, Lan meets up with Raika, and Raika's Commanding Officer, Milenkoff, who informs him of the problem.

Nebula has setup a dimensional area around the rare metal mine, which Nebula needs to produce Dark Chips, and Sharo needs to support its economy. Raika is to escort Lan to the mines, and when Raika asks Milenkoff to ask Lan about another mission, Milenkoff cuts him off and dismisses the other assignment. He tells Raika that his orders are to only escort Lan to the mines.

At the dimensional area, Raika hitches a ride with Lan past the force field, disobeying Raika's orders. Lan wants to know what's going on, but Raika refuses to tell him. They are attacked by FridgeMan, but manage to escape with the aid of a mine cart. SearchMan goes after FridgeMan, but due to FridgeMan jumping between the cyberworld and real world, SearchMan can't get a lock on him.

Lan is freezing, having never been to a country so cold before, but Raika refuses to stop and help him. This pisses Lan off, who berates Raika for treating him so badly, especially when Lan has come out to help Raika's country of his own good will, and all he wants is for Raika to tell him what's going on. Finally, Raika shows some humanity, and builds a fire for Lan and himself.

Raika informs Lan that he's looking for a missing hero of Sharo, the one who discovered the mines and brought about the prosperity Sharo is now in. It was not Raika's mission to find the missing hero, and he disobeyed orders to find him, which is why he wouldn't talk to Lan; he was embarrassed. They don't have time to sit around though, as a wave of viruses attack them. They make a run for it and hear barking down a corridor.

The barking is coming from Morisov, the hero of Sharo, and Raika's target for rescue. The dog turned out to be the one who discovered the mines, and is who Raika considers his best friend. Raika's personal mission completed, it's time to take out FridgeMan, which is lucky, because FridgeMan is right there, ready to ambush them.

Lan Cross-Fuses in a, thankfully shortened, fusion animation and does battle with FridgeMan. He manages to wound him, so FridgeMan escapes to the cyberworld to heal up and begin fighting again. Instead of healing up, however, he finds SearchMan waiting for him, a bit miffed at all the running around he's been doing searching for FridgeMan. SearchMan blasts FridgeMan with his cannon, causing FridgeMan to log out, and collapsing the dimensional area.

Back at base, Raika is punished for disobeying orders, and is sent to be tortured at the Russian POW camp... er wait, no... Raika doesn't get desert for a month and a half. Sorry, forgot what show I was watching. As the episode ends, Raika and Lan finally appear to have some mutual admiration for each other.

Critique
This episode adds the much needed depth to Raika's character, and finally brings him down to Lan on an emotional level. There's actually a fair deal of cleverness in this episode, like the mine cart sequence, and while the action isn't very climatic, the pacing is satisfactory. There isn't a lot of humor in this episode, but it keeps things interesting. It's not the best episode, but it's a decent entry.

Rating: Thumbs up!

Axess: Cut Episodes Part 5

After the episode of The New PET, somebody wasn't happy with NT Warrior Axess. Maybe someone at Time-Warner didn't like the show's ratings, or maybe Viz Media was difficult to work with, or just maybe someone likes the blue hedgehog a bit more. In either case, NT Warrior's dubbing days were coming to an end as the show would soon be replaced by... I dunno, Pokemon Part 17, or Yu-gi-oh-Mc-Do-gi-no, or whatever the hell is on kids WB.

Previous to this point, Axess had been doing relatively well in it's airing schedule, not missing a beat for quite a while, and airing each episode mostly in order, except for a couple. They would air BubbleMan's Plan as their last new episode, before a small break where the show would get a final run. When the show would return with The New PET, it would air as one of ten new episodes of Axess, airing once daily for the next ten days, until the season was finished. This (complete speculation by the way) was more than likely the result of a contract dispute between Time-Warner and Viz Media, with Viz Media wanting to be compensated for their hard work, and Time-Warner just wanting the show off the air as soon as possible.

It was because they would only get to air ten more episodes, that Viz Media would have to cut a few shows. Previous to this point, episodes may have been cut due to content or scheduling issues, but I can safely say, that these episodes were cut because of Time-Warner getting rid of the show, and Viz Media decided to select the more vital of the episodes to air, or at least, I think that was their intention. There is rumor (and take it with a grain of salt) that Viz Media did actually dub all the remaining episodes, but unless we ever get an Axess DVD release, we'll never know.

The next two episodes have very little to do with the over arching plot with Nebula, which is probably why they were chosen not to air, even though we miss out on a couple of DoubleSouls.

Flying to Shiisaa Island
Plot Summary Here
Basically, MegaMan and Lan meet a couple new characters, one of whom is WindMan, and I don't think we ever see them again. WindMan.exe gets into trouble, and MegaMan ends up using DoubleSoul with him.

Go To Hell By Train!?
Plot Summary Here
It's likely that title would have changed, had the episode actually came out in English. Anyway, a train goes out of control that just happens to have Lan, Chisao and Sal on it. The culprit is a darkloid, and MegaMan and WoodMan form a DoubleSoul.

In order of importance, the last six episodes are pretty much needed to finish the season. Besides that, you've got an episode featuring Bass, which is some important fan service I guess, the hilarious episode with Chaud and Raoul in disco clothes, an episode finally showing some respect between Lan and Raika (probably the pay off episode to that mini-arc), and then MistMan's Tower, which is a good Lan and Mayl episode, but lacking the more romantic overtones that Viz Media has been careful to cover up most of the show's run.

Taking those things into account, I suppose it makes sense why these episodes were singled out to not air. Ideally we would have got to see them all, but there isn't much a production company can do without a distributor, especially one as big as Time-Warner.

Axess: The Mysterious Masked Navi

Plot Synopsis
With the new PET, Lan is more powerful than ever, but a little too powerful, as he's become so arrogant about it he's stopped using any sort of strategy. When he starts showboating during a battle with SwordMan in front of Chaud, Chaud decides drastic measures to teach Lan a lesson.

With Raoul's help, Chaud concocts a plan to use a disguised ThunderMan to battle MegaMan. ThunderMan will pretend to be a darkloid, with Chaud and Raoul disguised as his NetOps. Chaud lures Lan out into an abandoned warehouse for the trap, and their disguise easily fools Lan and MegaMan.

Chaud and Raoul match Lan, move for move and keep MegaMan at bay. They try to leave, figuring they've taught Lan his lesson, but Lan refuses to give up, figuring he and MegaMan are battling for their lives, which is bad news for Chaud and Raoul. Lan pulls out all the stops, rare chips, Program Advances, DoubleSouls, and Chaud and Raoul start struggling to keep going. They're getting really worn out countering Lan, but Lan and MegaMan refuse to quit.

Just then, Mr. Famous contacts Lan and Chaud. SwordMan is back attacking another research facility, but Lan thinks his hands are full with this fight as it is. Realizing they're in deep shit with both ThunderMan and MegaMan totally worn out, Chaud and Raoul hightail it to the research facility, with Lan behind them.

When Lan arrives, MegaMan is confused why two darkloids are fighting each other. When SwordMan strikes, ThunderMan's disguise falls off, and MegaMan realizes who it is. MegaMan and ThunderMan fuse together for a DoubleSoul, ThunderSoul, and MegaMan is able to defeat SwordMan who logs out. Lan is initially horrified at the thought of having an evil darkloid soul, but MegaMan wises Lan up to whats going on.

Chaud and Raoul reveal themselves in shame, and let Lan know what they were trying to do. Lan apologizes for acting like a jerk, and promises to not let it happen again. Later, Lan and Chaud see Raoul off back to Netopia.

Critique
Easily the best episode of Axess, and in the top 5 for best episode of NT Warrior period. This episode delivers a perfect way to do off the wall situations, and combines it with a lot of clever dialog. This is the episode that sold me on Raoul, because he's pretty damn funny here, and it adds a new element to his character that fits so well with his already good nature.

Chaud is out of his element here, but he acts in a way that you would believe his character would grudgingly go along with something like this. Chaud and Raoul's voice actors deliver thier lines perfectly, accenting the phrases and emphasizing the words in such a way to emphasize their hilarious attire. Lan is also spot on, and there are so many great exchanges this episode.

ThunderMan: My Name is Masked Thunder, and I'm clearly a darkloid!
MegaMan: Okay... I believe you?
ThunderMan: That's good, because theirs no reason to doubt me! Now words been goin' round that you think you're too good to be defeated!
MegaMan: What are you talking about? I never said anything like that!

Lan: Who are you guys? What do you want?
Raoul: We're here to take you dooooown, and as for who we are, we're Masked Thunder's NetOps!
Lan: Are you serious?! Since when do darkloids have NetOps?!
Chaud and Raoul: Uhhhhh..
Lan: Well!?
Raoul: It just happened!
Lan: I can't believe this!

There's a lot of good stuff in here that you need some established characters to work with to pull off, and the costumes and accents just really sell the episode.

There is a part in the middle where SwordMan is delivering monologue to himself that is just god awful, but other than this scene, the entire episode is great!

Rating: Thumbs up!

Axess: The New PET

Plot Synopsis
Hey kids! Are you ready to throw your old official merchandised NT Warrior PET? You better be, because now it's time to buy the whole new officially merchandised NT Warrior Axess PET! Let's find out why Lan needs a new PET, outside of hawking toys that is...

So MegaMan's been rebooted and thrown into a new PET, which has been upgraded to take better advantage of cross-fusion. It's going to take some time to initialize though (damn Windows 200X), so they can't use it right away.

Nebula isn't too happy about this, so they have FridgeMan and SwordMan distract the Net Police, while they send ProtoMan in to destroy the new PET. A dimensional area seals up the lab, so Anetta grabs the PET and takes off with it before ProtoMan can destroy it. Everyone gets separated, and they can't use the PET to communicate with each other or ProtoMan will trace it.

Chaud meets up with Anetta and continues to elude ProtoMan until they reach the lab. Chaud then uses the PET to lure ProtoMan into it, where they trap ProtoMan inside a smaller dimensional area. Before they can breath a sigh of relief however, Chaud and Anetta are suddenly under attack from NovaMan. Just in time, Lan shows up through the ceiling and uses his, now formatted, PET to Cross-Fuse with MegaMan.

Lan's abilities have gone into overdrive with the new PET, and even without battlechips, he's ridiculously faster and stronger, and he even has some regenerative healing. The battlechips themselves load even faster than Lan can pronounce them, and NovaMan can hardly put up a fight before being deleted.

ProtoMan then breaks his sword off to escape the dimensional area he's trapped behind, and he swears vengeance before logging out. Lan smirks saying, "Nothin's gonna stop us now!" Well Lan must have never met the Time-Warner network execs, because NT Warrior Axess is about to go on hiatus before being thrown off the air for the last time.

Critique
This is a pretty simple episode over all, which I think is actually to its benefit. The whole scenario is built on suspense, since none of the characters can really fight against their adversaries. It had been nicer if some of the narrow escapes were a bit more clever though, as the episode goes through a cycle of "run in a room, escape through a vent" more than just a few times.

There's a sequence towards the end, where Chaud lures ProtoMan into the dimensional area that has a real nice touch. Chaud ends up ducking under ProtoMan's sword, and has a few hairs shaved off in the process. It's really too hard to see on any single screenshot, but it is a really nice detail in full motion.

Where this episode falls short is pretty much on Anetta, who for some reason, is animated much more poorly than the other characters. Her lines are pretty bad, her character is pretty lame (a shift in personality so much you could call her bipolar), and I don't care for her voice either. The animation in the rest of the episode is pretty substandard as well, but Anetta's movements really stand out.

This isn't an all out bad episode, but it could have been much better than it was, given the scenario, and the whole thing leaves a lot to be desired. This episode is sadly really mediocre.

Rating: Thumbs down.

Axess: Nebula's Great Invasion!

Plot Synopsis
MegaMan's down and out, and it looks like the Net Police are screwed. The greatest father in the world, Dr. Hikari, decides to rebuild MegaMan using an untested, painful, possibly dangerous procedure, on his only child, Lan. Lan of course has no problem jumping into a giant test tube for his buddy of course, but it'd be nice if his dad at least maybe struggled with the idea...

Anyway, they're going to rebuild MegaMan by enabling a cross-fusion between Lan and MegaMan, which will hopefully fill in the missing data for MegaMan. With both Lan and MegaMan recovering, and Chaud without ProtoMan, the Net Police are in trouble. Luckily, Lan's friend Raoul shows up, chasing down a darkloid named BrightMan. Raika has also been called in, and Chief Keifer orders them to work together, despite Raika's protests.

BrightMan isn't the only one causing trouble though, as more new darkloids show up. There's SwordMan, StarMa... god damn it! Why is his name NovaMan now? Fucking retarded ass translations. Anyway, they also have ColdMa... wait? He's FridgeMan now?! I... well... no I'll give them that one, ColdMan is a damn fridge... (I hope you can detect the irony in this paragraph, I really couldn't care less about the names...)

Raika feels Raoul is unqualified to help out as a civilian, but eventually Raoul and ThunderMan prove themselves (somewhat) to Raika by, not only saving Raika's life, but also correcting a mistake of SearchMan that saved the day. Raika grudgingly admits that Raoul was helpful.

At the end of the day, the procedure with MegaMan was successful, but MegaMan still needs more time to recover. Things are looking positive though.

Critique
Despite the train wreck of the last few episodes, this one is actually pretty good. I always thought Raoul's voice actor was pretty good, and it helps put up with the character's weird look and demeanor. He's one tall lanky black dude ain't he? Raika still comes off as an ass of course, but Raoul handles Raika pretty maturely, as you would expect an adult would handle a punk kid.

There's some really cruddy animation this episode, especially the running animation for Raoul about the middle of the episode. It just looks awful. The writers also go a bit overboard on the "anime man got hops" thing, when Raoul is leaping across pillars like a damn grasshopper.

Even though the story is decent this episode, I would still give it a thumbs up even if it was horrible. Why? Just look at BrightMan! HA HA HA HA HA! Holy fuck, that guys character design cracks me the fuck up! Look how hilarious he is! You couldn't ask for a better looking character for this show! Too bad BrightMan bites the dust at the end of the episode though, but for every moment he was on screen, I was in stitches!

Rating: Thumbs up!

Axess: Wanted - PrisMan!

Plot Synopsis
We open with the last two minutes of the last episode, then see Misaki using PrisMan to rob a bank. The police try to stop him, but he uses Cross-Fusion with a Dark Synchro Chip and takes off. He continues his crime spree into the night, while Ms. Yuri looks on grinning at her guinea pig.

The Net Police finally find out Misaki is causing all these heists, and Lan is left cleaning up after Misaki until Misaki finally collapses from exhaustion. Chaud takes Misaki to the hospital. Misaki wakes up, barely remembering the events that had just unfolded. Apparently, cross-fusing with a dark chip turns a person psychotic just like a NetNavi.

They keep Misaki under watch, but Ms. Yuri sends PrisMan in with a dark chip to screw up Misaki some more. PrisMan sends his dark aura from the dark chip to Misaki... somehow (what!?), and Misaki becomes Mr. Hyde, as he tears through the hospital.

He runs into Ms. Mari, mistaking her for Ms. Yuri, but Ms. Yuri is like ten feet away, so this scene is basically only there to keep drilling that mistaken identity cliche this show has run into the ground. Misaki takes off, prancing like a mad man when Lan finally confronts him. Misaki summons a bunch of dimensional area generators from the ground by yelling (this show is just getting worse and worse), and he Dark Cross-Fuses, while Lan answers back with his own Cross-Fusion.

Since Misaki is a human, Lan is hesitant to full out attack him, so Dr. Hikari tells his son to strike the Emblem on Cross-Fused PrisMan to break the fusion. Lan is about to do so when Dark ProtoMan shows up and interferes. Luckily, Chaud uses his magical power of teleportation yet again, and shows up just in time to deal with ProtoMan.

Lan and Misaki strike each others emblems at the same time, breaking both their cross-fusions and saving Misaki, but seriously fucking up MegaMan, and slightly injuring Lan as well. MegaMan is in critical condition and needs some serious repair. Lan puts it best at the end, "if MegaMan's damaged, and ProtoMan's a darkloid, how can we ever stop Nebula?!"

Critique
This episode seriously sucks ass until the very last few minutes, and even then, you've had to swallow a lot of tripe to enjoy it. It's kind of like having a nice dessert at the end of a really big serving of shit sandwiches, you're already too full of shit to enjoy dessert.

A good half of this episode is reused footage from the last episode, and a quarter of the new content is either recap, or just harping on old points of the series. Yes, I know Chaud doesn't want to fight ProtoMan. Yes, I know Ms. Mari and Ms. Yuri are sisters. Yes, I did watch the last fucking episode, I don't need to be reminded of every detail of it!

Of course Cross-Fusion vs. Cross-Fusion was coming from day one, hence why ShadeMan stole the Synchro Chips in the first place, and I'm not against the ideas of this scenario, beyond my usual stance on Cross-Fusion. Actually, Lan's hesitation in fighting Misaki is a good character position to put him in, and they do something similar with Geo in the Star Force series that also plays out nice. So this whole setup could have worked out fine, if they didn't cram the whole god damned plot into the last few minutes.

Then you end with some poor NetNavi in critical condition and... oh wait, that's MegaMan. He's still in this show? He basically uses one of about three of his lines in the episode to tell us he'll be out of commission the next episode. At least the writers are still aware that most of the fans of this show care mostly about this character... right?

Rating: Thumbs down.

Axess: The Battlechip Gate

I'm amazed they didn't call this episode Misaki returns...

Plot Synopsis
So yeah, Misaki comes back, and it's a big deal. Who the fuck is Misaki? Oh, you don't remember that extra character that had a total of two minutes screen time in the first episode of Axess? Of course you don't, Lan doesn't even remember that episode. That'd be like keeping track of every single battlechip Lan owns since the show started, Jesus!

Anyway, Misaki has come to join the Net Police along with Lan and Chaud, but he's all upset that he can't cross-fuse like they can. He still has some skill though, as he comes to Lan's rescue during a fight with GravityMan, which so so nonsensical it damn near crosses the line, even for this show. Anyway, Misaki uses his NetNavi PrismMan to trap GravityMan in a prism-prison (say that five times fast) and I guess they just leave him in the traffic lights network or something.

Anyway, as if MegaMan wasn't being phased enough out of this show, we're introduced to a new problem about Cross-Fusion which hasn't ever come up until this episode. No, it's not the cancerous growth on Lan's pancreas, it's the inability to use battle chips during Cross-Fusion. Apparently, they can only use five at a time since they have to preload them (even though Lan switched them out not more than a few episodes ago), and now suddenly this is a problem, despite the fact that Lan and Chaud have never struggled in choosing their chips beforehand. Should I point out that more than once Lan and Chaud have used Program Advances while in Cross-Fusion with a handful more chips?

Inconsistencies aside, SciLab has created an extension for the PET called "The Battlechip Gate," which is like sliding a game genie onto your NES, and functionally the same thing. The testing fails when Mr. Famous tries to load battlechips into Lan's Cross-Fusion, but Chaud seems to notice something Mr. Famous doesn't that basically only makes sense if you consider Chaud the god like figure the writers do apparently.

GravityMan breaks out of his prison pretty easily and starts wreaking havoc in a dimensional area, so Lan heads down there to stop him. Oh but guess what? Lan's five Battlechips don't work at all against GravityMan, so now Lan is screwed. Boy, good thing he was lucky in selecting his chips the entire season up until this point.

Chaud runs the repaired battlechip gate to Lan and uses some ultra rare, super effective chips, like Area Steal, Rock Cube, and M-Cannons for a Program Advance. With Chaud operating Lan (do not read any more into that, god my site comes up from some pretty sick people's search results...), NetNavi's can be phased out of the show entirely. Bye bye MegaMan, we'll miss you!

GravityMan gets deleted, and Misaki gets lured away by Manwella (the NetPolice Chief's secretary girl) when she tells him she knows where he can go cross-fuse. But wait a second! Manwella is standing with Chief Kiefer at SciLab!? Buhwhaaaaa?

In a merciful attempt to salvage something worthwhile out of this episode, ProtoMan shows up to taunt Chaud for a minute or so to make him cry a bit. There is seriously nothing better in Mega Man cartoons than an evil ProtoMan. If only Bass had made it to the Ruby-Spears show! Anyway, since this was the only thing interesting to happen this entire show, that's what the screenshot is of. Hell, I don't recall if they even use that stupid Battlechip Gate again.

So the episode ends with Misaki riding with the impostor Manwella (two guesses who she really is!) and she thinks to herself some ominous dialog... ooooh scary...

Critique
It's episodes like this that make this season a pain in the ass to enjoy. It's bad enough we have plots centering around so many disappeared characters returning, but now we're practically introducing new characters to come back?! Aren't we getting carried away with this shit a little bit XEBEC?

I feel sorry for the dubbers here, just what the hell are they going to do with this tripe? Is this what passes for children entertainment in Japan? Mega Man's name must hold a lot more regard there than I thought to have lasted the series as long as it did over there, but while American Audiences love Mega Man, we really need better shows than this to compete with what's out there. Admittedly, I quit watching Saturday morning cartoons when this show was running, but who am I to argue with what ten year olds like? I can hardly believe how dumb some of the shows I loved were (I don't love you any less though Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!).

In any case, what we have here is a manufactured crisis coming into the show, that apparently was a problem we never noticed until now. Lan's failure to choose proper battlechips against GravityMan is so predictable, cause all the characters basically tell you that's going to happen this episode.

With Misaki, you've got the coming of another plot line that this character was made specifically for, which we'll get into next episode, but you can really notice a difference between characters created by Capcom, and the show's original characters. Misaki is about as generic anime dude as you can get, and there's a good chance after his storyline is finished, you'll forget about him forever like I tend to do. They spend a good amount of time building Misaki up a bit for the audience, and all the characters act like they've known him a good long time, like he just belongs on the show. He's the big elephant in the room that nobody is talking about, but if you really have to remind the audience of where the character is from, he's not that important to them. We got rid of almost an entire cast of good supporting characters for bland personality-less jokers like this?

That's not to say everything in this episode is bad, just like 98% of it, with the last 2% being 1 part ProtoMan, and another part some of the silly dialog from GravityMan, and that's assuming you enjoy that kind of thing. What hurts this episode, is the lack of anything particularly interesting, and a conflict that seems conjured up out of nowhere, complete with new characters who have been conjured up as well. NT Warrior has plenty of good resources for material, why don't the writers ever use them?

Rating: Thumbs down.

Axess: Commander Beef Returns

Guess what? Another long lost character returns, marking the 4th episode to have this stupid title this season!

Plot Synopsis
Commander Beef is returning from a mission over seas to track down Mr. Gauss who's looking to score some Dark Chips from Nebula. Before he arrives, Mysteriyu and Black Rose get in contact with Lan and drop a bombshell on him; Commander Beef's identity is Masa! Lan is shocked at the news, but apparently everyone else already figured that out a long time ago, even MegaMan, further pushing the idiot NetBattler Savant theory. Also, everyone has already figured out that Black Rose and Mysteriyu are Sal and Miyu.

They're not supposed to know Commander Beef's identity though (making you wonder why the hell Sal and Miyu would reveal it to Lan) so Lan tries extra hard to keep Masa from knowing, that Lan knows, that Masa is Commander Beef.

Higsby on the other hand is frustrated at the news, because Ms. Mari has a crush on Commander Beef, and he blurts out Masa's identity right in front of her. This causes her to track him down and confront him about this, but Lan covers for him.

Masa and Ms. Mari go out for a walk down the fish market, and Lan is afraid he's going to reveal his identity to her, so Lan goes and keeps Masa away from her. While distracted, Mr. Gauss mistakes Ms. Mari for Ms. Yuri and takes her away to a secret warehouse. Lan and Masa spot her, and Lan gives chase while Masa runs off to change into his Commander Beef costume.

Higsby meanwhile, is pretty pissed that Masa is back, so he and the others spend some time sewing Commander Beef costumes. Back at the warehouse, Lan and Commander Beef jump to Ms. Mari's rescue, but are thrown off guard when Gauss shouts Commander Beef's identity in front of Ms. Mari. Ms. Mari is shocked again, but before it sinks in, Higsby, Mayl, Tory, Shuko, Miyu, Sal and Rush all show up dressed as Commander Beef. They claim it's Commander Beef day, which is why Masa is dressed up like him, fooling Ms. Mari.

Everyone jacks in their navis and then proceed to beat the shit out of MagnetMan. MagnetMan defeated, Gauss is arrested and put in cuffs. As the day comes to an end, Masa is about to reveal his identity again, but Lan stops him and says something along the lines of "a little Commander Beef is in all of us."

Critique
Okay, so the synopsis really makes this episode sound stupid as hell, but lets look over the upsides to this episode. You've got a Masa centric episode, with both Higsby and Mr. Gauss playing key roles, so already you've got a recipe for quality.

While the plot itself is kind of a mess, there's a great deal of humor thrown in, and it doesn't at all come off as repetitive watching the show, versus reading this synopsis. The whole episode is played up as ridiculous as possible, and it is a nice change from the melodrama that is generally associated with Axess. Lan plays off of Masa especially well this episode, and pretty much delivers one great line after line.

The only problem with this episode has little to do with the episode itself. Why has Masa been taken out of the main cast, and why is this the last time we'll see him this series? I'm not 100% on this, but I don't think Masa is ever seen again until the Beast series, and even then it's a parallel dimension Masa.

That doesn't take away what this episode has going for it though, and it's one of the strongest episodes as far as humor goes this season. Just look at this ridiculous couple of shots of Lan and Masa trying to hold back their secrets.
Rating: Thumbs up.