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.
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