Axess: The Purloined Princess

Plot Synopsis
Lan is pissed off about Chaud being able to Cross-Fuse, and complains to his dad about it. This wastes a good five minutes as this particular piece of continuity actually has nothing to do with today's episode!

Lan, Ms. Mari, Rush, and Mayl all get e-mails telling them to meet up at a certain point. An elevator opens up and they go inside, only to be thrust into a giant Optimus Prime style transformer mech, and thrust to Kingland, where Yai is now residing. Figuring no one would come and see her if she asked, Yai decided to kidnap them instead.

Anyway, Yai's company, AyanoTech is releasing a new video game about a princess based on Yai, however, some of the data was stolen by viruses. She needs help tracking the data down before the game is released, so everyone starts tracking it down. The viruses all end up at Yai's favorite Strawberry themed places, and since they figure the data is acting like her, they get ahead of it and track it down to one of Yai's castles.

The data is trapped inside a scuttle virus, and Lan hits an "Evil Cut" Program Advance to take it out and retrieve the data. The day saved, everyone decides to try out Yai's new game, only to discover the princess isn't the only character based on a real person.

Critique
Of all the characters that have disappeared from the show, why couldn't Yai have stayed gone? Get ready for a series of some of the most painfully bad jokes you've ever heard, and I sincerely hope some of them are the fault of the dubbers and not bad source material, but I doubt it.

I don't mind zanyness in the episodes, but every time a story focuses on Yai, the writing just gets plain lazy. Every setup goes, "something over extravagant and impractical happens," and the punchline is, "Yai is rich." It just isn't funny the millionth time you hear it, and Yai's selfish spoiled brat character is just so one dimensional that she doesn't have anything else to her character. Her onscreen presence is boring, and stories revolving around her are boring. This episode is boring.

Rating: Thumbs down.