Axess: VideoMan Returns!

For god's sake! Another episode titled "Character Returns!" and also a character who has been gone for maybe ten episodes at the most? Geeze! Despite that, I kind of like this episode though.

Plot Synopsis
Nebula's leader convinces VideoMan to join his cause for Dark Chips, and enlists him to delete MegaMan once and for all. VideoMan sets up a virus attack, which lures MegaMan and Lan out, and then he records MegaMan from afar. Using his recorded footage, he creates copies of MegaMan and sends them throughout the city to cause havoc, hidden within a new popular movie.

That movie (which is never named) just happens to be the one movie Lan is just dying to see, as there is the sequel coming out in a couple of weeks, and he wants to be caught up. He manages to find a copy of it, but gets interrupted when a copy of MegaMan starts attacking a local store. Naturally this confuses the hell out of Lan and MegaMan, and MegaMan is nearly deleted by himself, but ProtoMan jumps in for the rescue.

Chaud and Lan split up and try to take out all the copies, and Chaud notices that all the attacks in common happened after the proprietors of the property played the movie Lan wanted to see on their VCRs. Lan pops the movie in while at SciLab with Chaud, and the whole tape is ruined, which Chaud thinks might have been caused by the magnetic waves the two of them faced earlier. Dr. Regal, Mr. Famous, and Dr. Hikari determine that the copies of MegaMan are spreading through the tapes, and direct Lan and Chaud to check out where the tapes are produced.

The copies are getting grainy, so VideoMan gets BubbleMan to help clean his lens. He tests it again, and makes a perfect copy of BubbleMan. That's when Lan and Chaud shows up, so VideoMan unleashes a dimensional area (once again with generators sliding out of walls and the ground and shit), and attacks Lan and Chaud in cross-fusion. He manages to make copies of Lan in Cross-Fusion and uses them to attack Lan and Chaud.

Chaud uses a battle chip (I have no idea what he uses, or what he says, it sounded like Shake, but that doesn't sound right...) and he pulls out a, uh, thing, then Lan hits it with an electrosword, which causes a magnetic wave to burst outward for some reason and delete all the copies. Lan and Chaud then blast VideoMan with Lava Cannon's and delete him for good. Chaud tells Lan he figured out that the magnets would delete the copies from when Lan's video tape got messed up.

Lan tries to get another copy of the movie, but it's sold out. Chaud pulls up in a limo and takes Lan to meet the actors at Lan's own private screening!

Critique
This episode isn't perfect, but it's pretty good. Just about every piece of footage used in the dub opening of this show comes from this episode, with good reason. This episode is one of the finest animated in the series! There's a lot of good action sequences with MegaMan, and plenty of good poses and shots.

Something I hadn't thought of earlier had occurred to me this episode as well. XEBEC, the animators of this show, made a much better effort to give the characters more unique animations than the last series. Everyone has a unique "Jack-In" sequence, and even Lan and Chaud's "Cross-Fusion" animations look different, and in general, Lan tends to use different Jack-In animations more often than not. It's good to see that, even if the writing suffered in the new series mostly, the animation's quality did go up.

There's a few clever lines here and there, and you can see some attempts at foreshadowing the magnet plot device, even if it isn't exactly clear what tools they're using to accomplish it, but that could just be me being dumb.

Not that this episode is perfect. VideoMan spends five minutes talking to himself explaining his plan, which is pretty obvious to figure out from just watching the episode, and then explains it again to Lan and Chaud. We get it VideoMan, you made copies of MegaMan, get going already!

VideoMan's dialog fluctuates between clever and stupid, but I generally like his way of talking more often than not. Lan and Chaud's one liners I could have done without though.

As far as this episode goes, everything holds together well enough, but the animation is among the best in the series. Worth checking out for sure.

Rating: Thumbs up!