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.
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