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.