Axess: The New PET

Plot Synopsis
Hey kids! Are you ready to throw your old official merchandised NT Warrior PET? You better be, because now it's time to buy the whole new officially merchandised NT Warrior Axess PET! Let's find out why Lan needs a new PET, outside of hawking toys that is...

So MegaMan's been rebooted and thrown into a new PET, which has been upgraded to take better advantage of cross-fusion. It's going to take some time to initialize though (damn Windows 200X), so they can't use it right away.

Nebula isn't too happy about this, so they have FridgeMan and SwordMan distract the Net Police, while they send ProtoMan in to destroy the new PET. A dimensional area seals up the lab, so Anetta grabs the PET and takes off with it before ProtoMan can destroy it. Everyone gets separated, and they can't use the PET to communicate with each other or ProtoMan will trace it.

Chaud meets up with Anetta and continues to elude ProtoMan until they reach the lab. Chaud then uses the PET to lure ProtoMan into it, where they trap ProtoMan inside a smaller dimensional area. Before they can breath a sigh of relief however, Chaud and Anetta are suddenly under attack from NovaMan. Just in time, Lan shows up through the ceiling and uses his, now formatted, PET to Cross-Fuse with MegaMan.

Lan's abilities have gone into overdrive with the new PET, and even without battlechips, he's ridiculously faster and stronger, and he even has some regenerative healing. The battlechips themselves load even faster than Lan can pronounce them, and NovaMan can hardly put up a fight before being deleted.

ProtoMan then breaks his sword off to escape the dimensional area he's trapped behind, and he swears vengeance before logging out. Lan smirks saying, "Nothin's gonna stop us now!" Well Lan must have never met the Time-Warner network execs, because NT Warrior Axess is about to go on hiatus before being thrown off the air for the last time.

Critique
This is a pretty simple episode over all, which I think is actually to its benefit. The whole scenario is built on suspense, since none of the characters can really fight against their adversaries. It had been nicer if some of the narrow escapes were a bit more clever though, as the episode goes through a cycle of "run in a room, escape through a vent" more than just a few times.

There's a sequence towards the end, where Chaud lures ProtoMan into the dimensional area that has a real nice touch. Chaud ends up ducking under ProtoMan's sword, and has a few hairs shaved off in the process. It's really too hard to see on any single screenshot, but it is a really nice detail in full motion.

Where this episode falls short is pretty much on Anetta, who for some reason, is animated much more poorly than the other characters. Her lines are pretty bad, her character is pretty lame (a shift in personality so much you could call her bipolar), and I don't care for her voice either. The animation in the rest of the episode is pretty substandard as well, but Anetta's movements really stand out.

This isn't an all out bad episode, but it could have been much better than it was, given the scenario, and the whole thing leaves a lot to be desired. This episode is sadly really mediocre.

Rating: Thumbs down.