Axess: Cut Episodes Part 6

Following up from my last post about cut episodes, we have two more coming up that were skipped. My reasoning for them being cut remains the same, though I have some speculation as to why they weren't chosen compared to the episodes that were chosen.

Mayl's First Date
Plot Synopsis Here
Lan talks Mayl into trying to Cross-Fuse with Roll, but she just isn't in sync enough to pull it off. After the experiment at SciLab, Lan's dad gives them tickets to a theme park, which then comes under attack from darkloids.

As the title implies, this is an episode exploring Lan and Mayl's more romantic relationship. Young romance can, and has been done tastefully in childrens' cartoons before, but when we're dealing with foreign concepts of "taste," it's not surprising Viz Media decided to err on the side of caution by dancing around, and changing certain lines to tone it down some for US viewers. While I doubt there is anything in this episode really disturbing, the subject of 11 year olds dating each other is not a very comfortable subject for many US parents, and I think this episode was skipped over in favor of an episode that did make it to air, MistMan's Tower, which also explores Lan and Mayl's relationship in a more friendship oriented manner. Had the season been allowed to air in full, this episode might have made it in still.

Top and Grandchild
Plot Synopsis Here
Basically a retelling of a scenario featuring TopMan from Battle Network 4. Old guy Net Battles and builds tops. Wow, these episodes are really reaching for anything to kill time till the finale aren't they? Probably skipped over because of it's irrelevance to the main plot.

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.

Axess: Underground Hero

Plot Synopsis
On a typical snowy day in Sharo, some miners are caught off guard when a dimensional area swallows up the mine, and their little dog too! There's only one person in the world that can get in there, and he's gorging himself on free samples at the local supermarket. After being escorted by Net Police out of there, Lan finds himself on a plane trip to Sharo to help out with the problem. There, Lan meets up with Raika, and Raika's Commanding Officer, Milenkoff, who informs him of the problem.

Nebula has setup a dimensional area around the rare metal mine, which Nebula needs to produce Dark Chips, and Sharo needs to support its economy. Raika is to escort Lan to the mines, and when Raika asks Milenkoff to ask Lan about another mission, Milenkoff cuts him off and dismisses the other assignment. He tells Raika that his orders are to only escort Lan to the mines.

At the dimensional area, Raika hitches a ride with Lan past the force field, disobeying Raika's orders. Lan wants to know what's going on, but Raika refuses to tell him. They are attacked by FridgeMan, but manage to escape with the aid of a mine cart. SearchMan goes after FridgeMan, but due to FridgeMan jumping between the cyberworld and real world, SearchMan can't get a lock on him.

Lan is freezing, having never been to a country so cold before, but Raika refuses to stop and help him. This pisses Lan off, who berates Raika for treating him so badly, especially when Lan has come out to help Raika's country of his own good will, and all he wants is for Raika to tell him what's going on. Finally, Raika shows some humanity, and builds a fire for Lan and himself.

Raika informs Lan that he's looking for a missing hero of Sharo, the one who discovered the mines and brought about the prosperity Sharo is now in. It was not Raika's mission to find the missing hero, and he disobeyed orders to find him, which is why he wouldn't talk to Lan; he was embarrassed. They don't have time to sit around though, as a wave of viruses attack them. They make a run for it and hear barking down a corridor.

The barking is coming from Morisov, the hero of Sharo, and Raika's target for rescue. The dog turned out to be the one who discovered the mines, and is who Raika considers his best friend. Raika's personal mission completed, it's time to take out FridgeMan, which is lucky, because FridgeMan is right there, ready to ambush them.

Lan Cross-Fuses in a, thankfully shortened, fusion animation and does battle with FridgeMan. He manages to wound him, so FridgeMan escapes to the cyberworld to heal up and begin fighting again. Instead of healing up, however, he finds SearchMan waiting for him, a bit miffed at all the running around he's been doing searching for FridgeMan. SearchMan blasts FridgeMan with his cannon, causing FridgeMan to log out, and collapsing the dimensional area.

Back at base, Raika is punished for disobeying orders, and is sent to be tortured at the Russian POW camp... er wait, no... Raika doesn't get desert for a month and a half. Sorry, forgot what show I was watching. As the episode ends, Raika and Lan finally appear to have some mutual admiration for each other.

Critique
This episode adds the much needed depth to Raika's character, and finally brings him down to Lan on an emotional level. There's actually a fair deal of cleverness in this episode, like the mine cart sequence, and while the action isn't very climatic, the pacing is satisfactory. There isn't a lot of humor in this episode, but it keeps things interesting. It's not the best episode, but it's a decent entry.

Rating: Thumbs up!

Axess: Cut Episodes Part 5

After the episode of The New PET, somebody wasn't happy with NT Warrior Axess. Maybe someone at Time-Warner didn't like the show's ratings, or maybe Viz Media was difficult to work with, or just maybe someone likes the blue hedgehog a bit more. In either case, NT Warrior's dubbing days were coming to an end as the show would soon be replaced by... I dunno, Pokemon Part 17, or Yu-gi-oh-Mc-Do-gi-no, or whatever the hell is on kids WB.

Previous to this point, Axess had been doing relatively well in it's airing schedule, not missing a beat for quite a while, and airing each episode mostly in order, except for a couple. They would air BubbleMan's Plan as their last new episode, before a small break where the show would get a final run. When the show would return with The New PET, it would air as one of ten new episodes of Axess, airing once daily for the next ten days, until the season was finished. This (complete speculation by the way) was more than likely the result of a contract dispute between Time-Warner and Viz Media, with Viz Media wanting to be compensated for their hard work, and Time-Warner just wanting the show off the air as soon as possible.

It was because they would only get to air ten more episodes, that Viz Media would have to cut a few shows. Previous to this point, episodes may have been cut due to content or scheduling issues, but I can safely say, that these episodes were cut because of Time-Warner getting rid of the show, and Viz Media decided to select the more vital of the episodes to air, or at least, I think that was their intention. There is rumor (and take it with a grain of salt) that Viz Media did actually dub all the remaining episodes, but unless we ever get an Axess DVD release, we'll never know.

The next two episodes have very little to do with the over arching plot with Nebula, which is probably why they were chosen not to air, even though we miss out on a couple of DoubleSouls.

Flying to Shiisaa Island
Plot Summary Here
Basically, MegaMan and Lan meet a couple new characters, one of whom is WindMan, and I don't think we ever see them again. WindMan.exe gets into trouble, and MegaMan ends up using DoubleSoul with him.

Go To Hell By Train!?
Plot Summary Here
It's likely that title would have changed, had the episode actually came out in English. Anyway, a train goes out of control that just happens to have Lan, Chisao and Sal on it. The culprit is a darkloid, and MegaMan and WoodMan form a DoubleSoul.

In order of importance, the last six episodes are pretty much needed to finish the season. Besides that, you've got an episode featuring Bass, which is some important fan service I guess, the hilarious episode with Chaud and Raoul in disco clothes, an episode finally showing some respect between Lan and Raika (probably the pay off episode to that mini-arc), and then MistMan's Tower, which is a good Lan and Mayl episode, but lacking the more romantic overtones that Viz Media has been careful to cover up most of the show's run.

Taking those things into account, I suppose it makes sense why these episodes were singled out to not air. Ideally we would have got to see them all, but there isn't much a production company can do without a distributor, especially one as big as Time-Warner.

Mega Man 10 Out Today!

About an hour ago, Mega Man 10 hit the Wii Virtual console in the US. Since the game was announced, I've done my best to avoid seeing too much content about the game beforehand, which is pretty damn hard when you visit a good amount of Mega Man websites. I've only played a couple of levels so far, as I've got a lot of things to do today, but I plan to fully digest this title during the week.

Expect my review for this title to come after I've finished reviewing the Mega Man cartoons, which should be sometime this week (I'm not doing Stream, Beast, or Beast + as of yet). First impressions are decent so far, although I found Sheep Man's stage and boss fight pretty easy, but the game feels comfortable right now. It feels different than Mega Man 9 though. Mega Man 9 was a return to the old school classics, but Mega Man 10 feels like a blending of the old school with some new age polish, if that makes any sense. I hope to get more time with this game soon.

Axess: The Mysterious Masked Navi

Plot Synopsis
With the new PET, Lan is more powerful than ever, but a little too powerful, as he's become so arrogant about it he's stopped using any sort of strategy. When he starts showboating during a battle with SwordMan in front of Chaud, Chaud decides drastic measures to teach Lan a lesson.

With Raoul's help, Chaud concocts a plan to use a disguised ThunderMan to battle MegaMan. ThunderMan will pretend to be a darkloid, with Chaud and Raoul disguised as his NetOps. Chaud lures Lan out into an abandoned warehouse for the trap, and their disguise easily fools Lan and MegaMan.

Chaud and Raoul match Lan, move for move and keep MegaMan at bay. They try to leave, figuring they've taught Lan his lesson, but Lan refuses to give up, figuring he and MegaMan are battling for their lives, which is bad news for Chaud and Raoul. Lan pulls out all the stops, rare chips, Program Advances, DoubleSouls, and Chaud and Raoul start struggling to keep going. They're getting really worn out countering Lan, but Lan and MegaMan refuse to quit.

Just then, Mr. Famous contacts Lan and Chaud. SwordMan is back attacking another research facility, but Lan thinks his hands are full with this fight as it is. Realizing they're in deep shit with both ThunderMan and MegaMan totally worn out, Chaud and Raoul hightail it to the research facility, with Lan behind them.

When Lan arrives, MegaMan is confused why two darkloids are fighting each other. When SwordMan strikes, ThunderMan's disguise falls off, and MegaMan realizes who it is. MegaMan and ThunderMan fuse together for a DoubleSoul, ThunderSoul, and MegaMan is able to defeat SwordMan who logs out. Lan is initially horrified at the thought of having an evil darkloid soul, but MegaMan wises Lan up to whats going on.

Chaud and Raoul reveal themselves in shame, and let Lan know what they were trying to do. Lan apologizes for acting like a jerk, and promises to not let it happen again. Later, Lan and Chaud see Raoul off back to Netopia.

Critique
Easily the best episode of Axess, and in the top 5 for best episode of NT Warrior period. This episode delivers a perfect way to do off the wall situations, and combines it with a lot of clever dialog. This is the episode that sold me on Raoul, because he's pretty damn funny here, and it adds a new element to his character that fits so well with his already good nature.

Chaud is out of his element here, but he acts in a way that you would believe his character would grudgingly go along with something like this. Chaud and Raoul's voice actors deliver thier lines perfectly, accenting the phrases and emphasizing the words in such a way to emphasize their hilarious attire. Lan is also spot on, and there are so many great exchanges this episode.

ThunderMan: My Name is Masked Thunder, and I'm clearly a darkloid!
MegaMan: Okay... I believe you?
ThunderMan: That's good, because theirs no reason to doubt me! Now words been goin' round that you think you're too good to be defeated!
MegaMan: What are you talking about? I never said anything like that!

Lan: Who are you guys? What do you want?
Raoul: We're here to take you dooooown, and as for who we are, we're Masked Thunder's NetOps!
Lan: Are you serious?! Since when do darkloids have NetOps?!
Chaud and Raoul: Uhhhhh..
Lan: Well!?
Raoul: It just happened!
Lan: I can't believe this!

There's a lot of good stuff in here that you need some established characters to work with to pull off, and the costumes and accents just really sell the episode.

There is a part in the middle where SwordMan is delivering monologue to himself that is just god awful, but other than this scene, the entire episode is great!

Rating: Thumbs up!

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.