Hello again. Well, my blog
has completed its first year online. A lot has happened in anime
since then. Dubbing companies have closed their doors and their
assets absorbed by
other ones. The popular
Toonami block has been revived for a new generation of anime fans
as well as the ones that
grew up watching it. Long-running franchises have had even more
success. Digital
distribution is quickly becoming the norm.
And what of my blog
itself? Well, I've skewered several bad episodes and a bad movie
of anime; in a manner
similar to personalities on That Guy With The Glasses or The Agony
Booth (especially the latter before it shifted its focus from text
recaps to video recaps). So,
with 2013 on the horizon, I
think I'll take another look at a series from a bygone era.
That's right, it's time to
go back to Den Tech City to look at Mega Man NT Warrior.
In the time since my recap
of the first episode, Mega Man celebrated his 25th
anniversary with
little more than an iOS
game. Fans, not wanting the Blue Bomber to spend his first
quarter- century with something so dull, crafted a game called Street
Fighter X Mega Man; a freeware
fighting game with all the
fun and intensity of the other Capcom fighting crossovers. Capcom
was so impressed that they
decided to fund a complete version of the game. I celebrated it by
playing Mega Man X for the
first time; but that's not important right now. The Mega Man Battle
Network games were created
to celebrate Mega Man's 15th anniversary in 2002; with the
Mega
Man NT Warrior anime not
far behind.
I never really played the
Battle Network games or watched the anime, but Mega Man
NT Warrior's first episode
was a doozy. It featured a future of absolutely everything being
connected to the internet,
even when it doesn't make sense to. We had oven fires in electric
ranges. We had Dr. Wily dressing like someone from Sea Lab 2021. We
had a hero that lashes
out and whines when he
doesn't get his way; and he's shockingly voiced by a man who would
hold the powers of life and
death in his hands in a later role. So, as you can imagine, it was
pretty stupid.
Naturally, I realized that
there was plenty of material I could mine for recaps out of
the series. While the
second episode was relatively innocuous, the third episode is the one
I decided to recap today.
So, let's open up “Traffic Light Chaos” and plug into the cyber
matrix.
(I think I got a broken
capillary just from typing that...)
We get the same narration
from Lan to start us off. Something I didn't notice before, is
that Lan compares life in
Den Tech City to living in a video game. If it were, I'd imagine
there'd
be more people swearing up
storms while playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. He states that
everything is connected to
the internet. It's a wonder how that works, since I have to
constantly
tell my MacBook to run
Flash since it tells me the plugin is out of date every time I go
online.
He gets to the PET units.
Once again, most given smart phones can do this sort of thing better,
and more. Also, part of the
reason we don't have flying cars is because most drivers would wreck
them texting or playing Cut The Rope.
It turns out the viruses
that cause most problems in the episodes are caused by
an evil organization known
as World 3. Gee, and I try to beat Air Man and Boomer Kuwanger
late at night.
Oh lordy, the theme song.
It does not get better when you listen to it. It sounds like
a bad version of the
Beastie Boys' “Sabotage.” On top of that, the editing is a
garbled mess
of fast edits and jaggy
cuts; full of more neon than Joel Schumacher crammed into Batman
Forever.
We open on a limousine with
a little girl in it. Her name is Yai Ayano. What do I think
of her? Just imagine Paris
Hilton, all the Kardashians, Willie Scott, and any given TV child
of privilege combined into
one and you'll get the idea.
Naturally, she also has a
Net Navi, ready to be turned into a licensed product for
the 6-11 demographic. Said
product can be had on eBay for around $10.99 on Buy It Now.
We cut to the school. Lan
and his lady friend are skating in. The animation is still
kind of wonky, but I admit
it has improved somewhat. Another thing I missed from the last
Mega Man recap: the girl's
name is May Lu. She's one of the more tolerable characters, even
if her voice actress can't
seem to break an octave. Wake up!
Once again, we have Dax. I
still find it odd how the future has everyone and their significant
other on the Internet, but haven't had any breakthroughs in bringing
down at-risk
people on the Body Mass
Index.
So, Yai's limo pulls in,
rolls out the proverbial red carpet, and out the little Regina Rich
steps. Braided hair, a
little red dress, red Mary Janes, and a forehead that would make Neo
Cortex scoff. Seriously, her forehead shines for no reason.
Yai has arrived, and she
makes a big production out of transferring from a prep school
and being skipped ahead two
grades. She says she enjoys long novels, going to the opera,
composing music, and
judging art exhibits. … Do Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and
The Hunger Games Trilogy
count as long novels?
On top of that, she
actually brought a DVD of herself to show the class. Aside from
the fact that my middle
school didn't get its first DVD players till 2006, I think even Tony
Stark would call this
egotistical.
After her little home
movie ends, Yai excels at writing (even if her prose isn't as funny
as the stuff on the
blackboard in Pani Poni Dash)...
...And arithmetic. It's been
a while since my last algebra class, but I'm pretty sure she
solved the equation
correctly; I was always better at geometry (Note: I screwed up the
time
frame on the Digimon movie
recap, completely throwing off the setting of the movie. I fully
admit to fudging the
numbers.).
Lunchtime has arrived, and
the lunch is a shrink-wrapped hot dog, some New England
Clam Chowder, a cylinder of
milk, and some sort of bread. I fully admit to being well-fed in
school. I'm still wondering
what genius invented the Uncrustable, or what strings they had
to pull to let us have
pizza every day.
Yai, however, isn't swayed
by this. Oh Arceus, she summons her stewards to have some
foie gras, fruit compote,
and vegetable croquettes; complete with a sommelier serving her
strawberry milk. By the
way, a sommelier is someone who evaluates the quality of wine. In
fact, Cilan being a Pokémon
Connoisseur was originally Dent being a Pokémon Sommelier.
For the main course? Sirloin
steak, all the way from Texas. Well, I give the lady credit
for knowing a good piece of
beef when she sees one.
We then cut to Dr. Wily's
lair. (piff) (bursts out laughing) Oh, sorry. It's just that the Dr.
Wily I knew had more
restraint when he chose his hideout. He didn't have this swamp lair
like
the Legion of Doom.
(snerk) (bursts out laughing
again) Okay, I'm done. It's just that Dr. Wily's getup is so
ridiculous! I know the guy
in a white lab coat. I still think he looks like a Venture Brothers
villain with the monocle, skull cane, and robe.
Wily confers with another
member of World 3, Maddie. You want to know what I think of Maddie?
She looks like some floozy you'd find in the reptile district,
looking for synthetic
snakeskin.
We cut to Yai's home, and
she naturally has a mansion. Just the thing I needed to see
when I had thoughts about
putting on a Bane mask and pulling pranks on rich folks.
Lan and Dax actually try to
break in through a hole in the fence. Breaking and entering,
and trespassing on private
property. Lan, you are a horrible role model for children.
Yai decides to teach the
boys a lesson. She activates the security measures in her garden.
Like a killer lawnmower! Oh
no! Rotom is loose! Dax makes a comment about getting buzzcuts
from it. Buzzcuts? Most
kids that get caught in lawnmowers end up like the giant Nazi from
Raiders of the Lost Ark!
Anyway, Lan and Dax get
captured in a cage. Lan tries to use Mega Man to get out, but
Yai's Net Navi, Glide,
chastises them for breaking in. The preceding events were so stupid,
I can't even screencap
them. I will tell you they involved water cannons and automatic
tennis
ball servers, though.
Lan and Dax get sent out
through a tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKUOB8MN4Kc
The next day, we get a
class about how important it is to install firewalls and run regular
virus scans on your
net-connected devices. I think this is important, but these kids are
just
learning why it's important
to read books that got banned by other schools, like Fahrenheit 451
and The Catcher in the Rye.
Wait until they're a little bit older to tell them about this.
Meanwhile, the traffic
control has gone screwy; in yet another cliché. If this keeps up,
it won't take long before
we reach the fruit cart being destroyed in a chase scene.
Oh my, this is even dumber
than the oven fire in the electric range. Most cities would
not only not be able to
afford automated traffic control, but it would actually be a lot
worse
than what they're depicting
here (namely, all stops are red lights). Our cockamamie programming
for our traffic lights makes one street 20 seconds on Green and the
other 3 minutes on Green.
 |
| I just want to plaster "Tron Lives" all over this place. |
It turns out that the
traffic lights being fiddled with is caused by Wacko Man. What
a joke. What happened to
folks like Gemini Man, Flash Man, Crash Man, and Heat Man?
We also get some stock
footage of Mets mining through the internet from episode 1.
Still, it's not as bad as
Bakugan reusing the same hat flying off Billy clip every time he
attacked.
Look at Maddie. She's
wearing an outfit meant for someone 10-15 years younger than
her. She looks like Rika
from Digimon Tamers if she hadn't gotten over her angsty phase.
Seriously, look at her
clothes. A shirt that hugs her breasts. Tight shorts. Candy
cane- colored knee socks. Bright orange sneakers. That has to be some
of the worst early-2000s
fashion you could find.
We cut to Yai in the
backseat of her car in traffic, and she has to use the bathroom.
Why? Because she wouldn't
use the ladies' room at school on the grounds that there were
no gold faucets. Of
course, she has to go to the bathroom in the middle of traffic. If
she were
male, in the middle of the
desert, or both, she could go by the side of the road.
We get a bit of whining
about how Yai has to use the bathroom, but how nothing can be
done due to the traffic.
You know, there's more piss jokes here than in Transformers. I mean,
I like to put a little bit
of toilet humor in my recaps, but this is making the coolant leak
scene
in Cars 2 seem dignified.
Naturally, Glide is
packing heat in the cyber matrix. I suspected as much. Still, Wacko
Man is upon him and he is
forced to logout.
Meanwhile, Lan decides to
plug into the cyber matrix and find out what's going on. Why
do they have to put a
FireWire port on everything? I may be a nerd, but I draw the line at
going out of the way to
make an anime a 52-episode Best Buy commercial.
Mega Man engages Wacko
Man. I'm sorry, but I cannot take Wacko Man seriously
as a threat. This is a
franchise that had its characters fight Marvel superheroes, Tatsunoko
anime characters, Tekken
fighters, and the cast of Street Fighter; so seeing something that
looks like a bad theme park
attraction doesn't really measure up.
Back in the real world, Lan
notices Yai standing on top of her car. Yai grudgingly admits
her need to relieve
herself; and Lan races through town just so he can find Yai a
bathroom.
This is almost as bad as
Izzy getting the runs from guzzling oolong tea in the Digimon movie.
I can't believe this
episode had me reference that movie, let alone twice.
So, after Yai makes her
visit to the little girl's room, Lan gets back to fighting Wacko
Man. Wacko Man may be one of the most ludicrous villains I've come
across in an anime; and
I've seen Masquerade's
Elton John look.
Wacko Man multiplies
himself, but Mega Man activates his Cyber Sword and slices them
apart with some crappy early-2000s CGI. Like one of those Brazilian
rip-offs of a
Pixar or Dreamworks movie
you see in the $5 bin at K-Mart.
The real Wacko Man logs out,
and her master, Maddie, kicks a phone booth in frustration. Yes, I
am old enough to know what a phone booth is.
 |
| Carrot Top lied to me! 1-800-CALL-ATT my ass! |
The next day, Lan, May Lu,
and Dax are back at school. Dax makes a comment about his parents
confiscating his Net Navi; despite the fact that the thing is hanging
around his
neck. Consistency? What's
that?
So, how do we end a cliché
storm of an episode? You care to show us, Yai? Yai then
pulls in. As you can see,
Yai got another limo. A limo in Barbie Pink, and she had a toilet
installed in the back seat
to avoid a repeat of what happened before.
“Traffic Light Chaos,”
while still a bad episode of a forgettable series, is a slight
improvement over the pilot episode. The animation, while still not
as good as other series
that were around at the
time of airing (such as Yu Yu Hakusho or Shaman King); has improved
a bit. There are some
cities that use computerized traffic lights; and there are other
movies
and TV shows that have used
traffic tie-ups as a plot point, so it's at least plausible that they
could be hacked. However,
the fact that the series is based on a web-connected society where
anything and everything is
connected to the internet is nonsensical when most people use
the web to watch Gangam
Style remixes, look at pictures of cats making humorous statements
about cheeseburgers, and
make witty analyses of anime. People have also made clear that Yai
is one of the most hated
anime characters in the medium; and I can see why. She covers just
about every rich kid
stereotype you can think of. When it first aired, she barely had
fans.
Events such as the
financial crisis and the Occupy movement made matters worse for rich
folk in fiction. Lan still
acts strangely unheroic, and I'm still coming to terms that he's
voiced by Brad Swaile; one of the most revered anime voice actors in
the industry. With all this in mind, though, they were at least
trying with this episode. And so, my first year of recapping anime
has passed. More lies ahead for 2013, including more Code Geass R2,
Bakugan, and Pokémon; as well as some Transformers anime, some of
the Marvel anime (Iron Man, Wolverine, Blade), the next episode of
the TMNT anime, and much more. See you space cowboy!
