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Mega Man Ruby Spears: The Beginning
Reviewed: 04/04/2021
Super Silly Robot...BLUE DWEEB~!
Welcome to Easter Sadism 2021 everybody! This is the segment where we talk about the mad, bad and crazy productions that gave it's audience a paradox of pain and pleasure. Hopefully, more pleasure than pain and today's subject might be the best one of the shows that I have done. Don't get me wrong; this show is insane. However; Mega Man is a ***** classic compared to Chargeman Ken. In fact, it's probably the only one where a good chunk of episodes might be decent without the need of the trainwreck scale. The show in question is the return of Mega Man in his show after a run on Captain N: The Game Master, and it's already a vast improvement from that show. Welcome to the Rant Shack: The Ruby Spears edition of Mega Man. The most faithful rendition of the video game. To be fair, it helps a lot when Capcom was involved and made sure no beyond the pale stupidity happened in this show. To wit from Wikipedia (DANGER! DANGER!):
Mega Man starred in a Saturday-morning style cartoon that premiered in 1994. Ruby-Spears, one of the producers of the show, redesigned the characters from the Mega Man video games to varying degrees. The show had a budget of 300,000 dollars per episode.[2] It was originally designed in an art style matching the games' artwork. "Appearance in Japan", the first episode of Mega Man: Upon a Star, was made as test footage and intended to be a special episode of the series, as it had the same animation and used the same voice actors as the cartoon in production. However, it was a big budget, and so the animation style had to change. The new art style was based on redesigns of the characters Keiji Inafune had done in his spare time. "Appearance in Japan" still aired on TV in 1994, as an after school special on various TV stations and in Japan on TV Tokyo. If the series' art style hadn't changed, it would've aired alongside two similarly cancelled shows: an English dub of Magic Knight Rayearth starring Venus Terzo as Luce, and an American adaptation of Sailor Moon utilizing live-action and animation with Adrienne Barbeau as Queen Beryl and Queen Serenity. Despite consistent high ratings, the show was cancelled after 2 seasons. The decision to end the cartoon was handed down from Capcom, most likely due to merchandising pressures from toy-partner Bandai, which cut short several other popular toy lines due to not meeting sales expectations (including The Tick, Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball).[citation needed] The show's animation director Kenichiro Watanabe went on to direct Power Stone, based on another Capcom franchise.
I think the art style might have also changed because BS&P (which is far less forgiving than DTVA when in syndication and I'll talk about this as I go through this) didn't want children like characters shooting at people, and so everyone was aged up. It should be noted that Mega Man 5 in video games was well after release at this point (in fact, Mega Man VI debuted a year before this series); so a lot of the Mega Man 5 robot master designs were really not up to snuff compared to the Mega Man 1 designs which looks almost 1:1 with the video game. Personally; as a kid, I like this show; but that was back when I liked Mega Man as a video game character. Right now; this show is insane, but there is a method to the madness. It's not like Chargeman Ken where anything that went wrong did. It was more like "when it was good, it was really good; but when it was bad, it was hilariously bad". If you don't like the new designs, it's all on Capcom and Keiji Inafune, not on Ruby Spears. Don't worry, there is lots of things to mock that wasn't Capcom's fault and I'll go over each one segment by segment. I'm going to do a test run of five random episodes out of the 27 episodes that aired and see if it's worth it for a full series run. We begin at the beginning as Dr. Wily (the evil doctor of the Mega Man brand) launches an attack on Kennedy Airport in New York and Mega Man makes the save, although he is crushed and needs repair. Basically; this is an origin story of how Wily and Light became enemies. So, how does it fare? Let's rant on shall we...?!
The Beginning is written by Mark Jones and directed by Katsumi Minoguchi. Story was edited by Jeffrey Scott and Richard Merwin. Yay! Since this is an Easter Sadism rant, there are no tributes. Animation is done by Ashi Productions Limited, which might explain why the animation wasn't a complete disaster like it ultimately could have been.
Opening Moment #1: The opening sequence is a huge paradox of having the best animation ever compared to the rest of the show (including literally using footage from the show's pitch in the case of the bullets and Pipis, not unusal since TaleSpin did the same thing, only TaleSpin used footage from the television show); which is nearly every opening in the 1980's and 1990's and having the worst song I have ever heard. This also showed the only appearance of Napalm Man and he looked horrible here and might have just been a literal missile launcher. The rest of the robot masters from Mega Man 1 looked great outside of Ice Man wearing glasses; but all of them were really faithful to the game which is a win since Guts Man is a regular. Surprisely, Cut Man doesn't appear here despite being a regular on the show as well. Proto Man looks great; however, the writers decided to make Proto Man an outright heel who is on Dr. Wily's side despite the fact that the times where he heeled it up in the games, he had no alliances with anyone until after Mega Man 5 where he turned to Light's side for good; albeit still a loner. Amazingly enough, this angle became the basis for Bass and Treble (In Japan, Treble was known as Gospel; and that change wasn't Capcom's fault; it was Nintendo of America's censorship policy behind this at the time) about a year later when Mega Man 7 was released. Roll got the biggest change as she looks like an adult now and does a lot more combat despite having weapons based on house keeping, which was her gimmick in the original. As for the music, the music is great; but the song was... Imagine singing "Super Fighting Robot, Mega Man" eight times, a pause after the fourth one, and one new line after the eighth one. Granted, the singer was great; but there is only so much you can do with a lame lyric script. So, yeah; enjoy this though, this is the high watermark for this show in terms of quality.
We begin the series in a futuristic version of New York City near Kennedy airport with lots of rocket trains and train tracks. Now; the original games didn't really disclose the location of Dr. Light's lab per se, although the year was 20XX, so 2074 like in Chargeman Ken was still possible at this point. Maybe 53 years later, this will all be officially dated; but I do recall that the show is supposed to take place in the real world, so having Dr. Light be American and Dr. Wily being German, along with Mega Man 4 resident doctor Dr. Cossack be Russian, is not unbelievable at this point. So, we get various animated sequences of airplane activity as the airport as there are pilots and security being all robots dressed up, which is not unusual in Mega Man's world. I should note that the airplanes look like trash sweepers for some odd reason, since there is clearly a regular airplane in the background landing. Then we hear a loud explosion and in comes...Okay, here is my first strike against the cartoon: They show a closeup face of Guts Man and then zooms out to reveal Bomb Man, Cut Man, Elec Man (not Electric Man. Why? I don't know; ask Capcom about it, this is not a Ruby-Spears motif.) and Fire Man and instead of giving it five seconds to sink in since it's literally their first appearance, they within one second cut to the robots and denizen at the baggage check with one of them pointing out the obvious to us. They are also called Dr. Wily's robots, which it is possible that no one outside of Dr. Light knows this; but since Dr. Light is a well known figure in the show as a scientists, I would think that they would know that the robots shown are in fact created by Dr. Light in the games and that Dr. Wily brainwashed them into believing in world domination... and that humans are bad. Which is basically every Mega Man game including the spin-off series Mega Man X. Oh, and just wait until you see Mega Man actually meet Mega Man X in this very show! Tons of fun! So, everyone except security bails in various direction as the security robot blitz the heels and Elec Man shoots lightning bolts from his fingertips in an anime sequence. This kind of kills the theory that the design changes were basically Americans hate anime (with an incredible lack of self-wareness that anime is French for animation) because this is a Japanese animation motif.
I should note that Elec Man's pose is almost identical to the one in the opening, as Guts Man punches through the concrete wall, while Fire Man fires a flamethrower through the glass into the airport checkout area. Cut Man goes through glass and pillars with his Rolling Cutter. Sadly, while the designs of the robot master here are almost perfect, the weapon use is really inconsistant and sometimes looks bland. Elec Man's attack doesn't have the bolts going up and Fire Man has no fireball shield. Guts Man doesn't throw large rocks yet (except in the opening), although his punching skills are good enough to be faithful. Bomb Man throws a bomb and outside of the explosions not being 1:1 with the game; the damage is extreme; which is a vast improvement from the actual game. So, the robot masters go through the wall Bomb Man just bombed and we see Wily Machine Ruby-Spears edition; which is a really bastardized version of Wily Machine 4 from Mega Man 4. Considering that Wily changes his machine designs as much as he changes his underwear, this makes sense. Dr. Wily actually looks almost like the official artwork, sans the different color of his hair and the German voice. I should point out that Dr. Wily was voiced by the same guy who voiced in Mega Man: Wish Upon A Star, minus a German accent (Scott McNeil); so blame Ruby-Spears' voice director for that change. Dr. Albert W. Wily also appeared in Captain N: The Gamesmaster and outside of being much shorter, he's almost close to his video game counterpart. Compare this Mega Man to Captain N and even Cut Man; where Cut Man was called CutsMan and his head was basically a pair of scissors. Yeah. Like I said about Henry The Inkara from TaleSpin: Henry would be an Americanized Moogle on the Captain N set. Proto Man is watching and Dr. Wily is operating the machine lamenting about how this Krackpotkin plan is working so perfectly. Proto Man sits there with his shades glaring. Cut Man cuts through airplane wings for fun and really showing that it's Mega Man being OP'ed more than Cut Man being a joke. Oh, poor Cut Man; he has no idea what the writers have booked him to be. And HERE COMES THE BAD EPISODE POLICE less than 90 seconds in. Fire Man shoots his flamethrowers at the Prison Truck and then Bomb Man makes a crater in the road and this causes two police cars to crash into the ground.
Wow; this has been a near perfect segment thus far as it shows how destructive these robots are and thus we need a hero to stop this carnage. This gives me incentive to keep watching this show and it also makes me want to see Mega Man punch Dr. Wily in the face, even though the laws of robots prevents him from doing so, despite being totally facist BS in my opinion. It should be obvious: Why can a robot not harm a human, but the human can abuse the robot all it wants? That's slavery! I mention this because Dr. Wily is not above bullying his robot as you'll see later on and yes, I realize that he's the #1 heel of the show. Dr. Wily goes into his "they call me crazy" promo; which I replied "You're not crazy, you're a terrorist!" while doing the goofiest faces possible that it makes the whole thing look creepy because nothing else was moving in that sequence. Two officers get into a black helicopter and Cut Man destroys the props, to force it to land. Cut to inside the helicopter with red haired, blue pants officer panicking like a black haired male-pattern bald man in black pants is on the transmitter is calling for help and he addresses himself as Captain Lee as he is calling for Dr. Light and Mega Man as we head to Dr. Light's Lab and residence as it looks similar to Mega Man 5's version, only red and white instead of blue and white. His lab looks like a green missile cone with the top flatten and round glass window surrounding the upper half of the structure. There is also more detail; but in defense of Capcom, the games are on the NES and this kind of detail wouldn't exist on game until the 32-bit era. We head inside the lab as we see Mega Man all grown up with Roll all grown up. And 27 years later, the exact same thing happened to Kit and Molly, too. Background BS: The first shot has a completely gray background with no walls. Dr. Thomas Light has been made to look a lot less like Santa Claus here, which was what was the inspiration for Dr. Light's design in the games. Mega Man is called Rock Man and Proto Man is known as Blues in Japan. The whole original series gimmick is that the main robots are all based on music themes; but one of the execs at Capcom of America thought that calling Mega Man, Rock Man was complete BS and the Mega Man name stuck. The execs also didn't like the child-like designs EVEN MORE than these ones! At least Ruby-Spears had the designs much closer to the Japanese version and Infume was heavily involved in the process.
Here, the execs decided that the package had to look realistic in the first two Mega Man games, even though that would be false advertisting, until Mega Man 3, when they finally used Mega Man's true look, sort of. Anyhow; Dr. Light remembers that he and Dr. Wily were partners; but Dr. Wily must be stopped and Mega Man tries to bail; but Roll cuts him off because she wants to come. Mega Man refuses the deal and he is a sexist toxic masculinty asshole because he thinks girl robots shouldn't be involved. It took them two and a half minutes to make me hate this Mega Man already! Roll points out that Mega Man is afraid of being showed up. Cut Man should be worried about Roll showing him up as you'll see in Future Shock. Mega Man blows her off because it's too dangerous. Riiiigggghhhtttttt. So, Rush teleports in along with a Met (used to be called a Hard Hat; which made sense since the enemy was wearing a helmet and it deflected shots despite dying due to a sneeze), and turns into Rush Jet; and it's blurry but the sequence is almost dead perfect. Mega Man gets on Rush Jet and in comes a green Met called Eddie (Which means that they used Eddie's design and Auto from Mega Man 7's colors); which is his actual name for Eddie, only that Eddie is not a Met and is red in color. Nintendo Power calls him Flip Top for some strange unknown reason. He gives Mega Man a soda can for energy and Mega Man drinks it, so the E-Tank is gone from history, including it's blue large can design. As much as the designs were the most faithful; there are ones that are wildly inaccurate. Roll is not going to let Mega Man get away with his sexism as Mega Man leaves up from the roof of the lab and goes into a helicopter like car which looks really great as Roll proclaims that Mega Man needs help weither he likes it or not and all men are the same, even robots! Cancel culture is so stupid and lacks self-awareness. Roll rides up through the roof and heads for the city, following Mega Man, who has made it to Kennedy Airport, but Wily Machine RS is waiting in the subdued smoke. Proto Man calls Mega Man, the Blue Bomber and Dr. Wily hates him because he ruins everything. Wow, truer words never spoken! So, Dr. Wily goes on transmitter and orders the robot masters (all five of them!) to destroy Mega Man. They turn around and there he is on Rush Jet looking stern.
So, Bomb Man breaks the ice by throwing a bomb at Rock (Rock is Mega Man's civilan name as demonstrated in Mega Man 4's intro) and Rock shoots one arm cannon and makes the bomb explode and this somehow causes Bomb Man to first no sell the shot and then sell a shot of the arm cannon that misses him by inches, but he still impact the conveniently placed wall making a snow angel in the process. Rock jumps down and runs; and he touches the left arm of Bomb Man, and his arm glows, Rock glows and we get a close up of Mega Man's face showing a wired design of the weapon he has gotten. This is of course a major change from the games: Mega Man has to...ahem... kill Bomb Man in order to gain his weapon, instead of Mega Man merely stealing it and the robot master can still live, sans his weapon (although like the game, it's temporary since the disarming of weapons of Mega Man from Dr. Light is on brand for each game). This was a BS&P decision because you cannot say die and you cannot die in this cartoon enivornment, and it's more present in more animation nowadays (although you can say die more often nowadays); since killing is taboo and saying and doing it in a cartoon will mean children will do it in real life, even if they are robots. On the other hand; it does mean we get to see Cut Man a lot more in this show and no Cut Man would be a sad day in the world of memes. Bomb Man panics and bails stage right; so Mega Man does an anime sequence and fires a bomb right into Bomb Man and crumble Bomb Man into spare parts. Huh, I was wrong about the killing part. Dr. Wily is pissed off and we get one of the most hilarious insults of all time: He calls Mega Man, a blue dweeb. Keep in mind, Dr. Wily is 65 years old at least and trying to sound like a cool teenager. It is much more believable if Proto Man said it and he thinks the robot masters lack brain chips; so it's not just Cut Man who is incompentant as Dr. Wily uses the machine to collect the parts of Bomb Man as it's implied that he has to rebuilt Bomb Man, AGAIN! So, yeah; this has happened before and you wonder why Dr. Wily hates Mega Man. Proto Man shoves Wily's hand away from the controls because he wants to destroy Mega Man since he is his brother; and Dr. Wily claims that HE built Proto Man.
One problem: That is a lie; Dr. Light built him before he built Mega Man and only heeled on Mega Man to see if he could defeat him...while acting as Break Man (which Capcom of Japan messed up since Proto Man was supposed to look like a Sniper Joe until the boss fight with Break Man before the start of fighting Dr. Wily in Mega Man III; and then reveal his face for the first time at the end of that boss fight. There is evidence of this sequence in the Cutting Room Floor.). I'm guessing the writers truly show "Proto Man" kidnapping Dr. Light as him being Dr. Wily's lackey; even though it was really Dark Man; whom appeared in this very show! Damn; my head hurts and we are only four and a half minutes into this thing. Proto Man don't care; but he'll still obey him; when he wants to. They're still trying to make Proto Man a rebel and that would work a lot better if he wasn't on Dr. Wily's side outright. Proto Man flies out and Wily wants to put humble chips into him. Riiiigggghhhtttt; like he needs a personality transplant. You first, Wily. So, we finally get the big staredown between brothers and they promos on each other; I don't care, just fight already! Proto Man goes into anime background; and of course everyone is buffed and Proto Man has no shield, despite having one in the games. So, the AI pattern doesn't work here as both brothers have a fire fight, it was all right, I guess. In comes the machine flown by Roll and out comes Roll and the Met from earlier. Roll is behind Fire Man and her hand changes to a vacuum cleaner and she invokes the vacuum wave attack and crumbles Fire Man into spare parts, a complete and utter burial of Fire Man. She got a close up of her face and an anime sequence, so despite the Americanized changes, it still looks like it's from Japan. TaleSpin at least had some work done in France and Korea. She calls the Met, Doc and cuts a lame promo about going to pieces. I should also points this out: This was created BEFORE Mega Man Powered Up which decided to give all six robot masters actual personality (and Oil Man, who was so racist, the DOS Mega Man III game's version was quality. Ponder that for a moment...); so the personalities had to be more than just their gimmick and they made Fire Man into a literal psychopathic pyromaniac in the PSP game.
Guts Man and Cut Man turn around and Guts Man wants to crush her; so Cut Man throws his Rolling Cutter and it destroys the railway line and the train derail and lands into the hands of Guts Man. Guts Man then throws the train into the air right on top of Roll. Mega Man stops his fight and runs in, shoving both Guts Man and Cut Man; shoving Roll and Doc and gets crushed by the train! HOLY F*CKING SH*T~! And guess who crushed Mega Man? Guts Man and Cut Man; the later is the most incompentent of them all. Uh-Oh! You killed Mega Man and when he revives; you are punished for life. You art done as a badass, Cut Man! Guts Man gets a free pass because Dr. Wily loves Guts Man so much...and Skull Man in later games. It seems this could be a jealousy complex since he is obsessed with one Dr. Light and one Dr. Cossack robot. Dr. Wily is so happy about this as the Wily Machine flies away as we get a final shot of Mega Man's boots to end the segment six minutes in. Wow, what a roaring start to this episode, mistakes and continuity errors aside. I legit enjoyed this because this got the heat on the robot masters and made them look like actual threats instead of the jokes they would become later on. Also; there are eye catchers for this and the first one has a purple/pink background with Mega Man, looking more like X with human colored hands. That's minor compared to the second one featuring Roll and Rush with Rush being miscolored and Roll looking like she was going to have a much different design than she ultimately got in the final. Her arm looks like a pressure cooker weapon to me.
After the commercial break; we head back to the airport as the robot masters are destroying everything, except for the area where Mega Man is crushed as Roll runs in with Doc and Roll literally asks where Doc is despite Doc clearly being with her the entire time. What an idiot Roll is?! She must have a concussion; no way she can be this stupid. Doc uses his long pipe arms to drag Rock out of the carnage and then they use a cloth stretcher with Rush Jet carrying him away with ropes. Geez, are the modern stretchers trademarked or something? This is straight out of 1980's WWE. Now, despite Roll being able to kill Fire Man with a vacuum cleaner (and no; I'm not wasting Ron Sparks for this one), Roll bails with Doc into her ship and flies with Mega Man back to Dr. Light's residence; which has been implied in the games that he lives in Denver, Colorado. That's a long trip both ways! I think the Saban dub used this state for Digimon as well. Dr. Wily sees this as a victory and he wants more carnage because he hates Dr. Light, or something. Dr. Wily wants to bring the city to it's knees as somehow, the red haired police captain we saw in the first segment is with Guts Man and he basically blames Dr. Light for creating robots. I see where the Game Theory thing about Dr. Wily being totally innocent came from, actually. Then we head to Dr. Light's residence AFTER HAPPY HOUR (after dark) and Roll is blaming herself for all this. To be fair, Mega Man was the one who gaslit her into this by acting all macho and thinking he didn't need any help. Guts Man and Cut Man would have done it to Mega Man anyway because they actually acted like threats. Poor Fire Man though, I betcha we will never see him again in this show. Ditto Bomb Man. We head inside as Dr. Light is fixing him up and Dr. Light assures her that Mega Man was just saving lives although his status is pretty grave to say the least. Including Roll's; which means that it really is Roll's fault and Dr. Light is too kind to admit it. As Dr. Light is fixing Rock and Rock is talking gibberish as his brain is shorting and giving him memories of his past. Dr. Light proclaims that Dr. Wily was his assistant back then and then we HIT THE FLASHBACK~! Dr. Light is showing off Proto Man, sans helmet and shades, and has red hair. Of course! Dr. Wily is impressed and sounds more German than he does in the future.
Dr. Light has a remote control and after showing blueprints of various robot designs, including a Met bulldozer which looks similar to the Pickman Digger from Mega Man 11! Dr. Light uses the remote and that turns on the prototype robot, and almost instantly, the prototype robot destroys the lab. Instead of using the remote control and finding the off switch, Dr. Light shouts at the robot to stop this. The robot of course no sells this deal, making Dr. Light look like a total doofus and justifying the captain's word at the start of the show. Why didn't Dr. Light just use the remote to switch him off and if that didn't work; then there is a malfunction in the system? The robot pulls out a pipe and the iron tank falls down and crushes him, just like what happened to Mega Man and the train earlier. Dr. Light claims that it's the guidance system and Dr. Wily is gravely offended by this and thinks it's something else because it's never his fault, even though Dr. Light's reasoning is quite reasonable. Dr. Light wants to scrap the plans and start over. Dr. Wily sounds so sarcastic, he sounds like he's already made up his mind to turn on Dr. Light on the first slieght against him. To be fair, the original game is basically the same thing, although Proto Man left on his own out of fear of being changed due to the guidance system (Solar Reactor in the games) being faulty. Dr. Wily did fix him up; but ignored the defect, probably because it would be an admission of guilt of creating it in the first place. Anyhow; it's night time and Dr. Wily goes into the lab with his flashlight (and the effects they used here annoyed me) and grabs the plans and swearing revenge as he yells at a normal level. What an idiot because the lights come on and Dr. Light comes in and he is pissed off! Dr. Light runs in yelling at him for not destroying the plans and Dr. Wily of course refuses to destroy the plan; so benefit of the doubt is officially erased here and he is a monster doctor heel now. Dr. Wily runs away and he pushes a rolling cart; and this alone bonks into Dr. Light and he goes down. Way to go, Dr. Light! This is why nuance is so important in reviewing these shows, because so far; the babyfaces look like geeks here. Dr. Wily then accuses Dr. Light of sabotaging his system. Considering how much of a bunch of dorks the babyfaces are, I doubt that very much. Just a note: All of Cut Man's incompentancy can be traced right back to Dr. Wily now because Dr. Wily is not a good scientist.
Dr. Wily locks up the lab as Dr. Light is banging on the door and protesting this outrage, don't care. So, we head to Dr. Wily's lab and holy crap, even Baloo's Air Service wasn't this messy! Dr. Wily is fiddling around with stuff as rats and mice are infesting the area. Dr. Wily laments about being abused as a child and never having toys and being bullied; as apparently, he stole the prototype robot and redesigned it to become Proto Man, which is fitting since Wily is singing the blues at this point. Dr. Wily laughs because he is insane and don't care as long as he has total control. Considering what Proto Man has become now, Dr. Wily has at least fixed some of the bugs, just not all of them. We head back to Dr. Light's residence three months later after the previous segment and into the lab as Dr. Light has fixed all the bugs in his new robot and we see Mega Man laying on the table with a blue shirt, blue shorts; but the full blue boots on. And in a surprise, he is named Rock; which is Mega Man's civilian name as per the introduction in Mega Man 4 as Dr. Light uses the remote and Rock wakes up and he acts all human; which is by design as Rock and Dr. Light meet and greet. Rock goes to a conveniently placed mirror and admires himself. He likes the new look and we head back to the lab/residence AFTER HAPPY HOUR as Dr. Light pushes a button on the remote to open the door and introduces Roll as Rock says she looks pretty. Dr. Light states that she is like a sister to him (since Dr. Light built her of course) and uses the remote to turn her on. The power up sounds like Mega Man's Mega Buster power up in Mega Man 7 and 8 for some reason. The robots shake hands and then Dr. Right opens another hatch as his dreams for harmony continue with showing off Guts Man, Cut Man and Ice Man (with glasses on). They even call Ice Man's weapons, the Ice Slasher (although he also says beam; but that was probably to inform the audience that Ice Slasher is not a melee weapon; but a shooter weapon). Cut Man and Guts Man's titles are also 1:1 with the games. So, it's time for bed as Dr. Light closes the door and helps Rock and Roll to bed. So, later that night, we see Proto Man melting a wall with his arm cannon and Dr. Wily is back as he goes to the garage room and they open it to reveal the robots. However, Dr. Wily still doesn't know that in the fine art of not being seen, he has to shut the hell up. Yep; Dr. Light, Rock and Roll comes in with the lights on.
Proto Man is the smartest heel of the group, obviously. Rock decides to take them on and it's one-on-one, so Proto Man grabs him and throws him into the three robots, and they all turn on without any prompting. Huh? That's a real logic break as the robots are confused and so Dr. Light commands the robots to stop Proto Man, now that it's four on one, including Roll! However; Dr. Wily uses the GUN OF BRAINWARPING on the robots and they all officially turn heel, except for Rock and Roll. I don't know why he didn't turn Rock and Roll heel here, since that would make more sense, but Wily isn't the sharpest scientists in the drawer, so yeah. Guts Man grabs Rock and Roll as Dr. Light protests this outrage. Dr. Wily threatens Dr. Light to not follow him as Ice Man grabs him and Ice Man does his anime sequence freezing spray move from the opening and freezes the lab table and then Cut Man destroys the table with the Rolling Cutter. Again, the "never die" BS&P is in effect, because they need Dr. Light alive in order to set up the rest of the show and the heel has to be stupid in order for Rock and Roll to get their heat back. So, this was perfectly fine as Dr. Wily, Cut Man, Guts Man (with Rock and Roll in tow) and Ice Man go into the Wily Machine RS and run out. Dr. Light runs out; but doesn't follow them as Doc appears out of nowhere and Dr. Light is worried about what Wily might do to Rock and Roll to end the segment 13 minutes in. Wow, this is a really good episode in spite of the obvious flaws. Although Rock and Roll being kidnapped before Mega Man became Mega Man is a Ruby-Spears thing; even though in the games, the robots were kidnapped, then programmed to turn evil. The next eyecatcher is so badly designed that Rush's promo is the greatest thing I have ever heard. This should have been every eyecatcher segment, because it is funny. The next one is Mega Man pumping his flesh colored fist, nothing special.
So, we head to Wily Castle which is a bastardized version of the castle from Mega Man 3 as we head into Wily's lab which is much cleaner than the previous one. Rock and Roll are strapped onto the tables and the signs of bad animation have started as Rock's shorts and boots are black and the same went for Roll's boots. Dr. Wily asks if they like his new fortress, none of them responded of course. So, I'm guessing Wily Castle in Mega Man 1 was Wily Castle from Mega Man III all this time. At least this is what Ruby-Spears wants you to believe. Wily basically tells them his plans and laughs and I'm like: Why didn't you use the ray on them before you came here like you did to Cut Man, Ice Man and Guts Man? Oh, Rock has scruples you see! Wily mocks him for that and then laughs at him. I'll say this about the voice acting: Much better than Mega Man 8, not as good as Mega Man 11 though. At least Dr. Light doesn't sound like Elmer Fudd here. Proto Man officially speaks for the first time in storyline pointing out that they are brothers and thus this is a good thing, but Rock no sells the deal. Then Dr. Wily brings out the SCREWDRIVER OF BRAIN SURGERY, and threatens Rock with it. Roll calls Dr. Wily a dementedhead or dementhead or denthead and Dr. Wily is pissed off at her and Roll is acting all like Princess Lotta L'Amour now. So Wily decided to do brain surgery on her head; and Rock orders him to stop. Dr. Wily asks why and Rock claims that Dr. Wily won't live because Super Warrior Robots are going to kick Dr. Wily and his robot masters ass. Riiiiiggggghhhhttttt. And Dr. Wily falls for it becuase robots don't lie. Which would have been fine if Dr. Light didn't make Mega Man into a robot with human traits, which one of them is lying. And according to Louie, it's the responsible thing to do. Ironically, this is a perfect example of being needed to live actually! Nuance, it's great. Pass it on and the boots and shorts are back to blue for Rock and red boots for Roll. Dr. Wily decides to test this by asking Rock how to defeat these enemies and Rock agrees to if he and Roll are unstrapped. Proto Man complies and unstraps them and Rock walks over to a conveniently placed unfinished furance (I think) and then tosses it and Dr. Wily and Proto Man do not bother to get out of the way and they get bonked. Dr. Light would have been proud of that one. The artwork and animation just look horrible here; although it's actually cable rope and both are tied up together. HA!
Rock wipes his hands clean of this as he unstraps Roll and Dr. Wily is gravely offended by this because robots cannot lie. Rock and Roll manage to find the same ride Roll used earlier on in the episode except colored in purple and dark blue colors; and they fly away into the sky and escape without further incident as Dr. Wily screams at Proto Man for letting them get away and Proto Man tells him to relax because they have the robots needed to kidnap him and get him back anyway. Dr. Wily is cursing under his breath while doing the Gruffi pose in the most awkward fashion you ever saw. We head back to the lab and Rock is apologizing for lying and Dr. Light forgives him for it, probably because Dr. Light knows that he programmed him that way. However, there is a big problem on the horizon in that his robots are Dr. Wily's now and the only way to counter this is to redesign Rock into the Super Warrior. Wait, isn't he supposed to be a Super Fighting Robot?! It's not as bad as Wizardland, but it still annoys me. I guess the opening sequence was made after the script were written and no filter was present to make sure it made sense. So, Dr. Light rebuilds Rock via surgey, it's not as cool as the opening sequence one and they should have used it even if the animation bump would have exposed the rest of the animation. So, after an Astro Boy sequence and a helmet being put on, Mega Man is now official and he looks great as the Rock thing as a civilian name should help with the privacy issue, although with Wily knowing who Rock is, it probably doesn't matter at this point. Oh, and Dr. Light opens another hatch out of nowhere to reveal Rush the robot dog, who jumps up and tackles Mega Man down and licks his face, ala Dino and Fred Flintstone. HAHA! By the way, the dog side kick is very on brand with a lot of Ruby-Spears productions; so seeing Capcom work with RS shouldn't have been a surprise. At least Capcom was smart enough to be their filter, even if the filter is flawed in it's own right. So, Rush demonstrates Rush Jet and two other designs that Capcom never used in the games. No Rush Coil, no Rush Marine and no Rush Super Adaptor; although that last one probably wasn't known by the artists at the time. Mega Man calls him a hunk of a hardware. Get used to the bad puns, they get even worse as the show goes on. Dr. Light throws a dog treat which is made of batteries and Rush eats it. Ooookkkkaaayyyy. Roll shows off the vacuum cleaner hand and torments poor Rush with it and the vacuum cleaner sucks in Rush's snout. Now this episode really sucks. HAHA! Okay, now this is funny enough to say:
Ron Sparks: It sucks more than Sean Desmond.
Mega Man of course doesn't want her involved and at least back then, she was still working the bugs out of her weapons, so maybe in future; she would make a great addition to the team. For now; needs a little more training. She'll get better, I promise all of you. So, we finally return to reality (no, really) as we get doubled over speaking of Rock's name and Mega Man finally wakes up. Mega Man gets up as Doc is amused by this; but Mega Man wants back in action at once. Roll wants to come and Mega Man finally relents as she gets to be on Rush Jet for real, only because it's a lot easier to keep an eye on her than telling her no. Eddie comes in (I'm guessing he was built later and that scene was snipped for time; which is amazing considering that this episode overall is almost 25 minutes long including opening, ending and eyecatchers. TaleSpin should have kept their eyecatchers, they were tons better than the Mega Man ones.) and gives them two soda cans, only one appears in the far shot and the second one got teleported in on the close up of Mega Man drinking it. So, he powers up and the babyfaces all leave. Scene change to the airport as Dr. Wily has his face on the tailsection of the plane, just to see how much of an ass he is. Wow, the game version is more reserved than this one, he only puts a "Dr. W" sign on boards and it could easily be Dr. Wright; which is often a mistranslated shoot of Dr. Light, which is a nice insult to Dr. Light's reputation. Bomb Man and Fire Man are gone; but Ice Man somehow appears here despite being nowhere in the opening sequence! It's not a logic break; and we have seen Ice Man before; but it's weird that he wasn't part of the opening invasion of the airport. Dr. Wily goes into his premature victory speech and demands the mayor to surrender and in comes Mega Man and Roll on Rush Jet and that pisses off Dr. Wily. So, the fire fight is on, BABEE! Cut Man chases after them as Mega Man jumps off of Rush and we begin the first sequence of CUT MAN IS INCOMPENEDENT~! This one is more of Mega Man being over powered than anything Cut Man did, save for the last bit of this sequence. Here's what happens: Cut Man shoots two Rolling Cutters at Mega Man and stop right there! None of the cutters go in a circular fashion, although this would have been stupid because the cutters would hit the ground, making Cut Man look even worse. Not faithful; but it would have been worse if they were faithful.
Mega Man shoots one shot from the arm cannon, it hits Cut Man in the chest and Cut Man is knocked the F out! One shot! Remember, Bomb Man dodged one of those shots and the bomb concussion forced him into the wall. Now granted, Light's robots are not durable, they were not designed for war. But even then the games robots took more shots to knock out than this. Cut Man isn't knocked back (which is on brand with the game), he is knocked out on his back. Mega Man then touches Cut Man's arm because he steals the weapon when they are alive due to the "no kill" rule. Cut Man wakes up, realizes that he's F'd and runs stage left after Mega Man shows off the Rolling Cutter shot from his Mega Buster in an anime sequence. Mega Man then fires a Rolling Cutter, which is affected by the laws of gravity, sort of and is more like a Bouncing Cutter as Cut Man is running away from this, as I mention that Terry Klassen is doing his voice and it sounds like the horror movie star Peter Lorre. Despite every single wall that could deflect the cutter and stop it, Mega Man is so OP'ed that the cutter goes through everything like butter, including the airplane that Dr. Wily put his face. Except for one machine, take one guess what I am talking about here. Come on guess, it's too shocking~! Surprise! It's OKAY, BOMBERMAN~! POW! OUCH! Ummmm....Wily Machine Ruby-Spears edition. WHAT?! So, Dr. Wily panics because Cut Man runs through everything and figures "I'll be safe in the Wily Machine!", and probably would have if he got in and the door closed up the rolling cutter bounces away harmlessly. Nope! The rolling cutter went into the Wily Machine, Wily is screaming and Cut Man is in pain as the Wily Machine bounces away from the hard camera and that is that. That was an ultra-stupid finish; but I laughed so hard, it was worth it! Sadly, this should have been the finish; but we still have three minutes left and Guts Man, Elec Man and Ice Man are still alive, so let's bring in Ice Man with his freezing spray attack as Mega Man dodges all and kicks Ice Man in the midsection and in midstream, steals the Ice Slasher weapon and freezes Ice Man in his tracks. By the way; ice is not transparent like glass I should point out. In comes Elec Man shooting lightning bolts from fingertips at Roll.
She reveals the weapon from the eyecatcher and it's not a pressure cooker, it's a meatgrinder as Rush grabs Elec Man and then drops him on his head on the top of the meatgrinder weapon and Elec Man crumbles to parts. Half of the original robot master have been defeated in this matter and two of them by Roll of all people. And Cut Man is the one they love to bury. Come on, robot man~! Elec Man bounces into the Wily Machine as Guts Man throws the black helicopter (no one was inside this time) and it explodes; and Mega Man somehow dodged that without incident. Dr. Wily wants to bail; but Proto Man wants to fight again, because he was the only one who could hang in a fight and we need to kill more time here. Proto Man comes out and touches Guts Man's arm and steals his weapon; creating a giant muscluar arm on a bunch of robots who already have been on the Larson & Gary program. By the way; somehow Wily's fine; so I guess Cut Man got killed off-screen in the confusion. So, it's Rock Vs. Blues as Blues punches Rock and Rock goes through the brick wall into ther hanger of war planes and Rock gets into the cockpit, turns the engines on and somehow Blues got outsmarted and got sucked up into the engine. HA! Cut Man would be laughing if he wasn't in parts off-screen. Blues goes through the wall and gets knocked out outside. This was a really good sequence of events as Rock comes out and grabs him, informing him that he's going to Dr. Light's lab to be programmed to be a babyface. That's robot slavery, you blue dweeb~! Wily uses the tractor beam of doom to save Proto Man and remembers to call Rock a blue dweeb on the way out as Wily Machine RS finally leaves. Scene change to the security robots all cleaning up the area as the generic mayor arrives to thank Dr. Light, Rock and Roll for their services in the name of peace. Mega Man gives credit to Roll for her help and she did kill two robot masters without Rock's help; so she might be getting there. Although to be fair, the Mega Man 1 robot masters aren't exactly the toughest robots out there. Mega Man gives Rush a battery doggy treat and Rush somehow bites the tailsection of an airplane in mid-air. Cut Man? Incompendent? Really? To me, the babyfaces looked like geeks through out this episode actually. Rock questions Dr. Light's skills on robot science and then everyone laughs, it was not funny to end the episode at 23:13. Man; this went on for too long. Guess the channels had limited commercial interuption to justify the length of this episode. I got to admit, they did a really good job of making me want to watch this show as most of it was faithful to the games, and a few aspects were actually better than the games. Still; it was also kind of a hot mess, but nothing really bad outside of a sexist moment from Mega Man and a Cartoon Duck Syndrome finish. No rating on the trainwreck scale, and call it *** 1/2 (70%). Take a picture of that, it's all down hill from here.
THE REVIEW LINE
So, my Easter Sadism episode has been completed and while this episode was surprisely decent in spite of all the flaws, it did drain me of life. It really is a really bad example of the chaos of the Mega Man show. Sure, there were flashes of that; but even the Cut Man moment was more Mega Man being awesome than Cut Man being dumb and after that, I really wished they had gone there and just have the rest of the robot masters retreat to keep their heat; but of course they had to bury Elec Man and Ice Man deep within the earth and we'll never see Fire Man again. Proto Man was really good here, Ice Man was good outside of the burial, Guts Man and Cut Man were actually threats here and the show did a great job of wanting me to watch on. The problem is that after this episode, the show sinks in quality as they introduced robot designs up to Mega Man 5 with various degrees of ugliness, Cut Man and Guts Man became Mad Dog and Dumptruck, and sadly, Cut Man was the only one who was legit funny, Guts Man not so much as Dumptruck was. And everyone else got hit with the stupid stick, even Mega Man to a certain extent. Not to say that the first episode was flawless either; there were animation mistakes, some adaptation errors and a Cartoon Duck Syndrome finish because the episode went way too long. So, overall; a decent effort; but that's it. So...
Thumbs in the middle for this episode and I'll see you all next time.