I certainly wanted to have a page to just talk about the TV series for a bit. Ah, where to begin? I suppose many Megaman fans were as estatic as I was at the mention of an animated series featuring the Blue Bomber, other than the Captain N appearances (where he was more like "The Green Bomber", plus all of the robot masters were ugly as sin). Anyways, I guess the series became an aquired taste; I'm sure that there were the purists who simply hated the show because it contradicts the games so much. But there were also those like me who saw it as just a good show to watch (ignoring the somewhat corny segments that came along every once in a while), that was just loosely based on the Megaman games.
I guess I'll first talk about the things I liked about the series. One thing I should mention right off the bat for those who have played through MM8 and MMX4 is that the voice acting is enormously superior to those two games, in most places at least. Our two starring voice actors seem to be quite a household name in the anime world; Ian Corlett (Megaman) and Scott McNeil (Protoman and Dr. Wily). Corlett is probably best known for being Goku's voice actor in the earlier episodes of Dragonball Z. McNeil also voiced in DBZ, as Piccolo (funny coincidence, since Goku and Piccolo were major rivals in DB, as are Megaman and Protoman), along with various other roles, including Koga in Inuyasha and I think he did Duo in Mobile Suit Gundam as well. (Another strange coincidence; McNeil also did Dr. Wily's voice on this show, and Corlett did Wily's voice on Captain N.) There were only a few voice acting problems. One was Rush; what made the producers decide they wanted Rush to sound just like Scooby Doo? He speaks in the same half-sentences, with the speech imediment. Why would Dr. Light do that? You'd thing he could make him either talk normally, or not talk at all. Either Light is a big SD fan playing a cruel joke on "Mega Shaggy", or he's not as great a scientist as everyone cracks him up to be...There's also the Robot Masters; most of them sounded pretty good and were appropriate with their character, like Gutsman and Pharaohman. Others, not so much (Diveman really needed some cough drops).
I'm sure a lot of people objected to the fact that Protoman was a bad guy in the series. I actually liked seeing him in this role; I thought Protoman made quite the badass and it really showed here. (In fact, I think Protoman gets more screen time in a single episode that he did in the entire series of games combined!) If they were more true to the games, it should be Bass in the same role as Protoman, but I'm pretty sure the series was made well before Bass's introduction in MM7, so they didn't even know he existed yet. (Actually, I think it was even made before MM6 came out; no Robot Masters from any game past MM5 appear in the series)
I thought I'd talk about Dr. Light for a bit too. They did alright with drawing him and his voice fits his personality well. It's the way he acts that I can't help but make fun of! He is just so dang good at stating the obvious:
*Large BOOM sounds*
ROLL: "What was that?!"
DR LIGHT: "It sounded like an explosion!!"
Wow...great analysis, doc. No wonder you're the world's authority on robotics. And who can forget this classic example, "Now why would someone bar the outside of the bathroom door?" *thinks about it a few seconds...* "OH NO!!!"
Dr. Wily looked pretty good for the most part as well. Although he looked a little chubbier than he should in a couple of scenes. He talks in a stereotypical German accent, so he may sound like Hitler was cryogenetically frozen, thawed out in 20XX, and majored in robotics. He does pretty good most of the time, although sometimes he talks in such a thick accent, it's hard to understand just what the heck he's saying.
Robot Analysis Here, I'll give my personal scrutiny of all of the robots in the series; the good, the bad, and the just plain ugly.
