User blog:TornadoMan.EXE/My gripes with the EXE anime

It has been just over a year since I decided to start covering the EXE anime on this wiki. I have watched some of these episodes so many times the episode is ingrained in my head. But alas, solid info on the show on the internet is pretty sparse, especially when you get into further seasons past Axess, and some really cool moments are lost to fans who don’t have a means to watch it, so I’m enjoying myself. However, after a year of watching it, I can safely say the fairly major gripes I have with the show and not sound like a hater.

Don’t be mistaken. This show has some very good points and some very cool action sequences. People might think Cross Fusion would be a major bad point to me, but it’s not. The reason? Tbh, how can you make a five season show where the main threat is always on the internet? Lan and friends needed to be threatened themselves, and if their Navis were in the cyberworld, they would never be able to protect them. Yet, having their Navis out in the real world while the operators sat there is also boring, or straight up frustrating as the action sequences turn into horror movie-esque or damsel-in-distress sequences with the enemy Navi chasing the operator while the op’s Navi tried to save them. Catch my drift?

That said this review may get a bit critical, as the show has some glaring flaws. Without further ado, my gripes with the show:

Characters
Taking a rough look at the release dates of the games and the anime seasons, I think I may know the reason for this. Maybe it was to prevent spoilers, or they weren’t allowed to make the anime characters anything like their video game counterparts, Or they simply were not told about certain characters they could us, or, as I’m finding, maybe they weren’t allowed to use characters past a certain amount of episodes. Whatever the reason, imagine having a few video games worth of characters to use for an anime and barely utilizing them or using your own characters (who also, tend to go nowhere). Case in point. Characters such as Bass, Chisao, Rush, Anetta, Kiryuuin, and several other characters literally go almost nowhere during the course of the show.

You may argue with Bass, that he ultimately helps save the world by deleting Slur. Yep, he definitely did. But really, he didn’t do anything before or beyond that. Before, he magically appeared and tried to take back his Ultimate Program. After that in Axess he comes out of absolutely nowhere with Allegro and says he’s experimenting Dimensional Areas. Oh, and for some reason Lan and the others are threatened by him even though he was *technically* on their side the last time they saw him. Ok? Then he revives ShadeMan for some reason and watches him fight C.F. LaserMan.. You find out later that he was trying to prep for when Duo came. How did he find out about this? You never know, and Yuriko is the one who explains it all to Lan and friends. Bass is banished to the Undernet at the beginning of Stream and besides the movie (where is is banished to the Undernet again) only comes back in the last two episodes to delete Slur and go to space. He’s like Poochy from the Simpsons: “I have to go now. My planet needs me.”. The only difference is is that I’m sure people would have loved to see more Bass in the anime. Ultimately, he appears in 14/209 episodes and the movie. Yeah in the games after Battle Network 3 he’s brushed aside as a super boss in the post-game, but at least in each appearances he had an impact.

As for the other characters. Unless they needed a comedy moment after Rush and Chisao are introduced they are immediately swept aside. They help maybe a couple times? After their minuscule appearances in Axess I’m surprised they showed up at all. Anetta literally disappears after Stream except for maybe an episode or two of Beast, where Chaud basically tells her off and she’s *poof*. Gone. I’m not sure why they introduced Kiryuuin at all. She has an entire episode dedicated to her, they have set up a recurring gag that happens like once, and *poof*, random cameos. After her debut, Shuko gets less attention than AquaMan and is basically useless. You get the point. They had literally dozens of characters from the video games and original characters they made each season and barely did anything with them.

Antagonists
This is probably my biggest gripe. DesertMan, FlashMan, VideoMan, and BeastMan were the major Darkloid obstacles of Axess bar ShadeMan. Cool. But then they’re also the main Asteroid obstacles of the first half of Stream? Why?? Out of all those Navis, all those characters that could have made awesome action sequences with, they chose the same Asteroids that they made Darkloids. Even the one-off Darkloids/Asteroids are the same! Axess, Stream, and Beast all start with PlantMan as the first one-off baddie with either BeastMan or SparkMan on his heels. Go look. Now, I may not be remembering Axess right and there may have been more recurring Darkloids, but even then, you had BowlMan, MistMan, YamatoMan, DarkMan, and so many others who could have made into cool recurring villains in Axess or Stream and they instead chose the same basic group. If they didn’t have the FlashMan, DesertMan, VideoMan and BeastMan appear as Darkloids and say BurnerMan, ColdMan, and others were to have the main stage of Axess then FlashMan and co. could have been the main threats of Stream it would have balanced better.

Going back to under utilizing characters, you know what have been cool? If, say in Stream besides using one-off characters for the Asteroid Navis some of the side characters they never used got them. Seriously. The Asteroids weren’t even from Earth so you could use any Navi you want and you reused the main baddies from Axess. Like, all of them. You could have Anetta tempted into using an Asteroid to get Chaud to notice her, or Mr. Famous take the stage for once and be desperate to do something and end up using Asteroid GateMan. You could have even have had an Asteroid Roll, GutsMan, ProtoMan, anyone tempt their operators into fighting Lan seriously because of something and it would have made a very cool episode. Asteroids, after all, increase the greed in one’s heart. Instead we just get a ton of one-offs that don’t advance the plot at all beside “hey look Slur gave someone another Asteroid”.

Then the Zoanoroids. Finally, some variety! Awesome, FlameMan! GateMan! DarkMan and more! Whoa, Zoano GutsMan and NumberMan?? PUNK???

Aaaaand almost none of them lived past an episode. Hell, almost none of the supporting cast made it past a single episode in appearances. Beast’s story is much tighter and it loans itself to a better story, but man, they finally put some heavy hitting baddies in the show and they’re dead within an episode.

Plot