I am not going to claim this show was good. It was never good. The plot was formulaic, the battle sequences bored me to death, and save Sydney, who was moderately interesting (aka had half a brain and a character flaw or two), the good guys were one-note cliches. So was Kilokhan. And I felt most of this back when I was 7 and watching it, probably somewhere in the show's target audience.
There was ONE good element to this show, and that was Malcolm and his storyline. The idea was a big stroke of genius on *someone's* part, I'm not sure if it was in the original Japanese show or not.
Malcolm was someone you actually loved to hate, yet couldn't help but feel a little sorry for, a supercilious jerk who was Draco Malfoy before the world knew Draco Malfoy. He was far smarter than the good guys, although his lack of people skills more than made up for this, and was the only one with genuinely amusing lines. His using Kilokhan and the viruses to fulfill his personal vendettas was perfectly in-character for what was created, and it actually made the story fun.
I loved to see the interactions between Malcolm and Sam, hating each other yet never knowing that they're the cause of each other's problems in the digital world. It's actually a very interesting concept that I've never seen anywhere else. The Christmas episode where they temporarily discovered each other's identities was the first time all the characters held my attention, and it also played up on the three dimensions they managed to give Malcolm: the fact that he uses Kilokhan because of the lack of control and happiness in his own life, and his disillusioned belief that the virus lord actually cares about his wellbeing.
If you take it outside the context of the show, it's a very interesting story in itself.
