Ok, unlike some of the game purists who have left negative comments I'm going the other way and I'm glad to see that some people spoke of some of the good points of the show. Mega Man was a fun and entertaining cartoon. Sure it pulled away from the game quite a bit, but why not? It's a cartoon and I think it would've been pretty boring to have Mega fighting through setups like the game levels just to scrap a boss bot that went through predictable patterns.
People complain about Protoman being a villain? Why is Mega's brother a villain? they cry. But in the Mega Man 3 VG, unless you read a game guide, you wouldn't know Proto is a good guy as you have to fight him in several stages to continue. I like that the cartoon creators used this aspect of Proto for the cartoon. Can you imagine how lop-sided thing would've been if Protoman had been a good guy the whole time?
It'd be so boring! Wily's bots wouldn't last a minute against Mega and Proto. And it's not like people who've watched the series don't know it since Proto and Mega have teamed up. Mega can already total any of Wily's bots, so having Proto on Wily's side brings a balance of power that was needed.
As for Bots with muscles. It's a cartoon people, who really cares? Does anyone complain about the new Batman movies with his muscle-molded suit? I think not. Besides, who's to say that the titanium skin of those bots with muscles weren't simply molded to look like they had muscles?
Roll, ok so Mega's little sis wants to help him out instead of just being a house cleaning robot. I'm surprised she hasn't had an active role in any of the Mega Man games yet. I mean where you can actually play as her. I think it could draw in some more female players. Again, I can't understand why people gripe about it. It's not like she gets any super weapons or anything. She just tweaked some of her housecleaning attachments to be like 10x more powerful than usual. If you think about it for a minute I'm sure you'll see the other aspects of having Roll very much involved in the series too.
Funny, with all the things people've complained about, I'm surprised they didn't mention Rush, or how he has more transformations in the cartoon than in any of the games, including some very strange ones. It seems that they'd have jumped all over it they way they've jumped over all the other things that weren't like the games. But, this wasn't the game and you have to give the cartoonists some artistic license so they have the freedom to make a good show.
I liked the animation, it was almost always pretty seamless, and there were plenty of plots that were pretty way out there. Like the Curse of the Lion people, or the teleport pods that switched Mega Man and Snake Man's bodies, or the Incredible Shrinking Mega Man. All not very likely, but still they made for some interesting stories. And when all's said and done, interesting and entertaining stories are key to keeping a series alive. The art and animation were also crisp and clean as well as being well drawn so as to be pleasing to the eye. Which for any animation is key, in some cases even moreso as the quality of the stories is bound to change from episode to episode, but the art in this series was really quite constant. It was really refreshing to watch it while there were such an abundance of low quality cartoons on at the time.
My only real complaint about the series was that the opening theme, while it looked good, I would've liked to hear a little more than, "Super fighting robot... Mega Man!", though the last line helped. "Fighting, to save.... the world!(insert echo)"
This series obviously had some fan appeal since it lasted for so many episodes. Some series like the Legend of Zelda never made it past the initial 13, and The Raccoons only made through about 3 or 4 eps before they were canceled.
I'd rate this series an 9 out of 10. Sure it could've been better, but in my opinion it was far and away from being worse.
