XXXII: "Rockman.EXE" series

Like Ryuusei no Rockman, Rockam.EXE is also a game series, with anime to tail behind it. I wasn't too fanatic about it, having seeing it in English first, but warmed up when I got around to the later series.


Rockman.EXE has a collenction of titles, with US seeing only Mega Man NT Warrior, and about half of its sequel, Mega Man NT Warrior Axess, translated to English. So, much like the Ryuusei no Rockman series, it's clearly a series primarily Japanese. The characters in question deals with the previous incarnation of Mega Man, a navi known as MegaMan.EXE, and his operator, a netbattler named Lan Hikari (Netto in the Japanese dub.) Like before, this is in a parallel timeline where this succeeded the Classic Mega Man series, with navis and a few Earth characters made as either incarnations or homages to the Classic counter parts. Through battles, Lan and MegaMan fights a number of problems, such as the organization WWW or Wolrd 3 and their leader, Lord Wily (sound familiar?), to net mafias, a renegade Navi, the aforementiond Wily's son, and finally cyber titans of destruction.

While it spans a number of anime series, US was only lucky to get a series and a half translated: Mega Man NT Warrior and Mega Man NT Warrior Axess. Much like other series like Sonic X, the different dubs of the series were treated with different tones. In US, it was more kid friendly, though, the titular character has a cool attitude about him. In contrast, the Japanese dub was more serious in tone, while it had its share of comedic moments. Like the successor, the series were loosely tied with the games, though there were elements that were omitted from the anime that the game had, or vice versa. An example of this would be the Cross Fusion seen in Axess, which wasn't implied in either of the 8 games, and was later rehashed to be part of the games and anime Ryuusei no Rockman as EM Wave Change. Another trait is that localization, even platforming, prompted name changes, examples being Rockman.EXE (JP) and MegaMan.EXE (US), while the latter had a few changes, seen in transitions like so:  FireMan.EXE (Battle Network) and TorchMan.EXE (NT Warrior)

Before my final verdict, keep in mind that NT Warrior, and Axess weren't the only anime of the series, though it's the only ones the states officially saw releases of. Rockman.EXE Stream succeeded this series, and ended altogether with the anime Rockman.EXE Beast and Beast+. The anime entirely gets a 6, though I favor personal points for the latter 3 series.