Stream 34: Wish Upon a Star...

[Raijin]

Even though I'm really worried someone will post their summary while I'm writing, (edit: whew!) I'll go ahead with it.

An evil CG dolphin is swimming quickly through the water in the dead of night. We know it's evil because it has narrowed red glowing eyes. It delivers a box of Dark Chips and a bananna bunch to Inukai and Monosuke.

The next day at Jasmine's temple, Jasmine's old teacher Cardamom suddenly senses something ominous. and next thing we know we see a solemn Jasmine is on a plane for Japan, carrying a piece of paper and remembering what Cardamom said to her earlier...and then starts reading a sightseeing guide for Japan and smiles.

Wish Upon a Star...

After a short scene of Manabe and Kifune discussing the Dark Chip problem, we cut to Lan meeting Jasmine at the airport. Jasmine spots him from a few stories up on a walkway, and is so eager for a reunion she leaps off the edge, much to Lan's horror, but she whips out her parasol and floats gracefully to the ground Mary Poppins style. They greet each other with a Nihao and then it's off to business...right after Jasmine buys some crap from the airport of course.

Lan and Jasmine pay a visit to Animal Farm to check up on that Panda they apparently left there (Tampa? or was it Dampa?). Then they're taken to see the dolphin with the star on it. The caretaker seems worried about it, and upon closer inspection, Jasmine spots the marks where Inukai's box was strapped to it earlier.

At night, Inukai is giving some kind of progress report to Tesla from his own base of operations at a lighthouse where he met with the dolphin last time. After Tesla hangs up he has Beastman send out a signal, making a bunch of dolphins' (with boxes strapped to them) eyes go red.

Daytime again, Medi and Jasmine are taking care of the star dolphin while Lan calls in Dex from Maha Ichiban. Apparently to order curry, but we also needed an excuse for Dex to see his newest crush again. After eating their curry Jasmine explains a bit about the dolphin, none of which I cought. Edit: Except now I realize this is the part where Jasmine names the dolphin "Hoshi" for the star mark on its side.

Night time again. It looks like the kids are staying with Hoshi for the night to keep an eye on it. Online, Medi is giving Gutsman a Healing Pulse massage. In the real world Jasmine brews up some special tea, Lan and Dex get sleepy, and Jasmine's still tenderly taking care of Hoshi.

Eyecatches: Lan's CrackBomb and Megaman's Super Vulcan.

The next morning, everyone awakes to see Hoshi all better. They take it outside to swim around freely, and it pulls up one of Inukai's dark chip boxes from the water. Yahoot shows up to examine it with them. They now know Neo-WWW is behind Hoshi's injuries, and are none too happy about it. Beastman's signal is heard, causing Hoshi to go crazy. Yahoot traces the signal to the lighthouse, and then Jasmine runs straight for it. Hoshi meets up with some other dolphins outside a boat of DarkChip smugglers. Or maybe it's just a bunch of other dolphin's minus Hoshi, not sure.

Inukai and Beastman are celebrating another job well done when Beastman is attacked from behind by a Medi Capsule. Medi throws another, but Beastman easily dodges it this time and lands next to Medi to slash her. He follows up with a Jumping Attack, but Megaman's MetGuard blocks it for her. Jasmine's in trouble now though because Takeo just sent Monosuke after her. Medi summons another Capsule because apparently Jasmine had to run from the jack-in point. Lan's running to meet up with her to help, so Megaman has to fight with just his buster too. Jasmine runs outside while the lion chases her to a cliff. Inukai watches from a monitor and is pleased. It seems she's doomed, but it's Hoshi to the rescue. When Monosuke pounces at her, the dolphin leaps out of the water and srikes him in the belly, knocking him into the water. Jasmine then proceeds to jump onto Hoshi's back. At this point Beastman logs out because Takeo just smashed his computer in rage (his pet lion is drowing, what did you expect?).

Dimensional chip time, you know the drill. Beastman charges, R-Mega counters with Tornado. Trapped in a vortex, Beast can just sit there while Lan humiliates him some more by attacking him with a handfull of MiniBombs. Then he has a sword equipped all of a sudden and finishes Beasty off. Wow, that was anticlimactic.

Inukai escapes in a boat with his lion who he rescued from the water. Yahoot, Jasmine, Dex, and Lan meet afterwards to discuss how things went, and Lan's still worried about the Dark Chip smuggling, but Yahoot took care of it. We cut to the docks where the smugglers are all tied up with a sign taped to the ropes saying "These are smugglers of Dark Chips". Mr.Match stands triumphantly over them.

That night, Lan and Jasmine wave by bye to Hoshi, and then Jasmine gets a Duo Crest. What a nice predictable episode this has been.

After that there's a bit of stuff I can't understand enough. Cardamom says something from Choina that he has to laugh and wink at, Jasmine, Lan and Dex are back with Dampa, and Lan's freaked out about something. Little help?

Next time, Tesla, Shuko, Madd, Manabe, and Gauss in some kind of beauty pageant. Gauss is in his most disturbing drag yet, complete with super-bouncy boobs.

I give the episode 2/5 boners for nice animation, but lousy battles and a predictable dimensional chip sequence and Duo Cresting.

[Hikari]

Agh, I was going to write a summary but quit. Episode seemed okay, but I still wish the writers would get serious.

:stonecube: :stonecube:
Two Stone Cubes for odd plot and decent animation.
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[Sasuke.EXE V2]

Oh dear god, I can see that Megaman is taking lessons from pokemon, exploiting the cross dressing and predictability of certain things. But over all I'll have to watch the episode before making a final judgement on it. Oh and if you didn't understand the deal with the panda (as a just in case), the panda was sick in one episode, thus leading Netto and Dekao to go to Choina.
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[Raijin]

Could you stop comparing it to Pokemon for stuff like that? Cross Dressing and predictability are hardly monopolies of Pokemon.

[DrkXFuZion]

Crap...I was just about to write my summary. Oh wellz.

Bleah, I was REALLY hoping Magicman in this episode. Oh well. And I thought the name sounded like Moshi.
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[Raijin]

Actually, it seems "Hoshi" means "Star" in Japanese, so Hoshi it is.

[Black Angel]

It was an okay episode, but I really hope they pick it up with these episodes and do something meaningful to the plot beside adding new cross fusions or giving characters the Duo Crest. The next episode should definetly be good for a laugh or a chance to vomit (seeing Guass dressed up like that is just wrong)

[Wackoguy]

I hope this usual predictability stops soon....it killed me this time.. :puku:

At least the next episode sounds better. (Though Gauss and the bouncy chest sounds a bit disturbing)

All in all, this makes a nice filler episode...
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"I ate your siggy..."

[Unknown Neo]

Sounds like a nice filler episode. Wait boobs? Where'd he get those from. (I won't say james from pokemon because raijin asked not to compare the two.)

[Tachyon360]

GRAAAAAAAAAAH! JASIME IS AS F******G IRRITATING AS EVER!!!

*Deep breath.*

This episode was utter crap, and that's giving it too much praise. It was dull, since all they did was sit around and talk about that damned dolphin for half the episode. The rest of it was either bloody predictable or totally pointless. On top of all that, Jasmine managed to get every annoying facial expression and chuckle-grunt-noise possible by an anime character in a season, packed into one episode. Couple that with her annoyingly exaggerated facial features and her disturbingly annoying voice, and you've got a nerve-wracking monstrosity.

Beastman's fight scene? If only Netto would show that kind of focused rage whenever he defends Meiru.

And WTF was it with that cliff scene? She reached the edge, waited while, then screamed when Umanosuke finally decided to lunge at her. Then the dolphin jumps out of nowhere and knocks Umanosuke into the water. And what does Jasmine do? She jumps off the cliff into the water! WTF? Why didn't she do that in the first place!? Especially considering she jumped down two stories at the f-ing airport!

And don't get me started about the unnecessarily big scene she made at the airport!

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

*Deep breath.*

Stream had such a strong start, and they're starving it of decent content. Why, God, why? I can't believe I wasted a half hour of my life watching such crap. This episode gets absolutely no points from me. It's so bad that it made the last one worthy of an Emmy Award by comparison. I'm really hoping Queen Fight makes up for it, and I'm especially hoping Jasmine isn't in it (or at least makes a brief appearance and nothing more).

I'll bear with Stream for the time being, but I'm really hoping they actually give it a freaking plot already. First, they kick Earth onto the verge of total annihilation and made a big deal about Duo. You'd think we'd get an epic quest ending with a spectacular battle of all of Earth's military might against the forces of Duo in a last ditch attempt at slavation. Something with enough subtle Biblical allusions to put Bungie to shame. Something with at least a relatively mature theme.

What did we get in reality?
Netto: OMG Mejin-san, Dimensional Area!
Mejin: San wa iranai.
Netto: Synchro Chip, slot-in!
<insert Neo-WWW member here>: Liek omg. look @ my üb3r1337 pl4n tat j00 c4n7 b34t!!!
<insert corresponding Navi here>: <insert Navi's signature move here>
*Thwack!*
Netto: Ahhhh! ... Oomph! <insert random chip here>
*Pwnage.*
<Neo WWW member>: omg my pl4n!!!!!!1111

Yeah, so I got off on a tangent, but Stream is really shaping up to be craptacular. I defended it up until around episode 29, and I enjoyed it up until episode 33. I'm really hoping episode 35 breaks the pattern. It's got a lot of potential.

[Nazne]

...what, with Gauss? <__<

I couldn't make heads nor tails of this episode. The idea of using animals to do stuff was fine, but somehow they turned it into a stand-around-stare-at-the-bad-guy-waiting-to-kill-you and threw in Maha and Hino just for the hell of it.

-BMA

[Enzan Chaud]

The whole crossdressing Gauss thing has been around since the original series. :O I wouldn't find it too odd...however there was an episode where James got implants....but...yeah that has nothing to do with it. Anyways, don't compare it since alot of young audience geared anime is like that. (OMG it's aimed towards kids? Blasphemy! :<)
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[JunkmanSP]

I Somewhat agree with Tachyon here. While it is nice to have a character development episode once and a while, we don't need Stream to pull it's normal song and dance.

Ok, Takeo is using Dolphins to smuggle dark chips, when the Zoo's dolphins start showing symptoms Jasmine is called(Why call a 9 year old girl anyway?) That seems pretty solid, solid enough that the whole combat wasn't needed in any way(atleast not in the real world)

Jasmine is yet another girl to become a mary sue, I don't see why Netto needed (Another) love intrest, he has Meiru, there isn't a single girl in the EXE anime who can stand on her own two feet, they all need rescuing<Quiet Starman!>(Medi, despite having a bigger arsenal than Rockman got her ass kicked, then Rockman comes and saves her with the Rock Buster...)

Yes, Stream did start out with a strong plot

Duo wants to bomb the earth 30 years ago using time travel, they spent the whole first season doing NOTHING.

Let's review what we did get.


Enzan can sell things too.
The "new" cross fusion isn't new.
Narcy wants to paint things pink.
Yui is an idiot and Stoneman turns people to stone by accedent(how can he do that anyway?)
Manabe is sensitive about her weight
Yui tries again to sell things to children
A giant Mettool.
Asteroid Navis roam the world for no reason
Princess Pride is a literal Princess in distress.
Laika is a hypocrite.
Half the characters in the opening took about 40 episodes to actually appear in the show.
The entire concept of the show introduced in Axess is rewritten so they can cover their mistakes.
Rush can turn into a chip >.>

They tried to develope Jasmine's character, which they did a little, but we already know she's a caring little girl, what else can they tell us? that is what they should have gotten into. Nice to see the other characters aren't forgotten(But actually are) Dekao whimfully gives up netbattling, for example.

Why can't we get more remotely coherent plotlines like Shademan trying to change history and WTF happened to Colonel and Barrel?

And the Zomg D area rant? Rock on, Tachyon.
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[Kirbopher15]

[Raijin]

Wow, it really was that bad, huh? See, this was only the eighth Stream ep I've seen so I don't have as much to compare it to. Although even with just eight eps I could still notice how incredibly formulaic the climax sequences of these episodes are. Dimensional chips slotted-in, bad navi appears, Lan screams "Meijin-san" into his PET, Famous creates a DA and says "San wa iranai", Lan slots in a Synchro chip, henshin sequence, battle sequence. And I remember people worried about Axess over-using Cross Fusion. Now they're not only over-using it, they're over-using the same script for it.

The next episode preview showed some Dimensional Battles too, so it's not over yet. If any episodes are going to give hope, it's 36 and 37. There appear to be no Asteroid navis involved so we may finally see some original conclusions.

[Azureman.EXE]

Jesus, with a title like this, I was REALLY hoping for AStarman... :/

Stream is heading even further into its' downward spiral. Yet another awesome chance for Soul Unison, and yet again they blow it off so Jasmine can get a worthless crest...
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[Rocketboy]

No worries, Asteroid Starman will be coming.

Anyway, this episode was like all of the others,

Meet up with character
Choose either Inukai or Narcy as the Neo WWW member of the week.
Have a problem
Inukai or Narcy shows up and makes things worse
Netto foils their plan
Dimensional chip, slot in!
Cross fusion solves everything
Crest

Very predictable. :/

But Gauss, in the next episode...*Shudders*

[Falcovsleon20]

[mysticgohan]

Well I guess i was right about Jasmine epsidoes having great animation as you could notice during both cyber world and rela world battles. This epsidoe was ok and I did like seeing Beastman fight for once with like almost no freezeframes. I think I can see a partern or somthing and were gona have another Dingo episode with a Soul Unision then next ep with Jasmine and then Medi Soul Unision. I am looking foward to next weeks ep since it looks like it focuses Mostly on Gauss Madoi Tesla and Charlie. W00T! looking foward to next weeks ep as for gauss not looking foward to that >_>.

[illusion]

Gads, after watching this episode I've come to the opinion that Jasmine is much more hyper than even Netto. I found the episode to be a bit boring though. I was hoping Rockman and Medi would team up against Beastman, but we got another generic CF battle instead. At least we got to see a couple WWW3 members do something besides hang around that curry establishment (although it still wasn't much).

Oh well at least next episode looks interesting. However, I'm starting to get the feeling that all the left over soul unisons will either be jam packed into the end episodes, or held off so they have stuff to make another season off of. >>;;
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