Part 16: If nothing else, read this update so the other games make sense.

This update consists mostly of a single cutscene. But it's the most important cutscene in the series that will be required for any of the subsequent games to make any sense, so I'm devoting an entire update to it.



The last of the WWW dungeons is the Power Plant mockup. Invisible path fuckery ensues.




The MMBN games have a merciful way of warning you when you're imminently approaching the point of no return. Five seconds past this program, and there's no turning back until the credits roll.



And thank god for that, invisible paths are bad enough.



Roll shows up, and Lan about sums everything up.



Roll's headspaghetti glitter saves the day.



Mayl confesses to having seen Lan at the school, and naturally she told everybody. She tearfully wishes him good luck.



You have to wonder what Yahoot was doing this whole time. We're right before the outdoor area with the rocket and LifeVirus, was he just standing out there waiting for us?



And that's his Navi MagicMan.EXE. I always saw his beard as a giant beak.



MagicMan goes down like any other chump. He summons random viruses! That's his entire gimmick, which I guess was technically impressive for a GBA launch title.



Wily, exasperated that even Yahoot has been defeated, offers some LifeVirus data to install into MagicMan.



MagicMan glows with power and uses his new attack, LifeMagic!



It kills MegaMan and blasts him backwards a few feet. No, I'm not joking. MegaMan doesn't get up and brush the attack off and start round 2 of a battle or anything.



ProtoMan fares better.



MegaMan is the flagship character, nobody is here for the adventures of Lan Hikari, so it's time for a gigantic amount of backstory and exposition so we can revive MegaMan.



Chaud, in a rare moment of emotion, quietly forks over the enriched Plotonium.



It's a batch file of all things. Presumably on an old floppy disk or something because flash drives hadn't been invented yet when this series came out. Or maybe it's a magic glowing sphere that exists in the real world and Cyberworld simultaneously like the LifeVirus.



Yuuichiro sends an emergency phone call. Note how Mayl's hands stay glued to her mouth for the duration of this entire scene.



The Plotonium will save MegaMan, but apparently at a cost. What could it be?

 ABSOLUTE POWER, for starters! 



This is not reflected in terms of gameplay.



Pictured: Lan's character in a nutshell.



And by extension, the entire world, y'know. Chauderhead has cutscene powers only, ProtoMan would be useless against the LifeVirus.



You heard the man, listen to the track that only plays during this cutscene.



Roughly before Lan was born.



Blink animation, this is not the time!




That whole pesky "sentience" thing, right.





You have to wonder where the starting point is when someone sets out to play god and fabricate a digital being fully capable of independent thought.



By MMBN logic, the Human Genome Project's database should be self-aware.




You can see which side of the "nature vs. nurture" debate the writers fall on, alright. Complex things like upbringing, social values, philosophy, education, etc., nah screw it, it's all in your DNA. Like being gay!



If you haven't caught on yet, this absolutely fundamental cutscene that establishes a major plot point that basically every single game in the series will hinge on is utterly ridiculous. It's par for the course. It gets better.



Well, binary is base two and DNA is base four for starters. What I mean by that is that computers think in terms of 0 and 1. DNA has A, C, T, G base pairs to do its "coding", so you can imagine that Yuuichiro probably had a rough time with this endeavor.



That said, 95% complete is impressive, although bear in mind that human beings have a fraction of a percent difference between each other. That isn't nearly accurate enough.



"Lord knows how I had the time to actually do the deed, given my work schedule."



Computer pun names are law.



Given the background music, you could probably guess that this story isn't exactly a happy one.



Amazingly enough, this fact becomes very relevant two games in the future.



You can see where this is going, can't you?



Older by a few minutes, but yep.



Notice that in official art MegaMan's eyes are green while Lan's are brown. So almost identical, but this is explained in a minute or two.



ALL CAPS SUDDENLY.



Yuuichiro had the DNA solution he'd been looking for.



This whole explanation has been too vaguely plausible for Capcom standards, we need something to drive it far into the realm of complete absurdity.





There we go, that'll do! What's odd about the related works such as the anime and manga adaptations of this series is that the "MegaMan is Lan's dead brother Hub" plot point is expunged entirely. Despite it being the central premise of the series.



I like to assume that the change was just altering MegaMan's eye color.



And like I said before, the implied drawback that Lan will take damage if MegaMan does never comes up in gameplay. The story apparently assumes that you don't take any damage, which is actually plausible. The LifeVirus is a pathetic final boss.



Fair question, really.



MegaMan is good at keeping secrets, evidently, for it to go unknown all this time. Although you have to wonder how Lan never knew he had a dead twin brother. Wouldn't everyone who knew Lan's parents be aware of the tragedy? Yes, this is a minor plot hole, an NPC in MMBN5 mentions knowing that the Hikari family had a pair of twins. Apparently, everyone who knew was sworn to secrecy.



Although this is arguably a good point. MegaMan using human DNA is why Lan can't just use backup data to restore MegaMan, he's too complex. Ignore Network Transmission, which botched this and made backups your extra lives in that game.



As if the decision weren't obvious.



Was there ever any doubt?



No response at first.



A green beam of light strikes down into MegaMan's Navi icon! Cue the triumphant music!



MegaMan glows bright blue with power. Oh, did I mention the power? I'll put it this way, whenever Hub gets namedropped, MegaMan gains a massive power boost. Hub.bat is an extreme subversion of gameplay and story segregation. When the game says you get a power up, god damn do you get a power up from this.



"By an utterly absurd margin!"



The MegaBuster is now your god, and I will demonstrate this by defeating the LifeVirus using only it.