Good on their promise, Capcom USA has uploaded every episode of Mega Man NT Warrior and Mega Man NT Warrior Axess on YouTube -- for free.
If you're interested in checking them out, you can find the playlist for season 1 here, and season 2 (Axess) here. These episodes will no longer be available to watch after September 23rd, 2023.
Do keep in mind that the first episode of Axess is presented in Japanese with English subtitles. For reasons not currently known, the dubbed version is unavailable. Also of note, Capcom went so far as to include Axess episode 30 "AquaMan in Love", which never aired in the United States during the show's tenure at Kids WB.
The Mega Man NT Warrior Twitch marathon presented by Capcom USA concludes tomorrow, March 24th. Although there is no official confirmation, several fans are optimistic that the event will end with news regarding availability of the series on additional streaming platforms or a DVD/Blu-ray release. We'll keep an ear to the ground.
The dubbed episodes of Axess are taken from the original master files so they look and sound much much better than the old Kids WB TV-Rips that have been around the internet. Considering that Axess dub never had a DVD release it would be good idea to archive them before they dissapear.
ReplyDeleteMy going theory of why the first episode of Axess is subbed and not dubbed is that the master of that episode became lost, and was only aired once or twice. Websites that archived the dub of Axess have that episode, but it's lower quality than the rest of the series, possibly because it never got reruns, and this is the only preserved version. I would love to be proven wrong, though.
ReplyDeleteWhile I can't speak on the master being lost, the first episode of Axess did get reruns, albeit very sparingly. After it's initial premiere on 11/22/2004, there are three other times it reran that I know of - 12/06/2004, 02/28/2005, and 03/21/2005. The first two reruns listed here I have recordings of on VHS, as well as old schedule listings to back up the dates. The third rerun I've only got a schedule listing for, but I doubt there were any last minute schedule changes. (https://web.archive.org/web/20050320205318/http://tv.tribune.com:80/whatson/kids/0,1181,kswb-11,00.html)
DeleteMy best guess is that people in the encoding scene back then saw no reason to encode the episode a second time. They already had a perfectly fine copy, and no one really knew that the series was never going to be seen again after 2005, so nobody bothered. The encode of the first episode could've been done by a different group as well, which would explain away the quality loss, but I haven't looked around for the encodes of the series myself, so I wouldn't know. (extra point of note, reruns starting on 02/28/2005 starting using the normal Axess intro, instead of the preview intro, which was just the NT Warrior S2 intro with the Axess logo slapped on)
It would be great if Discotek could get their hands on all of Mega Man NT Warrior and release it cleaned up on blu-ray.
ReplyDeleteI really hope Discotek is planning to do this at some point. Or otherwise maybe Capcom themselves are planning to do this after the episodes are removed from their channel in September. One can only hope...
DeleteAxess Ep30 dub:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/lFazrboTtBw
Would be nice if they had the DVD collection for the anime series. That be a great way for them to make even more money off us megaman fans =b. Maybe make a battle network 7 in the future?
ReplyDeleteWow, whoever Capcom had name the videos definitely failed.
ReplyDeleteHow cool.
ReplyDeleteStill a shame they didn't dub the Maylu and Lan date episode from Axcess. The english dub will always be a reminder of that for me. Idk why censor it, it's literally just a cute episode between the two of them.
ReplyDelete