Firstly wow, what a dramatic difference in the quality of the CGI animation. All of the faces and eyes have so much more expression to them, and the body movements have a more natural flow, and a lot of the lighting looks more dramatic and atmospheric, what an improvement. Not that I personally ever had any problem with the animation. Even at its most basic that animation was a huge part of the appeal of this show. Ignorant new viewers to it may sneer these days but this was very new back then. Now CGI leadens all major movies everywhere and has become rather routine and dull, but I've still never seen it quite as entertaining as when Reboot did it! Anywho, more than anything else, I love this fantastic season three opening episode because of the way a great deal of it feels like one big middle finger to the show's former sponsor, the meddling censors of the ABC! Good riddance. The game sequence which among other things, is an awesome nod to the Evil Dead movies has a fair bit of imagery that you'd never have seen before, like zombies(and Frisket!) getting shot with actual shotgun blasts, and the Morticia Addams/Elvira game mode version of Dot showing more cleavage than you'd have ever thought possible! It's pretty gruesome when zombie Enzo's eye pops out and he shoves it right at the audience, perhaps in a spoof of what you'd get a lot in those cheesy 80s 3D horror movies! Nice bit of eye-related foreshadowing there, as well as what the Scottish deer head says. I'm almost positive that deer is a vague reference to this hilarious British advert about wine gums that had dancing bagpipes in it. I love the first of what will be several alternate openings for the show. This is Megabyte's intro as he brazenly declares that Mainframe is now his realm of Megaframe... Not if our remaining heroes have anything to say about it! After the last episode of the second season it took over a year for the show to return, but the action starts right where it left off, with the struggling Principal Office at the mercy of Megabyte's devastating weaponry, not to mention having just lost its best defender. Megabyte has his foes right where he wants them, but then Hexadecimal ruins his plans when her lust for destruction grows out of control and she refuses to stop firing on the Principal Office, even though destroying it will result in the destruction of the entire system including herself, an outcome she considers "glorious!" She's so magnificent in her madness as she floats atop that giant cannon of doom, gleefully ready to rain hellfire down upon Mainframe! It's a shame her fun has to end so soon as a game descends on top of the cannon and overloads it and her with power, which results in her brutally being fried to a crisp from the inside out and essentially dying as her mask cracks and reveals the light beneath for a moment. The fortunes of Mainframe sure are fickle.. Her charred remains which Megabyte's lackeys later locate are very corpse-like, and I could be wrong but as Megabyte has Hexadecimal raised up on the apparatus that she'll be trapped in for a while to come as he orders her restored - she looks a heck of a lot like a macabre take on Christ on the cross! Never ever would you have seen such an image before. I love it, the slight added grittiness and maturity gives things a much greater depth that is only just beginning. Great episode, thank you, and The Evil Dead does rock!!!
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