Heat Guy J Review - ForYourAnime.com
Nov. 13th, 2009 07:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foryouranimeI think Heat Guy J can be considered a sleeper. I had never even heard of it before until a friend forced me to watch it. She tricked me with promises of a different anime series, got me over to her apartment, and inflicted this series upon me instead. I knew I wasn’t going to like it. I mean, the name sounds ridiculous. And it’s another futuristic, boy-and-his-robot story? No thank you! Obviously I was totally in love with it after the first episode. Sigh.
Heat Guy J was a wonderful surprise. It reminds me a lot of Cowboy Bebop without all of the underlying darkness. It does have its dark moments, but it never manages to sucker punch the audience with the emotional surprises Bebop did. All of the characters are wonderful and eccentric. We have wolf-headed assassins, explosive-loving mafia prince-lings, a robot cop with his own bagpipe theme song; what more does a show need really?!
The plot is about a small, experimental branch of the police department whose job it is to stop crimes before they happen. The department only consists of Daisuke, the Miami Vice-esque young detective, and his partner J, an experimental cyborg. There is also their overworked, underpaid secretary who turns out to be the most normal of the pair and the crazy crew they attract, much to her shame.
It flows a lot like Cowboy Bebop, too. The majority of episodes are stand-alones with the plot-laden ones clumped together at the end. All of the cases were amusing and fun. It was really neat how the writers subtly explained the facets of this futuristic world without breaking the flow of events by launching into lecture mode.
I was really upset that there is only one season of this. I thought it was a great show and needed to be hyped a bit more than it was. I think the animators thought it might be picked up for more episodes too, judging by the ending. The only thing I quasi-disliked about the series was the rushed feeling of the last episode. They tried to cram in the last three minutes the denouement of every character and the entire story. The entire epilogue left me unsatisfied. They did do a good job of foreshadowing what would happen to everyone, but I wanted to SEE it happen. I can forgive it though because the rest of the episode was action packed and the series as an overall whole rocked.
Fans of futuristic detective/western series will definitely not be disappointed in this. Cowboy Bebop and Coyote Ragtime fans, I’m looking at you!
...all your anime news and reviews... http://ping.fm/dmVwU foryouranime.com
Heat Guy J was a wonderful surprise. It reminds me a lot of Cowboy Bebop without all of the underlying darkness. It does have its dark moments, but it never manages to sucker punch the audience with the emotional surprises Bebop did. All of the characters are wonderful and eccentric. We have wolf-headed assassins, explosive-loving mafia prince-lings, a robot cop with his own bagpipe theme song; what more does a show need really?!
The plot is about a small, experimental branch of the police department whose job it is to stop crimes before they happen. The department only consists of Daisuke, the Miami Vice-esque young detective, and his partner J, an experimental cyborg. There is also their overworked, underpaid secretary who turns out to be the most normal of the pair and the crazy crew they attract, much to her shame.
It flows a lot like Cowboy Bebop, too. The majority of episodes are stand-alones with the plot-laden ones clumped together at the end. All of the cases were amusing and fun. It was really neat how the writers subtly explained the facets of this futuristic world without breaking the flow of events by launching into lecture mode.
I was really upset that there is only one season of this. I thought it was a great show and needed to be hyped a bit more than it was. I think the animators thought it might be picked up for more episodes too, judging by the ending. The only thing I quasi-disliked about the series was the rushed feeling of the last episode. They tried to cram in the last three minutes the denouement of every character and the entire story. The entire epilogue left me unsatisfied. They did do a good job of foreshadowing what would happen to everyone, but I wanted to SEE it happen. I can forgive it though because the rest of the episode was action packed and the series as an overall whole rocked.
Fans of futuristic detective/western series will definitely not be disappointed in this. Cowboy Bebop and Coyote Ragtime fans, I’m looking at you!
...all your anime news and reviews... http://ping.fm/dmVwU foryouranime.com
