Heat Guy J
A friend at work, discovering I was into anime, offered me a title from his personal collection. The rather mysterious "Heat Guy J". Not mysterious because it's rare or exotic, it had a well funded commercial release, but interesting because it seems to have bypassed all the anime fan's I know. Some knew the title, but not much more.
And I can sort of see why. It has very decent production values showing a substantial investment in it. The backgrounds are almost excessively bright and crisp, obviously computer assisted and having a wonderful time of it. Although they do tend to over-use some of the scenery. The setting is some massive metropolis of the near future. And we are following two characters who are special police tasked with finding crimes before they happen. One is young, cynical and cool, while the other is a towering muscleman in a long black coat (his partner being in white). The large guy is J, the legendary heat guy, and the only legal "machine" (ie. android) in the city. He's super-powered, quite taken with doing huge leaps to get around, but he's not super bright. His "wit" is the endless repetition of rather silly aphorisms which make him sound like a 2$ positive thinking book. He also spends a remarkable amount of time getting his butt kicked, he's a bit of a tactical dunce for all his power.
Between them they tackle one crime after another in this big city with a rotten under-belly... although in reality the main crime they face is the really atrocious writing. It lacks energy, enthusiasm or even logic to a quite alarming degree. Some of the stories we've seen so far, 9 episodes in, have been laugh out loud bad with huge plot holes and weirdly lifeless scenes and dialogue... action too when it comes to that, there's something odd about it (very checked, it always seem to stop short). Also impressive is that their detective work seems to center around asking one old guy meditating in a darkened shop who tells them, seemingly free of charge, all the information they need to know. There's not a great deal of backstory either, or they are being really stingy. What is the history behind this odd city or the characters we follow? no idea. This makes it all feel as if they were too busy playing with the visuals to bother too much about the story logic. Indeed the entire thing feels a lot like a tech demo, an experiment in how to integrate computers into animation, rather than something the creators actually cared about that much. Either that or it's just trying too hard to be cool and is thus afraid to risk experimenting with what they have.
Put simply it's really pretty, but it is also an empty shell yearning to be filled with some energy and life. There's much better stuff out there. Still there are also 17 more episodes (although the anarchic-feline is fading fast) so it could get better... but my hope is not great, they seem too happy to just go through the motions.
The lead characters bike is sort of cool though, I will admit that, but I'd take the one out of FFVII-Advent Children rather.... geeze I must review that, it was such a damn fun film. Exactly the sort of exciting drama and action Heat Guy-J misses.
And I can sort of see why. It has very decent production values showing a substantial investment in it. The backgrounds are almost excessively bright and crisp, obviously computer assisted and having a wonderful time of it. Although they do tend to over-use some of the scenery. The setting is some massive metropolis of the near future. And we are following two characters who are special police tasked with finding crimes before they happen. One is young, cynical and cool, while the other is a towering muscleman in a long black coat (his partner being in white). The large guy is J, the legendary heat guy, and the only legal "machine" (ie. android) in the city. He's super-powered, quite taken with doing huge leaps to get around, but he's not super bright. His "wit" is the endless repetition of rather silly aphorisms which make him sound like a 2$ positive thinking book. He also spends a remarkable amount of time getting his butt kicked, he's a bit of a tactical dunce for all his power.
Between them they tackle one crime after another in this big city with a rotten under-belly... although in reality the main crime they face is the really atrocious writing. It lacks energy, enthusiasm or even logic to a quite alarming degree. Some of the stories we've seen so far, 9 episodes in, have been laugh out loud bad with huge plot holes and weirdly lifeless scenes and dialogue... action too when it comes to that, there's something odd about it (very checked, it always seem to stop short). Also impressive is that their detective work seems to center around asking one old guy meditating in a darkened shop who tells them, seemingly free of charge, all the information they need to know. There's not a great deal of backstory either, or they are being really stingy. What is the history behind this odd city or the characters we follow? no idea. This makes it all feel as if they were too busy playing with the visuals to bother too much about the story logic. Indeed the entire thing feels a lot like a tech demo, an experiment in how to integrate computers into animation, rather than something the creators actually cared about that much. Either that or it's just trying too hard to be cool and is thus afraid to risk experimenting with what they have.
Put simply it's really pretty, but it is also an empty shell yearning to be filled with some energy and life. There's much better stuff out there. Still there are also 17 more episodes (although the anarchic-feline is fading fast) so it could get better... but my hope is not great, they seem too happy to just go through the motions.
The lead characters bike is sort of cool though, I will admit that, but I'd take the one out of FFVII-Advent Children rather.... geeze I must review that, it was such a damn fun film. Exactly the sort of exciting drama and action Heat Guy-J misses.