Late to the Party--HeatGuy J

Hey all! In an attempt to bring more content to my blog, I've decided to start going through my rather extensive backlist of anime and review the shows as I finish them. I've decided to call these posts "Late to the Party," since the stuff on my backlist ranges from shows that aired last season that I simply didn't have time for to stuff that aired years ago that friends insist that I must check out. There isn't going to be any kind of schedule to this, since unlike currently airing shows where I can make time each week for a number of singular episodes, the backlist shows are what I watch when I get some spare time, which changes from week to week. Regardless, I hope that you enjoy reading my thoughts on these shows. And what better way to kick this off than to talk about this great example of the buddy cop genre (with androids!), HeatGuy J?

  
One of the tropes of the buddy-cop genre is that the pairing is played for laughs: oh look how awkward this pairing is! Will they ever learn to get along? This usually ends up having a hit-or-miss effect; sometimes it works (Kotetsu and Barnaby), and sometimes it's too over the top to take seriously (Whoopi Goldberg and a dinosaur, whose bright idea was that?). One of HeatGuy J's immediate strengths is that the duo is played completely straight with no wackiness involved. The initial plot follows the members of the Special Services Division, which is tasked with keeping the city of Metropolis Judo safe from the criminal activities of mafia families present in the city. At the beginning of the show, Special Services only has three members: J, a nearly indestructible android with an advanced A.I., Daisuke Aurora, a pretty boy with impressive deductive reasoning who can more than hold his own in a fight, and Kyoko Milchan, the division's account and resident tsundere-in-training. Most of the action follows Daisuke and J as the show takes a mostly episodic approach to crime-solving and information gathering while building the world in the process, which I'll talk about more below. However, instead of just allowing the show to stay at that level (which would have been entertaining in and of itself; who doesn't want to watch a cyborg fight mafia bosses?) the plot eventually reveals an overarching structure with a more dangerous villain pulling the strings from the shadows.

  
This may all sound pretty cliched at this point, but as with any kind of entertainment, it's not the tropes used so much as how they are presented. And I'm not talking about the hook of J being a android. Despite the episodic setup, where the immediate problem is resolved in each episode, there is always something, however small, that advances the overall plot or at least one of the character's subplots. There are also basically no one-episode characters in HeatGuy J; everyone introduced plays a role, and I can only think of three characters who did not appear again but still played a vital role in either resolving a subplot or further advancing the story for a later episode. And for the most part, they're a pretty eclectic bunch, ranging from the stereotype of the hard-boiled detective with a heart of gold to a literal werewolf who hides his animal features with a holographic mask. And for the most part, they're pretty well developed, since the viewer gets to spend enough time with each of them to hear their backstories and learn their individual quirks. And it's largely through these characters that the viewer gets to learn about the world of HeatGuy J. As you probably guessed from my mentioning androids and holographic masks, HeatGuy J is set at an undetermined point in the future, where mankind mostly lives in large cities powered by "lost" technology. I won't go into to much detail here to avoid spoilers, but what initially appears to be our world with more advances technology turns out to be something far deeper than that, and over the course of the show it is fully realized. While every minute detail isn't explained, the viewer gets a great feel for what is similar and what has changed in this futuristic world, and how the new world order effects each of the characters.

  
But as interesting as HeatGuy J is, it's not without its faults. The show makes use of CG quite frequently, usually with J's internal android skeleton as well as with Daisuke's motorcycle. These bits definitely could've been integrated into the traditional animation better, something that was probably caused by a lacking budget (see the OP below for an example of what I mean). That said, I'm not sure how the steam system of the androids would've translated to usual animation, but I'm pretty sure that the bike would've been fine. It's worth mentioning that the version that I watched was the English dub. While I don't have the Japanese version to compare it to, I felt that it was pretty well casted (especially J's voice actor) but there is the occasional awkward pause as they try to follow the lip flaps. Also, the pacing over the overarching story starts to get a little strange after the halfway point. Sometimes the show will decide to drop a huge amount of information in one episode while in others it'll focus exclusively on one character and will throw a tiny plot point in at the end of the episode for good measure. And there are also some things that are straight-up not mentioned again, mostly dealing with technology. There were points when I felt that the pacing could be a lot tighter without losing anything that made the show such a great watch, which makes me wonder if the writers were just trying to pad out the 25 episodes they had to work with. As a result, the ending of the show wasn't as satisfying as I expected it to be, after the show took all that time developing the characters and setting up the world. Regardless, this show was a really enjoyable watch and I ended up getting pretty attached to the characters far before the show ended. It also has some awesome fight sequences, my favorite coming from episode 19, which had a great stylized flair to it in addition to being nicely choreographed. This show also has one of the most diverse soundtracks that I've heard in an anime, ranging from alt rock to slower ballads, but it all manages to fit the mood of the show really well. I highly recommend this show to anyone who is even remotely interested in it, since for the most part it rises above the cliches of its genre and becomes something highly entertaining in its own right.


Images from Hulu.com.