HEAT GUY J
What's a Heat Guy, anyway?
Review by: M.H. "Faster, Stronger, Better" Torringjan
Length: 26 episodes
Genre: Sci-fi, action
Watched: Entire series
I picked up this series on a lark, remembering seeing it advertised a lot when it first came out. I then watched it promptly drop off of the face of the earth, buried under the next big thing that they spent too much money advertising. At the time, I thought that it might be interesting to check out, but not at the time. In the end, I forgot about it in a similar manner, my attention being drawn by the pretty colors of something else (hell, I don't know, maybe Ai Yori Aoshi). Having watched it, I have only two questions. (1) the question mentioned above and (2) why didn't it get more attention?
Plot summary: In the future, after humans have destroyed most of civilization with wars, mankind lives in seven mega-cities under the protection of the City Safety Department. Int the city of Judoh, two of the (three) members of the Special Operations Unit are Daisuke Aurora and J, an android specially built for the Special Unit (which either was designed by an idiot who gave him steam power or has a really nasty coolant leak). Order in the city is maintained with a fragile balance between the Safety Department, the police force, and the mafia, which could be in danger of tipping due to the workings of a shadowy man behind the scenes, who is somehow linked to the murder of Daisuke's father.
Artwork: This series came out at about the same time as Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and uses a similar blend of cel and CG animation, which works very well, although they aren't quite as seamless as Ghost in the Shell was. The character designs, for the most part, don't have anything special about them, and don't do much to differentiate themselves from other series.
Music: The music from this series has a nice feel to it, fitting very well to the action on screen and sounding pretty good on its own. Frankly, I was surprised how well bagpipe music goes to this as a battle theme, since I had only seen it used before in that context to play "Baby Got Back" at a basketball game (it didn't work very well then). The only thing limiting this soundtrack, though, was a lack of variety. The same five or six tracks were used in almost every episode, which made them get old after a while. The opening track is a little bit grating when you first hear it, due to the main singer's Guns 'n Roses wannabe voice, but it grew on me after a number of episodes. Overall, I'd buy or at least download the soundtrack.
Characters: The characters are interesting and pretty well done, but don't evolve much during the course of the series. Daisuke Aurora is the chief investigator for the Special Unit of the Safety Bureau with loads of street smarts, a laid-back attitude, and connections out the wazoo. He always gets the job done, if not a little bit slower than Kyoko would like. Kyoko is the secretary of the Special Unit, who tries relentlessly to get Daisuke to behave himself and follow the guidelines, usually in the form of getting him to file his reports (which he usually doesn't do anyway). J is the special machine built for the use of the Special Unit. He has a preoccupation with what it means to be a real man and, being a machine, is a real stickler for the rules. He also has badass special powers that entitle him to be accompanied by 6-Million-Dollar-Man-esque sound effects which sound oddly like letting off steam. As such, whenever you hear those sound effects and he's not on screen, you know something badass is about to happen. Ken Edmund is Daisuke's friend on the police force, a gruff, middle-aged man who plays it off the book and is more concerned about right and wrong than playing strictly by the rules. Bouma is a fugitive from another city whose face was genetically altered to resemble a wolf's face as part of his punishment. He wanders the city searching for his Usagi and fighting a bad-guy here and there. Clair Leonelli is the head of the Vita company and the mafia in Judoh. His title is Vampire, but for some odd reason, he doesn't drink blood, turn into bats, use honking big badass guns or anything like the fun vampires. He does, however, use explosives a lot and has an explosive personality to match it. Shun Aurora is Diasuke's brother, who's in charge of the City Safety dpeartment
Plot: The plot of the series doesn't actually show up much until about the last ten so episodes, when it sneaks up to a climactic last three or so episodes. For the most part, the series is episodic, with interesting storylines that made me want to watch more. Almost any plot that deals with the mafia and corruption in the government has to have at least two plot twists, and those twists are present here. The twists work pretty well, although they weren't totally unexpected.
CHICKS!! There were only two chicks throughout this series, and one of them was a nerd's wet-dream. Kyoko has a caring center underneath the cold, hard outside layer that insists on filing reports (for the bureaucrat in us all). For those of you who aren't too good at keeping a checkbook up to date (that'd be me), she's got the record-keeping skills that could probably save your bank account! And although she isn't a bombshell by any stretch of the imagination, she's got a nice body that I wouldn't mind inspecting and filing my report with anytime. Meanwhile, the doctor Antonia is about the hottest scientist I've seen since Adult Washuu. She has a caring, sentimental mind-set that would ensure your safety any time of the day. Plus, underneath that lab-coat, she's got a body that I've never seen on *any* scientist in real life. That woman gets my bunsen burner burning, she gets my reaction going, she... well, you get the point. Plus, she's a genius when it comes to constructing androids, so if anyone would have a chance ot producing an anime-chick android, it'd be her.
Overall: Although the series started off slow and didn't go much of anywhere for a while, when it got going, it got going. The action scenes were done pretty well, with J's badass android power and the series' dusting of humor to keep things moving along. Although this was hardly one of the best series in its genre, it was still a pretty darned good series, and it doesn't do it justice to write it off without a view. I'd recommend watching a bit of it before deciding.
In a nutshell:
+ A couple laughs go a long way
+ Nice action sequences
+ Pretty good soundtrack
- No variety in soundtrack
- Static characters
Final score: 7.5/10
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