TV show discussion of the week: Mega Man

I really like a lot of the old videogame based cartoons, even the ones where I despise the games I still love the cartoons, like Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda, and one of the main reasons for that is the fact that the cartoons were made to make the playable sprites become actual characters, where in the games they were nothing but graphics now they had personalities and their actions weren't limited to just being able to jump and/or shoot etc., they could talk and interact with other characters and be part of stories rather than just levels, so even if I didn't like the gameplay of the games I could absolutely enjoy the stories and characters of the cartoons, also they were usually made by different people and were at most based on the games rather than following them perfectly which also gave them a chance to be greater than the source material in terms of the characters' personalities and the stories they were part of.

As for the Mega Man cartoon specifically I really like it, it's silly fun and I really like the characters, it has a catchy intro (typical for the time, sadly intros for cartoons have pretty much sucked since the early 00s with very few exceptions since), I haven't watched it as much as some other classics as I sadly never saw it as a kid, but I've watched it in more recent years and I enjoyed it for what it was, had I seen it as a kid I would've loved it then too.

Loved Battletech which came on after this.

First official videogame adaptation? What about the animated Pac Man series?

I guess Spirit Bomb meant the first official animation based on Mega Man (don't forget the Super Mario and Zelda shows were also before this one). That is still kind of wrong, though: there was a 3-part japanese OVA just before this one was released. It's closer to the game's art, but it was just an educational series of videos about japanese culture.

Yeah, that's what I meant, and I wasn't aware that there was any Mega Man animation produced prior to this show. Thanks for the correction.

In regards to the show, I have very limited memory of it; I only saw less than half of one episode as a kid, and while I liked what I saw then, looking at the character designs now makes me cringe. "Americanizing" or "westernizing" the look of anime was a pretty common phenomenon back then when it came to localization, and sadly old Rockman clearly suffered the same fate, based on this show and also his design on the western boxart of many games; example:



YUCK! This pic will always haunt my dreams...

It's a damn shame because the art direction (especially character designs) of the Mega Man games has always been extremely well realized and lends itself marvelously to animation. As nice as the TV show's intro was animated, I still much prefer Mega Man 8's intro, which draws inspiration from the show's except has MUCH more faithful (and by that I mean better) character designs and music, despite having much less frames of animation. For those who haven't seen it:




I still think Mega Man 8 was one of the best Mega Man games in terms of art direction. The visuals seem to be exactly as Inafune and his team originally envisioned it.

I'm not giving the show a rating because I haven't seen nearly enough of it, but it seems like filler to me, with basic plots and such. Could be wrong.

stratogustav - I've watched everything until the end of the Hades saga (the last thing I watched was the movie "Heaven Chapter: Overture", which happens right after Hades). 12 Houses and Hades are the high points of the series, but I agree that Asgard and Poseidon have some good stories and battles too.

The series has a very strong greek/roman inspiration, so romanic speaking countries might have a greater cultural identity to it - I think the "inspirational divine" feel of the series, with Athena being almost a Virgin Mary-expy and the knights being pretty much protector saints, is somewhat reminiscent of catholic christianism (which is not as spread in the US as in romanic-speaking countries). The religious references are easier to get in romanic languages, I guess, and give a more serious and sacred tone to it.

I was browsing anime DVDs in a local store the other day and noticed this compilation DVD of episodes from this series:



Even the boxart is a fucking scam! That cover drawing of protoman looks a million times cooler & more worthy to Mega Man than any still image from this lame series.

The talented folks who drew these covers and the awesome intro were just con artists.