TV Review #5: Mega Man (1994 - 1996)

 

It's finally time! 2020 is over! Finished! Done for! Which means its time to talk about the first review of the new year and boy howdy did I ever start it off right! Mega Man (1994 - 1996) was the penultimate tv show that the animation company Ruby Spears ever did! They also had a pretty interesting beginnings in the world so I shall regale you with them. In 1977, head of ABC Fred Silverman (who was also the head of CBS in the early 1970s and started the whole rural purge that ended shows like Green Acres and Beverly Hillbillies and ushered in urban shows like the Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family. So he's already got some TV history behind him before Ruby Spears.) and he got rid of Filmations stuff on ABC and if you knew about animation history on TV, in the 1960s and 1970s it was like two whole groups of dudes making it. Filmation and Hanna-Barbera.

So.. Fred Silverman (1937 - 2020) (apparently Fred from Scooby Doo was named after him, wild.) got Ken Spears (1938 - 2020) and Joe Ruby (1933 - 2020) who had worked for Hanna-Barbera from the mid 1960s to 1977 (they created Scooby Doo along with character designer Iwao Takamoto (1925 - 2007) and had them create their own animation studio in 1977, the first show they made was one of the umpteen Scooby Doo ripoffs, so Fred Silverman didn't want a monopoly of shows from one company on like all 3 networks (how many flippin cartoons did Hanna-Barbera even make?) but apparently didn't care if they ripped each other off. They went on to make stuff like THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN (which I haven't seen but it was made by Jack Kirby and Steve Gerber so you know it's gonna be a fuckin wild ass ride) and Alvin and the Chipmunks (which is the best version of the chipmunks and I will fight anyone who says differently) and worked in animation for 19 years ending in 1996, which is 25 years ago now and I feel like I'm about to turn into dust and be blown away.

It was a pretty wild legacy and I haven't seen the last show they worked on, Skysurfer Strike Force (holy shit that's a mouthful of a title) I HAVE seen Mega Man  (which ran from September 11, 1994 to January 11, 1996) which was a big show for me as a child (and one I thought lasted longer then it did and also wished it lasted longer than it did). This was a show I would watch on TBS before school, It was Sailor Moon and then Mega Man. I think after that it became Bewitched and Rocky and Bullwinkle. It's amazing that I sometimes forget what I was going upstairs for but I can remember nonsense like this. I would like to have a set of Newfoundland Herald's from the 1980s and 1990s just to make sure. Anyway this was my way of waking up in the morning. I would have some nice cinnamon toast and watch Mega Man fight Dr. Wily. I mean sometimes I'd end up falling asleep in Mr. Kelly's class but Sailor Moon and Mega Man are more important than math. Maybe make me feel like going to a place where a ton of kids thought I was a gross weirdo was a good thing instead of getting mad at me Mr. Kelly. Stupid jerk.

Uh, okay let's back away from the unprocessed negative memories of my youth and let's go talk about the positive stuff.  Mega Man for those not in the know was a series of games that started in 1987 and is still going on from time to time today. It's probably the best series of video games ever and I don't care what you say. Hell if you count the spinoffs as part of the whole series it IS the best series of Video Games EVER. Mega Man X might be the best non-Chrono Trigger game of all time. This was not the first time Mega Man appeared in animation either. He was a multicolored midget who was also a chronic three pack a day smoker in Captain N: The Game Master which I am sure we will talk about sooner or later on this old blog of mine.

So we finally got all the backstory for the show out of the way (I do the backstory because it honestly interests me and I like to also mention what I thought of the show as a child because it feels good to see what changed in 20 something years) I can easily say that Mega Man is a very enjoyable 90s action cartoon that I felt got a bad rap. I know video games into cartoons are very hit or miss but I felt Mega Man shouldn't have been considered a miss. This show has wacky over the top plots with lots of action and silly humor that still amuses me in 2021. I really like the voice cast too. They all feel pretty good, my favorites have to be Dr. Wily, Protoman and Cutman. Dr. Wily sounds like a stereotypical German which works so well for him. Protoman just sounds so cocky and sarcastic which works for his EVIL version in this show and Cutman sounds like Peter Lorre and he's always a fun guy to impersonate. \

I think the designs for the characters are pretty true to the games, which must have been hard to do, getting the characters to look right when all you had to go on were the original 6 NES games (I am probably wrong and someone will go NO YOU TURD MEGA MAN 7 CAME OUT AND IT CLEARLY SHOWED HOW EASY IT WAS TO JUST TURN THEM INTO ANIMATED CHARACTERS) but they worked very well for me. The animation in the show worked well too, pretty fluid and nice from the 3 episodes I watched. Pretty darn good for a TV budget. I also enjoyed the characters too. It was neat to see Roll use goofy homemaking stuff to beat ass. She breaks out of a damn jail cell with just a cake mixer thing! Mixes the shit outta that wall. I wouldn't mess with this Roll.

FINAL VERDICT: First off two things I just feel like I gotta mention but I didn't know where I could mention them. The little cartoon of the Good Guy dolls from Child's Play was animated by Ruby Spears. That would show up in Child's Play and Child's Play 3. Now that's pretty darn wild. Also this show was a co-production between like the most companies I can think of, at least thus far. Capcom, Ocean Productions (thankfully not related to the terrible video game company), Ashi Productions (from the land of the rising sun!!!) and Ruby Spears. OK, that's just four but still usually it's just two corporations. It was a production between 3 countries. America, Canada (Ocean Productions is in Vancouver, British Columbia (HI PAVOL)) and Japan. Secondly This is still a fun show and I definetly plan to check out the other 24 episodes of it. Of all the shows I've talked about in my TV Reviews this is clearly the one I had the most fun with. Hell I could do a play by play review of just the Monster Bot episode because WOW that was some wild stuff. I highly recommend you give this show a shot.