Anime: Heroman

Heroman is based on a work made by none other than Stan Lee, the master of super heroes. Everything is animated by the powerful studio Bones, famed for the hype it creates, great production values, but plots as much messy as Gonzo's settings. What we have here is yet another very generic title, one that can be easily forgotten, skiped, and left to the sidelines. But don't be hasty on skipping this, because it can be a good show for those who only want some nice animation to fill time.

Art & Animation
Heroman reminds me a lot of Eureka Seven. It has the same style that Bones used there, from character design to the use of colors. It's a sharp work, full of action, fluid animation, bright colors, great backgrounds, and an overall good visual experience. Sadly, the tale tries to be more mature than a parody, and for that the toyish looking robot and the vivid color palette doesn't help. It's still one of the great jobs of its year in this department.

Sound
Heroman has a decent sound direction, but nothing superb. It has fitting voice-acting, perhaps plagued by more yelling than necessary, with good background music and decent openings and endings. If you manage to watch it fully, you'll probably have the shout "HEROMAAAAAN!!!" fixed in your mind, so prepare to bear with it, that thing glues to your memory like super bonder.

Story
Joey is just your average boy dreaming of having a hero figure. But he's poor, has to work to sustain his grandmother and having pricy toys is out of question. But one day he finds a torn figure droped by some rich boy, and out of pity he takes the toy and repairs it, only to learn that the thing is a freaking powerful piece of mysterious technology!

1. Stan Lee Goes Super Robot
   Although this definetely has lots of references to Stan Lee comics, from how the protagonist initially lives, some names, the U.S. starting point, western stuff, and other details, it somehow reminds me of Gurren Laggan. It's a show filled with cartoonistic style, even though the artwork is pretty animesque. The boy finds a weird stuff hanging around and this stuff happens to be an overpowerful god-like machine, from there he faces the opressive foes, finds about the true enemies, and everything escalates to very higher degrees. The feeling is about some kind of tribute to classic super heros, born from the will of the protagonist and that earn strength just for the sake of it. It's basically another super robot show, perhaps that's more the reason I found it so similar to Gurren Laggan.
   
   Heromaaaaan!!
   Like other shows of this kind (can I call it a super robot show? I dunno), it's all about shouting stuff and things happening. It never tries to make sense. Aliens attack, the hero robot defends the city, aliens are perplexed, they send more powerful weapons, hero robot gets power up, and repeat. We have a more mature feel to the show, especially on how events unfold to harm mankind and how the aliens are very powerful. But it's not just nonsense, we have some good plot twists and small events that makes nice cliffhangers to lure you to the next episode.
   

Character
Heroman don't waste much time with its cast. They are very basic, and even the protagonist don't grow much through the episodes. The whole cast has a good charisma, with their signature style, flashy clothes, weird talking or exagerated personalities, but they are not deep and much less evolve during the show. It's a basic shounen cast with the guy whose willpower is so absurd that everything he tries ends up succeeding.

Value
Heroman is a big mix of typical shounen elements. Stan Lee's influence is almost invisible (I've only learned it was written by him months after watching this, and never ocurred to me it had a non-japanese writer), as he makes this whole show feel a lot more japanese, maybe even more than some shows made by japanese writers. We have powerups delivered in key moments, the love interest, the doctor, the super robot, etc. The western influence comes in the form of the bully guy from school and a few adults that have a more north-american appeal, but this all pale in front of the shounen influence of this. It's not a good change of pace, the execution is just average, and this is most fit for younger audiences, so it can't make much of an impact.

Enjoyment
You want a show with a guy thet gets more and more powerful? You like super robot stuff? You like Stan Lee? Well, if you like these stuff you can be surprised by this pure fun flavor of Heroman. But it's just an average show with your super hero moments mixed with super robot moments, and anyone looking for something worth of Stan Lee, or with a more western-hero approach will be very disappointed.

Comments
This is one of Bones weakest works, but still has its feel. Even with Stan Lee writing, the show gets convoluted enough after its mid part, but it's easier to grasp than usual, so it can please the audience it targets (young teenagers). It's a typical show, made to be pure fun, but also having small parts of maturity and a decent pace. I've watched it as it was released, but I don't think I'll do again to see how things feel when watched continuously, but for a weekly show it's entertaining enough.

This show makes me think one thing: super stuffs (hero, robots, whatever) elements are similar anywhere, if you change the direction the thing can go from north american appeal to japanese appeal in a second. The writer can't save a show alone, and even Stan Lee will have issues when dealing with a japanese staff to make his work look like err... his work.

Intro Disclaimer: If you read this review, please rate it and, if you like, leave a comment or two as well! We reviewers really appreciate getting feedback, and rating takes little additional effort on your part. That said, on to the review:

HEROMAN is a very simple shounen action series, but a successful one. If you can appreciate a show that has no grand ambitions but nevertheless pulls off its maneuvers with flair and good humor, you should like HEROMAN, for it does what it does well. If, on the other hand, you only wish to watch epic shows with convoluted stories and philosophical issues at stake, you most likely won't be able to appreciate this one. Don't get me wrong, those kinds of series tend to be my favorites, but simpler fare, if well done, most definitely has a place. Thankfully, Studio Bones agrees; furthermore, this was their first fully lighthearted shounen romp since The Mars Daybreak way back in 2004, and it was welcome.

Story

Not much to be had here, but enough. HEROMAN is broken up into three distinct but inter-related arcs, all related to an alien invasion that begins in the second episode. Although the arcs are distinct, the story is linear, and best appreciated as a whole. There are just a few major turning points, all more or less predictable, but that's the point. HEROMAN is a very self-conscious series: the writers were very well aware that they were crafting very, very traditional and oft-told (or shown) scenarios. The alien invasion sequence, for instance, contains just about every cliche of the genre imaginable. This is all part of the fun, however, and if that does not offend you, the way that it's all very tongue-in-cheek will be a selling point. This retreading of old ways works on two levels: first, it accounts for much of the humor and charm (it can be awfully satisfying to watch an eminently evil villain indulge in evil laughter, especially when you know that the writers were just as aware of all the tropes as you are), and two, there is also something very impressive about seeing a new, 2010 anime steep itself in all these cliches and yet be so enjoyable. In a sense, HEROMAN reminds you why they became cliches in the first place: because, when done right, they are pretty damn entertaining!

That said, HEROMAN also does us the favor of never going too far. Since everything that happens is so predictable (or very close to it), the series does not shoot itself in the foot by forcing the issue. For example, one episode features a classic showdown between the main good guy and the main bad guy in which both get knocked about quite a bit and yet both refuse to die... but despite being of a genre in which classically every showdown becomes a variation on this theme (see Bleach, for one), HEROMAN actually only does this once. Accordingly, the one episode in which all this happens becomes an entertaining celebration of the cliche, not a tired repetition of it. Another, somewhat different example of the way in which HEROMAN flirts with but evades frustrating the viewer is that the whole second arc seems to hinge on a very weak plot development, but in fact it finally is justified in a satisfactory way, and ultimately I didn't mind that I had to scratch my head for a little while. There are minor plotholes here and there, but they're just that, minor, and very easily overlooked in light of the overall entertainment the series provides. All this means, in any case, that I can't give HEROMAN's story a particularly high grade since it is based completely around cliches, but it pulls them all off so well that it would also be completely unfair to give it a low grade because of the same.

I also must add that despite the predominance of cliches, there are also some really fun and clever elements that, it seems to me, only a show with HEROMAN's audacity would've been able to pull off (for example, though it could certainly be a reference to something older I haven't seen, I found the killer spheres precisely unpredictable, and completely awesome at that).

Characters

Again: not an original character to be found in the bunch, but that is not a problem either. You've got Joey, the kindly wimp-type who rises to his role as hero and learns the true power of friendship, his badass but good-natured friend Psy, the cheerful love interest Lina, her overprotective brother, a good goofy scientist and an evil mad scientist, aliens bent on world destructions - and, the strong and silent (battle-grunts aside) Heroman himself, and so on and so forth. You've encountered all these figures countless times, but as with the recycled story elements, HEROMAN throws these all together again in such a charming way that one can't help but grow to love and cheer for the good guys, and enjoy the baddies in all their sheer badness. Getting to watch all the characters interact becomes a real pleasure once you get used to the fact that they are nothing more than traditional characterizations (but again, traditional characterizations that do justice to their older counterparts!).

Script and Directing

As the above two sections implied, it is particularly in these categories that HEROMAN shines. Since the characters and the story are nothing to write home about in and of themselves (in fact, they're exactly the opposite), the task falls to the writers to make sure that the cliches resound in freshly interesting ways, and they absolutely do. It bears mentioning that HEROMAN is a very funny series, and that even when you're not laughing you're bound to be watching with a smile on your face. I quickly lost count of the times I inadvertently found myself punching the air or shouting "hell yeah!" or, most often, both at once. Great humor is gleaned from the simplistic character motivations (such as—uttered in all seriousness—"if I stick with him, I'll become famous!" or "this is a war. Victory goes to the one who strikes first!"), and best of all are moments in which the character themselves poke fun at the cliches they embody ("a person who can smile like you can't be evil," or the guilty look that flashes across Heroman's face when in the middle of training he knocks down the cutout of a little girl with a puppy when he should've been pummeling only ones of the aliens). The charm is not only of a humorous or ironic nature, however; I also came to really care for the characters, and though it was obvious all along that things would turn out well for them (this is a kids' shounen series, after all, and one needs to recognize it as such from the get-go), I still got invested in their adventures. My point is, despite the proficient dipping into cliches, HEROMAN also becomes moving and likable in its own right. At some point I realized that I really did want to see more of, say, the bantering between Psy and Professor Denton specifically—not any of the characters they were based on.

Incidentally, you should also keep an eye out for reference to other Bones shows (such as the character Axel Hughes, named after Axel Thurston and Maes Hughes from Eureka Seven and Fullmetal Alchemist, respectively, or the blatant throwback to E7 in the final episode—you can't miss it—to name just two). This seems to be a new hobby of the studio's, as there's quite a bit of it in Star Driver as well (halfway through its run at the time that I am writing this review).

Animation and Music

HEROMAN is aided immensely by its great production values. Yet again, the creators must have been aware that lots of the appeal would come simply from getting to watch awesome, flashy scenes of Heroman beating up aliens or fighting other robots—that comes with the genre, after all, and Bones pulls out all the stops to deliver on this front. There are very many fantastic fight or chase scenes, and even if you hated everything else about the series you'd be bound to appreciate that at least (and in fact, denemthor's review here on AniDB supports this claim). Furthermore, the character designs are great (classic Bones) and the setting design is awesome! It's really cool to have a series set in the States that (even though it thinks Washington, DC is in Maine) goes a long way to recreate the look of a west-coast city, and its seaside and desert. The series also gets props for keeping up the excellent production level from beginning to end; I can't think of any episode or even scene in which the animation quality slipped.

The soundtrack gets high marks, too. It's nothing I'd listen to on my own time but it works very well within the context of the series. As befits the series, it is mostly upbeat and dramatic, with lots of metal-influenced fight tunes and lighthearted acoustic ditties for the less tense scenes. Never did I think the background music inappropriate or intrusive (on the contrary, it always worked just right). All four opening and ending themes are excellent, too: standard catchy melodic J-pop, but it fits.

Value

Were HEROMAN just a typical shounen series, I don't think it'd get many points here, but its self-reflexive nature helps a lot: on the one hand, it is a typical shounen series, in fact it is exactly that, but on the other it is both playing with its own simplicity and pushing itself to run the viewer through extremely familiar motions and yet make them enjoyable in their own right in this particular context. It is also worth noting that the series gets decidedly better as it goes along; the first arc is fun already, but the second is downright awesome, while the best moments of the third are the best of the whole series (and episode 26 is undoubtedly the best single episode). Of course, this kind of positive progression leaves a much better impression than a series that starts strong and fizzles out! Anyway, I do hope the series gets a Stateside release so that I can get it on DVD as I will certainly be revisiting it in time. It's just too funny, charming, and just plain fun not to return to.

Conclusion

Absolutely not for everyone, but for those who don't constantly expect Great Things from anime, have an eye for subtle humor, and are susceptible to a the simple charms of a series, HEROMAN should not be missed.

I'm not going lightly on this show.

prologue: I'm a huge fan of the Bones studio. I'm still working to find some of their early works, but I've seen the most of them ad loved it.
This said, I have mixed feeling about their late works, and HEROMAN holds a special place in this uneasiness.
From now on, i'll consider this anime like an open OYSTER… yes the Ostrea edulis served in restaurant.

Whenever you think about an oyster, you cannot avoid to imagine it wide open with a nice pearl inside, and so here we have the ANIMATION as the true pearl of this show.
The first episode gave away the idea that HEROMAN was going to be a top notch animation masterwork: intriguing character design, a lot of details, fluidity everywhere, saturated colors for the sake of every kid. Fasten your seatbelt, this is going to be amazing… or maybe not.
Continuing to watch the series, you notice that whenerver HEROMAN is not acting, fighting, staring at someone, or running around shouting, the animation tends to be simpler. Every aspect of the animation is affected, being it fluidity or details. Sometimes I cannot bring my self to watch how bad some sequences are drawn. That is too harsh for sure, but watching a plain filler episode after an amazing fighting episode, is simply eye-cancering. Way too much difference, way beyond usual standards for filler/main episode animation.
This is, mostly, because the fighting sequences are damn very well drawn. I'm not kidding when I say that some of those sequences are so unbelievable good to be out of place, well over tv standards in fluidity, design, details, and perspective. Why didn't they make a movies instead of series? damn them.
Speaking about fights, I frankly do not give a damn about some tactical reused scenes. Being this an anime with a "call-name" for each attack, it's bound some sequence is going to be reused all over and over again, Sailor Moon style. It's only a plus that sometimes those sequences are changed in something slightly better, to enhance the performance during climatic fights.
Actually I'm bothered by the real presence of such scenes and call sings… but that is a different issue.
Along with a lack of interest for the common episode, we have a sign of poor dedication to the characters, as they do never change look at all. They almost never change their clothes, thee are no remarkable changes in their aspect due to time or stress or whatever. As you can see, I wrote "change" many times, to compensate for the lack of it inside the anime.
But this a Bones show after all, so, even if they are quite childish and plain, we have a lot of different characters with unique design and unique animations. Not an easy feature to pull out, since it loads tons of work on the animation team, and drains money like hell.
We have a pearl, a really dirty one, but in the end it is a pearl.

Back to the oyster image. We can see it, wide open. Beneath the pearl here we are with the entrails of the oyster. The fluffy part is, in our case, the SOUND.
Like the fluffy part of the oyster, the SOUND of this show, is soft, weak, simple, just a good riser for the pearl/animation. But personally…I really hated it. Not because it lacks any remarkable BGM, or for the poor sampling of generic effects: I cannot stand Joey calling for HEROMAN. "Please do not do this, or do it quietly" that were my desperate wishes. In the end I shielded my sanity from deteriorating halfing the volume output. That is, maybe, the cause I didn't quite remember any interesting BGM.
It is a fact that the special effects where very well done, especially the lighting theme of the whole bunch of HEROMAN moves. But still I felt sometimes the sound where not right, like not enough powerful to match what is shown or the other way around. (yes, this is an impression I got before halfing the volume).
The senyou department was able to do the job of depicting a lot of characters with a lot of random emotions spurring out at the first glimpse of a random-but-important event. I didn't like the voices, but I felt they fitted very well the various characters… probably because I neither like them.

Back to the oyster, you know, it got a dull and dirt shell. Some oyster are polished and refined to look like jewels, but this is the common oyster you got from the nearby restaurant, so even if it is tasty, it has spikes on its back, it is rough and got dirty colors.
This is the STORY AND CHARACTERS section. This is a show for kids, and since kids must be stupid, the story is stupid. So dull you want to crush it under your feet, but you cannot because it is hard as steel. You cannot deny it, it is unbreakable! All follows a steel-forged route that cannot be avoided or breached, and you know it… so better resign yourself to his hardened majesty and watch the plot develop it self as well planned.
The characters are all dumb. Not like, you know, Akira Toriyama template, that is a good way to depict childish and immature characters, they are dumb like someone who forgets how to sit in a chair (sorry Peter)..
Common sense is an expression from another dimension, no one in this show ever use it...
They have scripted course of action, even scripted positions and expressions...
They rest adamant about every decision they make, thinking about is not an option...
They cannot actually make rational thoughts for more than two consecutive lines…
They tend to repeat themselves all the time…
The male lead is sexless…
I felt the urge to launch Holy granades at his face most of the time…
The name of the hero is HEROMAN… and if he used guns: GUNMAN… and if he was a ROBOT: GUNDAM
The moment you think that the plot is actually getting interesting and deep, it all goes in the "RANDOM" way…
Every time something really cool is going to happen to one of our character, it is interrupted by some deus-ex-machina and resolved in the way you most fear and hate…
The twists of the story are so makeshift to defile logic and beyond, even common sense. (which we already stated belongs to a different dimension)
Mostly forgotten: space and time are overrated dimensions, they freeze or vanish whenever is time TO SHOUT AN UNBELIEVABLE PROSAIC ATTACK MOVE.
The power of love is nothing compared to the power of true friendship.

Somehow the second half of the story is better build than the first, with some unexpected well designed plot twist and a much more mature narration. Nevertheless they keep failing when it really matters, so abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

The oyster is complete.
I'm not going to eat it another time, but the race of men is vast, and there is people still playing Starcraft all the day from the 1998, so it is all relative. Maybe FOUR out of ten people will truly ENJOY this show with a smile.
In San Francisco I paid an oyster FOUR dollars at the Salt House… I didn't quite liked the oyster itself, but the dish was very well designed and served, and so its VALUE is confirmed.

I doomed my self watching this show, but I were unable to skip it due to my Bones-ness attitude. Surely there are worst anime around. But that is not an excuse.

I apologize for the many errors in spelling or missing "s" or other grammatical flaws. I do not run native english in my mind, and it is pretty early in the morning here.

Heroman is an anime geared toward a younger audience than the vast majority made these days, and one that I will call a bastion of the status quo. This works both to its advantage and disadvantage.

Animation

First off, the animation in Heroman is undeniably superb - and very colourful. The budget is visibly much higher than the average 26 episode romp. It really rarely gets higher quality than this - Characters hair waves in the wind, viewing angles are pretty dynamic, and there's some very fast paced action here at times.

It does however reuse (to a small extent I would argue, even some of the following examples see original animation at times) some scenes in battle, such as Joey commanding Heroman, and Heroman's victory pose. In reality though, these segments do take up a very, very small portion of the action.

The animation, while good doesn't necessarily show much originality - this, combined with the few reused segments, I cannot give the animation a perfect 10. As I said at the start of the review, Heroman is a bastion of the status quo - It is, in my opinion an good example of just what is possible with TV anime animation in 2010. It doesn't break new ground, but it stands firmly near the top of what has been established. This is Heroman's strongest aspect, and one in which adhering to the status quo doesn't exactly hurt it.

9

Sound

Personally, I found Heroman's soundtrack quite enjoyable. The first opening theme was a little cheesy so it loses points there, but the second was much better. Depending on my mood, I would actually sit through the ending themes at times - Something I just don't do with the majority of anime.

The majority of the BGM wasn't too memorable, but there was an insert song that played at times which I felt enhanced the already dramatic scenes it was used in.

The voice acting was all around satisfactory, though while it didn't bother me I could see Joey's relatively high pitched voice grating on some people. But it did kind of fit his design, as did the characters voices in general. None felt out of place. This would be the place to point out that I found it very enjoyable in the case of Professor Denton, his voice was nailed better than any of the others.

Overall, the sound isn't fantastic but doesn't really fall into many traps either, and makes relatively good use of established conventions such as insert songs at key moments. With sound, Heroman really just walks the line, but in a way that I enjoyed more than didn't.

7

Story

The somewhat legendary Stan Lee of Marvel comics fame takes the writing helm. It's pretty much his work as far as that goes. Although watching it, you get the feeling he's definitely let existing anime influence him in terms of overall theme. In terms of series structure and layout of events, while I'm no expert on his exact works, I think this is where his influence sets things apart a little. There was definitely something about the finer points of the story that made me think back to some of the old Marvel cartoons I enjoyed as a kid, roughly a decade ago.

Thematically though, this is a coming of age shounen aimed at a younger audience, once again diving into the deep end of the status quo. The major criticism I can make of Heroman's story, is that there are existing anime that have done this before and better. Status quo isn't the way to pursue a story if you want it to stand out, even if you're going to use existing conventions, you still need to do something fresh with them to keep interest.

That said, there are definitely a lot of anime that have pursued this route a lot worse than Heroman. If it's the kind of theme you can enjoy, you can definitely go worse than with Heroman. As it's aimed at a young audience, the story isn't incredibly convoluted - Characters have clear motives and the threats they face are immediate and real. And as a mecha, super robot show, it dodges the monster of the week formula that can make them oh so very repetitive. But it does still manage to give the hero something to use his powers for pretty much every episode, preventing the show from becoming overly dull.

In terms of the overall plotline, it doesn't really resolve entirely (or perhaps more accurately, suddenly opens up again after resolving) - A continuation seems inevitable.

The last point to be made about the story, is that one thing it does very well is cliffhangers. Most episodes left a significant hook that made me want to come back for more.

All in all, once again this is a facet in which Heroman is more pleasant than not. All the while sticking to the status quo of coming of age shounen in a clean and non-convoluted way.

7

Character development

What a cast of characters. By the time it reaches the later episodes, Heroman has built quite a large cast, 95% of whom continue to contribute to the plot in their own way. Here I have to praise Heroman in that it really doesn't waste time with characters when they're introduced unless they're still going to be relevant in the later episodes.

The bad? Personality wise, plot wise, their stories (for the most part, at least) don't really stretch the imagination if you've watched any significant quantity of anime. But even if the stories won't be memorable, the faces will be. A cast more memorable than average has been created here, probably as a result of how cartoony and abstract some of their designs are. The characters are well differentiated, there's no solid template for what they should look like and some creative freedom is exercised in their designs.

Overall, I personally felt the cast meshed well and had any back story fleshed out to an appropriate degree considering the target demographic. Not everyone is forced a relevant back story too, which I think is probably for the better.

Once again, Heroman only disappoints in lack of originality here.

7

Value

Here's the thing - I can say good things about Heroman, but I can easily say better things about other shounen and or super robot shows with a coming of age theme. The one thing Heroman may have on some of these is animation quality.

It's not an anime that will be fondly remembered, re-watched, or anything like that. But there is something here. Something, which as a whole it's difficult to call bad. Look past the silliness of the concept and the name, and you'll find a modest story full of characters with vibrant if simple personalities that's generally pleasing to the eye.

And it has to be remembered, this is the child of Stan Lee - And it's quite remarkable that he's still active, even exploring new territory, and reaching out to new audiences at his age. He even appears in the anime frequently, and it always put a smile on my face to see his character there at the least. It sort of made it feel like the whole cast were as dear to him as children to see him watching over proceedings in it like that.

So while Heroman doesn't break much new ground, and isn't going to shock and awe, it does have modest value in its pretty visuals and heritage.

6

Enjoyment

I'll be blunt, I enjoyed Heroman quite a lot. The cliffhangers kept me wanting more, the visuals were pleasant, and it had a good flow. I never felt like nothing was happening. And for their generic nature, the characters still managed to be good hosts to their universe for my stay.

8

Conclusion

As I began the review, I will end it by saying that Heroman is best described as a bastion of the status quo. There's really no better way to describe it. It breaks no new ground, but stands firmly and unashamedly as a charming, perhaps simplistic shounen anime. And it comes from the mind of a man who has long since left his mark on the world.

If you're reading this, trying to decide whether or not to watch it, I can only say give it a try. You may find you actually enjoy it. In the end, the name is really the worst thing about it.