Tenka Seiha » HEROMAN #01 — …In AMERICA!

HEROMAN #01 — …In AMERICA!

April 1st, 2010

Sorry… I couldn’t resist.

Impressions:

Well, when your opening supervillain is a car wreck, there’s only so impressive that things can be. It did provide some great unintentional humor though. After dragging Joey out to the burning car with his friend in it, Heroman just stands there, staring at Joey while the kid screams to rescue his woman. I suspect that Heroman actually brought Joey out there to make him watch Rina die in a fiery inferno. Above and beyond that, there’s this very silly cultural disconnect that’s hard to ignore. The show is trying so hard to be American… FOOTBALL! JOCKS! CHEERLEADERS! STEEL WORKERS! and then the jocks run off to play with their ~~AIBO~~ HEYBO. It’s a tad… puzzling.

It was an okay start though, but I’m certainly underwhelmed. Production is up to Bones’ usual standards, but there wasn’t anything worth animating this week, so who knows if they’ll actually carry that through. I already don’t like Joey, so that’s a strike against the show. ~~Flash Thompson~~ Totally-Not-Flash Thompson and ~~Dr. Connors~~ Totally-Not-Dr. Connors also made me roll my eyes a bit. Whose-his-face on crutches was about the only one that I couldn’t directly connect to some other Stan Lee character in one move, and that’s probably on my head.

So I’m pretty neutral on this first episode. I think it has a lot of potential to get better, but the seeds are definitely there to be much worse. Honestly, the biggest thing this show has both going for and against it right now is that it airs at around 3am my time, so it’ll be sitting there… lurking… watching me while I sleep and ready to demand my attention as soon as I wake up. We’ll see how episode 2 goes when they actually throw in some possible semblance of a plot and something a little more villainous than Heroman bringing his meat puppet to look at a burning car. It’s on Crunchyroll too anyway… not that that’s ever stopped me before, I suppose.

Class starts in exactly 2 minutes, so I’m not going to be able to get to Maid-whatsit for a few hours minimum.

Preview:

Antagonists! And flying cheerleaders.

Posted in Anime | 20 Comments »

20 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

NightShadow2239 says:

April 1, 2010 at 4:02 pm

When you get robots that are able to stare you down, you know something is wrong.

Btw, do you dorm at your campus or just commute and use a laptop?

Aroduc says:

April 1, 2010 at 8:02 pm

Commute. I evolved beyond dorms my sophomore year of undergrad, let alone grad school.
- NightShadow2239 says:
  
  April 1, 2010 at 8:35 pm
  
  I’ve heard from my friends that dorming sucks because the rooms are too small and that it gets extremely boring after a while. I dunno whether or not that is true since I commute myself, but I plan to keep commuting at least till I am done being an undergrad. Why did you choose to commute?
  - Aroduc says:
    
    April 1, 2010 at 8:53 pm
    
    75% because I hated my roomate and 25% because a bunch of friends were renting a huge house together. About 80% of the non-frosh undergrads students there lived off-campus though (frosh have to be in dorms) so it was common for my school while it’s definitely not for others. It wasn’t really commuting either, just a slightly longer walk. Here I do commute, but that’s because living nearby would be exorbitantly expensive (since it’s a hospital too).
  - Yue says:
    
    April 1, 2010 at 9:55 pm
    
    If God gives you Haruhi/Konata/Nagi as dorm roommate then…
    
    [Yue got facepalmed] XD

Arabesque says:

April 1, 2010 at 5:18 pm

First episode was pretty nice. looking forward to more.

But the moment the plot turns into ”save the cheerleader, save the world” I’m dropping this.

Shinmaru says:

April 1, 2010 at 5:21 pm

Yeah, the activation of Heroman just puzzles me. Apparently he tells Joey what to make him do via the arm controller, but he can’t actually do anything himself unless Joey tells him first … but the controller automatically creates a shield to protect Joey from the explosion. Huh.

Rina’s dad is a pretty terrible driver, too. I don’t think the rain was thick enough to obscure an accident involving a huge truck, but hey, I wasn’t the one doing the crashing.

Anonymous says:

April 3, 2010 at 3:18 am

I think it’s more like a play on the American cliche (again) of how cars pile up when one stupid tanker flips on a highway.

lollerman says:

April 1, 2010 at 6:54 pm

And if Bandit Keith does show up, we will finally reveal the insidious truth: That this show actually takes place in Vancouver, Canada! That’s right, they are a bunch of Canadians!

On a more serious note, I get that this is a collaboration between Bones and Stan Lee, but why is Lee not using Marvel’s animation studio? Why is he outsourcing to Bones? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to do it in house and ship it over if they are trying to get market penetration?

Arabesque says:

April 1, 2010 at 7:44 pm

I don’t think he actually works there anymore (as in, he’s retired)
But from the looks of it, he is attached to this project more as a gimmick to sell it rather with actual reason. Beside, Japanese studio + American comic author attracts more attention than American studio + American comic author

Topspin says:

April 1, 2010 at 6:59 pm

This doesn’t look like it’s going to be original in any way, and the characters all annoy me except the robot (because it’s damn creepy). In many ways it feels like it’s just an excuse to re-create the same mecha show we’ve been watching since time immemorial, but it’s not so bad that I’d drop it in one episode.

Dude says:

April 1, 2010 at 7:56 pm

Why does the Op look so familiar with Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann?

Syaoran Li says:

April 1, 2010 at 8:52 pm

LOL the best part was Stan Lee’s cameo. My God, that man has to be in every of his creations/colaborations.

Hyosuke says:

April 1, 2010 at 9:10 pm

Yes this is cheesy as hell, yes this follows the same formula as every other boy and his robot/mech series ever made…. and yet I love it. Theres just something about it that I can’t put my finger on. Well, we’ll have to see where this goes.

LOL! I was curious after having watched the opening on this site and then watching the first episode of Crunchyroll but I confirmed it. Crunchyroll did indeed flip at least the opening so its more Americanized. Oh I got a kick out of that. Gotta be able to read HEROMAN the true American way after all. ^^

nosauz says:

April 2, 2010 at 2:00 am

holy shit was this trying so hard. After reading the first couple of chapters for the manga, I’ll say it’s at least an improvement to manga which was god awful. The worst part and weakest part of the show is easily the characters, where as animation, music selection, etc are top notch because who are we kidding it’s Bones. Man those characters are real type cast I mean the cheerleader wears her uniform all day, the jock brother is a jock but a rich kid who doesn’t play sports. I feel like their rehashing very shitty versions of marvel characters but for crying out loud give these characters a wardrobe, or else their doomed to their american tired cliches.

/end rant

still I have to say the animation is pretty good, besides the obnoxious characters and the super unrealistic setting the op gives me hope that Stan Lee won’t be heavily involved.

The Phantom says:

April 3, 2010 at 12:57 pm

Other than good visuals (is bones after all), there is nothing more worth in this show. I will probably watch a few more episodes, the visual aspect is flawless, but the plot and those hair styles are good only for a laugh.