When it became clear that video games were starting to leave the arcades and enter the living room, America in particular did what America often does and attempted to pan for gold from the hearts of kids all over. In addition to merchandise, branded cereals, and promotions on canned pasta, many Japanese-created video game series saw short lives as cartoon shows in the 90’s. Some actively tossed away the inherent cores of their franchises in an attempt to appeal to kids of the day, but Mega Man was a curious case of walking a line where it managed to keep everything important about the brand in tact while filling out the massive empty space around that with weirdness and fun.
While it was produced for America, the Japanese studio Ashi Productions and American Ruby-Spears Productions collaborated under Capcom’s supervision, redesigning the characters and scaling down on their initial ideas of a more anime-inspired series. But despite that change of direction, the show somehow nails its intro sequence, capturing the glimmer of what might have been. The 90’s were a time where cartoons were no stranger to totally radical intros, typically accompanied by lyrics laying down the premise of the show to any potential audience who was tuning in because it was a Saturday morning and what else were they going to do?
But the Mega Man intro here focuses on stylish, smooth animation with an anime sensibility that the contents of the bulk of the series don’t actually exhibit. While that might make the title sequence a bit misleading, it doesn’t make it any less of what any Mega Man fan would’ve wanted to see. It lays it all out there – ‘super fighting robot,’ pumping music, flashy actions sequences, melodramatic imagery showcasing the main characters…it’s what you would expect if you cared about Mega Man.
While the bulk of the show’s content won’t exactly wow anyone with its episodic and often silly premises, the introductory episode does a surprisingly good job at setting things up. It’s important to remember that at the time of its production, the franchise was still new, and there was very little lore to work with, but all the same, the show managed to do double duty in its pilot. It starts things off right in the middle of the action, immediately highlighting all of the primary characters and their roles, illustrating Mega Man’s gimmick as a hero (he’s a robot who can copy his enemy’s abilities). It then takes a solid chunk of its runtime to look back on the origins of the conflict – how Wily and Light worked together, until their visions clashed and Wily stole Light’s technology to break off and fulfill his plans of…well, vaguely but undeniably E V I L intent.
This isn’t award-winning material by any stretch but it’s a bit impressive in retrospect just how well the pilot manages to convey an understanding of what makes the series fun and even what is at its emotional core: Dr. Light’s fatherly relationship with his sibling creations Rock and Roll. Oh, right – they even make sure to address that his canonical name is ‘Rock’ (in Japan he’s always been ‘Rock Man’) something lesser known at the time, and something one would expect 90’s America to straight up erase – although they do seem quick to discard this in favor of shorthand title ‘Mega’ as the show goes on.
Dr. Light and Wily as well as their robots are all portrayed with the kind of cartoonish exaggeration that one would find from any Saturday morning show of the era, and none of the main characters blend together (see: old school TMNT). While Rush coming across as a Scooby-Doo wannabe is questionable, Dr. Light and Wily contrast each other as anticipated, with Light’s naivety and good intentions against Wily’s incurably over-the-top ‘evilness.’ Mega Man himself is the typical action hero of the day, with quippy remarks and a perspective that’s unsurprising from the kinds of people who were probably writing TV shows back then. Proto Man is bizarrely funny, like some angry, cocky man child who is as obsessed as Wily is with stroking his ego, but often lacking the ability to back it up.
And then there’s Roll. She isn’t nearly as prominent or capable as Princess Zelda was in her respective cartoon, but Roll has a decidedly non-canonical spunk and ferocity here that’s fun and charming. While Mega Man, a lab assistant retooled to be a warrior, transforms his arm into weapons, Roll has not been reworked for combat and ends up using her own arm to transform into a vacuum cleaner, a blender, and other tools, somehow managing to occasionally contribute. Especially when compared to the Zelda cartoon, it feels clear that this was more of a placation toward women rather than something genuine, but for its time it was at least making some kind of effort in this regard.
With its main cast immediately established and consistently used, the Mega Man series also does something even the games still struggle to accomplish: create a world that feels relevant and plausible to its base premise. The entire concept of the franchise was a world where robot technology has advanced enough that robots can aid humanity in day-to-day life. Usually the levels of Mega Man games lack this world building, but the show isn’t afraid to depict a world of the future where robots and various tech are used and inevitably abused. While the series isn’t keen on true character development, it does manage to work in moments of reflection on what makes humans unique from other animals and, by contrast, how that touch of humanity in Dr. Light’s creations makes them unique from other robots.
It might not technically be something the show does ‘right’ but something that is nevertheless entertaining is just how silly its action sequences are. Mega Man is an action game series, after all, so it’s expected to see fight scenes pop up in any adaptation. While other cartoons based on games pretty reliably take rather strange and illogical paths to resolving their conflicts, the Mega Man cartoon is a bit more noticeable, and it lends an utterly odd endearing factor to things.
Maybe it’s because the concept is rooted in science fiction, but some of the ways the characters get into and out of jams is absolutely illogical and often very sudden, often sprinkled with terrible puns and zingers. It’s fast and goofy and doesn’t waste much time in most instances, though, and it’s that suddenness combined with the silliness which results in a lot of unintentional comedy. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if it really is unintentional or if the creators decided to just have fun.
When all is said and done, perhaps that right there is what can best summarize what makes the 90’s Mega Man cartoon an interesting piece of game-related media: the creators clearly had fun making it. From Wily’s over-the-top characterization to action scenes that balance flashy movements with straight-up nonsense, the series brings together everyone who was a potentially prominent character at the time, including recurring boss fight characters, and it manages to have fun with them all, time and again, while not betraying the emotional core of the original idea.
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