The Japanese Robocop JANPERSON

America had fed so many ideas into Anime, Japan either made it better or made it worse. So okay, Robocop came first before Janperson but I find it better than Robocop. Why? There were meaner, bigger villains and far more action in the show. I find the scenes more dramatic than Robocop was.

Well what's the big deal? Unlike Robocop who is part-human, Janperson like the kiddie character Rockman is a mechanical human but he's a far more serious character. When MX-A1 was unstable, one of the police scientists took him and recreated him into a fighter of justice that the law soon respected as an ally to the police force.He of course was involved with at least fighting three evil organizations. We have the Neo Guild which was led by Ben Funami and later George Makabe which uses cyborgs, the Super Science Network led by Reiko Ayanokouji which uses biological weaponry and the Tatakake Konzern a terrorist organization led by the insane Ryuzaborou Tatakake. These three villains were well known in Toku. We had Kazuoki Takahashi who was Change Griffin from Changeman, Atsuko Takahata who was best known as Maribaron in Kamen Rider Black RX and Shun Sugata who played Kamen Rider ZX in a TV special as well as various villains.

He wasn't alone in his missions. In fact he later befriended his supposed evil counterpart Gun Gibson (created by the Neo Guild) who became his closest friend. He later gained a robotic pet that combined with his pistol to form an extremely deadly weapon that was however good only for one shot. Gun Gibson also later earned a bazooka. As the series goes through, these two had their adventures as best of friends. I sort of kinda considered Gun Gibson to be the Blues of the series just as Janperson is Rockman.

What was amazing later was how Kazuoki Takahashi was later given robotic parts to become the fraudulent cyborg Billgoldy. This guy was what I'd like to call really a fraud, a stronger fraud and even far more badass than the rest. Of course the series ends with each organization destroyed since they're all wanted dead or alive.

I find Reiko's final story to be far the most dramatic, I hated her at the same time sympathized with her, I even liked this performance by Atsuko Takahata better than she was as Maribaron in Black RX because she wanted to take revenge on humanity, but then again as evil as humans can be, you don't make one right with two wrongs.

It was also pretty interesting the way George Makabe ended, he was just a human with cybernetic implants like Dr. Man was in Bioman (note that Green Two's actor was a guest in this show as a police officer) and how he was an egoistic scientist like Dr. Wily was in Rockman.

With Billgoldy, well the heroes never discovered he was really just their old lollipop licking enemy until later. Kaori seems to betray them but thankfully she didn't. She was such an artist I thought she had gone evil but again, in real life, real good doesn't become evil. In the end, Gun Gibson who was thought to have perished was still alive, the battle ended and revealing that Janperson could override his MX-A1 circuit on his own (while he previously had it restored to beat Billgoldy) and Billgoldy was destroyed.

However it was a shame (for me) that it should be affiliated with tokusatsu that involved monsters of the week like B-Fighter for the finale. That is, his old enemy Billgoldy returns to settle scores but was absorbed by Jagul. He and Gun Gibson were a team again for the B-Fighter, Blue Swat and Janperson special which took place after the destruction of the Gaohm Empire's last remaining survivor Shadow.