8 Man After (1993) (V)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Writers:

Kazumasa Hirai (characters)
Jirô Kuwata (characters)

Genre:

Animation | Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

A police officer that nearly meets a violent death is turned into a cyborg with superhuman strength, speed and reflexes.

Plot Keywords:

Cyborg | Police | Speed | Death | Danger

Cast

Jane Alan	...	Sachiko Yokogawa (voice: English version) (as Mari Devon)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Richard Allan	...	Additional Voices (voice: English version)
Stephen Apostolina	...	Max (voice: English version) (as Steve Apostolina)
Catherine Battistone	...	Sam (voice: English version)
Steve Bulen	...	Hazama Itsuro / 8 Man
Richard Cansino	...	Ichiro (voice: English version)
Ardwight Chamberlain	...	Additional Voices (voice: English version)
Masaru Ikeda	...	Chief Tanaka (voice: Japanese version)
Art Kimbro	...	O'Conner (voice: English version)
Michael McConnohie	...	Detective (voice: English version)
Mike Reynolds	...	Chief Tanaka
Barry Stigler	...	Daigo (voice: English version)
Kirk Thornton	...	Chen, Eddie (voice: English version)
Jeff Winkless	...	Tony Gleck (voice: English version)
Dan Woren	...	Professor, Mayor (voice: English version) (as Daniel Woren)
Keaton Yamada	...	Professor a.k.a. Dr. Tani (voice: Japanese version)

Runtime:

120 min (4 parts)

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Certification:

Spain:13 | Chile:14 | USA:Unrated | Peru:14 | Argentina:16 | Singapore:(Banned)

Trivia:

Professor's Japanese name is Dr.Tani

Movie Connections:

Follows "Eitoman" (1963)

Part of the legend and tradition of animated SciFi

The Perfect Collection brings to one "film" all the episodes of this story, and I was glad to find this VHS when I did. I grew up with the original "8th" Man TV series in black and white, during the same TV era as Astro Boy, Ultra Man and continued with Speed Racer. Even though those productions were somewhat raw, the underlying themes and cultural sensibilities spoke to me at the gut level.

This is not a "modernized" version of the original. It stands alone as the retelling of the story by new writers and artists, making their choices and giving it their style.

No character is flat. None of them is without some sort of flaw or inconsistency. This is story and character development at its finest, even with the production flaws when compared to more modern efforts. On my copy of the video tape, the major flaw was in the audio tracks, but it's still watchable and enjoyable. The poor audio is the only reason I took my rating down a peg from a 9 out of 10.

I do have one complaint: the character of 8 man seriously pre-dates Robocop, and while it is speculative to say that Robocop was directly based on 8 man, it is totally wrong to say that 8 man was based on Robocop. Please, do your research before making such claims.