8 Man After

8 Man is not just another anime with a totally stupid title, but also one of those many anime productions that, for some incomprehensible reason, has been hailed as a cult classic by many fans of Japanese factory cartoons. It is only the slightly better drawings (compared to the large mass of the bad anime film genre) that do not push the film down to 0 stars. Or 1 Star, because you can't give no star at imdb.

This film is an excellent action film where you can turn your brain off and just watch as a human turned cyborg goes after a crimelord called the puppetmaster, who uses cyborgs of his own to control the city. Probably the most dimensional character is the washed up football player who has cyborg implants put in that just cause him and his son more trouble.

Some of the English dubbed dialogue was a bit messed up, as it is in many foreign films, but other than that the voices were coherent and the story was as good as an action film could get.

I'm sure I'd give it a much higher rating if the english dubbing wasn't so terrible. I want to hear the original language of any foreign movie with subtitles. I'm an extremely fast reader so subtitles don't bother me, in fact I welcome them. If you absolutely have to dub at least get people who can act. I know this will offend people but I don't care.

Before Cartoon Network had Toonami and Adult Swim, the budding "Sci-Fi Channel" had a weekly marathon they called "Saturday Anime." They'd play stuff like Cashaun: Robot Hunter, Tank Police, Project A-Ko, and my favorite: 8-man After. This wasn't Tiny Toons or Chip & Dale, this was the extreme world of Japanese animation. I don't remember much of it since I was 12 when I had seen it, but 8-man is a complicated hero who not only must battle the bad guys but must fight to keep himself sane as well, less he kill everyone around him.

He shreds through the air at lightning speeds and though he is ashamed of it, he gets his energy from a kind of cyber-dope. A company called "Bio-Tech" has been manufacturing the drugs and the cybernetic limbs and selling them to street gangs as well as a football team. The team goes berzerk and sets their sites on the spectators, 8-Man loses his grip and he mercilessly kills the players to save the innocent. The girl he had earlier saved screams at him, calling him a monster.

8-Man begins to question if he really is in control of himself. It is a very twisty and emotional piece that pulls you in. Before Sci-Fi ran the stuff I didn't even know anime existed, now its EVERYWHERE!

So I stumbled across this anime many years ago, but only having the time now to see due to how cool the animation is for it's time and that's the charm of 90s anime.

Aside from the animation and action which were redeemable, the story was OK along with the voice acting, I've seen worse than this. Overall it's a nice anime flick, just don't expect something grand as it's your typical grim dark 90s anime.

This could've kick started its own anime series with it's own arc and may outbeat Astro boy but alas the lack of interest shelved it for decades, without this, there wouldn't be 6 million dollar man or Robocop for that matter.

7/10, just because I'm generous

P.s. Let's hope Hollywood could pick this up and maybe, just maybe they could pull it off or be another RoboCop rip-off to casuals 🙈