He's a renegade! His partner is a robot! Together they fight crime!
This is the high concept of Heat Guy J, a mildly entertaining but ultimately inconsequential anime series originally released by Geneon in 2003 and now re-released in a new boxed set by FUNimation. While its 26-episode span includes some reasonably entertaining and intermittently surprising bits, it never manages to be much more than a collection of well-worn science fiction clichés executed without any truly notable flair.
 The lead of Heat Guy J is the androgynous Daisuke Aurora, the only agent of the Special Unit in the futuristic city of Judoh. His partner is the enormous and powerful "J," the only robot allowed to operate in Judoh. As the series begins, the head of the powerful Leonelli crime family has died, passing the mantle to another rather androgynous character, his bratty, spoiled son Clair. Over the course of the rest of the show, Daisuke and J uncover mafia gang wars and conspiracies over who truly runs the city, all of which feel like things we've seen elsewhere and done better besides.
While all the elements of Heat Guy J make perfect sense intellectually, the series never really manages to connect emotionally. Over half of the series essentially consists of world- and character-building, which it needs if the conclusion is to have meaning and resonance. Even so, a lot of it still feels like padding, partly because so much of it consists of material recycled from other science fiction series and police procedurals, and which for that reason doesn't really need explaining. The Special Unit's office manager Kyoko Milchan is a stereotypical uptight den mother, constantly nagging Daisuke to file his paperwork (although she's not above providing a little fan service when she needs do some field work). The police officer Ken Edmundo is a world-weary cop, constantly sniping at Daisuke for working outside the law. The mysterious, sword-wielding criminal Boma is slightly more interesting, but still overly familiar as a tall, dark, silent stranger with a shadowy past who maybe isn't as bad as we are supposed to think. The story resolves itself into yet another conspiracy theory where Everything You Thought You Knew Was Wrong And Nothing Is What It Seems, but several of the plot twists can be easily guessed several episodes before they are revealed. The show manages to show a flash of inspiration or creativity every now and then, but such inspiration is sadly rare.
 It doesn't help that the series also undermines itself early and often. We are led to believe that Daisuke is some kind of hyper-capable super-cop, but he completely flubs most of his earlier missions and only succeeds (and survives) due to the timely intervention of J. One of the series' throwaway conceits is that Daisuke must file a special request every time he wants to carry a firearm, and even then is usually issued only 4 bullets: three normal rounds and one "Red Tab." Like Daisuke, the Red Tab is clearly supposed to be the best of the best—a highly destructive super-bullet—but it is so ineffective or easily defeated in all its early appearances that we are left wondering why Daisuke bothers to discharge his weapon at all. Similarly, Clair Leonelli's childish behavior is clearly supposed to make him seem like a dangerously unhinged and unpredictable menace. Instead, he comes off as merely a spoiled brat playing mafia don, ensuring that we cannot take him seriously or treat him as a threat.
One of the only reasons why the series is watchable at all is J himself. Oddly enough, he avoids many of the usual clichés about science fiction robots by being treated as little more than a machine by both the writers and the other characters on the show. J is not afflicted with any kind of Pinocchio complex. He doesn't have problems with his second-class citizen status as a mechanical being because the inequity doesn't seem to register with him at all. When other characters insult him to his face, he betrays as much emotion as our computers and cell phones do in response to our curses and threats. J's appeal is further enhanced by the hilariously deadpan delivery of his dialogue (by Takayuki Sugo in Japanese and Bob Papenbrook in English), especially when he drops his pithy maxims about how a Man should behave on the insouciant Daisuke. On top of all that, he's also just flat-out cool, leaping in to save the day with a steam-engine blare and a well-placed steel fist, even if he is little more than a deus ex machina more than once. J comes off as something like a super-strong, hyper-capable GPS: an exceptionally useful device that is very easy to project a personality onto.
 Heat Guy J's animation is solid but unremarkable. The best work is reserved for the many action scenes, which have a nice kinetic punch to them. The only real sign of the show's age is the rough melding of CGI and hand-drawn elements, which has gotten much smoother in the six years since this show was first released. FUNimation's four-disc DVD set packs 6 to 7 episodes per disc with no discernible loss of quality in the anamorphic widescreen image. The soundtrack is in English and Japanese, in a flat stereo for both—a slight disappointment, but the action scenes don't seem to have suffered much from the loss of surround sound and sub-woofer rumble. The translation is quite good, though; an example of its nice touch is how Daisuke is nicknamed "Dai" or "Dai-chan" in Japanese, but "Dice" in English. The only extra included is an interview with the show creators on disc 4, which would be of greater value or interest if the show were better.
Heat Guy J isn't a bad show, but it isn't a great one, either, doing little to distinguish itself from the other TV shows and movies that it liberally borrows from. However, it is always easy to watch and reasonably addictive. It's not much of a recommendation to say, "You could do worse," but Heat Guy J never rises much higher than above average.
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