--NO MAJOR SPOILERS are in this review-- J-Decker is an episodic super robot mix of SoL, comedy, and your typical police show. While aimed for young kids, there’s an undeniably comfy and energetic energy to the show that I think makes the show work for any age and is just generally enjoyable. Perhaps the most unique thing I can say about the show is its “humanization” of the robots and developing them as characters, it’s something you’ll find in hardly any other mecha show. --STORY— The actual overall plot of the show is incredibly loose, and doesn’t really come into play until the halfway point and again nearthe end of the show. Most episodes are just the Brave Police dealing with various crimes or circumstances, and there’s quite a variety of situations. The writers were creative enough that despite being nearly 50 eps, the show remained mostly fresh and entertaining the whole time. There’s also a nice core message of what it means to be human, and how both our ability to do good and bad makes us who we are. It’s nothing deep at all, but for a kid’s show it gets the job done.

--CHARACTERS—

Mecha shows pretty much always focus primarily on the characters with the robots being a vehicle to tell the story, it just so happens here the robots ARE the characters. There’s about 8 of these guys in total, and each have their own unique developments and relationships with the side cast made up of humans. The show actually tackles some interesting situations of “humanized” robots like fearing being outdated and not useful due to new models, losing their memory data, not wanting to be upgraded so they can increase their skills naturally, etc.

Yuuta is a good kid, but I can’t say there’s really any depth to him. He works ok as a mc, and the other human chars are good too. Antags don’t really have any depth either, but hey Takehito Koyasu voices one of them so that’s cool.

--ANIMATION/ART—

J-Decker is a surprisingly consistently good looking show. There’s at least 1-2 really great shots per ep, and overall doesn’t have too much stock footage for a mecha show. Mech designs are solid, and char designs have a somewhat unique thing going on with some of the hair and eyes.

--Sound—

Soundtrack is memorable enough with a pretty catchy OP and ED. VA is good, and I enjoyed Victim, Gunmax, and Shadowmaru’s vas the most. Drill Boy was kind of annoying at times, but that’s my only complaint.

--ENJOYMENT/CONCLUSION—

J-Decker is just “good”, 7.5/10 series. It doesn’t aspire to be anything more than that, but it also doesn’t drop in quality. It is probs one of the most “consistently good” shows I’ve seen. If anything, it has a few things to offer you’ll see in nothing else, but perhaps Patlabor and a few of the Brave shows. Give it a try if you’re looking for something a bit different in the mecha world.