Mega Man: Upon a Star, known in Japan as Rockman: Hoshi ni Negai o (ロックマン 星に願いを, lit. "Rockman: Wishing Upon a Star"), is a Japanese anime original video animation (OVA) series based on the popular Capcom video game franchise Mega Man, produced by Universal Multimedia Entertainment, Capcom and Ashi Productions (who also worked on the American Mega Man cartoon in 1994).
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Plot
In the early 1990s, Yuuta Kobayashi is a Japanese boy who plays the game Mega Man 5, but forgets to turn off his console when going to bed. Mega Man along with his friends and foes manage to exit the "video game world" to Japan in the "real world". Dr. Wily quickly attempts to conquer the real world, and Mega Man teams up with the Kobayashi family to search for Dr. Wily.
Why It's Wishing Upon A Star
- Unlike other Mega Man cartoons, Mega Man or even the other characters from the Mega Man series here remain with their original design of the Japanese Mega Man box art.
- While it's educational on Japanese culture, the show still allows Mega Man to do his things, which is something that most video game educational cartoons don't do.
- The Mega Man characters get a decent number of screen times, including Mega Man himself, who gets the most screen time of all the Mega Man characters.
- The plot was innovative for the time of its release: Yuuta Kobayashi played Mega Man 5 but forgot to go in bed and turn off the NES, and Mega Man, with both his friends and foes (mostly Dr. Wily), was out of the video game world.
- There are some funny scenes here and there, such as when Dr. Wily goes out of the game and jumps out of the window to be out of the Kobayashi family house and falls to the ground.
- All of the Kobayashi family characters have a nice design and are all likable for the most part, especially the kids themselves. Dr. Wily even said good-bye happily when an episode ended!
- The intro and outro before an episode are both awesome and badass, even by Mega Man standards.
- The show is very faithful to the Mega Man games despite being based on Japanese culture.
- Both the Japanese and English dubs are well made; even the English version is good and better than the English voice acting of both Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X4.
- The animation is great, with no animation errors which was impressive for a 1993 animated show.
- The soundtrack is really good, especially the openings, which have some of the best musics of the entire show.
Bad Qualities
- Some of the characters can be unlikable at times (trough that depends on the people)
- While the third episode was released in 1995, they unfortunately didn't include Bass from Mega Man 7 or even other new characters, which is a missed opportunity.
- Unfortunately, there are only 3 episodes which is way too short for a show.
Reception
Mega Man: Upon a Star receives mixed to positive reviews by critics and positive reviews by Mega Man fans; the series currently holds a 7.6/10 on IMDb.