How About That Thing?

Everybody has their favorite Mega Man video game. A lot like 2, a lot like 3, and some like 4, 5, and/or 6. And then there’s those weirdos who like 8. We don’t talk about those people. Or Mega Man 8 as a whole, for that matter.

For me, It’s probably anywhere between 3 and 6 in terms of my favorite game ever. Mega Man 1 got the ball rolling for sure, and Mega Man 2 proved that the sequel can be better to the point of eclipsing the original entirely. Hell, even Mega Man 7 wasn’t ENTIRELY without charm. But for me, the era between 3 and 6 was definitely the sweet spot.

And when I think of my absolute favorite Mega Man BOSS of all time, there’s one name that comes up instantly. Yamato Man.

You’re probably looking at me funny right now. Seriously, THAT’S the robot master you picked?

Look, I get it. Yamato Man was probably not anyone else’s first choice. In fact, Mega Man 6 as a whole was probably not the game that had anybody’s favorite robot master. I myself don’t really know what to tell you, except Mega Man 6 was the Mega Man I remembered the most clearly from my childhood, if not the most fondly.

Furthermore, as embarrassing as it probably is to admit out loud… I have no idea what a yamato even is. Context clues tell me it might be a type of spear? But they don’t call him Spear Man, do they? Nope. They go all out technical, and call him Yamato Man: which ten-year-old me looked at with wonder and intrigue.

See, I wasn’t always a hardcore otaku. I didn’t really come to know Japan, and a lot of its cultural cliches and quirks until around high school, when I met my first ever anime nerds. Sure, I knew Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was originally a Japanese show, and I’d heard things about Sailor Moon at the time. However, I knew virtually nothing about Japan, or Japanese culture, or Japanese history, or Japanese ANYTHING until at least college. And frankly, the stuff I DO know is mostly foot notes and random trivia about this or that, but I digress.

Yamato Man’s level is definitely Japan themed. The only thing it really brings to the table, compared to other levels, is this guy.

He’s a pretty common enemy throughout the level, and he’s equally pretty easy to dispatch.

The music of Yamato Man’s level is… Interesting. There’s a weird part of me that thinks someone was influenced by the Power Rangers theme… But I’ve presented this theory to friends and well wishers alike, and nobody else seems to hear it like I do. I mean yeah, there’s enough to differentiate the two. It’s not a ripoff, but there’s definitely some cradling going on in the writing of this music.

And then, there’s Yamato Man himself. Wearing a style of armor I’d only ever seen in that Ronan Warriors cartoon I used to watch, and wielding a spear that I honestly thought was going to be more involved than it actually is. Also, Mega Man 6’s robot masters have that really cool/overdramatic entrance where the sky turns dark, and lightning strikes as they lower to the ground. MM6’s boss music, while not my favorite, is definitely not without its charm.

Then the battle begins. And… Yeah, I’m pretty sure the developers wanted you to fight this guy first. Hands down, Yamato Man is the easiest robot master in the game. He has a grand total of two attacks:

1. He leaps up into the air, and fires a spread shot down at you.
2. He hurls a spear at you, then walks on over to pick it back up.

That’s it. That’s literally all he does the entire time.

The weapon you get when you beat him is, obviously, his throwing spear. And now I’m not sure if the spear he spins is the yamato, or if the throwing spear is, now that I think on it. Is it a USEFUL weapon? Eh, not especially. I actually can’t remember if I ever figured out which robot master is weak against it, and I never really used it for much after the fact. Unlike Tomahawk Man’s tomahawk that can curve upward or downward, or Centaur Man’s centaur flash, which freezes time for a few seconds. But considering Yamato Man was the first robot master I beat on my first playthrough, I still considered it an accomplishment to obtain this weapon.

So yeah, perhaps Yamato Man himself isn’t really all that interesting to normal people. But to ten-year-old me, he was the single most interesting thing about Mega Man 6 altogether. No joke.

I liked Yamato Man so much, I even started drawing a sort of fan comic about him. I forget what it’s about now, and I think the pages I had drawn out got lost to time and multiple moves across the Kansas City area, but I remember Yamato Man being the protagonist, I remember it being a sort of alternate reality where Mr. X was not only NOT Dr. Wily, but his own separate character entirely; and I remember Blizzard Man being the monster of the day in the one and only issue. It had a lot of what the kids would probably call “first issue energy”. IE, you can tell there was a lot of worldbuilding and not a whole lot of action or adventure just yet in the way the panels were coming out. I think if I had the motivation I do now, and if I’d known there was a market for fan comics out there in the world, I’d have probably finished it at some point.

Either way, this was how much I loved this character. which is more than I can say for literally ANY Mega Man boss before, during, or since.