The Brave Police J-Decker is my favorite anime of all time. Its a very important series to me and overall a franchise that I hold very dear to my heart. I hope this page encourages you to check it out.
"What is Brave Police J-Decker?" Well first, It'd probably be helpful to understand what the Brave Series is. The Brave series is a franchise that came out of the time shortly after Takara ended the G1 Transformers storyline when they partnered with the animation studio Sunrise (famous for mecha such as Gundam). Almost every installment deals with themes of bravery (hence the name "Brave Series") and the main cast often consistents of humanoid mecha robots and human characters. The various installments focus on the cast forming bonds and friendships with one another while defeating the overarching antagonist. They will often deal with semi-complex themes of emotions and what it means to truly have a heart. The Brave series is a major reason why we still have the super robot genre today. While the Brave Series itself is very popular, the titles most people know are Exkaiser (1990) and GaoGaiGar (1997-2016). Meanwhile, not many people pay attention to Brave Police J-Decker, which came out in 1994. Brave Police J-Decker is the fifth entry in the series, following Brave Express Might Gaine and followed by The Brave of Gold Goldran. Brave Police is my personal all-time favorite and it makes me happy I get to share it with you!
Fun Fact: Did you know that the “Is This a Pigeon?” meme comes from a Brave Series? It’s from The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird (1991).
The story is focused around a young boy named Yuta who stumbles upon a robot. This robot is known as Deckerd, who was made for the Japanese Police Force. With Yuuta interacting with Deckerd consistently, it caused him to create a robotic "heart". Due to this and the two's partnership, Yuta became the boss of the "Brave Police Force". We watch him and Deckerd make new friends and preform heroic acts all while getting to see their friendship progress. We also get introduced to more robotic characters, all of which we get to see understand themselves and help one another. You can actually enjoy the full series subbed on Youtube by following this link.
In my opinion, Brave Police is a fantastic and easy way to be introduced to the super robot genre. The story eases you into the universe of the show, so there isn't much homework to do before jumping in. All of the characters, both human and robot, are very charming and unique. The characterization and development of the robotic characters is very interesting and often very sweet, so much so that I feel like it has some of the best characterization of the robot characters in all the Brave Series. There’s a character for everyone to enjoy in my opinion. Outside of this shrine, I also collect multiple pieces of J-Decker merchindise and related memorabilia, including Atsuko Ishida’s Art Book, who served as a character designer and animator on the show. Included in my collection also is the Dengeki Data Collection: Brave Police J-Decker Guidebook which includes full character profiles from the main cast to the villains and costume changes from the show. I hope to scan some of my favorite pages from these and share them on this page in the future. I also completed the BP-119 Duke Model Kit previously. I also created the stamps below, so if you find yourself liking the series feel free to share them, though I'd appreciate credit if you can!
Fun Fact: The reason why Duke's number is 119 because its Japan's emergency number and he's an ambulance.
If you can’t tell from my url, my favorite character is BP-119 Duke! He is incredibly important to me and is one of my favorite characters of all time. He appears in episode 25 so if you're new to this series you won't be seeing him for a bit. Duke is very similar to Deckerd, he was made to further the police force in England and then sent to Japan to aid in the Brave Police division. Duke has to step up as the leader of the group during Deckerd's disappearance, much to the dismay of the other robots. Duke at the time refused to express emotion and was overall very stubborn to the idea showing compassion or sympathy. Duke must learn the value of emotional connections with the others and how his emotions will affect his choices regardless how much he tries to ignore them. Duke is an amazing character and has a very interesting contrasting narrative to Deckerd considering their different relationships with their human companions.