Detective Azuma is murdered by criminals and his body is retrieved by Captain Tanaka (in the manga), or Professor Tani (in the anime).

He typically takes on the form of his former body, and keeps the fact that he is a super robot or 8man secret from everyone, even his secretary Sachiko and his assistant Ichiro.

In the manga, Detective Azuma is trapped in a warehouse and gunned down, while the TV series has him killed when he is run over by a car.

Building on Astro Boy, 8 Man helped to shape the trajectory of robot and cyborg heroes for the next decade.

While the game stayed true to the concept of a crime-fighting super-robot, it was widely criticized for being tedious and relying too much on the gimmick of its speed-running effect.

8 Man - For All the Lonely Nights), it was directed by Yasuhiro Horiuchi and starred Kai Shishido as the title character and Toshihide Wakamatsu as Detective Yokota.

Distributed in the United States by Fox Lorber video simply as 8 Man, the movie was widely panned for its choppy editing, mediocre direction, and low-budget feel.

Many modern American viewers, unfamiliar with the older animated series, felt the movie was an inferior version of RoboCop, although the latter was a much more recent franchise.

[10] Existing in a world far more corrupt than that of his predecessor, the new 8 Man had no qualms about being extremely violent towards the cybernetic criminals who had murdered him previously.

[15] A crossover between 8 Man and Cyborg 009 by Kyoichi Nanatsuki (script) and Masato Hayate (art), began serialization in Champion Red on July 18, 2020.