Doctor Light (Mega Man)
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| Dr. Light | |
|---|---|
 Dr. Light from Rockman Complete Works (PS1). |
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| Game series | Mega Man series |
| First game | Mega Man (1987) |
| Creator(s) | Keiji Inafune |
| Voice actor(s) (English) | Jim Byrnes (Ruby-Spears cartoon) Randall Wiebe (Powered Up) |
| Voice actor(s) (Japanese) | Shōzō Iizuka (Mega Man 8) |
| In-Universe Information | |
| Classification | Human |
| Weapon(s) | N/A, although has constructed many creations |
| Loyalty | Good |
Dr. Thomas Light, Ph.D is a video game character from the Mega Man and Mega Man X series. He is depicted as an aged scientist (in his late 50s or early 60s) with a white fluffy beard and hair combed to the back of his head.
As a peerless roboticist and winner of the Nobel prize, Dr. Light is the creator of protagonist Mega Man and several other robots (including the first six Robot Master bosses), and ultimately of X, whose design would revolutionize the world.
Dr. Light is a sage mentor figure, the counterpart to (and arch-nemesis of) the power-mad Dr. Wily. While a pacifist, he reluctantly recognizes that the use of force can be a necessity. He plays a supporting role, often developing and distributing new gear.
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[edit] History
[edit] Classic and X series
Dr. Light graduated from Robert University's engineering department, where he met his colleague Dr. Albert Wily. During the 21st century era of the Mega Man series (given as 200X in earlier games, 20XX later on) he resides in the midwestern United States with his robotic son, Rock, and his robotic daughter, Roll.
While his robots are masterworks, they are still automata, programmable tools. The last creation of the aging doctor is X, the first robot capable of genuinely independent thought and decisions. Fearful of what might happen should X go wrong, Dr. Light seals him for extensive diagnostics, knowing that they will exceed his own remaining lifespan. When X is found roughly a century later, his design is used as a basis for the reploid race of machine life.
In X's time, Dr. Light resumes his supporting role through enhancement capsules that contain upgrades to X's systems together with messages relayed by silver, slightly translucent holographic projections. The status of these holograms is not entirely clear. In games Mega Man X to X3, Dr. Light speaks in recordings, with phrases such as "I do not know what has happened to you." In contrast, from X4 to X6 he exhibits clear awareness of the situation and Zero actually holds conversations with him. In what's most likely a continuity error on Capcom's part, the capsules' messages are again presented as recordings in X7 and go back to being sentient in X8. One possible explanation is that different capsules were created at different times, with properties similar to Rock and Rockman X, insofar as one can learn and grow, whereas another can not.
[edit] MegaMan Battle Network
In the MegaMan Battle Network series (plotwise unrelated to the other ones) Dr. Light's counterpart is Tadashi Hikari, the father of Yuuichiro Hikari and the grandfather of Lan Hikari (Netto Hikari) and Hub Hikari (Saito Hikari) - aka MegaMan.EXE. In his youth, Tadashi Hikari developed the internet that exists in the series, that allows Net Navis to exist in the Cyber World - including the prototype, Alpha, which gained the ability to act on its own and turned on its creators, leading to its sealing.
Tadashi himself has never appeared while alive in the series, beyond being mentioned and in scenes where Lan and MegaMan find ways of "visiting the past." This first occurred in "Battle Network 3", where they discovered a memory recording of Dr. Hikari inside Alpha. He would be seen again in "Battle Network 5", in "Vision Burst" scenarios, recordings of specific events in time, all of which were used to give Lan and MegaMan particular information about the past and reveal the secrets of a project Tadashi was involved in.
In the anime, Tadashi is rarely mentioned, although his most meaningful appearance is a reminiscence of how he developed the "Ultimate NetNavi", PharohMan. He is present as a speaking character during a flashback sequence about Bass in the manga, however. He has also made an appearance and mention in Rockman Beast though this was his parallel universe self. But this parallel version had helped in taking all emotions from Beyondard Colonel and created Iris to hold them until Colonel wanted them back. There is no other known mention of him besides the current.
[edit] Name trivia
The character was originally renamed "Wright" in the United States because Capcom of America thought that the Japanese had tried to imitate American names unsuccessfully (this is also why Wily is often confused as "Wiley"). Dr. Light has been called by his Japanese name only once in the English releases, in Mega Man 3 (NES, 1990).
Further complicating matters, in the Mega Man Battle Network alternate universe series, Dr. Light's character counterpart is named "Tadashi Hikari" (光 正 Hikari Tadashi). Hikari (光) means "light", but Tadashii (正しい) means "right" or "correct". This was done deliberately to poke fun at the mistranslations of the past.
American fanon attributes the middle name "Xavier" to Dr. Light, but this name is not found in any Japanese or American official sources.
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Mega Man X • Mega Man X2 • Mega Man X3 • Mega Man X4 • Mega Man X5 • Mega Man X6 • Mega Man X7 • Mega Man X8 |
