is the title character and protagonist of the Viewtiful Joe series. While normally a regular person named Joe, he obtains the ability to transform into Viewtiful Joe by entering a movie and gaining the ability from an older superhero named Captain Blue in order to save his girlfriend, Silvia. He was created by the game's director, Hideki Kamiya, and illustrated by Kumiko Suekane. In the video games he is voiced by Dee Bradley Baker, while he is voiced by Jason Palmer and Tomokazu Seki in the English and Japanese dubs of the anime series respectively. Joe has appeared in several video games, both in his series and in spin-off material. He first appeared in Viewtiful Joe, where he obtained his signature costume and abilities. This release was followed by two sequels titled Viewtiful Joe 2 and Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble!; in the first, Joe is teamed with Silvia, who has become the superhero Sexy Silvia. One more game was released in the series titled Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble, a fighting spin-off game featuring Joe amongst other characters from the series. Joe has appeared in three other fighting games from Capcom: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Joe has received generally positive reception. Concept and creation Joe's character design, created by Kumiko Suekane, was inspired specifically by 1960s and 1970s Japanese-costumed tokusatsu television shows such as Kamen Rider and Ultraman. The design is most akin to the Tatsunoko Productions hero, Casshern. The protagonist of Viewtiful Joe was originally going to be a cute and innocent-looking character who had great physical prowess and super powers, but the developers found this boring and went with a cooler character. In its earliest stages of development, the character went under the working title "Red Hot Man", but the name was changed due to copyright conflicts with the American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers. When designing the star of the video game Bayonetta, Kamiya described two of his characters, Joe and Dante from Devil May Cry as a mischievous kid and a tough guy respectively, and that he wanted to create a different character from these archetypes. Characteristics Viewtiful Joe has the power to slow down the movie, speed it up, and to zoom into the picture, much like camera effects seen in movies. At first, he is only able to