i've always thought it was particularly interesting that wily decided that the very first mega man killer had features resembling close to a human. human-like face. human-like anatomy.
all three mega man killers are humanoids for sure, but it feels incredibly deliberate that the first had to be human-like. why not an air man-type body, instead? with how wily chose the designs for the second-line to be less human-friendly and more power-based than that of the first-line (even accounting for the inspirations, for instance, with how elec man's design inspired quick man's), wouldn't he instead do something bulkier and less human-like to make the ideal robot who would dispatch mega man? what, and how, would having a human-like countenance contribute to the killing of mega man?
maybe, you could say, he got a little too inspired by light's design philosophy at first, before de-prioritizing people-friendliness over sheer power... and that would be that. and that makes sense; the robot masters that he's ever created have been bulkier and beefier in weaponry, and that's even reflected in the progression of the mega man killer designs, somewhat.
i think there's more to that.
enker's special weapon is the mirror buster. its function is that it redirects residual energy absorbed by enker (albeit taking damage from it too) towards the target in a wave form traced by the tip of his barrier spear. that residual energy seems to be only coming from mega man's buster shots, according to the damage chart for enker in dr. wily's revenge. (*)
i will be honest: i don't think the mirror buster really serves its purpose of killing mega man that well. it seems more of a defensive weapon rather than a directly offensive weapon, and enker makes that up with these acrobatics that actually costs those health points more. when i played dr. wily's revenge and got face to face with enker for the first time, i accrued a lot of damage not from the waves he sends back at me (which i could easily jump), but with from colliding with him in that little cramped gameboy screen space, where mega man's jump has a height that barely skirts the tip of enker's head spike.
so this makes it even more curious: if the mirror buster seems really counterintuitive to enker's purpose, then what was wily trying with that? wily had intentions with that choice of special weapon, as he certainly did when he chose a human-like design for enker! so, then, what are those intentions?
okay, this is where it gets into headcanon territory. i think enker's design is supposed to be a symbolic middle finger at light, were he to be successful in dispatching mega man.
in particular, i think enker is supposed to be a hypothesis for wily to test the following: that the way to defeat mega man IS to mirror him, or well, mirror something like him. we can see this with the mirror buster: it produces the largest wave when enker exclusively absorbs the mega buster shots. thus it's really to mirror mega man's attacks back!
wily has already attempted at verifying this hypothesis at least once with copy robot, who is exactly in likeness to mega man himself. when that didn't work out, well, i think wily still held onto that hypothesis in a different form: rather than fully copy mega man, he was trying to isolate the parts of what made mega man so powerful himself, and see if those parts can be used against him.
so, i think he started out with the human-like features like appearance and AI, where, in a sort of roundabout way, that if his first mega man killer started out as a well-developed human-like AI (with all the packages of emotions, experiences, and autonomy on the level of blues, rock, and roll) then that can be used and developed into an efficient machine to defeat light's well-developed human-like AI who just turned out to be a really good at battling. and if that were successful, then i think wily could rub that in light's face.
(that didn't work out, so wily developed mega man killer number two, punk, who is without the human-like features, and not at all a mirror of mega man.)
i could even go a step further and say that wily based enker off of blues, judging from the musically-themed name and the connection. (**) i'm sure he was well aware of blues's existence around mega man 1, since sniper joes appear in bomb man's stage and sniper joes are repurposed service robots based off of proto man. it wouldn't be uncanny if wily extended that inspiration of blues from the sniper joes to enker himself.
i could say more about that and where that leads into enker's development and how that affects him (listen i think enker is a very significant project, on par with how important blues, rock, and roll are to light, and that there's something to the expectation of being mega man's killer that deeply hurts him to the core, and how i headcanon him to be extremely parallel to blues, and so on and so forth) but ok that's enough typing my hands are tired and i am draining. i just really wanted to ramble about this. wheek wheek
(*) i think it's particularly funny that enker is damaged by nothing other than the mega buster in both dr. wily's revenge and mega man v. listen i tried sending mars' photon missiles to his way when i played mega man v. nothing. nada. he is impervious to stardroid weapons and weak to mega arm, which is crazy. maybe that's worth another exploratory essay in another time...
(**) the genres of enka and blues are really similar (thematically and melodically, each using a pentatonic scale). in fact, some of the stylistic origins of modern enka can be traced to jazz and blues, due to the sudden popularity of these genres during and after the occupational period for japan, led by the utagoe movement and the jcp
