Here it is, the third Marvel/Madhouse studio instalment and the one crossover in particular I was eager to watch being a self confessed X Geek. I couldn’t begin to express my enthusiasm with this little project and yet here in lies the problem. Given that I’m already familiar with the comics, I can’t say I was entirely satisfied with the anime adaptation. Despite the strongest offering to date, I can’t help but feel nagged by the little inaccuracies that held the anime back from complete brilliance.
To start with, I found the choice of cast or rather lack there of to be a consistent problem. Considering the vastness of the marvel universe, the primary x-men roster was fairly limited which seemed a real shame overall. While the anime made the correct decision of making Cyclops its lead character, something pretty novel in recent media history, the supporting cast received a mixed reception. Wolverine actually restored my faith in the character, Emma Frost gave a good suspicious sexbomb and first time animated Hisako was your standard tween, slightly annoying but unexpectedly proved her worth in the end. However the likes of Beast and Storm were audaciously overlooked, all but whitewashed into the background.
The villains on the other hand were a colossal let down. The U-Men were incredibly tedious and one dimensional. Fortunately a mutant baddie did make an appearance and Mastermind did a reasonable job if somewhat clichéd, still he was just not the one I wanted. The sheer lack of Magneto really undermined the whole piece, especially with several references and artwork in the credits, nothing more then empty promises. Nevertheless I have my fingers crossed after watching the epilogue, same goes for Rogue, Nightcrawler and
I was further frustrated by Japanese versions of pre-existing characters in the form of Yui Sasaki and Takeo Sasaki who were blatantly based on Moria MacTaggert and Legion respectively. Their personas and appearances are all but identical, why not just use the names as well and thereby acknowledge the original characters? Then again this is little more then a personal regret since both Moira and Legion are old favourites of mine.
Another more prominent problem concerns the script. Despite an interesting premise and a rather gripping opening couple of episodes featuring a concept that’s familiar to long term x-fans and self explanatory to x-newbies, nevertheless the main plot took a massive detour about half way through the season when the X-Men hot tail it out of
Nonetheless anime X-Men has some strong advantages in its favour. For one thing, it’s visually stunning, the animation remains true to the comic books while having placed a sleek twist on character designs, giving very striking individual appearances. I have to take my hat off to Madhouse studio, particularly when you compare to the last American X-Men cartoon, which frankly had such a worse animation and flat character designs, I’ve ever seen in an x-related cartoon.
In all, the anime had a lot of squandered potential but that doesn’t necessarily make the series bad. Perhaps the main problem was that the series was an adaptation and therefore open to interpretations. Hopefully there will be a second season and hopefully it can improve on some of these flaws.
Rating: 7.5/10
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