Growing up in the late 80’s and early 90’s, memories of the Spider-Man and X-Men animated series, aired on Fox Kids, often float around in my head. Those cartoons were the whole reason I ever took an interest in comics and comic book characters, so any time I hear about a new Marvel animated series, I usually take interest. One of Marvel’s latest ventures unites another interest that I acquired around high school, anime.
Marvel has been working on bringing their unique characters to a new audience by sending their characters to the realm of Japanese animation. The new experiment for Marvel is bringing Iron Man, Wolverine, The X-Men, and Blade a new look with animation styles, being overseen by various Japanese anime directors, including Mitsuyuki Masuhara, who worked on the popular series, Death Note.
Being a fan of the X-Men franchise, this series piqued my interest the most. After watching a few of the episodes, it looks to be off to a good start. Comic fans may take a moment to get used to the new visual style of some of the characters, but each of the X-Men characters retain their classic traits (you won’t find Wolverine with goofy bright yellow 80’s style hair here.) The English dubs won’t be out for a while, so I can only wonder how good voice acting will be. In my mind Wolverine will always have the gruff vocals of Cathal Dodd, the man who voiced good old Logan in the 90’s animated series, but anime English voice overs tend to be pretty hit or miss. Let’s hope they get a hit.
Iron Man and Wolverine have already aired in Japan and are scheduled for airing on G4, July 29. Although I haven’t had a chance to check out either of those series, they have received good reviews, so my hopes are a bit high for their release into the U.S. market. X-Men has been airing in Japan since April 1, and Blade begins July 1, with a release in the U.S. probably a few months after for each of the series. If these new adaptations are received well, we may see a swell of comic book based anime series. As long as they keep making quality work, I say the more the merrier when it comes to our favorite comic heroes!
Written by Ryan Heuer
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Tags:
Marvel, Anime