Anime Review: Marvel Anime: X-Men
The Tohoku region of northern Japan has an unusually high number of mutants in its population. Recently, some of them have gone missing. Given the general prejudice against mutants, there hasn’t been much interest in looking for them, especially after a couple of police officers who tried wound up dead in “accidents.” It’s not until teenager Hisako Ichiki is abducted that her parents contact Charles “Professor X” Xavier, one of the world’s top mutant researchers, a powerful telepath, and the founder of the mutant superhero team called the “X-Men.” For some reason, the Cerebro device Xavier uses to detect mutants has a dead spot in the Tohoku area, as though something is blocking both that and telepathy. Professor X agrees to send the X-Men to investigate.
This version of the team includes Hank “Beast” McCoy, who has great strength and agility from his furry body, but is also a brainy scientist; Ororo “Storm” Munro, weather controller; Logan “Wolverine” (just “Logan”), who has sharp senses, regeneration, and unbreakable adamantium bones and claws; and Scott “Cyclops” Summers, who projects force beams from his eyes and is the field leader. Cyclops has to be prodded back into action since the death of his girlfriend Jean “Phoenix” Gray has left him emotionally broken for the last year.
In Japan, the X-Men quickly discover that the abductions are the work of the U-Men, a human supremacist group that uses cybernetics and stolen mutant organs to give themselves twisted bodies and powers. Hisako is found alive and unconscious in the U-Men base, along with a surprise outsider. Emma “White Queen” Frost! Hisako is able to use her mutant power of a psionic exoskeleton to protect people, but doesn’t have much control. And Miss Frost is suffering from Damon-Hall Syndrome, which causes secondary mutations. Her new diamond form is actually pretty cool, but interferes with her normal telepathy.
After the rescue, Hisako’s parents explain that they’d hired Emma Frost to teach their daughter how to control her powers, but she’d never arrived. Emma claims that this is because she’d detoured to scout the telepathic dead zone and been ambushed by the U-Men. Cyclops is suspicious. As the White Queen, Emma had been a member of the Inner Circle (standing in for the comics’ Hellfire Club) and he distinctly remembers her manipulating Jean Gray into going berserk. Ms. Frost claims she’d left the Inner Circle before that battle.
Hisako takes the code name “Armor” and since the local Sasaki Institute has closed (and most people don’t even remember it existed) comes to New York to train with the X-Men. It’s soon discovered that the mutant detection and telepathic dead zone in Tohoku has not gone away with the defeat of the U-Men, and cases of Damon-Hall Syndrome in the area are skyrocketing. The team returns to vaccinate the local mutants with a cure for Damon-Hall and investigate the strange incidents more closely. They’re joined by Armor and (over Cyclops’ protests) Emma Frost.
It turns out there is a hidden menace in the mountains of Tohoku, one that was never suspected until now, but with a personal connection to Professor X. Exacerbated by an old enemy of the X-Men, it could destroy the world!
This was the third of four anime series created by Madhouse in conjunction with Marvel Comics, though it’s not clear if it’s in continuity with the Wolverine series previously reviewed. It mixes and matches elements from the comics and movie version of our heroes that protect a world that hates and fears them, and adds a few localized characters. (Armor is, however, an existing character from the American comic books.)
Character changes range from small to serious (Storm is made weaker by having her powers drain her and she’s seemingly lost her background as a street thief and goddess) to striking. Emma Frost loses almost all of her villainous traits outside a little snarking, and Jason “Mastermind” Wyngarde’s illusions are now nearly capable of taking out the X-Men solo.
The art and story are okay, if kind of stock for the X-Men franchise. There’re some good action sequences, with considerably less
standing around explaining how your power works than anime from many shounen action series.
Jean’s death hangs over the entire series, affecting Cyclops and Wolverine most strongly. There are hints that she’s not entirely gone.
One thing I felt disappointed by was the surprisingly small cast–there are dozens of X-Men and evil mutants that could be at least referenced. There’s some brief cameos in the final episode, and a sequel hook where Magneto has escaped from prison off-camera, but no pictures of former students in Professor X’s school?
Content note: body horror, fantastic racism towards mutants, suicide.
It’s best to have a little familiarity with the X-Men characters before seeing this series, so you know where they are coming from, but it’s a self-contained story so little continuity lockout. Most assuredly worth seeing if you’re a mutant fan.
