Marvel Anime: Iron Man and Wolverine

So, I missed the first few minutes of Iron Man, but... I don't think that could change my opinion. Anyway, these were created by Madhouse, which made me reasonably excited because they did Trigun, my favorite anime. Read on to see how they are.

 

Iron Man

Well, that was a disaster. There's very little about this to like this show, but let's break it down piece by piece, starting with the most obvious part, the art. Simply put, it's terrible. They go with the dubious choice of pairing CG with traditional animation, with the Iron Man suits being CG. Normally this wouldn't be too bad, but they look incredibly flat, and their animation seems to be missing frames. Of course, the traditional animation isn't any better. All the characters are weirdly angular, with the worst victim being Tony Stark. His nose looks like a lethal weapon, and instead of looking like a playboy, he looks like a date rapist.

This is not helped by his terrible voice, provided by Adrian "Nathan Petrelli" Pasdar. While his visual design suggests rapist, it's Pasdar's truly awful performance that seals the deal. The quality of the rest of the voice work is consistent with this, and the script really lets them be as bad as they can be with some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard. Iron Man gets attacked by a monster, who politely pauses while trying to kill him to tell him what his name is and what organization he works with!

Everything about this show is terrible, avoid it at all costs.

Wolverine

Most of what I said before applies here as well, but I wanted to call attention to Wolverine's awful design in here. It's like they looked at his design, realized they liked his claws, and then simply added them to a character they had already made that doesn't look anything like him! He appears to be roughly 7 feet tall, slender and with no body hair. In other words, the exact opposite of his design in the comics.

Of course, I should point out that the voice work is much better here, though the script could use some work. Somehow he plans out a battle against people who can turn invisible well enough to know that one of them would take his friend hostage and they would fall off a building, and Logan would have to slow the fall with his claws... and then catch the can of beer he had thrown into the air at the beginning of the fight. This definitely isn't the same character as the comics.

As a side note, hearing the word bub come out of this character's mouth was HILARIOUS.

Final verdict: Not quite as terrible as Iron Man, but insulting to anyone who enjoys Wolverine.