Movies / Animé and Toons

Marvel X-Men Volume 2

By Hervé St-Louis
April 30, 2009 - 23:13

The second volume of the X-Men cartoon series from the 1990s continues in chronological order, the adventures of a core team of X-Men, representative of the line up from the 1990s. The main plots are the adventures of Professor X, Magneto in the Savage lands against mutants, and Sauron and the continuing fight of Cyclops and Jean Grey against Mr. Sinister. The series ends with first Phoenix saga that establishes how Jean Grey first got her powers and also marks the first meeting of the X-Men with the Shi'ar and their imperial guard.

The animation in these episodes was a little better than the one in the first volume, but not by much. One recurrent issue is that for almost every story arc Saban switched studios. Therefore, the characters’ model sheets are not always consistent and the characters will change slightly depending on the artist. Episodes with Bishop are the worst. Others with Lady Deathstrike are much better, with a little bit of overacting by the characters. A constant in this series was the choice of using black as darker areas on the characters. It was a way of evoking the comic book origin of the series. However, it probably added to the dated look of the series when compared to newer X-Men series that totally adopted the animation look and did not try to reproduce the comic book look. A similar series with the same type of realism in character design was Marvel Studios’ G.I.Joe series that clearly escaped the strong-inked look of X-Men and fared much better. The inked look weighs on the characters and creates large patches on the screen that compete for the viewers’ attention with the motion. As the backgrounds of the series were not impressive, the black shadows on the characters made them stand out even more and did not provide a balance overall design. One can feel from this series that Saban did not hire the best designers on the industry to render this series.

However, what Saban’s team lacked in visual design skill, it more than made up in storytelling. The continuing saga of the X-Men presented in this series, makes it the most engaging X-Men cartoon series ever. None of the other series created in the 2000s can match this series in terms of rendering the plight of mutants against a suspecting world as well as this series. The characterization is superior and unlike recent cartoons, doesn’t treat viewers as idiots or try to sell them a junior version of the characters in the hopes that kids will find them relatable. Instead, the series just pushed ahead with what the X-Men are adapting elements from the comic book series creatively and logically.

The DVD features for this release are the same as the previous. Language options in Spanish and French and no commentaries or extras. The one annoying part is the multiple trailers and teasers added by Disney when starting the first disc. It’s annoying that one has to skip about ten trailers before getting to the actual material desired. Since DVD trailers are here to stay, I’m not asking Disney to remove them all from its DVDs. But ten trailers is overkill and trying the patience of your viewers. No more than two trailers should begin a DVD disc. The rest of the material can be put in the sneak preview section of the disc where viewers can choose to view them if they like. It’s disrespectful of viewers for Disney to view them as walking piggy banks to whom you have to force feed commercials for upcoming films and DVDs.

Disc 1

• Red Dawn
• Repo Man
• X-Ternally Yours
• Time Fugitives (Part 1)
• Time Fugitives (Part 2)
• A Rogue's Tale
• Beauty & The Beast
• Mojo Vision

Disc 2

• Reunion (Part 1)
• Reunion (Part 2)
• Out of the Past (Part 1)
• Out of the Past (Part 2)
• The Phoenix Saga (Part 1): Sacrifice
• The Phoenix Saga (Part 2): The Dark Shroud
• The Phoenix Saga (Part 3): Cry of the Banshee
• The Phoenix Saga (Part 4): The Starjammers
• The Phoenix Saga (Part 5): Child of Light

Rating: 9 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12