Movies / Animé and Toons

X-Men DVD Volume 5

By Hervé St-Louis
May 12, 2010 - 00:00

The Last volume compiling the popular X-Men cartoon series from the 1990s that introduced the characters to a mass audience outside of comic books features a lot of loose end resolutions and a few good stories.

Like all long running series with intricate plots, the X-Men series from the 1990s produced by Saban and later purchased by Disney featured a variety of loose end plots to cap off the series in style. Other stories focused on much neglected popular characters such as Storm, the uncredited leader of the X-Men and strong woman whose presence held the team together. I never liked Storm in the X-Men cartoon from the 1990s. She seemed to noble and too distant for viewers to connect with her. In the comic books, the fact that her voice is left to readers to imagine probably helped. Maybe the actress was overacting. I have a similar feeling with Beast and Professor Xavier and their too literate and polished English diction.

But here, Storm snobbishness was matched with an equally distant and annoying character taken from the comic book series. Arkon, a regular foe of the Avengers plays the role of Romeo to Storm’s Juliette. It’s hard to believe she would fall so easily in a matter of days for such a man, but maybe as one character noted, Storm is used to be nobility and worshipped.

Other stories focused on the whereabouts of Apocalypse and Cortez. Another one explained the origin of Mr. Sinister, a regular foe of the X-Men in the cartoon series. I liked the flashback a lot. Another story set in the past was the Wolverine team up with Captain America. It wasn’t very deep, but we got to see the Captain in action. Although it’s a super hero series, that episode was the most super heroic of all. Longshot and the annoying Mojo were back and it was painful to watch that episode.

The quality of the stories ranged from great to bad. The one with Cannonball was great and the acting and the accents well done. The ending with a focused on Professor X and Magnus could have been better if it had been longer. Yet the writer and director managed to do in 22 minutes what it took the X-Men 3 movie two full hours to accomplish and with better results. There were a few plot holes such as the disappearance of Jean Grey. I don’t remember her being away before. I’ll have to rewatch previous DVDs.

The animation the episode focusing on Cyclops and the orphanage was bad. The one with Longshot wasn’t better. Yet, the episode with Apocalypse and Jubilee looked much better. The animation in that series really was low budget and although strong stories were the norm, looking at these episodes is often painful, when compared to older series with much better animation like G.I.Joes An American Heroe.

There are no DVD extras and less episodes than the previous volumes, yet the price is the same. It’s not a good deal.

Rating: 7 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12