Wolverine – 02

As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Infinite Stratos has a male lead who despite only piloting a mecha once, has 1337 piloting skillz. Yeah right, been there, done that. Moving on,

Anyway, now that the entire season aired, I can really say that it has one HUGE advantage, and one huge disadvantage:
– The great thing about this season is that just about every series has an awesome soundtrack. There really is a TON of ear candy here.
– The bad thing about this season: teenagers. Whether it is the series that continued on from previous seasons or the ones that debuted during the past two weeks: nearly every freaking show revolves around kids and teenagers.

The only exception is this one: Wolverine. So of course I couldn’t pass this up, especially how much better than Iron Man it has turned into. Wolverine pretty much had the worst possible publicity with the disaster that was Iron Man: poor in just about every way. Let me reassure you though: Wolverine was made by an entirely different production team. One of the few similarities is that they had their soundtracks composed by the same guy, and even there Wolverine is better.

Now, I am not really a fan of Wolverine, so I don’t really care whether or not he’s different from his American version. Still, I’m not going to complain that this series is going to adapt a number of the comic books that are integral to his backstory, especially after how Iron Man screwed up with its original story. Wolverine’s action also was much better than the incredibly dull fight scenes of Iron Man. It’s well directed and makes great use of its soundtrack in order to build up and create its atmosphere. The fights themselves aren’t particularly well animated, especially after watching Madoka Magica and Yumekui Merry, but they still work thanks to a good sense of timing and atmosphere.

The acting is very stiff, this episode showed that again, especially during the quiet parts. Still, the characterization is good enough to make up for it. The female character who was introduced in this episode actually kicks ass, compared to Iron Man’s love interests whose roles were completely shallow and corny. Yukio’s backstory meanwhile is simple, yet effective. It fits the whole superhero series much better.

Ironically, two and a half years ago Madhouse and Osamu Dezaki pretty much created the perfect example of how an anime superhero crossover should be done with Ultraviolet: it had interesting plot and characters and a unique style and creative vision. Wolverine ultimately is too simple to be as good, but this simplicity is more than enough to keep my attention here because beyond the stiff acting there’s nothing really wrong with this one. Still, this remains a great sign: all of the marvel anime are going to be completely different from each other, instead of the same. Who knows, perhaps X-Men and Blade are going to be even better?
Rating: * (Good)