Hostages are a very common trope, but then again it’s no big surprise because it’s often the most logical thing to do. You have a bunch of people who don’t want to listen to you? Just threaten to kill their best friend and they’ll squeak differently. With all tropes, there are a ton of ways to do this, whether good or bad. The first half of this episode of the X-Men showed a bit of a strange version though.
The guy with liquid powers could have killed Cyclops, Sasaki and the others that he caught easily if he wanted to. the result was that Storm and Cyclops just stood there while they easily could have zapped everyone, and the only one who did something was Hisako, being the only one stupid enough to not understand the implications of her actions.
This is where Wolverine (the TV-series) stands above the X-Men. Wolverine’s storyline was simple but effective, and was really just a bunch of powerful men duking it out for the sake of romance and stopping at nothing until they achieve their objectives. In the X-Men, the plot is dictated by teenaged emo. That’s just… less impressive.
Having said that though, this episode once again looked absolutely gorgeous, and the adults here were as good as ever. In terms of building up this series only manages to increase its tension and atmosphere, exactly as an action series should. Compare this to Sengoku Basara Two, which spent a ton of time building up to a final episode that ultimately was a let-down. Despite its plot issues, this show remains engaging and well told.
Oh, and this episode also showed a new trailer for Blade, and unfortunately it seems like the acting is going to be a problem again. That’s the thing with Madhouse: they always have great and unique visuals and character designs, but because of that they get really hard to animate consistently. The footage was only a few seconds long, but that was enough to show that the animators didn’t avoid this and the show will be full of stiff acting again. It’s a shame, because the X-Men avoided this really well.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
In the X-Men, the plot is dictated by teenaged emo. That’s just… less impressive
Yeah, I caught all that too…the thing is, they just wanted to make the small Japanese girl(hisako) look good (or better) than the rest of the team,,, Storm could have zapped, frozen or even blown away the water guy(as she is an Omega class mutant as well if you didn’t know…shes one of the strongest characters in the x men universe) Cyclops was caught in an illusion that he should have gotten out of way sooner…beast who has SUPER intellect and who always thought of something in the comics/other animated series, just stood there and did jack and shit, but then little ol hisako gets the POWAH of teenage emo angst, with a stupid flashback that nobody cares about and all of a sudden overpowers the bad guys and saves the x-men…yeah whatever. the only good things about this ep were: wolverine being …wolverine, and the grand entrance of Charles at the end…that was cool…oh and the animation was nice..other than that I was rolling my eyes throughout the episode lol
@Carbuncle i don’t know about your complaints, the only one i could agree with is Beast not doing much but Cyclops is still tramautized by Jean’s death and Storm was only confirmed a Omega-level later on, she’s still pretty young here. I mean they’ve talked about Omega but i don’t remember anyone knowing that Storm was Omega-level until she became a supporting character on Black Panthers solo book. Also, X-men have always been about adults taking care of angsty kids. I mean, even most adults are angsty in the books.