The first part of Madhouse Studios and Marvel’s four-part joint collaboration, Iron Man is a twelve episode series based on the comic books with the same name. The series is written by Warren Ellis with Yuzo Sato directing it. Is this series good start to the Marvel Anime series? Just read the review to find out!
In this series, Tony Stark decides to create an Arc Reactor in Japan and along with, decides to plan his retirement by creating a new Iron Man armor called, Dio. But during his stay in Japan, Dio goes out of control and ends up with the sinister organization called Zodiac. Because of this, Tony decides to return to his old gold and red suit and kick Zodiac robot butt as Iron Man!
On to the review, to answer the question that I asked earlier, is it a good start with the four part Marvel Anime series? The answer is no. Iron Man fails what fans expected in the trailer. To those who remembered the trailer, Iron Man’s armor is more eye candy 2D, but the actual product is this. We have a badly CGI Iron Man suit with bad transitions between traditional and CGI! Seriously, the CGI suit reminded me of the latest Iron Man cartoon in which Tony is a teenager!
The suit was disappointing for starters but what’s more is the story. At first, it follows more of the traditional monster of the week route, a route followed by Japan in its superhero shows since the big Henshin Hero boom that gave us Kamen Rider and Goranger and other Ishinomori heroes. To begin with, I find it fun to watch but the problem is how will this formula last in the short span of time? This is when Sakurai and Yinsen came into picture.
Similar to the Yinsen we know from the other incarnations, he is the one who saved Tony’s life by creating an artificial pace maker available in the terrorist camp where Tony was held captive. The only difference with this Yinsen is that he lived and decided to take revenge on Tony because of his company who, even after Tony halted the weapons production still does under the table transactions without Tony knowing and after realizing that the Iron Man armor is also a weapon.
I love this version of Yinsen! He is the perfect rival to Tony because he was involved with the early days of the Mark 1 Iron Man suit. What makes this version of Yinsen fun to watch is that he is operating Dio and the big revelation on his introduction in this series gave a good impression of a master vs. student scene in this series plus the episode where he was over the top is too epic not to miss! He is something that this show needs; a deeper plot with Tony having a bit of conflict with the ideals his “mentor” thought him now that he is a changed man.
As for Sakurai, he is a member of the Japanese military, and later operated an armor based on the Iron Man suit called, Ramon Zero. He is the perfect opposite to Tony’s laid-back attitude. Stiff, disciplined, something that is not Tony and I love it! Sakurai is the one that gave the proper balance in this series and I would like to see him much longer in this series. Even if he is disciplined as a soldier, there is one point of the series where he stands out, the finale in which he defied orders for the sake of his friend, Tony.
To the two girls in the series, Nanami Ota and Chika Tanaka, Nanami is just your average reporter girl, strong willed and goes where the action is; in short, I have nothing to talk to about this girl since she is the classic strong female protagonist. Dr. Tanaka serves as Tony’s Pepper in Japan, both as his secretary and love interest.
Chika is one of my favorite characters in this series and I am disappointed on how she ended up here. I mean seriously, turn her into a member of Zodiac at the end of the series with no concrete explanation?! Sure, it was hinted that she is a member of Zodiac because she is having blackouts during the course of the show but with no proper explanation?! What the heck was that!
Even with that forced heel face turn so that Tony will have a tragic end in this series. Chika’s last scene in the series gave a proper conclusion to her character; she loves Tony so much that she is willing to sacrifice her own cyborg body just to save his work, the Arc Reactor, which is his Tony’s dream for Japan, free clean energy.
Minister Kuroda is surprisingly, Zodiac’s mastermind and it turned out that he became a member of Zodiac because of his love for Japan… weird. He wants to return Japan to its former glory before the Americans decided to nuke Japan back in WWII. From the very beginning, I always suspect that he is one fishy character, and I was right. As for his motivation, I find it weird. I mean, Japan is successful right now and want to turn it into a military nation and use its resources to conquer the world? For starters, I find it a weak motivation to conquer the world.
As for the animation, I find it mediocre. The 2D animation is standard Madhouse but the CGI animation felt weak. I mean, it kinda looked like a bad mix of Photoshop’s bevel effects and a bit of chrome in it! Because of it, it stands out from the 2D animation and didn’t properly gel well with the 2D animation of the series. Madhouse has this reputation of having films and some shows having a good mix between CGI and traditional but Iron Man never lived with that reputation. I started to wonder, has Madhouse gone made in budgeting the CGI? If so, they should just go all out with traditional! Also, there are some 2D frames of Iron Man that the 2D version of the suit looked a bit fat. The only time that I can say that the animation is top notched is at the final episode of the series.
As for the fights, it felt a bit bulky in my opinion. To be honest, most of the Zodiac vs. Iron Man fights felt a little slow for me even if the Iron Man armor is quite an advance piece of technology. The holograms seen in the in suit scenes looks good and adds the proper tech touch with the series, something that the Iron Man films are known for.
As for the Iron Man vs. similar Iron Man suit battles, it felt like what Toshiki Inoue, one of the screen writers of the show is known for, his Rider vs. Rider fights in which the lead cause of it is misunderstanding between two characters or fight of their own beliefs. Thank God, he never decided to use a dead girlfriend as an excuse to fight each other! As for the animation, still the same with the Zodiac robot fights except it is more intense and place more emphasis on the aerial fights, which I liked. Too bad, the CGI animation is not that good.
Overall, Iron Man was a mediocre start for the Marvel Anime franchise. What makes it mediocre is the animation and that there are problems in terms of the story, which includes some unexplained events and the sudden transition from episodic to series with a running plot which felt weak for me, in my honest opinion. As for the characters, they tried as much as possible that the characters found in the comic book as close as their counterpart and the original characters as close as the spirit of the comics with Japan’s own personal touch.
Asides from those problems, the series tried to be flashy with the CGI… and it failed horribly. Seriously, they should just stick with traditional if their budget can’t sustain CGI for a couple of episodes! At the end of the day, I started to wonder, why Iron Man? To be honest, I prefer other Marvel titles to kick off the series.
Was it because the popularity of the movies? Maybe but I prefer if they decided to go with the more popular characters such as Captain America or Spider-Man. Oh, Spider-Man already has a series with Toei… and it’s live-action and its quite popular which caused them to do a collaboration with Marvel for three more years which gave Sentai its trademark robot per each series! Never mind the last Marvel character that I said.
Was it because the popularity of the movies? Maybe but I prefer if they decided to go with the more popular characters such as Captain America or Spider-Man. Oh, Spider-Man already has a series with Toei… and it’s live-action and its quite popular which caused them to do a collaboration with Marvel for three more years which gave Sentai its trademark robot per each series! Never mind the last Marvel character that I said.