This is it, the final battle, now that Mastermind has poisoned the mind of the young Takeo and that the X-Men is now in quite trouble since two of their big guns, Logan and Hank are fighting one of Mastermind’s men, what are they going to do?
The last two episodes of the series is the best of all the finales that I saw in the Marvel Anime Series, and hopefully, Blade can beat this finale in terms of the drama, the tension and most especially, the action. Drama wise, they were able to pull of Takeo’s tragic past quite well and that he was just one of Mastermind’s victims. What’s more is that they finally revealed his powers, that is to warp reality… which makes sense since his daddy is Xavier which is known in universe as the strongest telepath around. Well that explains the destroyed bridges and Xavier being stuck in some alternate dimension for the past two-three episodes!
More on Mastermind, he is indeed one magnificent villain. He was able to manipulate Takeo and cause him to go berserk, separated the brawlers of the team, caused Emma to go in “diamond form” and Mastermind manipulating Cyclops’ mind and give him an illusion of a future that he created. To add up the intensity, it forced Wolverine to ask Beast to force him to go berserk and Jean’s ghost visiting Scott’s mind. What’s more is that at the end, Mastermind died at the hands of Takeo, the boy he forced to go berserk.
Now comes the fun part of the finale, the world is nearing its destruction thanks to Takeo’s reality warping powers and the family drama… with a huge serving of X-Men cameos in the side. First with the world nearing its destruction, compared to the threats that the X-Men faced in the comics or its related spin-offs, this would be the only time the X-Men faced quite a disaster. I mean, in one of the spin-offs they had Bishop travel back to the present to prevent the future they had or in one spin-off, the Professor X coming from the future communicating with the X-Men of the present to stop Senator Kelly. In Takeo’s case, chances of having mutants coming from the future or ways to communicate from the future is not likely to happen due to the possibility that Takeo CAN destroy the future thanks to his powers. Yep, they are indeed doomed.
Compared to the previous Marvel Anime shows, the last episode has the largest count of Marvel hero cameos. Namely, we had Angel, Colossus, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Deadpool, a mutant wearing the British flag and Iron Man now donning an upgraded armor. Compared to the previous cameos, the heroes didn’t have any speaking lines, they just did their job has heroes while the core X-Men team are busy handling Takeo’s issues. The last episode also wraps up Takeo’s issues towards his daddy in which at the end, Takeo is just one lonely by wanting to receive some love coming from his father. You might say that it is so cheesy or over melodramatic but those scenes made Xavier more human to the eyes of the viewers, and yes, it changed my view about this bald mutant.
The last two episodes were also Armor’s shining moments (well, asides from Logan stealing the show… again) due to her relation with Takeo and even if she is the youngest member of the core X-Men team in Japan, she tried her best to save her friend and to save the entire world even if it will cause her own life. Heck, even her superiors were impressed with her performance! The last two episodes also serves as the proper closure to Scott’s “issues” with Jean and as fan who wasn’t quite satisfied in what Scott is doing for the past few episodes, I say that he finally grew up and officially started to move on with his life. Oh and they are hinting for more Scott and Emma at the end!
Overall, the last two episodes are simply the best finale episodes of the entire Marvel Anime Series right now. If you want a comparison on why it is the best, here’s why: Iron Man was too dramatic and didn’t have any proper closure and will cause you to re-watch some episodes for you to better understand the ending. While Wolverine had proper balance between action and drama, it felt short with the climatic battle between Shingen and Logan in which Shigen decided to cheat and it was earlier established that cheating is not part of his principles. Did I mention that Logan’s adventures in Madripoor felt like wasted in the end?
Animation wise, it was above the standard that the series set and still, I am impressed with the animation since it felt like a standard MADHOUSE animation with too much Western influence in it. Will I be watching Blade, yes since hey, since I started watching Iron Man in the previous Fall 2010 season, why not finish the Marvel Anime Series?
FINAL THOUGHTS:
For starters, I will not be doing my regular full series reviews since a) I am reviewing the series weekly or bi-weekly, b) I am pretty busy right now with my studies and c) I am placing my thoughts in every character or in every scene that I saw in each episode. So how this wrap up works? I will just state the strong points and weak points of the series and that’s it.
Animation wise, it improved quite drastically compared to the previous two titles of the Marvel Anime Series. You might say that the animation quality is something that MADHOUSE does regularly. It also helps that X-Men never received any early animation promotion compared to the previous two shows in which most fans were disappointed with the result, especially with the Iron Man anime; again, ESPECIALLY with the Iron Man anime.
I am fine with the roster of mutants that this series had and the fact that they used Armor, who is a Japanese mutant that appeared in the comics and one of the most unknown mutants in the franchise since she is a fairly new character was good addition to the classic X-Men roster. My only disappointment is that having Logan part of the core roster. I mean, he had his own show prior to this one! Oh well, most people will want him in the roster anyway.
Character wise, the series did characterization pretty well especially with Scott, Hisako, Emma, Xavier and Takeo’s case in which they tried to make them as human as possible. Same goes with the other mutants in the series most especially, Storm in which they placed a limit with her powers, which causes her not to spam her weather manipulating powers that much compared to the other spin-offs. My only disappointment with the characters is that implying that X-Men happened years after the Wolverine anime, Logan’s character was a bit different compared to the his personality in Wolverine, oh, and he constantly steals the kills most of the time.
For the character designs, they made quite improvements, my only disappointment is in Wolverine’s character design which made him look like a muscular fat man. More on the disappointments, I was expecting a lot from U-Men in this series, turned out to be that they are just one of Mastermind’s pawns. Fine with them being pawns since Mastermind is one hell of a villain compared to the guy they faced in the earlier episodes. Another thing that I am disappointed with is that they never played much with the secondary mutation angle that this series introduced. Sure, they gave most of the mutants vaccines and that they learned that the cause of those mutations is the Sasaki Institute found in the mountains but wouldn’t be interesting if Mastermind or any of the X-Men developed a secondary mutation?
As for the ending, like I said earlier, it was the best ending of the entire Marvel Anime franchise and makes you ask for more X-Men but since the series is planned for only four shows with Blade being the last, you can only dream on what will the X-Men do now that Magneto escaped his glass prison.
Last words: This is the best of all the current three shows of the Marvel Anime franchise that I am not sure how can Blade defeat this one.
