(L) X-Men (Madhouse)

[kenjiharima]

Logan likes loli's. Jubilee, Kitty Pyrde, X-32...lol

Seems he's Hisako type. "Wild Guys" lol

[Arabesque]

IB4 people start shipping HisakoXLogan (Hisalogan? Logako?) from now on.

Now this show is officially an anime. Waiting till the shipping wars happen so we can move on to the truly great

Originally Posted by duckroll

Tonight's fight should be pretty exciting. I'm looking forward to it. Newtype has updated with the known staff credits for the last two episodes:

Ep11
Script: Mitsutaka Hirota
Episode Director: Yukio Nishimoto
Storyboard: Satoshi Nishimura, Ken Ootsuka
Animation Director: Undecided

Ep12
Script: Mitsutaka Hirota
Episode Director/Storyboard: Fuminori Kizaki
Animation Director: Michinori Chiba

So what I take from this is that the last episode will look a whole lot like the first episode (which is good) but there might be a problem with the penultimate one (I don't expect it to look bad, but the Undecided is leaving me worried)

[duckroll]

Well, I just found out what "undecided" means for Ep10! This was the first (might be the only, or ep11 might be too!) outsourced episode for X-men. Even so, it didn't really look bad. Mainly because they had all the regular staff for the series working as ADs (8 ADs!).

The action was good, but I found the middle parts of the episode way too draggy. Lots of talking and plot exposition which isn't needed since the "twists" are so predictable and obvious. It's clearly padding here, and we already had some of that last week. The end of the episode moved things up a notch though, so the next episode should open with lots of action once again.

Here's the staff for those interested:

Script: Hideo Takayashiki

Episode Director/Storyboard: Masashi Abe

Animation Directors: Itsuko Takeda, Hisashi Abe, Mika Yamamoto, Hiroshi Kosuge, Katanao Akai, Ai Yokoyama

Action Animation Director: Kenichi Shimizu

Chief Animation Director: Michinori Chiba

Takeo Design: Takashi Okazaki

Key Animation: Taiichiro Kohara, Masayuki Fujita, Etsurou Mizuno, Koichi Takai, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, Akimasa Imagawa, Akihiro Okuzawa, Osamu Sato, Natsuki Watanabe

Inbetweening and Finishing: MSJ Musashino Production Office

Line Production: Studio Guts

Animation Production Assistance: Mook Soratia Animation

Fairly standard outsourcing credits. Not the first time Mook Soratia Animation has used Studio Guts for keyframing and MSJ Musashino for in-betweening. It seems likely that Madhouse is only outsourcing towards the end of the series because of time constrains, as opposed to budget, since they bothered to put a ton of ADs on board to ensure consistency. Too bad they didn't put in this much effort in the previous two Marvel Anime shows. It would have been nice to see Iron Man and Wolverine produced like X-men.

[FlareKnight]

Originally Posted by Arabesque

IB4 people start shipping HisakoXLogan (Hisalogan? Logako?) from now on.

Now this show is officially an anime. Waiting till the shipping wars happen so we can move on to the truly greatSo what I take from this is that the last episode will look a whole lot like the first episode (which is good) but there might be a problem with the penultimate one (I don't expect it to look bad, but the Undecided is leaving me worried)

Yeah it's just not an anime until you get some serious shipping in there . Personally think Logako works better since it's nice and short .

Anyways nice to go through a bunch of episodes in a row with this series. Things getting pretty chaotic with that brief mind control going on with Wolverine. Took a bit of time to put him down. Couldn't help laughing at Hisako liking wild guys and then they had to deal with that.

Do have the numbers advantage though whatever is behind that door should be pretty key. Likely has something to do with this child that Yui mentioned to Charles earlier. Wouldn't be surprised if the same kid was friends with Hisako before.

[Lumir]

Takeo (aka legion) is finally reviled. I wonder what professor x was fighting against? Was that another dimension formed by his son? Either way its going to get crazy as their son is an omega class mutant, if i recall there are only 5 or 7 of those in all x-men universes.

[Arabesque]

Originally Posted by duckroll

Well, I just found out what "undecided" means for Ep10! This was the first (might be the only, or ep11 might be too!) outsourced episode for X-men. Even so, it didn't really look bad. Mainly because they had all the regular staff for the series working as ADs (8 ADs!).

I honestly wouldn't have been able to tell that it was outsourced from the first few minutes due to how good the action was (the Wolverine/Storm team up was very good) but the rest of the episode was fairly slow and used a lot of still frames and reused footage as well as flashbacks. But that wasn't too bad.

The best thing about this episode was the Wolverine/Storm bit against the creepy hedgehog guy. I like how the anime doesn't let the fights simply fall into one-on-one fights while the rest of the team are simply looking on, but lets there be a good deal of team work and choreography. Good stuff

Originally Posted by duckroll

The action was good, but I found the middle parts of the episode way too draggy. Lots of talking and plot exposition which isn't needed since the "twists" are so predictable and obvious. It's clearly padding here, and we already had some of that last week. The end of the episode moved things up a notch though, so the next episode should open with lots of action once again.

Well, the way I see it, this was really hitting two birds with one stone. This was an outsourced episode, so the quality wasn't to be all that great, and we had to reveal all these obvious plot details eventually. I mean anyone who had watched an anime or read a comic could see what was coming already, but they still needed to get the team to piece everything together and realize what was going on, so we had all this padding to fill out the episode time, and save money in one shot.

Next episode preview looks pretty good though.

Originally Posted by duckroll

Here's the staff for those interested:



Fairly standard outsourcing credits. Not the first time Mook Soratia Animation has used Studio Guts for keyframing and MSJ Musashino for in-betweening. It seems likely that Madhouse is only outsourcing towards the end of the series because of time constrains, as opposed to budget, since they bothered to put a ton of ADs on board to ensure consistency. Too bad they didn't put in this much effort in the previous two Marvel Anime shows. It would have been nice to see Iron Man and Wolverine produced like X-men.

The only explanation I have to why there is so much care here is that the team is made out of relative new comers into the industry who are taking a crack at some new positions, so they don't want to have the first anime they had worked on as AD/Storyborder etc. to suck badly lol that and they might have thought after Ironman and Wolverine that they could do what they wanted here as no one would really care, so they might as well make something they can be proud of.

Originally Posted by FlareKnight

Yeah it's just not an anime until you get some serious shipping in there . Personally think Logako works better since it's nice and short .

Speaking of, did you see how Logan looked in her general direction this episode, or how she looked so anguished when he was trapped?

True love at its finest

Originally Posted by FlareKnight

Do have the numbers advantage though whatever is behind that door should be pretty key. Likely has something to do with this child that Yui mentioned to Charles earlier. Wouldn't be surprised if the same kid was friends with Hisako before.

I do think this show works quite well in a marathon as opposed to week by week, but it still a good watch.

And yeah, it's fairly certain Hisako will play a role in defeating/subduing Legion (perhaps this will be similar to Jean's finale moments, where Scott jumps in and saves Hisako and in a way achieving complete closer with the event, and thus this anime becomes truly about him).

[EroKing]

Derp, only 2 episodes left. I hope this one doesn't get MadhouseD

[FlareKnight]

Well everything is tying together nicely now. Not surprised that Takeo was the source of this and that his power is so incredible that it could have effects like this. There's a shock though for Yui to find out that the suppressants had been working fine, but they just hadn't made it to Takeo. That's what she gets for it seems leaving it to a new guy.

Kind of feels like it was a waste of time to explain everything to those assistants if they were just going to get killed off like that.

But wow Yui really did some monstrous things for her kid. I can get how afraid she was and wanting to help him, but wouldn't it make more sense to reach out to Xavier for help? He's got a whole school full of a variety of mutant children, think it'd be a better option than working with guys like the U-Men and just creating suppressants.

Set up nicely for a final battle. Possible that Takeo was behind that mental trap that the Professor had to run into and that he has a bond with Hisako. Though I'm still not sure how that mark was caused or why it hurts around him. Sure he's connected to her but did something serious happen?

Originally Posted by Arabesque

The best thing about this episode was the Wolverine/Storm bit against the creepy hedgehog guy. I like how the anime doesn't let the fights simply fall into one-on-one fights while the rest of the team are simply looking on, but lets there be a good deal of team work and choreography. Good stuff

Yeah I liked them working together and taking care of that guy. Really they are a team so combining forces instead of forcing themselves to go one on one and negate their numbers advantage makes sense. The finishing move was hilarious, I didn't expect Storm to actually hit Wolverine as well. I mean sure he can take it, but still funny .

Speaking of, did you see how Logan looked in her general direction this episode, or how she looked so anguished when he was trapped?

True love at its finest

Really it's quite touching .

I do think this show works quite well in a marathon as opposed to week by week, but it still a good watch.

It is a good series, but easier to marathon a little bit. Though I think most of the time it's nice to have the ability to watch 4 or 5 episodes at once of any show. A week between is fine for discussion, but more is good.

[Mr. DJ]

...have they been downplaying Storm's strength till now? suddenly she can spam her lightning bolts and not feel exausted after one.

and they're seriously pulling a Orihime w/ Hisako...I swear her last 10 lines were "Sasaki sensei"

[duckroll]

Originally Posted by Arabesque

I honestly wouldn't have been able to tell that it was outsourced from the first few minutes due to how good the action was (the Wolverine/Storm team up was very good) but the rest of the episode was fairly slow and used a lot of still frames and reused footage as well as flashbacks. But that wasn't too bad.

Yeah, honestly I only found out it was outsourced when the credits rolled. The action was really well choreographed and animated. Credit probably goes to Masashi Abe for the excellent storyboard and direction, as well as Kenichi Shimizu for supervising the action animation. There were some really good cuts in there.

Originally Posted by Arabesque

The best thing about this episode was the Wolverine/Storm bit against the creepy hedgehog guy. I like how the anime doesn't let the fights simply fall into one-on-one fights while the rest of the team are simply looking on, but lets there be a good deal of team work and choreography. Good stuff

Originally Posted by FlareKnight

Yeah I liked them working together and taking care of that guy. Really they are a team so combining forces instead of forcing themselves to go one on one and negate their numbers advantage makes sense. The finishing move was hilarious, I didn't expect Storm to actually hit Wolverine as well. I mean sure he can take it, but still funny .

Yeah the Wolverine/Storm fight was great. When the action went side view for one entire cut, it looked like a Marvel vs Capcom fight with assist attacks. Pretty sweet.

Originally Posted by Arabesque

The only explanation I have to why there is so much care here is that the team is made out of relative new comers into the industry who are taking a crack at some new positions, so they don't want to have the first anime they had worked on as AD/Storyborder etc. to suck badly lol that and they might have thought after Ironman and Wolverine that they could do what they wanted here as no one would really care, so they might as well make something they can be proud of.

Well, honestly think that would only be part of it. I would imagine most of the credit probably goes to the director himself. Out of the four Marvel Anime shows, X-men is the only one with a director who is actually known for quality animation and action. He probably assembled most of the main core team together himself to ensure he gets the quality he wants.

Definitely looking forward to Ep11. I hope Wolverine doesn't get to have all the fun in the action scenes though. I definitely want to see Hisako get at least one more solid creative action scene with her Armor ability.

[Endrance]

Originally Posted by DjTrizz

...have they been downplaying Storm's strength till now? suddenly she can spam her lightning bolts and not feel exausted after one.

and they're seriously pulling a Orihime w/ Hisako...I swear her last 10 lines were "Sasaki sensei"

All i could hear was kurosaki-kun.....Storm should have been fighting liquid guy her lightning could have saved the butt kicking they were getting

[duckroll]

Six Animation Directors for ep11: Mika Yamamoto, Tetsuro Moronuki, Hisashi Abe, Hiroya Iijima, Katanao Akai, and Ai Yokoyama. Michinori Chiba was not credited as supervising animation director for this episode, presumably because he would be working on the final episode exclusively while this episode was in production. Ken Ootsuka was also credited for key animation, aside from his co-storyboard credit. This episode is not outsourced.

Overall, I didn't really like this episode as much as the last few episodes. Wasn't awful or anything, but the action didn't feel as solid, and most of the episode served to wrap things up before the final episode. There were some good scenes, but overall I felt it could have been much better. Hopefully the final episode doesn't disappoint.

[duckroll]

Hmmm, I watched the episode again in HD, and I found I liked it a lot more. The pace was good, and I suppose the animation is a lot more enjoyable in higher quality. Or maybe I just wasn't in the mood to enjoy it properly yesterday.

[FlareKnight]

So pretty much the "why didn't you tell Charles" question was answered with "no reason." I mean seriously you brought him into the world is the excuse for not telling one of the best experts around and who happens to be the kids father? Instead you turned to crazy scientists who butchered mutants for a drug? That woman may be a scientist, but she's a true idiot. Can see wanting to care for her kid, but it wasn't just her kid. She wasn't even doing it all alone since she brought those two who died along and hired on the guy Mastermind was pretending to be. There doesn't seem to be a good explanation besides her just being stupid about it.

Good old Wolverine, let's just get punched under those conditions until you go berserk . True enough that his healing ability will keep him alive through those amplifications, but close call for Beast . Guess he couldn't let Hisako steal the show.

Jean is just saving the day all over the place for someone that's supposed to be dead. Helped out the Professor a few times and saved Scott during his fight.

[orion]

Yeah, that lady was an idiot. What ever happened to OCPs? Wasn't she taught anything during her reproductive class in school? And Charles...why didn't you use a condom?

Anyways, I guess she didn't want a lecture about having a responsible sex life so she just couldn't say...."Charles, you know that little fling we had produced a little bundle of joy...that wrecked my school." He'd prob just fly over, take custody and prevent all the mess she was responsible for because she was an idiot.

Dad arrives at the end so I hope he can save the son that he never knew he had.

[Lumir]

The reason for her not revealing him to Charles was because their son hates them both. Especially Charles. He feels his situation is their fault, just seeing or even sensing Charles could have made him go berserk back then. We already saw the alternate reality that Charles had to break through to get to the X-Men, and that was far off, and it was caused by takeo (aka Legion).

Last ep should be interesting.

[FlareKnight]

Originally Posted by Lumir

The reason for her not revealing him to Charles was because their son hates them both. Especially Charles. He feels his situation is their fault, just seeing or even sensing Charles could have made him go berserk back then. We already saw the alternate reality that Charles had to break through to get to the X-Men, and that was far off, and it was caused by takeo (aka Legion).

Last ep should be interesting.

But could argue he wouldn't have felt that way to begin with if Charles had been in his life from the start. Maybe they could have found ways to avoid the painful experiences that helped to shape his current thoughts (though we haven't seen much of his thoughts in the anime other than a flashback and him being berserk ). It'd be a decent hindsight explanation for her to run with. Think it's harder to say how Takeo would feel or act in the present if Yui hadn't made some downright stupid decisions.

Really his life has been some painful experiences, wiping himself from others memories, and living in a bubble while being given suppressants. It's no wonder he's resentful.

[orion]

Originally Posted by FlareKnight

Really his life has been some painful experiences, wiping himself from others memories, and living in a bubble while being given suppressants. It's no wonder he's resentful.

I agree. He has a right to be resentful. But if Charles was there sooner, it prob could have been avoided. Takeo didn't receive any training to control his talent, just drugs from his mother to make him more human and isolation.

[Samari]

Going to try and watch this series again. I stopped after the third episode I think. It just seemed to be getting ridiculous. I'm a tough critic with anime though...and I'm an advocate of American comics. Plus I know there is going to be a cultural context implemented. So I'll try to keep that in mind. Hopefully I can at least finish it so I can give it a review.

[GDB]

Well, it's at least better than Wolverine and far, far better than Iron Man. Take from that what you will.