Wolverine

Wolverine is a well known marvel comic. Of course, coming from only watching the movies and maybe seeing him on cartoon network a few times when I was young, I thought it would be pretty cool. What I was looking for was some action that had some anxiety against it - some good counters to the immortal man, and a solid story. While I guess you could call the story solid it didn't fulfill either of those goals. If there was ever a time I wanted to write a negative review it would be right now, but let us stay as positive as we can… Atthe start our princess Yukio gets kidnapped. We get a few seconds of the two of them together, and bam they are seperated. For good. We never really see her again for the rest of the show, and when she appears it is only so she can cry and weep at her uselessness. Far below the level of damsel in distress, it leaves us wonder why we should care for this character at all. There is no flashbacks or any background to her either. Yet our heroic Wolverine continues to get caught up in the Yakuza screaming at everyone to give her back. Thankfully for the feminists we get two female sidekicks that fight alongside Logan. The more prominent one has an interesting backstory to her, and combined with the rest of his allies creates an okay story. The master samurai Shingen is turly badass, and while he can wipe the floor with Logan, he lacks any way to actually beat him. The true villain is an organized crime boss with a lack of balls; pathetic but when logan's motivation isn't transferred to us effectively it gives us a reason to cheer. He literally hides behind his waves of different underlings who are more interesting and praiseworthy than he is. The plot is okay, but lack any impact or real surprises. After the first two or three episodes we've seen the best part, and the rest of the show is spent chasing down Yukio while the next episode's enemy is shown at the very end to attempt some sort of 'suspense.' Until they reach the stronghold of our villain, this same pattern repeats. As if my hatred had been answered, the ending provided me what I wished to see, but in a way it feels as if they storyline rage quitted and gave up. The animation is good and done in marvel style. This carries over to the battles, but there isn't anything flashy about them; as I mentioned before there is only three times in the show where the opponent even has a chance against our immortal protagonist. Two of the more prominent characters are swordsmen so there are plenty of fights where he uses his claw like a blade. It was a noble adaption, but the show was very ineffective at engaging the viewer into the plot. The action was average but they didn't put up much of a fight against wolverine, and the designated heroine was portrayed poorly till the very end. Better luck next time 'bub.'

So, once again, I’m looking into the world of Madhouse / Marvel Anime and to see how the next disappoint—I meant, installment of their comic book counterparts and as you can see by the title description, you know what it is. Up next in the four-part Marvel Anime project and broadcasts after the Iron Man anime, Wolverine is a mutant, possessing animal-keen senses, enhanced psychical capabilities, three retracting bone claws on each hand and a healing factor that allows him to recover from virtually any wound, disease or toxin at an accelerated rate. Logan learns that his girlfriend Mariko Yashida, who disappeared a year ago, hasbeen taken to Tokyo by her father Shingen Yashida, the head of the Japanese crime syndicate Kuzuryu and a supplier of A.I.M., in order to be wed to Hideki Kurohagi. Wolverine goes on a quest to rescue Mariko and defeat Shingen and Hideki, encountering several opponents along the way. Once again, I am disappoint, son. Anyone who knows much about comic books, specifically Marvel comic books that Wolverine is the most notable X-Men character and Marvel character overall, but yet that one time where they made a origin story about him in 2009……yeah, you know how that went and I don’t know much of the other X-Men related animated series or other comics but I hope……I really hope they did a better job on that than in this one. I really don’t like the story to this….Actually, no; I hated the story to this for two reasons. 1) Its very predictable. You’re not really going to be surprised or in shock of what happen throughout the course of this series. 2) I just couldn’t get into it. As bad as the two other Marvel Anime I watched (Blade, Iron Man), at least I somewhat got interested in them, no matter how generic is it and not only is this plot generic, it fails at being even the slight watchable. The romantic angle between Logan and Mariko is so minimal, it’s a leech. Mariko is the basic mopey damsel-in-distress who waits to be rescued by Wolverine and she’s forced to be married by this guy Hideki Kurohagi, who’s the basic bad guy who may seem like a threat but you know he’s a little cowardly bitch who lets his minions to the dirty work for him. Characters are no better here: Wolverine is the basic badass that everyone wants him to be; there’s a female accomplice of his whom has a mysterious past that I’m sure not to care about; Side characters are there to serve some purpose until they eventually die (Yeah, I’m noticing a pattern in these shows. I don’t mind them but them just come out as unnecessary and played for sympathy points) and villains are played out as uninteresting and lame. The animation…..I want to say Madhouse did well but this is an exception. Some of the action scenes were not very well animated. It looked very cheap with them using still images for explosions and shaking the picture. Wolverine’s design is very bi-shounen and pretty boyish, which I don’t think represent him well. I won’t be the final judge but I’m not buying the look of this. The music is pretty uninspired with the same rock theme that thinks it’s cool because it is and the ending theme with many mood swings shows that like the show, I don’t even think they were trying to make this interesting. The English dub, handled by Studiopolis, is ‘meh’ but serviceable. The role of Wolverine is this is played by Milo Ventigimilia and he really didn’t do it for me. I didn’t feel much of a presence from him (and no, I’m not comparing him to you-know-who) and it’s just rather bored. Other performances from veterans VA’s like Kate Higgins, Crispin Freeman, Stephanie Sheh, & Vic Mignogna felt wasted here. FINAL VERDICT: So far, this is the worse Marvel-Madhouse anime adaptation I’ve seen and I haven’t even seen the X-Men anime yet (I still am, I’m not backing out of that.) It’s basically everything I feared what the Blade and Iron Man anime would be. I’m just going to end it here and say I really do not recommend this title, even if you’re curious about it. You can watch it if it helps you sleep.

The wolverine. Chances are this isn't the first time you've heard of this character. In fact, you probably wouldn't be looking to watch this if you don't enjoy marvel products to some capacity. I'm a total marvel geek and I watched this just to say that I've seen wolverine in anime form. After watching it I was a bit disappointed, but I wasn't angry or sad about it, i was kind of content with what I got. STORY 6/10 If you've seen the wolverine movie from 2013, you know where he goes to Japan, this is an incredibly dumbed down version of that pretty dang good moviein my opinion. Wolverine needs to go to Japan to save his girlfriend, Mariko from an arranged marriage. Her dad is evil and so is her fiancé. Wolverine joins with Yukio to stop them, an assassin and an angry Russian. That's it. It's simple, it's easy to follow, which is kind of a good thing. It's based off of comic books. I wasn't expecting Shakespeare and nor should you. CHARACTERS 3/10 Characters are possibly the most important thing about any story, if their not developed or well-written enough, then I'm detached from the story and I don't care enough. This is the case with the wolverine anime. In terms of characters, it's wasted potential. The wolverine character from the comics and movies is rich with personality, development, conflicts and I was disappointed to see that none of that was used in the anime. The driving force for his entire mission is to save his girlfriend whom he apparently loved so much, even though we had no way of knowing how much she meant to him. The most we get from them being in love is when poorly directed scene at the beginning of the season. SOUND 5/10 I never linger too much on the sound or anything like that in a show, but I can for this. The soundtrack consists of pretty much 3 or 4 tracks that are used over and over again. Granted they sound awesome, but they're so overused I get tired of them and I really notice the lack of diversity. The voice acting (English) was hit or miss. Vic Mignona is Mariko's evil fiancé, and he does perfectly, as does Steve Blum as Shingen. Speaking of Steve Blum, he usually suitably provides the voice for wolverine in marvel products like the games and cartoons, but not in here. Instead the voice for wolverine in this anime is pretty crappy. He's not shit, but Steve Blum would've been better. ANIMATION 6/10 From a visual perspective, this show looks great. It looks clean, shiny and fancy. Once you start watching it and realize all the horrible action scenes, cheap animation tricks and corners obviously cutted for the sake of saving money, then you can complain. OVERALL 6/10 Should you watch it? Again, you probably don't want to unless you're a marvel fan, like me. Yes there is some novelty in seeing wolverine, and a few other characters (no spoilers) appear in an anime, but there isn't much to this anime beyond the novelty of it. I won't stop you from watching it, because i didn't dislike this anime, but I'd suggest watching a better show

The first problem and certainly one that justifies you to stay away from this thing, the "Wolverine" of this series is NOT Wolverine. His personality have nothing to do with the famous mutant, his past not exist, his amnesia? Neither. Not even what is his greatest mark, his savagery is shown here. Berserker mode? NOOOP. So we have a tall, skinny guy, without a beard, without body hairs, with an emo hair, without his strong personality, without his animalistic side, without a past. The only things he has in common with Logan are the name, claws, healing factor and a jacket. Okay, enough about"Wolverine". What remains? More trash: Mariko, Yukio, Yashida, Kurohagi and rest are as generic as possible, as well as this "Logan", in fact generic is a good way to summarize this anime. Scott is thrown out of nowhere in the middle of the story and does practically nothing, and he's even interesting (probably because he barely shows up), and I must admit that Kykyo is quite cool. Omega Red is ok too. The action is also generic, it doesn't have an interesting choreography, tension, twists, good animation, violence and "Logan" just gets beat up and looks more like a punching bag from Yashida. They made history in Japan because OBVIOUS THEY ARE JAPANESE THEN THE STORY HAS TO BE THERE ALSO. Yes, I know that Wolverine has an arc in Japan but couldn't they have left that arc for later? Who knows in a second season and instead focus on Wolverine? Showing the war, the weapon X project, the mysteries and dramas of his amnesia, his duality between man and a beast. They preferred trown "Logan" in Japan to rescue his girlfriend.. Yes.. THAT'S THE PLOT. But ok, if they wanted to make the history in Japan that much.. SO WHERE IS SILVER SAMURAI??? At least it's not as episodic as Devil May Cry, but it's just as boring. The true Logan is such a good character, he allows stories from the most diverse presentations and in this anime they didn't use anything from him. It is just a commercial anime of an attempt to introduce a western character to the land of the rising sun. It would be better to partner with a renowned seinen mangaka and turned into an anime later..