Revue Reviews: Wolverine and the X-Men

Wolverine and the X-Men

When it comes to action cartoons from the 90's the shows I remember fondly are X-Men TAS(The Animated Series), Batman, SWAT Kats. Not many shows in this era could live up to the nostalgia or acclaim shows like these had. When the made X-Men Evolution, I hated it since it ran off the steam of the Movies and rewired the classic comic characters to pander to a dying era...the EXTREME era. But in it's own right it had a place but it wasn't X-Men TAS.

But that's not the subject today and I am sorry for the massive block of girls media on display on this Blog but during deployment and after my return both to the US and this Blog the Boys or in this case General media cartoons never made me question every second of their show.

Whoa, watch those man hands

 I'm just saying that when it comes to girl's cartoons and anime it's usually worse. When I heard about Wolverine and the X-Men I had a feeling something was off. I like Logan but he's not the guy fit to lead his fellow mutants in the right direction. Must of his combat style is yelling and thrashing. He's almost as bad as the Hulk except anger management will at least let Wolverine in. The title tells me that this isn't really going to be about the X-Men.

Mutant Lives Matter

And for the the most part I was and still am right. 80% of the show is about how great our snick bub is. Back in the 90's I liked Wolverine's moxie and how he rebelled whenever he could but looking back on all of that he was kind of a joke.

The guy had near invincibility and weapons EVERY ninja wished they had and he got beat up 90% of the time. I know the little kiddies couldn't see our man slice a mob into a new deli stand but he looked like he was all talk and needed to get in line. I know Gambit was a thief (he still is) but at least he was at least (in TAS) over that part of his life.

The show has a familiar crew that fans of TAS and evolution would enjoy but these guys don't get billing like Wolverine. Storm is mostly there for her health, Beast just plays straight man to the overall plot and Jean Grey is just a plot device. Cyclops gets the worst treatment simply because of the direction of the show.

 He gets demoted in favor of Wolverine, left to wallow in his stupor and in the end he winds up switching sides in the cliffhanger. I know Cyclops made us want to punch him in the dick but he was that guy that had the everyone's best interest in mind. Sometimes his plans go south but he's only one man. I felt like they were treating him like this because of how he was used in the third X-Men movie.

To be honest the whole thing felt like a overblown rehash since it duct tapped multiple familiar plot lines together and wrecked the characterization of most of the cast.

It had some impressive fights in it but too much relied on Wolverine while the X-Men were just well...there. It's very unlikely this show would continue since the Wolverine hype died down to an extent and who would want to see more character shilling in a show that supposed to have a team dynamic.

Revue Reviews: W.I.T.C.H.

For a while now I have been a fair person when it comes to my reviews and the subjects in question but a lot of times I have to be "That guy". W.I.T.C.H. sucks, and I'm sure there are fans of this knockoff anime using tropes from a equally washed up idea but I stand by what I just said. But maybe I should make my case reasonable to illustrate my point.

Right out of the starting gate is the title, W.I.T.C.H.. It sounds cool I mean too cool for some westernized Sailor Moon clone to be called until you later realize the title makes very little sense. With W.I.T.C.H. as your title, logically the show should be about a team of spell casting WITCHES with a creative story and whatnot but the characters are designed to look nothing like that...at all. And you will get this impression from the opening alone. So why is it called W.I.T.C.H. in the first place you ask? Well all the first letter in each of the main characters names spells witch. So rather than come up with a design that better reflects the title or come up with a title that makes a LOT more sense they went with this.

Witch indeed...

The show itself tries to invoke some Lord of the Rings imagery with the tone and the setting but it barely works when more often than not they prefer to use the more modern setting than their more fantasy based setting. They had something more interesting than Sailor Moon and they wasted it. Unlike Sailor Moon they had a better mystery to work with since their "princess" character wasn't a part of the team and nor was it obvious who it was. The main problem with most of these copycat shows is that their plots require a lot of stupidity to work and it doesn't help when the show uses a summoning gimmick worse than Captain Planet.

Unlike Captain Planet who needs all 5 characters alive and healthy to save the day, our "W.I.T.C.H." girls need the leader present to transform and the leader requires her necklace to start the transformation. So the villains plan of attack should have been to get rid of her or steal the necklace but they try each plan once and give up.

And the logic around the diversity of the cast is a little off. While Anime magical girl show all the characters are Japanese (of course), the westernized shows have this habit to give each character an ethnicity. The reason why it so odd is that two of the characters are Asian. They have the obvious Chinese/Japanese (I know she's Chinese but usually the writers of similar shows can't choose) and the other is African/Asian (to be honest it's not clear). So what I was thinking is that they only needed one possibly the African/Asian since it's unique and have some other ethnicity represented but that's just me.

The first season was a passable little romp but the second was where things got stupid. Somehow the original leader of the Guardians (its like they went out of their way to make the title meaningless) returns to take over the world or worlds (there's More than one apparently) and to me it felt like they handed her everything with without any resistance. After everything comes ahead the show just swaps her out for the villain(s) from season one. Its like seeing Goku fight Freeza for 3 hours only to replace him with Raditz or something. They sequel baited a third season but it never fell through. I don't blame them since this show blows. Winx Club has better marketing and more blatant pandering, Angel's Friends has a more interesting premise and both shows title makes MORE sense.

All this show is a washed up cash-in on a idea that sucked to begin with.

Revue Reviews: Rainbow Brite

This is a one of those shows that came and went. It left no lasting impression and it shows. Rainbow Brite came from that classic era of cartoons that rarely if ever failed. I think it did but lets give it a gander.

The show is about a little girl named Rainbow Brite (originally wisp), twink and her colored friends...

Might want to rephrase that one.

Battle against the forces of Murky and Lurky. Yeah this wasn't the most compelling stuff but it has some cult following and did get a remake in 2009 and 2014.

Rainbow Brite (1984-1986)
Not much of note in this era. I only watch maybe half of the episodes including the last one which was the best and worst episode of the 80's version. The other than the final episode which I'll cover last they have an origin episode that was somewhat interesting but failed to keep me awake. The Show is slow and the main characters are bland.

Murky Dismal sucks even for a girl's cartoon villain, and I'm starting to wonder if he really was supposed to be a bad guy since he's doesn't do much to endanger Rainbow Land.

Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer (1985)

In the 80's if you had toys, you got a movie and Rainbow Brite had one too. This, like the show would/should have been the most forgettable entry in the 80's Toy movies if not for...

 The Star Stealer

This was the one time Rainbow Brite had a real villain on their hands. They had charisma, an 80's design and an actual army to make them threatening. The (Dark) Princess was and probably is the one thing that anyone remembers about this movie.

Rainbow Brite (2014)

I couldn't find the 2009 reboot but the 2014 reboot was...

Rainbow Dash anyone?

No one can deny this one, they were channeling My little Pony with this reboot, just about every character is in this one with the exception of the Male analog character from the movie that just got merged into the TV show character. The princess is less memorable even with Molly Ringwald voicing her. Yeah my copy is out of order and crummy but still the show is a crock.

Queen of the Sprites

The last thing of note is the last episode of the cartoon. The only interesting thing to ever happen in this show is (spoilers) the princess from the movie survives her ship blowing up in space. With only her court magician and a small ship she plans on defeating Rainbow Brite once and for all.

Sadly this wasn't a two parter which it should have been and most of the episode is spent outlining her getting her powers back. So most of the episode has her taking over the mines and getting resources to mount an attack...only for her to be defeated in about a minute if not less. So yeah it sucks but it's the only good episode of the show.