X-Men '97

Unlike me crawling back into Criticker after spending years in a regeneration chamber, the return of this series was an incredibly welcome sight. Seemingly tailor-made for my inner comicbook kid, X97 balances the action-packed fun of the original series with more serious storylines from the X-comics that came out afterwards. Filled to the brim with Stuff Happening, its main drawback is not letting things breathe. But mannn, every time the theme song started up my smile was visible from space. :3

Based on just the first 9 eps: wow. I was reluctant to watch a childhood-sentiment series because that's often when I find out the cartoon is still aimed at kids, while I've grown old(er). X-Men '97 however just picks up where it left off 27 years ago, except with a maturity level aimed at the 40somethings who watched it originally. So much happens, characters even die. My only gripe is the pacing! It's like they're trying to cram 27 years worth of stories into just 1 season.

Let's face it, Disney makes a lot of trash and they're getting pretty infamous for cramming a very trite, naive brand of social justice advocacy into everywhere they can. Overall, modern Disney is usually artistically bankrupt, say nothing of the deliterious effect their messaging has on the quality of public discourse. Still, I will support that company forever if they keep producing stuff like this. Absolutely fantastic & such an interesting, surprising project.

This must hit hard if you know all the references. For me, it's all the problems of the meth-level speed & convolutions of the American Horror Story series, but this time I don't have any touchstones. Very entertaining, but it's too much, man.

Oddly enough, I enjoyed this more that the original series from '92. The cadence of the voice acting is a bit more modern. The animation style is akin to the original, but with improved backgrounds and action. Most importantly the writing has taken a step up from episodic to serialized, and in doing so made the story more compelling. Xavier still comes across as a dick, and the X-men rarely have a good reasoning against the villains.

Problems with some stories not getting the time they needed to truly be explored. Things moving too fast to really be as powerful as the stories and characters were in the comics. Great ending and I think how stories that were disjointed from each other in the comics were weaved together and how much some characters had time to shine makes up for a lot. I love the original X-Men series and the comics and think this is a really good adaptation of the comic and a continuation of the series.

Season 1: 73

This show is just fun and pure nostalgia. Really hits the feels where it needs to as well. It's brought me back into the Marvel fold and I'm not mad about it.

Season 1: 85 / Season 2: 75

Season 1 - 87 Season 2 - 92 Absolute cinema!