Marvel we mock you for your animated shows but we forget that you did used to make great animated shows and like your current movies and live action shows they also lived in a shared universe and the show I want to talk about today is in my opinion the best version of these characters i'm of course talking about X-Men: The Animated Series.
This show really doesn't have a plot but it's basic premise is it's the adventures of Cyclops, Wolverine, Rogue, Storm, Beast, Gambit, Jubilee, Jean Grey and Professor X and that's really all the set up you need it's a superhero show so of course there will be bad guys to fight and for me this set up works so there's no need for a series long plot.
I just said that this series doesn't have a plot and that is true but the first two seasons of the show each have there own storyline the first season dealt with The Mutant Registration Act while the second season dealt with Magneto and Professor X lost in a place called the Savage Land. If I were pushed i'd say that season one had the better story but that said i'm glad that they stopped doing season long stories after season two.
Starring in the show are Norm Spencer as Cyclops , Cathal J. Dodd as Wolverine , Lenore Zann as Rouge , Iona Morris and Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm , George Buza as Beast , Chris Potter and Tony Daniels as Gambit , Alyson Court as Jubilee , Catherine Disher as Jean Grey and Cedric Smith as Professor X. Storm is listed as being played by two different actress because for the whole of the first season and the first seven episodes of season 2 she was played by Iona but for the rest of the show she was played by Alison and for the first four seasons Gambit was played Chris and for some unknown reason was replaced for the fifth and final season and Tony daniels I have no idea why they replaced two of the main characters in the show I can't find a single reason anywhere so we can only assume.
I will say tho that i loved the first voice actress for Storm since she made the character come alive and for me her second voice was a little distracting but tho I will say that the actors did a great job and it helps that they had great material to work off.
The show was animated by AKOM Production, Ltd and i'm reading what shows they've worked on and they pretty much worked on most shows of your childhood they did Animaniacs , Batman: The Animated Series , Tiny Toon Adventures , Jem and Earthworm Jim. So yeah they've worked on alot of solid shows and movies so imagine my surprise when I saw that the animation in this show wasn't that good and that's shocking because the animation in Batman is fantastic.
Speaking of AKOM after how they acted when animating the first season of this show i'm surprised that they continued to get work because they turned in the first episode not with one or two animation errors but with hundreds of them and they refused to fix them so Fox was forced to air the episode with all the errors and to make matters worse then turned in episode two was turned in just before a deadline with fifty scenes missing if I was producing this show I would have fired them because acting like that in unprofessional.
I think that it's safe to assume that any guy who watched this show as a kid had a huge crush on Rouge and quite frankly I don't blame them heck I was one of them and like a fine wine she has only gotten better with age but watching this series for this review I quickly realized that she was over powered as heck and I was just sat there wondering why she doesn't just touch the villain and boom mission over.
I really can't see a kid from today getting into this series just because it's a very nineties show just everything about this show screams nineties from how the tech looks in The X Mansion to the fact that Jubilee's foster parents mansion her destroying a VCR heck they even have Scott use the famous not put down all of these are things that you wouldn't see in a show today.
This show was still so popular when it ended in 1997 that the person that Avi Arad who was a fan of the show and who helped Lauren Shuler Donner get the film rights to the characters and the pair helped produce the first X-Men live action film so if you like those films it's this show that you've got to thank for them existing.
I don't think this really needs to be said since i've just mentioned the live action films but the animated series aired on Fox Kids between 1992 and 1997 and it was a smash hit from the get go and the person you have to thank for this show coming into being is a person called Margaret Loesch who thought hard for the series to be made.
I don't think i'm the only one that thinks this but for me the best multi-part episode is very easily "The Dark Phoenix Saga" those four episodes for me are the best episodes that the show ever made it had a bit of everything it had action , it had suspense and it had a bit of romance and unlike The Last Stand it didn't butcher the whole franchise.
I didn't notice this growing up but this show has a few Power Rangers guys working on the music the iconic theme song was written by Ron Wasserman who did the theme song to Power Rangers and the music was done by both Shuki Levy and Noam Kaniel Shuki co-wrote the very first episode of Power Rangers and well helped produce the show and Noam is the current composer for the show.
Overall this was a solid show I will admit that some parts of the episodes did bore me a little but that's not a major thing for me since your going to get episodes like that in any show but the show did also have some annoying characters and if you want to see more from this continuity then check out X-Men '92 a comic book that's set in the world of the show for me the show scores an 8.5 out of 10.