Storyboard:

The X-Men reunite a year after the passing of Jean Grey, in order to investigate the disappearance of a mutant girl in Japan.

The Sweatbox Review:

Marvel Comics appears to be taking over the world right now, at least in terms of its feature film franchises. On the animation side of things, however, Marvel’s record has been a bit spotty, though there have been a few highlights, including the respectful 1990s adaptations (though there were a couple of lousy shows back then, too), and a few recent direct-to-video offerings that have gotten good notices. Still, the Marvel cartoon projects simply haven’t gotten as much fan respect overall as the DC shows, though I’d argue that neither filmography is beyond reproach. Nevertheless, Marvel made an interesting move in 2009 when they reached an agreement with Japanese studio Madhouse to create four Marvel series for the Japanese market.

It made good sense. Marvel had the characters, and Madhouse had the animation chops, known for creating visually striking TV shows and films that resonated with their audiences, e.g. Ninja Scroll, Trigun, Millennium Actress, and Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis. Madhouse would be given a large amount of latitude, but with the creative input of Marvel writer Warren Ellis. Ellis would provide story direction, ensuring that the characters would be recognizable to their existing fans, while the anime creators would bring something fresh to their interpretations.

X-Men fits quite comfortably with the comic book continuity, at least to the casual fan. The X-Men anime serves up a cast of familiar characters, including the team’s wheelchair-bound leader Professor Xavier, and its field leader Cyclops, plus Wolverine, Storm, and Beast. It even opens with the end of the famous Dark Phoenix storyline, where powerful telepath Jean Grey sacrificed herself to stop the Phoenix Force from using her to… whatever it was trying to do. Destroy the world and stuff. It’s a strong beginning for the show, and provides its ongoing dramatic and emotional core.

In the aftermath of the Dark Phoenix battle, the X-Men disband, with each character dealing with the passing of Jean in his or her own way, with Cyclops being especially scarred. Professor X brings the team back together a year later when a call for help from Japan is received, with a set of parents looking for their missing girl. Their daughter Hisako is a mutant, and her disappearance is only the beginning of a set of mysteries involving that region of Japan. This is a region that seems to defy mutant detection by Professor X or his Cerebro device, despite the fact that there are an unusual amount of mutants in the area.

The X-Men go to investigate, and run afoul of the U-Men, who are gathering young mutants in order to harvest their organs. They find their former adversary Emma Frost, and then young Hisako, who joins the team as Armor, getting training back in the United States. After some discussion, Emma also joins the team. Once the X-Men return to Japan, they continue their investigation and discover an institute whose female director was once romantically tied to Professor X. This doctor, Yui Sasaki, knows Hisako, and appears to be hiding some dark secrets. Meanwhile, the X-Men also have to deal with the involvement of their nemeses from The Inner Circle, to which Emma Frost used to belong.

Emma’s presence on the X-Men is a thorn in Cyclops’ side, as he remembers seeing Emma at the scene of Jean’s death (Emma denies her presence there). Cyke doesn’t trust Emma, and he’s also not willing to give Hisako— who was originally trained by Emma— much of a chance, either. This conflict drives much of the emotional narrative for the story. Wolverine, of course, continuously calls Cyclops on his stubborn paranoia, and even Beast and Storm (the most undeveloped characters in this story) take Emma’s side.

By the twelfth chapter, multiple secrets are revealed, including a major one involving the story’s main threat and his origins. The battle at the end is reminiscent of other anime stories— philosophical, a bit confusing, and tonally a big shift from what had come before. (Akira certainly came to mind while viewing this.) There is a sense of the creators trying to reach for a deepness that the story can’t provide, but to their credit it only falls a little flat. Overall, this is an exciting adventure with an interesting take on the familiar characters.

Your own enjoyment will likely depend on how much you like the X-Men, and how much you like anime. I have only a general familiarity with the characters, gained more from film and television than the comics themselves, so I may be more forgiving than hard-core fans. The animation style, meanwhile, is likely to divide viewers. It is definitely an anime project— the character designs include long swooping noses, and the women have unbelievable curves (not much different than comic book art, in that respect). Though characters are very detailed, the animation is pulled off beautifully, aided by copious use of camera moves. (I really liked the character designs, actually, except for Cyclops’ shoulder pads.)

Visually, there is an over-reliance on diffuse light effects. And, of course, the animation direction focuses on delivering the BIG moments. Money is sometimes saved by not showing character’s lips move as they speak, but when it’s time for action, all the money’s on the screen. Character movement is extremely dynamic when called for, and the animation can be very impressive. And even when a character is otherwise still, there is hair blowing furiously in the wind.

The story provides ample opportunity for conflict, whether from its lead characters, or the “villains.” I wasn’t always sold on characters’ emotions, and their philosophical musings occasionally seemed out of place, but I find that in a lot of anime. This series has it where it counts: diverse and interesting characters, great design, and plenty of action. It’s not all action, though, as there are also lots of quiet conversation scenes, with ample opportunity to get inside the character’s heads. This is a perfect blend of X-Men and anime, for better or worse. Hopefully, X-Men fans will keep an open mind. Me, I liked it.

Is This Thing Loaded?

This release has a nice set of bonuses on it. The first disc holds two featurettes, beginning with The Marvel Anime Universe: Re-Examining The X-Men (9:05). This features Marvel multi-media executives and series story consultant Warren Ellis discussing bringing the X-Men to its anime incarnation.

Their insight is interesting, and they all seem quite enthusiastic with the results. The same folks appear in X-Men: A Team Of Outsiders (10:36), which is more of an overview of the comic’s appeal.

The second disc has the final and best bonus feature, Special Talk Session: Marvel Anime’s X-Men And Blade (32:00) a great discussion among the creators of the anime, naturally in Japanese but subtitled in English. (The talk of Blade is minimal; the focus is certainly on X-Men.) From the director to the writer and designers, we are offered a dandy behind-the-scenes discussion of how they crafted the series, and the choices they made. Much of it is talking heads, but we do get to see some production artwork as well.

A set of Previews also appears on the second disc, including those for Attack of The Show, Moneyball, Starship Troopers: Invasion, Resident Evil: Damnation, an anime film whose name is strangely never revealed, and Sky Crawlers.

Case Study:

The 2 discs come in a keepcase with a disc on each side of the interior. An insert inside advertises the TV show Attack of The Show.

Ink And Paint:

The video transfer is excellent. For a show that uses a lot of camera moves and fast action, it all holds together very well on these DVDs. Shimmer is minimal, and the image is totally clean. The only detriment comes with the visual style, which often uses diffuse lighting effects that can drown out details. It would have been interesting to see if a Blu-ray would look any better, but I suspect the difference would have been negligible.

Scratch Tracks:

These discs default to the Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Both it and the English 5.1 track excel at delivering a complete sound experience, with solid bass and prominent surround effects. The sound mix is just as dynamic as the visuals, and that’s saying something.

Final Cut:

It is quite conceivable that an experiment such as this will not satisfy either anime or X-Men fans, but as a casual fan of both, I found this series to be very enjoyable. For those that don’t care for the anime stylings, I would argue that the visuals for this show are leagues beyond what we saw on the 1990s animated X-Men show. The DVD set offers a great picture and fantastic sound, including the original Japanese track. Extras are also better than what we can usually expect for animated TV shows, making this DVD set a nice surprise all around.

Animated Classic or Back To The Drawing Board?

Storyboard:

Siblings Chuck and Nancy travel the world of old Arabia in an effort to return their magic rings to their rightful owner, so that they can return home. Aiding them is their genie Shazzan, and a winged camel.

The Sweatbox Review:

Designer Alex Toth is synonymous with Hanna-Barbera shows in the later 1960s. His exquisite work graced such shows as Space Ghost and Herculoids, making pedestrian scripts sing, creating classics out of shows that could have been forgettable. Out of that era, the major Toth-designed show that had until now remained unreleased on DVD was 1967’s Shazzan. Shazzan debuted in the time slot immediately after Herculoids, and went up against reruns of The Flintstones, and the first season of Spider-Man. In my view, Shazzan is the least of any of these, and its therefore understandable that it’s the last to reach DVD.

It isn’t a bad series, but I just have never been able to really get into it. The shows’ opening describes how its boring leads, two siblings generically named Chuck and Nancy, find matching rings in a cave in New England. They discover that placing them together transports them to the land of the Arabian Nights, and gives them access to a genie named Shazzan. In order to return home, they must seek out the true owner of the rings and give them back. It’s decent set-up, but the show never lives up to its potential.

During the course of the series, with two stories per episode, the brother and sister move from place to place, getting into various forms of trouble, and naturally get bailed out by their genie. The stories generally start out fun, presenting conflicts typical of Saturday morning fare. They face thieves with magical devices, evil witches and wizards, monsters (giant ogres and the like), various mystical beasts, nasty genies, and they do so while riding atop a flying camel named Kaboobie. That’s pretty fun, right? During their quest, they also find time to assist royalty and peasants alike. Of course, the plots get a bit repetitive in one important way, with at least one of the siblings getting kidnapped or otherwise separated from the other, making it impossible to use both rings to call the genie forth. Once the kids are reunited and use their rings, Shazzan appears and becomes the show’s biggest liability.

With Shazzan able to do literally anything, there isn’t a whole lot of suspense once he shows up. You name it— ring of fire, golden cage, teleportation, lightning bolts— he can do it all. Even against powerful adversaries, the outcome is nowhere near uncertain once Shazzan joins the fray.

Enjoying the show then rests on how interesting the characters are and how they’re developed; and this being a cartoon from 1967, with only ten-minute stories, there isn’t a whole lot there. Chuck and Nancy couldn’t be blander in both appearance and personality, with their signature trait seemingly being susceptible to getting into trouble. It doesn’t help that their quest never really gets them anywhere, with no sense of progression within the show. They never do find the rings’ owner and go home, making the whole premise of the show rather unrewarding.

Even the Toth designs can’t help much. Shazzan looks great, especially when it looks like they simply dropped a model sheet right into the show, but as I said the kids aren’t too special. The other human characters aren’t very interesting either, and even the monsters aren’t Toth’s best efforts. Maybe I would have appreciated the look of the show much more if the backgrounds weren’t so drab. So many stories take place in the barren dessert, that the eye has nothing much to admire, especially since the color design is generally unimaginative. True, there are also mountains and palaces and treasure chambers, but on the whole there are a whole lot of earth tones in the backgrounds.

Unless you’re a Toth or Hanna-Barbera completist, or just like genie stories, it’s hard to recommend this as a purchase. There are far more interesting shows out there. Shazzan isn’t a terrible show, it’s just not all that magical. That winged camel is pretty cool, though.

Is This Thing Loaded?

Originally presented on Saturday Morning Cartoons – 1970s: Volume 2 (which never made sense, since this is a 1960s show, but whatever), The Power of Shazzan (5:45) nicely offers commentary about the series from fellows like Scott Geralds and Mark Evanier, and shows off some of the beautiful pre-production art. They do acknowledge the core weakness of the show, but it’s hard to argue that the artwork looks great.

The episodes have chapter stops in the appropriate places, allowing once to skip past the opening, or go on to the next episode. For an Archive release, that’s pretty good.

Case Study:

Clear keepcase, with no insert or any episode listing with the packaging, though they’re all laid out in the menus. It’s good to see the Hanna-Barbera trade dress being used consistently.

Ink And Paint:

The episodes look surprisingly good! The video compression work is very strong, with the shows looking at least as good as they did back on 1967 television broadcasts. The prints look just about as good as new, with the only drawbacks being the dust and smudges inherent in the look of any cel animated show from the era. Video artifacts are negligible, making for a very fine presentation

Scratch Tracks:

The mono audio also sounds as good as ever, with no hiss, crackles, or pops. Dynamic range is predictably limited, but one can’t fault the DVDs for that.

Final Cut:

In truth, Shazzan was not a highlight of 1967 Saturday mornings. I’m sure that anyone who grew up on the show (not me) has fond memories, and will find enormous nostalgic appeal here; but for someone coming to it fresh, it seems pretty ordinary— just another kids’ adventure show being cranked out to meet a deadline. For kiddie entertainment, it’s certainly acceptable; it’s just rather forgettable. The video and audio are pretty good, though, and it’s nice to see the old featurette show up here, so for Warner Archive it is a good DVD release. Fans of the show should be happy.

Animated Classic or Back To The Drawing Board?

Shazzan: The Complete Series may be ordered directly from Warner Archive.

Storyboard:

Teenaged Jonny and his friends & family roam the globe, finding adventure in Borneo, Canada, Easter Island, and in the Himalayas.

The Sweatbox Review:

Sluggish sales of the first volume of The Real Adventures Of Jonny Quest in early 2009 doomed plans for a retail release for the second half of Season One. However, this is just what Warner Archive is for. Fans can at least continue to collect favorite series, even if they have to accept the perceived downside of made-to-order DVD-Rs. Personally, I’ll take what I can get. Better DVD-Rs than nothing at all.

In this continuation of 1996’s re-imagining of the classic show, we stick with the same designs and concepts that showed up in the earlier episodes. As explained in our review of the previous volume, things would change greatly for what was loosely termed Season Two, which was actually a parallel show developed separately by a different production team. But for this 2-disc DVD set of Season One,Volume Two, we stick with a grey-haired Dr. Benton Quest, a south-western accented Race Bannon, and the occasional episode dealing with the virtual reality playground of QuestWorld. Aside from that CGI land, stories are initially fairly down-to-Earth, with frequent sci-fi elements; but as the end of the season approaches, things get a bit wackier.

Thirteen episodes are split unevenly over two discs, all in broadcast order.

Disc One
The collection begins with In The Wake Of The Mary Celeste, where Dr. Quest’s team looks into the mystery of a ship that sank decades ago in the Atlantic, and they encounter a strange phenomenon. Next, they jet off to Borneo in Amok, only to encounter a legendary sloth monster and a gang of drug smugglers.

Quest nemesis Jeremiah Surd shows up in Besieged In Paradise, and reveals his plans to use whales and dolphins to conduct deadly attacks (that’s scary if you really think about it). The Spectre Of The Pine Barons is an intriguing tale involving a centuries-old battle over the Declaration Of Independence.

Heroes brings back Surd, who is interested in a Greek archaeological find. Next is the ghost story The Ballad Of Belle Bonnet, which sees a spirit watching over a cache of gold. In The Darkness Of The Moon brings the team to northern Canada, where Race falls in love with a lady werewolf. It gets more “out there” in The Secret Of The Moai, as Dr. Quest and Race find an alien ship, and get devolved into apes by Surd. Expedition To Khumbu involves Yeti and an avalanche.

Disc Two
Race’s daughter Jessie crashes through Siberian ice and into an underground world in Ice Will Burn, only to be promoted as a heroine who will help re-ignite a volcano. Ezekiel Rage, another great villain, returns in Future Rage with a plan to melt the polar ice caps. (Bwa-ha-ha!) Then, with a title like Alligators And Okeechobee Vikings, no description of the plot can live up to expectations. To Bardo And Back brings back Surd, a mad bull, and a QuestWorld rescue mission.

I always love globe-trotting adventure, and for me, this show delivers. The stories never attain heights any higher than “boys’ adventure stories,” but they do just what they set out to do: primarily entertain, but also to bring a little exposure to unique settings. It’s too bad that the animation can’t quite keep up, being from a hodgepodge of animation studios from around the world, which often struggled with the realistic character designs and (intended) high-octane action. More stylized design may have actually benefited the show. Other than that, the writing is solid, and it’s clear that the producers were aiming high. They may not have created the classic they intended, but they did manage to deliver a pretty fun show.

Is This Thing Loaded?

Somewhat unexpectedly, this set does have a new featurette, possibly prepared when a retail release was still being considered. Journey Into Questworld (9:21) looks at the cyber world created by Jonny and Hadji. Jerry Beck and creators from the show look back at how the series used the technology of the time to create a unique environment for its characters.

I recall the CGI parts of these episodes looking cheesy even back when the shows first aired, but one had to appreciate the effort. It certainly gives the show a little extra something, even if one must be forgiving of the primitive character CGI animation (the 3-D environments actually look pretty cool for the most part).

Case Study:

Clear keepcase, with a swinging tray to carry the second DVD-R. No inserts. There is no episode listing anywhere on the case or discs. There is not even any mention of bonus material on the packaging. The cover logo states Jonny Quest The Real Adventures, but I’ve used the series’ official name in the title of this review.

Ink And Paint:

Unfortunately, the video quality is quite lacking for this release, and is not as good as for the previous volume. While the source material has a minimum of physical artifacts, the transfer itself looks shoddy and overly compressed. Any pans result is outlines breaking apart, and there is a large amount of shimmer, along with some moiré effects (especially with the opening sequence, where green lines turn into rainbows).

Scratch Tracks:

There are no complaints, however, with the stereo sound. That opening sequence with the lousy video quality is still a masterpiece of auditory delight. The episodes themselves rarely deliver any acoustic thrills, but the sound quality is more than adequate.

Final Cut:

This is essentially the last of this incarnation of Jonny Quest, as the following season revamped the show. I’ll look forward to seeing those, as I rarely caught those episodes back when they aired. A weak transfer and variable animation quality plague this current set, but the episodes themselves are good adventure stories that subtly offer lessons in geography and science. The stories get a little crazy, too, which is a good thing in my book. The addition of an original featurette, rare for a Warner Archive release, makes this a compelling purchase.

Animated Classic or Back To The Drawing Board?