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Marvel Anime: Wolverine: The Complete Series

Score: 80%
Rating: Not Rated
Publisher: Sony Pictures Home
                  Entertainment

Region: 1
Media: DVD/2
Running Time: 284 Mins.
Genre: Anime/Action/TV Series
Audio: English, Japanese 5.1 Dolby
           Digital

Subtitles: English, English SDH

Features:

  • The Marvel Anime Universe: Wolverine Reborn
  • The Ferocious Anti-Hero: Wolverine Defined
  • Wolverine Meets X-Men

While Marvel Anime: Wolverine: The Complete Series reinvents the lone-wolf X-Man in his physical appearance, it keeps the feral mutant’s character intact and tells an interesting version of Wolverine’s love, Mariko.

Instead of a short and stocky character, Wolverine is portrayed as the standard Anime-designed tall and skinny, but still muscular, action-hero type, who just happens to have claws, a healing factor, top-notch senses and Wolverine’s winning attitude.

The 13-episode series starts off with Wolverine and Mariko being separated because she is told that she must marry someone else. While Wolverine spends a lot of time looking for her, it is a tip from an old friend that points him in the right direction.

Unfortunately, getting Mariko back isn’t as simple as going up to her father, a crime-lord, and asking for her hand. His quest takes him back to Japan where he teams up with an assassin named Yukio, and finds a new rival in a mutant that not only has a healing factor ability, but also has katana swords come out of his wrists. This new rival, Kikyo, shows up quite a few times in this series, and it feels like one of the reasons for the Marvel Anime series is to introduce this very-Japanese mutant, especially since he later shows up in the Marvel Anime: Blade show.

This show doesn’t just throw new characters at Wolverine though. An old favorite, Omega Red, gets brought in to try and keep the feral mutant from getting to his love, and even when our hero seems to take the Russian super soldier down, he doesn’t seem to be completely out for the count.

Eventually, Mariko’s trail takes him and Yukio to the gangster island of Madripoor, a place hardcore X-Men fans might remember. Mariko is held in a tower in the very center of the island, and dozens of gangs stand between him and that tower. During his time on Madripoor, Wolverine will have to join forces with one of these gangs who claims to have a true right to ruling over the city, and it will be with their help that he will try and stop the wedding before the "I do’s" are exchanged.

Marvel Anime: Wolverine: The Complete Series is a fun ride with tons of fast-paced fight scenes. In this series, you see everything from one-on-one duels, to Wolverine taking down hundreds of enemies that are pouring over him. Heck, Wolverine even takes on a giant guardian statue.

To make things better, this DVD collection also comes with a few special features. Two of them are about the effort that went into re-designing Wolverine for a Japanese audience while still trying to stay true to who he is, and the other is a discussion between the show’s creators. This last special feature is in Japanese only with English subtitles. Speaking of which, Marvel Anime: Wolverine: The Complete Series’s default language setup is with the original Japanese audio track and English subtitles, but those readers who prefer their anime dubbed don’t have to worry, there is an English audio track as well.



-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer

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