I’m probably the LAST person to rate something related to Iron Man, I’m not big on most of what Marvel does, however I am an old school fan of Anime and so I looked at it through the eyes of an Anime fan and man, I was very impressed.
Written by Marvel’s Warren Ellis and re-written from that story by the writers at Madhouse in Japan, the Iron Man Anime takes the viewer into a later stage of Tony Stark’s career. Tony travels to Japan with nothing but peace in mind after years of manufacturing and selling weapons. In order to begin a step towards peace, he creates a power plant called the Arc Station which will give clean, unlimited and FREE energy to the world–who wouldn’t want that? Well, apparently a group called Zodiac which is based loosely off of Marvel’s Zodiac characters. This group is an organization that wants to take over Japan first, followed by the rest of the world. Although Tony Stark wanted to retire from being Iron Man, he is forced to resume his role in order to stop Zodiac and bring peace to the world.
The Iron Man Anime is more than just a simple story, it has a lot of life messages and issues of reality and I think that is something that gives it the Anime feel other than just the art and animation being high-end.
The Iron Man Anime is a 12 episode mini series which is absolutely beautiful! The art and animation is by Madhouse who is capable of making masterpieces. Probably the cleanest modern animation I’ve seen in a long time using partial CG animation for Iron Man in mostly battle scenes. Iron Man has a lot of heavy animation, this isn’t something like “Speed Racer” where they stand there and their mouth moves, more or less–this anime is action packed and remains beautiful throughout the entire series, they didn’t cheapen it up towards the end because of budget issues like a lot of older Animes, this show is amazing!
The music score is…well…rock’in! I feel that the rock/metal score really gets the viewer into the action and its all brought to you in English/Japanese 5.1 surround!
The voice acting is great, they seemed to have chosen a good selection of familiar voices for the English track of the series, however, the language needs to be set before pressing play or it starts in the Japanese language.
Iron Man has a good selection of extras including a few interviews with all involved in making the series including the staff of Marvel and even the staff of Madhouse. One of the things that I liked about the interviews with Madhouse was the fact that they showed enjoyment in making the Anime; to them, it wasn’t just a job, it was part of their life, their pleasure and that is nice to see and hear–something that is very rare in the comic book industry. To most in comic books and animation its just a job, they could care less–I guess that is why most comic books suck these days, its just a job, as long as they sell, who cares. So kudos to the Japanese staff who did their best to bring a great Anime to fans and non-fans of Iron Man.
GRADE: A- (Iron Man is really enjoyable for fans of the comic and Anime Fans who might not like Iron Man, that’s not an easy task because if I like it, then others might too. The high grade is well deserved).
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