Well, the fight between Marvel fans and anime fans has always been prevalent on both social media and, well, in real life.
Whenever an anime fan meets a Marvel fan, all they do is fight over whose preferences are senseless, whose movies and series are more meaningless, and whose characters make absolutely zero sense in reality. Personally, I got some friends who like to watch Marvel, and I hate to bring up the topic of films in front of them, because I know there’s no end to these dumb fights.
But, as much as fans of both sides hate each other to the core and can’t digest looking each other into their faces, both creator powerhouses are actually really close. Or, well, used to be. Today, they don’t even know what the hell the other ones are doing on the other side of the world.
But anyway, both used to be really close. Yeah, Marvel and anime producers used to be really close. You heard it right. In fact, Marvel has even created a whole universe in collaboration with Madhouse, the goat production house of the previous decade—the production house that created the mighty Death Note, Parasyte: The Maxim, One Punch Man, Black Lagoon, Monster, Hunter x Hunter re-mastered, Summer Wars, and many other anime that shook the entire industry, and kept on shaking it for the rest of the decade.
And, the collaboration resulted in the creation of Earth-one-zero-one-zero-zero-one, which is also known as Marvel’s Anime-Verse.
Yeah, it’s not known by that name—in fact, I made it just this second—but it sounds cool, you know.
Anyway, this is Marvel’s Anime-Verse, and here I am, to guide you through this absolute masterpiece, when two powerhouses from different lands joined hands to create something that had the power to shake the world to its core—but for some reason, it didn’t.
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#01 – Marvel Anime’s TV Series
Marvel’s anime journey began with the beginning of Marvel Anime. Even though it’s the most basic and the most horrendous name the companies combined could have ever imagined, it’s actually more than you think. Marvel Anime is a combination of four superhero series and two direct-to-video movies inspired by Marvel, and it includes some of the best Marvel characters coming together to beat up some of Marvel’s freshest enemies.
Iron-Man was the first Marvel Anime. In Iron-Man’s own anime series, Tony Stark visits Japan to join a unique power station, dubbed Arc Reactor, that does not need to run on fossil fuel. As Tony is about to join this project, he also planned to announce his retirement from these superhero activities. But, he’s already created mass-produced Iron-Men, who will take care of his superhero duties after his retirement. But, during the ceremony, he’s attacked by Zodiac, some random supervillain organization that intends to take control of the Iron-Men.
Wolverine was the second installment of Marvel’s Anime-Verse, where Logan has to go to Japan to save his sweetheart. Even though it doesn’t really feel as interesting as the others, its story is really down to earth with some really good internal conflicts, along with some high-paced action scenes.
X-Men is perhaps the series where Marvel Anime shines the brightest. This anime takes place when X-Men are reassembled by Professor X to investigate U-Men abducting mutants and harvesting their organs in order to create some super-soldiers that can take over the whole world and cause mass destruction. It’s filled with high stake action scenes, but the reason it shines the most is the character development of Cyclops character and how U-Men, who are mostly seen as comic relief characters in the comics, are fleshed out as actual supervillains.
Blade is one of the lesser-known characters in the Marvel Universe. Blade is a vampire hunter who became half-vampire after his mother was attacked by Deacon Frost when she was pregnant with him. In the series, Blade confronts Deacon and has to go against Existence, an army of vampires, alone. Like Wolverine, Blade too is filled with action-packed drama along with some really emotional scenes, and is the perfect adaptation for the origins of this character who is rarely seen on television.
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#02 – Some Childish Marvel Anime
You won’t believe it, but Marvel even tried their hands at shonen anime as well. Yeah, Marvel tried to create two more anime which, instead of their superheroes, followed ordinary teens who wanted to do something extraordinary. These two films are not under the Marvel Anime universe, but are still worth mentioning.
Marvel Future Avengers is a two-seasoned anime series that follows Makoto, Adi, and Chloe, three young teenagers that are genetically modified by Hydra and are under their captivity. They have distinct superpowers, which were provided to them by Hydra themselves, and were brainwashed by birth into believing that Avengers are the actual bad guys and it’s up to these three young superheroes to one day grow up to be able to defeat them. However, the three soon realized Hydra’s evil plans and decided to run away, out of which only Makoto was able to go out. He then somehow contacts Tony Stark to save the other two too. Then, with the three kids safe with them, the Avengers decide that it’s best for these kids to train under them so that they could learn to use their superpowers for the betterment of society. But, obviously, some dark stuff is playing underneath.
Marvel Disk Wars is another childish superhero anime series aimed at younger audiences, just like the prior one. This series follows five children—who have the power to call the Avengers for a short period of time according to their will—as they work alongside Dr. Nozomu to capture all DISKs, a new device used to capture supervillains into disc-shaped miniature shells.
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#03 – Marvel Anime’s Movies
Yeah, Marvel Anime universe also included two extra full-length movies before both the production companies finally decided to call it quits. Both are filled with action sequences and high-staked fights along with some captivating drama.
Iron-Man: Rise of Technoverse sets Stane and Stark in front of each other as Stane has successfully created a bio-technology that is capable to defeat Iron-Man. As Stane unleashes a terrorist attack and sets Stark, the superhero must find a way to evade Fury’s manhunt and clear his name.
Avengers Confidential: Black Widow and Punisher is the last time Madhouse and Marvel decided to work together, and thus, is the last installment of the Marvel Anime saga. It involves Black Widow doing her usual spy-stuff as she and Punisher team up to prevent SHIELD’s leaked technology from being auctioned away by Leviathan, a terrorist organization.
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#04 – Conclusion
Now as much I hate to admit it, I gotta tell you all that none of these movies and series made it big anywhere. All of them are rated poorly on MAL and other sites, for some reason, and they’ve seen some really hard criticism from a lot of anime fans. Maybe the storyline wasn’t that good, maybe the direction fell off, maybe the soundtracks could have been improved, maybe people just didn’t like Americanized stuff in anime. There could have been several reasons for their failure.
But anyway, it’s really cool to see the two most-respected film producers from two different sides of the globe coming together to create something out of the world—even though it was not really out of the world, to be honest. And, it could have been a lot cooler if they had seriously worked on these projects together and not just used each other’s brand names to just grab some extra cash into their pockets.
Signing Of
