Recently I picked up a few episodes of the mid-90s Saturday morning cartoon you may have heard of: X-Men. It had to be one of the more sophisticated animated programs of the time, featuring multiple converging plotlines, individual character background stories, and a continuing plot that spanned entire seasons. I remember being transfixed by this show ten years ago, so I thought it might be a good time to revisit and see how it has withstood the test of time.
There are moments when the animation, dialogue, voice acting and storyboarding definitely show their age, but as a whole I found it just as good as I remembered. Wolverine is as badass as ever, and he always gets the best one-liners in each episode. The whole “mutants and humans must get along” is a thinly veiled stab at prejudice and intolerance, but somehow it doesn’t beat you over the head with it, and it’s cool when the “little guys” can shoot lightning from their fingertips and topple entire buildings with a single punch.
There are a few WTF moments where I almost groaned in pain, however. In the third episode, Beast was speaking in court when someone threw tomatoes at him. Tomatoes? In a courthouse? Seriously? Fortunately nostalgia smooths over those rough areas to let me settle in to enjoy a nice mutanty television program, just like in the good ole days.
