The X-Men Animated Series Intros Are Even Cooler In Japan
If you thought the intro sequence for the original X-Men: The Animated Series was awesome (which it was), wait until you see what they had over in Japan. When the show started airing on TV Tokyo in 1994, the series got a high-quality Japanese-animated version of the opening scored by the song “Rising” by Ambience. It’s quite a juxtaposition from the animation of the original title sequence, and it basically straight-up turns X-Men into a shonen anime.
While X-Men: The Animated Series was an undeniable classic when it comes to superhero cartoons, the animation is a little stilted and has aged.
The sequence shows off X-Men: The Animated Series mainstays like Jubilee, Wolverine, Gambit, Professor X, Storm, Cyclops, Rogue, and even Cable, ripping through enemies with top-notch animation. There’s even a shot where Wolverine goes full Dragon Ball Z mode and battles in mid-air. It’s honestly so different from the actual animation of the show that people watching the intro were probably taken back a bit when the show started.
While X-Men: The Animated Series was an undeniable classic when it comes to superhero cartoons, the animation is a little stilted and has aged. The Japanese intro is much slicker, and the animation is much more fluid. If you watch that intro and then switch over to the animation that the series actually uses, you might be a little disappointed.
Fortunately, X-Men: The Animated Series got to continue this year with the revival series X-Men ‘97, which brought the classic comic animation style to the modern era while keeping the fantastic storytelling and characterization the original was known for. The series is widely considered the perfect continuation of the beloved 90s series. If you’re one of the many who have nostalgia for the original, it’s well worth checking out X-Men ‘97 on Disney+.
…if you only watched the TV Tokyo dub of X-Men: The Animated Series that aired in 1994, you may have seen a very different version of the series.
What’s interesting about the TV Tokyo version of the X-Men: The Animated Series intro is that it wasn’t the only thing different about the show in Japan. Yoshikazu Iwanami, who directed the TV Tokyo dub of the series, rewrote many of the script for the show to make it more humorous and satirical. The episodes were also often shorter, as they were edited to include ending segments to promote the arcade game X-Men: Children of the Atom where the dub actors pretend to play the game as their characters.
…the Toon Disney Japan dub ended up using the original intro for X-Men: The Animated Series.
So, if you only watched the TV Tokyo dub of X-Men: The Animated Series that aired in 1994, you may have seen a very different version of the series. In the early 2000s, the show received a proper dub for Toon Disney Japan that was more in line with the scripts of the original cartoon. Of course, they also weren’t edited for time.
Those who watched that dub missed out on the cool Japanese intro, though, as the Toon Disney Japan dub ended up using the original intro for X-Men: The Animated Series. Fortunately, the Ron Wasserman instrumental theme is an absolute classic and helps the American version of the intro stand out on its own. Still, it’s definitely cool to see that no matter where and when you watch X-Men: The Animated Series, you have to watch one of the coolest opening sequences of all time.
