Hello and welcome to Wasted Plotential, where we discuss the wasted potential of our favourite
plotlines.
I have a similar bone to pick with the Marvel anime that I did with Batman Ninja. This was
a collaboration between Marvel and Studio Madhouse, producing four twelve episode series
and two movies. The movies are just animated movies and nothing worth talking about at
all. The series, however, are set in Japan, but they're just the most basic bitch Marvel
stories set in Japan. Iron Man, a businessman in the tech sector, goes to Japan. An adaptation
of Wolverine's canonical history with Japan. The X-Men go to recruit a Japanese mutant
and fight the U-Men, of all people. Blade hunts vampires in Japan. They're such nothing
concepts. If Batman Ninja could happen to most Batman incarnations, these shows could
happen to absolutely any version of these characters. Early trailers for Iron Man and
Wolverine suggested they were going to be much more out there with the anime influence,
but it was toned down significantly for the final product.
The unique opportunity of collaborating with such a famous Japanese animation studio should
have been used to make something more uniquely Japanese. The shows don't strictly have to
reimagine the characters as being Japanese, but the story should be more than just putting
an existing Marvel character in Japan. Really draw on what the Japanese like.
For example, Iron Man already had the perfect setup for this. The premise is that Tony is
planning to retire as Iron Man and is setting up a team of Iron Men in Japan. However, the
project is sabotaged and Tony drops the idea at the end of Episode 1. Why not go all-in
on that? Tony (or a Japanese equivalent) is making a team of heroes with Iron Man suits,
each with a distinct colour and primary weapon. One uses lasers, one uses explosives, and
of course, the red-clad leader has an energy sword because the Japanese love that shit.
Imagine a Sentai team of Iron Men and Women. Tony is the mentor and sixth ranger who is
forced back into action in the second half of the series to help the team, maybe with
some backup in the finale from Rhodey and Pepper. Sounds cool, right?
Next, instead of just the X-Men going to recruit Armour and then staying in Japan because that's
the writing prompt of the project, we embrace another of Japan's deep fascinations. No,
not that one. High school. A ton of young mutants have been popping up in Japan recently,
so Professor X has a new school set up in the country, with Japanese or Japanese-speaking
X-Men Wolverine, Psylocke and Sunfire being asked to run the school and teach these young
mutants. The main cast, then, are the likes of Surge, Armour, Sunpyre, Kirika Yashida,
Yukio, and the token human, Amiko Kobayashi. Yes, the entire main cast is female, but it's
really hard to find a Japanese Marvel character who is heroic and male. Or not tied to the
X-Men, for that matter. It's bizarre. Maybe you could reimagine some obscure characters
like Base as teenagers to balance things out. The antagonists are also Japanese, like Lady
Deathstrike, Silver Samurai, Kwannon, and Pestilence from Uncanny X-Force. Maybe the
final arc or one of the movies sees the mentors turned into Apocalypse's other three horsemen
and the kids have to beat them like in Young Justice. Anyway, the show can either have
the kids balancing normal high school life with Mutant Academy life, a la X-Men Evolution,
or just the academy stuff. The show could have been HeroAca before HeroAca. And Logan's
history with Japan could be explored in one episode or in one of the movies, instead of
making 50% of the project's TV content feature Logan as a main character.
The third show, for a laugh, could be a harem parody focused on Spider-Man, with the harem
being his various love interests reimagined as Japanese high school archetypes: MJ is
the childhood friend, Felicia is the oujo, Cindy is the shy kouhai (I know she didn't
exist yet, shut up), and Gwen is the popular girl Peter initially has a crush on. More
serious concepts are Spidey attending or teaching at a Japanese high school, be he Peter Parker
or a Japanese equivalent, or you get the rights to make a sequel to the Spider-Man Tokusatsu
series with that Spidey training a team of successors.
And the fourth show is simply Marvel Showcase, each episode following a different Marvel
hero who can have the more basic "hero goes to Japan" premise, because they don't really
have a strong enough concept to justify a full show. Here are a few examples: Blade
gets one episode for his basic show concept instead of twelve. Punisher pursues some Yakuza
back to Japan and neither they, nor the Tokyo police, are anywhere near prepared for the
carnage he'll unleash. Captain America meets a Japanese soldier in World War II who helps
him free some American POWs from his own side because that's a place no one wants to be.
Daredevil and Electra fight The Hand on their home turf. Hulk fights a big monster in Japan
and it's basically a Godzilla movie starring the Hulk. And Big Hero Six get their own episode
as well. Either that, or each episode is a new Japanese reimagining of one of the heroes.
Something along these lines would've been way more interesting than just sending the
characters on bog standard trips to Japan that wouldn't be out-of-place in Earth-616.
Really, the best thing to come from this entire project was the anime design for Storm, which
is the best she's ever had. Fuck your mohawk crap. This is peak Ororo and if you disagree,
you're wrong.
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