Tony’s intentions to retire from being Iron Man to focus on bring clean, free energy to the world isn’t going to be an easy thing.
What They Say:
Japan: Enter Iron Man
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Having grown up on Marvel Comics, I’ve definitely been enthused for the end result of a partnership between them and animation studio Madhouse which has produced some really good, engaging and great looking shows over the years. With Iron Man, they’ve definitely taken their cues from the comics in a lot of ways, using some of what Warren Ellis did as a launching point for the series as they bring Tony Stark to Japan. Ellis has pretty much disavowed his participation in the show, so the story credit isn’t really warranted here, so much as an “inspired by” his works in terms of who the character is and some of the basic ideas.
The story comes at a time when Tony is moving on to bigger and better things in his life with the Ark stations being planned for moving into use in the world, starting with Kyoto first by working on the project alongside a military base. Because of his interest in focusing on this, using it as launching point for what he believes will lead to world peace, he’s given up on being Iron Man and is working on getting his replacements trained and moving the new suits that he’s designed into mass production. An army of Iron Man is a pretty scary prospect in general and you can easily see how a lot of people would be uneasy about it at the least since it essentially gives him a private army that’s very powerful.
A good part of the episode focuses on the trial run for the new Iron Man Dio prototype and the trio of Japanese pilots that are testing it out. There’s some good moments to it where Tony’s confidence definitely shines through with it, and it gets even more so when he eventually gets caught up with the press who are questioning him on everything. This brings the female lead of the series into play with a reporter from a small and not all that well known paper named Nanami. She’s a bright and upbeat young woman who gets to be one of many women that has slapped Tony in his life after she stumbles into him by accident and he makes it pretty flirty to say the least. It’s a cute moment and another that points out how unaccustomed to Japanese lifestyle and sensibilities he is.
The tension within the episode comes from the new suits having a problem during the testing that Tony has to track down when the flight goes wonky when he tests it and later when the suit seemingly takes over control of the test pilot. It provides a good challenge for Tony to figure out how it happened while also having to take on the prototype itself since it’s definitely going to cause trouble if and when it falls into the wrong hands. Tony’s personality shines through well here as we get to see both his suave and playboy side as he deals with Nanami as well as his serious hero side as he deals with the prototype. Mixing that in with his goals of doing things to bring peace to the world through his reactors hits all the basic points that we’ve seen from him in mainstream adaptations since the 2008 movie so this isn’t really a radical departure or even a departure in general.
In Summary:
Being a comic book fan much, much longer than an anime fan, I’ve definitely been one of those people that has been looking forward to these shows to see what the pairing can do. The opening episode gives us a good look at Tony the man but also Tony as Iron Man, though it’s a smaller part of it overall. The focus on character is definitely a Japanese approach and it works well here since he’s engaging in both forms. The story is set up slowly here but it works to introduce us to the setting and Tony’s plans for the armor and the reactors while also realizing that there are still those out there that want to take him down and won’t let him retire. This opening episode gave me everything I wanted from it with good animation, a solid dub and a story that has me interested in seeing where it’ll go. It’s a combination of all I’d want to start off an anime adaptation of a Marvel Comics property.
Content Grade: B+
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
