Anime: I have a problem taking anime seriously, unless it's an esoteric fantasy movie (Howl's flying castle, Princess Mononoke) or a cyber-punk series (Ghost In The Shell (GTS)). I mean, I watched it as a kid growing up, and the american imports.... well, they saturated me with crap that I now intrinsicly link with all anime. That and dealing with a vast sub-culture of kids that want to live in Japan because they think it's cool and modern and have some idea of a world like something in a manga, similar to the belief that Europe was cooler to live in during the 70's and 80's, the short craze over Australia, etc. etc. Not that I don't like Japan, or Europe, or Australia (hell, I'd like to visit the barrier reef some time in my life), but the idealism, the excessive amounts of anime t-shirts, it's like the Smiley face or the peace symbol, everybody buys into the "unique" fad and it's no longer unique anymore. You don't know how let down I was realized that I hadn't actually found the key to world peace after discovering masturbation, unfortunately, that was discovered by a cave man tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, or by something before him, like dogs... or something, and yet, world peace has not arrived. That said, the people I've known that did go and live in Japan, well, they got a wake up call, and it's called "crowded", with a side of occasional anti-foreigner (gaijin, or something along those syllables) attitudes from some of the folk, particularly the older generation and the very young (removing all Japanese hostile acts from WWII history books... mmm... can I beat the living daylights out of whoever decided to jump from cover up to rewriting history for an entire generation spawning various controversies? I thought we this sort of wide spread nationalism ended back in the 80s for everybody outside of Asia (Japan being the 'exception', possibly with India as well, Russia's still stickin it to the truth, along with China, North Korea, some bits of history for South Korea, etc. etc.)Wow, that was a bit of a rant there about the textbook change... back to topic
That aside, I thought Iron Man looked interesting... until they showed other characters (robot pirates with cliche anime villain, with long hair, with monocle, with eyepatch (doesn't that cause a problem, having both an eyepatch and a monocle... I guess glasses don't work so maybe it's the only way, but it just feels doubled up) and then the fighting (Iron Man uses blasts of kinetic energy, not karate; okay he uses other stuff too, but that stuff revolves around projectile weapons, again, not karate) and then the swarm of mechas that get eliminated by Iron man with incredible ease.
Wolverine: several problems
1-He doesn't look like Wolverine, he looks like a generic Anime character, long haired with an almost semi-androgynous face (for as detailed as an anime face may be, they usually come out that way, versus western drawing styles that make more realistic faces, though they get cookie cutter after a while just like anime ones, but it's a longer while)
2- Open Hand Slash? Is he slapping his enemies and then scratching them with his claw tips? That's asinine.
3- Glowing blue slash trails and after images: they're adamantium, that's a metal, not a lightsaber color, I know it's a common anime theme (it saves time when you can just re-use a slash after image on black stock animation versus going through and doing all the movements with the character; but honestly, I prefer seeing just air lines (as corny, annoying and over used as they were in DBZ, I mean really, can't you find a better excuse to... screw it, throw away the excuse and do the damned anim, I hate fucking seeing 2 frames of a character then a stock then another few frames then a stock image, then another, and stock backgrounds, give me a break you lazy bums, it's not like you can't create a background plate)
