My Review of "X-Men '97 (Season 1)"

X-Men '97 (Season 1) has finally completed. It was a long anticipated series that has gotten a lot of hype and adoration from fans of the old series. I remember watching the old series when I was a teenager and this kind of reminded me of what it was kind of like. Admittedly, I haven't gone back to rewatch the old series to get reacquainted.

The season starts off apparently right after the last season of the old series. Professor Xavier is presumed to be dead and in his stead he had asked that Magneto take over the X-Men. This kind of makes sense knowing the relationship the two had in the previous series.

In this season, Wolverine takes a huge back step to Cyclops. A lot of the story revolves Cyclops and his relationship with his wife Jean Grey. This quickly becomes a huge entanglement story dealing with clones, babies and a full grown adult child due to time travel. When I say this show gets wacky it certainly gets wacky.

At the forefront is always the conflict between humans and mutants. The segregation and how the X-Men are trying to make peace between the two races. Again this gets kind of crazy with all of the outlandish things that happen in it.

As a fan of the series I understand why it went this way. It's a cartoon so you can play around and go crazy and they certainly did. They also made it feel like a comic book cartoon. It is what it is. Certain people will love over the top soap opera scenarios that happen in this season. The target audience is the same as it used to be, adolescents. They're very susceptible to love these types of drama and over the top craziness. It's the reason why Anime is so popular.

While watching this, I couldn't get over the fact that this feels like a kids cartoon. I know that's its main objective but in a way I felt I outgrew this show. Don't get me wrong it's still fun but in a different way. It's like catching up with an old acquaintance and seeing what happened in their lives when you lost track of each other.

Animation wise it's a hit and miss. At certain times it looks pretty good and then there are other moments that it looks dreadful. There's no real consistency to the art direction but for the most part it's adequate and fine.

I did like how the show pays homage to a ton of X-Men related video games from the past. I saw a lot of nods to the games I played in the past. I'm sure there's a ton of homages connecting to the original comics that I'm missing. True fans will gravitate to all of these things.

That's the thing though, it's really for the fans. I was so shocked that this show has gotten so much hype when new people coming to this show might not feel totally at home. Sure they do a good job in recapping every episode so that everyone can keep up with what's going on. I think there's a nostalgia to this that only certain people will appreciate.

I even think that they used some of the same voice actors of the original show for this. Voice acting goes a long way. When the Capcom versus arcade games came out and they used the voice actors of the original show it made a big impact for us to like it even more. This goes the same for this season.

Overall, I had a good time with this but I'm confused if this fun time I had was based on nostalgia or genuine enjoyment of the show. It is most likely a little more of the former because I don't see myself rewatching this season over and over again. That's why I have to give this season a 6 out of 10.