New Fantastic 4 series on toonami!

[Lunar_Wolf]

The theme is horrible. I loved the old theme from the 90's. Fantastic Four do do do do.

 

[ultimatefan]

The theme is horrible. I loved the old theme from the 90's. Fantastic Four do do do do.

Yeah, I don´t care if I´m flamed for it, it was a catchy theme if nothing else...

 

[GhostPoet]

I love this show and the characters. I'll be watching this from now on. Hope it does well.

 

[gvcool2]

i hope johnny gets a hair cut in the near future and sue...well gets a character rewrite

 

[3dman27]

The theme is horrible. I loved the old theme from the 90's. Fantastic Four do do do do.

that sounds like part of the 1960's ff theme

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I'm still undecided on the current cartoon's theme. It doesn't feel like it goes with the show at all. But I can't say I was a huge fan of the '90s cartoon's theme, either. That one did go with the cartoon, but it just wasn't really that good. The only opening credits I really liked from the Marvel cartoons of that era were the X-Men, Hulk, and Iron Man season 2 ones.

 

[Lunar_Wolf]

i hope johnny gets a hair cut in the near future and sue...well gets a character rewrite

It's them sideburns, they suck, Johnny should have some fashion sence.

 

[Nathan]

Just be happy that he doesn't look like this.

 

[gvcool2]

or this

looks like hellboy and 50 cent's offspring

 

[gvcool2]

It's them sideburns, they suck, Johnny should have some fashion sence.

ye the sideburns are pretty weird

 

[Savage]

Just be happy that he doesn't look like this.

I don't get what's so odd about this haircut. I see people with it all the time.

The theme has grown on me. For some reason it's been popping in my head all day.

 

[FOG3]

Its not odd, its annoying.

 

[gvcool2]

looks like the hoff, and if I ever saw the hoff flame on, suicide would be my only option

 

[Charlie No-One]

His hair looks great like that.

 

[marcvader]

Just caught F4 and I thought that overall it was not bad. on the negative side- Theme song sucked. Johnny Storm's do looks like some thing out of Robotech. Thing's 4 on chest stupid. Lip synch off a bit, seems like a foreign toon. On the plus- Action/ fight scenes were good. No problem with different take on Doom. Animation better than feature type Ultimate Avengers. Overall best Marvel toon series in a while.

 

[Charlie No-One]

Good, but Reed has problems with his S's.

"Thuthan! I'm not Doom!"

 

[Savage]

Alright episodes. I hope they start some arcs though because so far it's just...random events. Even Doom seems like he has nothing better to do than bug these guys. His voice is pretty awesome though.

As for Reed, either get a new guy or tell the current one to stop trying so hard. Iiiit's ridiculous.

 

[3dman27]

wasn't "doomsday" supposed to air BEFORE" doomed"?
that scene early in the story with vicious vic trapped in a force field [this was BEFORE the mind switch ]doesent make sense why are the eps being shown out of order?

 

[ultimatefan]

I don´t live in US and saw the Trial ep on youtube. Is Doomed there too?

 

[Savage]

wasn't "doomsday" supposed to air BEFORE" doomed"?
that scene early in the story with vicious vic trapped in a force field [this was BEFORE the mind switch ]doesent make sense why are the eps being shown out of order?

I figured the sheild was to keep Reed out of his way.

 

[Charlie No-One]

Was I the only one that caught Reed's lisp?

 

[Sabretooth]

Just saw this week's episode. Random thoughts:

*Reed sounds waaaaaay too old.
*Doom is much cooler looking in motion
*The theme,while not too annoying,sounds like something out of a Batman show
* The spraypainted 4 on Ben has got to go.
*Sue is probably bipolar.
*I realise the style of the show is anime influenced,but must Johnny look like Vash from Trigun?
*Every other thing in this show is CGI. Very annoying.

Other than that. Pretty good episode.

 

[gvcool2]

man just watched doomsday episode, it's such a badly written show, if doom didn't want the F4 to know he was in reed's body than he didn't do a very good job of hiding it, and the F4 were even more stupid for believing that the usual caring and goofy reed was still him!

and johnnys hair, it would be alright if they just took away the SIDEBURNS

doom looks great though

I like the admantium reference as well

on a lesser note that cab scene 'your the iron man arn't you' was cringe worthy

oh and i like how they got richards building the microverse, its alot closer to the comics than most cartoons

 

[MalroyChick11]

I really liked Teen Titans. And I didn't mind that it was a tad cartoonish/animeish. But FF's voice acting is pretty dull. And I don't like the art much either.

 

[Dread]

The easy quip: "DOOMED" all but describes my sentiments about this series so far.

To recap, this is technically Episode #3. Episode #2 aired as the premire and the actual pilot, that introduces the characters, the main villian, and their universe, has yet to air. This is all because of CN's wiggy policy that apparently, only anime shows have a purpose for episode order, but Western shows never do. Which would have been true back in the 1980's. But since the 90's, Western shows have taken strides against this, especially Marvel shows. SPIDER-MAN in the 90's is the easiest example, but so did the X-MEN, X-MEN EVOLUTION, the second seasons of IRON MAN & FF, and so on. TMNT, circa 2003, was a Western show that best captured the spirit of "serial" and 4kids TV didn't screw up their episode order until at least Season 4. "DOOMED" was an episode that really needed to be shown after the pilot, so Dr. Doom and his rivalry with Reed could have (hopefully) been properly introduced and fleshed. But apparently either CN figures this doesn't matter to there target audience (6-11 year olds, who apparently will watch anything with bright colors and flashy motion, how else to explain THE BATMAN's success), or they just don't care. And at this point, if CN doesn't seem to give a damn about this series, why should I? Maybe when CN treats it's rare Western shows half as well as the anime that they're love-slaves to, then we'll talk. Instead of sparking a second coming and maturing of our own animation, it seems that ever since the 90's when anime started exploding into our mainstream, all it's done is give animation designs an easy "gimmick" to attract attention, and give network programmers a cheap and easy source of ratings (as anime is usually bought, editted, translated and dubbed by other companies).

The second problem with the show so far is that both of their episodes have had fairly generic plots, a problem that plagued TEEN TITANS too. Last episode was "hero on trial", and this one is an even older one, the "body swap". Now, that's not to say that a good writer can't take tired cliches like this and make them workable; Paul Dini & Bruce Timm made a great episode out of "TRIAL" on B:TAS and Mark Millar recently did the "Reed and Doom swap bodies" plotline on his final arc in UFF, and it was brilliant and fresh. Heck, JLU saw success in "THE GREAT BRAIN ROBBERY" because they realized that it's rather hard to take the body-swap plot dead serious, so they didn't even try, and the result was one of the few "comedy episodes" of that show that actually WAS hilarious. And while people, myself included, bemoan the super-deformed anime antics of TEEN TITANS, part of what helped the show work in it's own ADHD way was that about 35% of the time it DIDN'T take itself seriously. This incarnation of the Four is played dead straight aside for one liners and it's not working when the plots are so hokey.

This show to me is like Marvel's version of THE BATMAN; the animation is incredible, the designs are hit and miss, and the show's weakest link continues to be the writing. Of course, I will say that THE BATMAN probably has a better cast of actors, they simply look worse because they often are reading drivel. FF's cast aren't as high profile and they're reading drivel, too, so they look worse. This is pretty much a dreadful 180 from the 90's era of Marvel cartoons, where the animation was usually cheap and choppy but the writing was high calliber; hence why SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN can rerun indefinately on cable and still grab good ratings. The only Marvel show where you can really say you got good writing and hot animation was X-MEN EVOLUTION, and that show was hardly perfect and the teenage cast earned it's share of haters, including Marvel apparently.

There's not much to say about this episode. Dr. Doom, who has never been introduced and is in this cheesy, spikey, "steriod anime" design that would look hokey in HELLSING, uses some techno-bug thing to switch minds with Reed, leaving Reed inside his own shut-down armor behind a shield. THis episode might have been average had it aired in the proper order, but airing without the premire it looks worse. Of course, Reed-in-Doom escapes and the Four learn what's what, and of course something happens and Doom escapes. Sue Storm is still an almost unlikeable b!tch, so much so that she makes Lois Lane look like the Virgin Mary. She all but goes out of her way to RIP into Johnny, so much so that I wonder why he doesn't just leave. And after going on a tirade about how irresponsible and reckless Johnny is, Sue is then suddenly surprised when he screws up a delicate task (run a TV crew filming them) that she HERSELF gave him. Well, what'd you expect! The comics Sue would tease Johnny and act like a "bossy big sister" but she also protected him and genuinely loved him; I feel none of that from the dialogue or the actress. Paul Dobson, who is doing his "Wolfgang Krueser from Viz Media's FATAL FURY 2" for Doom, may be better in a better episode but here, stuck making his debut playing Reed-as-Doom, he comes off shakey.

The Thing remains the only character who seems to be done well, and the fact that the show is making a running detail about how his huge, stubby, rocky fingers make it hard to grab small, delicate things is accurate and worth noting. His voice performances are fine and his dialogue is often decent. Granted, Thing was the best thing about the last show, too, and is the only member of the Four who can sell his own solo stories for long periods of time; he's that classic Marvel character, where his powers are also his curse, along the same vein as Spider-Man or the Hulk.

Johnny also gets some occasionally funny one-liners but he's annoying the other half of the time. Reed's VA seemed far better at his "cruel Doom lines" than at his normal dialogue, amazingly.

Some of the action is alright, but Doom of course has to perform stupid actions because he's the villian; rather than just letting Reed-in-Doom get carted off to jail and then blow up the Baxtor Building unmolested, he brings him down with him, which tips off the Four a few seconds sooner and leads to his downfall. The greatest villian in Marvel is again reduced to underling level mistakes. Corniness be damned, I still think the best version of animated Doom we've ever seen was from the syndicated 1981 era SPIDER-MAN show (no, not AMAZING FRIENDS, Spidey actually had his own season of 20+ episodes in '81, it was just syndicated so it got to fewer TV's). Good design, good voice, presented in full regal splendor (his title as monarch of Latvernia was actually worth a damn as he had diplomatic immunity, so he could try to take over the world without fear of arrest; most other shows he's just a generic armored villian).

I actually liked the last episode more because Ronan had a far better design; with the lean body, the spikey face and the FINGERNAILS ("Don't be afraid to use your nails, boys! Hahahaha!") makes him look like Manson-as-Doom. Plus, CN's apathy (or ineptitude) regarding the episode order is rubbing off. With the TT movie taking the Four's timeslot next week, it'll have been a month before we see the real #1 episode and they are in order, and that's sad. Plus, as these are supposed to be episodes 2 & 3, we should be seeing a slow progression of improving quality; even TMNT: FAST FOWARD has that. But here they're still continuing to be more con's than pro's for me.

As much as some of you like reading my reviews, considering I lack cable so I have to go through more effort to watch this show than others, it's really not worth my trouble. I doubt I can last a season unless the quality starts to spike upwards dramatically. I may watch some of the guest star episodes out of morbid curiosity (the Iron Man quip was mildly amusing, FYI), but so far I'm just not feeling it. Anyone who feels that the ULTIMATE AVENGERS DTV's "sucked" needs to watch this show and see if they still agree. And Sony's decision to premire the next SPIDER-MAN animated series on DVD (like anime OAV's) is starting to look better and better.

Disappointing so far. But historically, most animated FF cartoons are. The 60's version sucked, the 70's version stank more, and the first season of the 90's show was just as bad. Even the hit movie was hardly "fantastic". Marvel's First Family surely deserves better.