Motendo/Lifedeath - Part 1

The novelty of the nostalgia starts to wear off in Episode 4, and we're left with one throwaway story for the first half, followed by a lame drama that cuts to "To be continued..." the moment the story picks up. Boo!

The first half is definitely the most pandering episode we've seen so far in terms of lazy virtue signaling, but that's really not the problem. The problem is that it focuses on arguably both the least interesting heroes AND villain, so as soon as they say, "What's a Motendo?" in the first 3 minutes (assuming you've seen the show/comics/video games) you know exactly what's about to happen, and yup, that's exactly what happens. Yay. The inclusion of memberberries for the arcade machine that took the 2nd most amount of my weekly allowance next to Ninja Turtles was nice, but ultimately does-not-an-interesting-story-make. It just made me want to play the arcade game. Also Jubilee is kind of a brat and Sunspot is kind of a loser, which doesn't help anything.

Cut to Storm in a desolate bar re-enacting 'Casa Blanca', followed by the beginning of a plot thread to get her powers back involving Forge, then the villain is introduced in a dramatic fashion, and SMASH CUT TO CREDITS.

I really liked Episode 3 and had high hopes for the rest of this series, but Episode 4 is a harsh reminder that at the end of the day this is a show that was intended to air on Fox Kids. The only thing missing from the Jubilee episode was a PSA telling kids to "Stay in school and just say 'No!' to drugs!" The original series had some banger episodes as well as some real cringeworthy ones, so expecting 'X-Men '97' to knock it out of the park every week may be a bit unrealistic. So far we have 1 miss, 1 hit, and 2 not-bad, which is a not-bad average; and the Storm storyline was really intriguing right before the abrupt ending, so maybe they're saving the fireworks for Episode 5(sorry, Jubilee, that didn't count!).

It was a disappointment. Half of the episode was spent with two teenagers playing video games. Whoever's idea was to compress the entire X-Men world into a 16-bit game and waste a whole chapter was terrible... I can't even praise the Matrix and Nintendo references...Don't waste 20 minutes on arcade graphics... If you skip this chapter, you won't lose anything. It was a pointless episode that spoiled a good series.

I don't know, while there are dozens of good characters, the story is persistently told through "Jubilee". I hope the series reaches its initial pace in other episodes..............

Pure cheese and not good cheese.

It's split into two segments.

1) Jubillee Birthday in Mojo world.

2) Storm and Forge in the country.

Both parts are lame.

Jubillees episode at least looks cool and has some not so subtle easter eggs splattered through out. But it's just a weak as piss story, about characters no one really cares for.

Storms episode a bad atempt at a romance failure. Neither Storm or Forge are cast in their best light. Boring snooze fest.

These were the crapppy pointless fillers that I didn't like as a kid, and still don't like now.

There is sure to be few who like this episode. But most won't.

Ok I understand some people mot liking this but hear me out. Jubilee was and has always been in the animated series as a somewhat conduit for the 90s of the kids who watched the show but recently I see her differently bc as any person who wouldn't want to go back to better times when it made sense, but seeing her realize she can move forward and then finally start not holding back feelings for a boy. It's natural for people to want to not embrace change so you can't fault her for not liking the changes she's dealing with. For the next episode with Storm, I really feel for her because when she lost her powers, she lost a part of herself that made her feel special. I thought Forge was in his own way trying to help to relieve his guilt and want so much to show Storm there's more to life than being an X-Man. When you're used to fighting for so long, the thought of normal would scare anyone. But that's just opinion. Take it as you will.

The writing in this episode is a sharp contrast from the previous episodes. It wasn't quite there.

I really hate that kind of Saturday morning cartoon 2 parts format. X-Men didn't have nor need that, that's why it stood out. Plus, Jubilee never actually says she doesn't want to grow up and yet that's the message? By the time we get to the real episode you don't get a chance to get invested.

The animation is top notch as it has been and I enjoyed the callbacks to the X-Men arcade and Genesis game. Plus, Jubilee finally gets a chance to show off the skills she has developed since she joined the X-Men juxtaposed to Roberto's inexperience.

Storm's episode... felt waaaay too rushed for a moment it seemed they would wrap it up without any conflict.

It was disappointing to say the least.

The past episodes were great. What happened?