Motendo/Lifedeath - Part 1

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 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!).

Maybe the worst episode of a Marvel show ever. Need a much better plot line to follow than Jubilee in a video game and Storm with a big owl/love story. This episode was boring, the villains were ridiculous and the heroes were not much fun either. The first three episodes were ok with some notable exceptions like Gambit's hair or having 2 Jean Gray's. There is so much to explore with the X-Men let's not jumble it up with stupid villains and moronic plot lines. The people who watched the show in the 90's would appreciate a little growth. I'm finally starting to worry about my man, Fiege allowing this low of quality to be shown.

A story of two halves and both were lacklustre. Motendo is inspired by the X-Men arcade game.

It is Jubilee's 18th birthday but Magneto wants no celebrations. Not even a trip to the arcade.

However there is a games system called Motendo in Jubilee's room. Before long both Jubilee and Roberto are whisked inside the games world as they are attacked by Sentinels.

Somehow they need to get back to the real world and escape from the digital arcade world.

This part of the story was less comic book inspired and may be fun for those who remember the arcade game. Here I did not think the animation was up to much nor the story.

Lifedeath Part 1 was a better character piece about Storm trying to get her powers back. She is being helped by a man called Forge, who has his own reasons to help mutants.

The arcade part should had been the whole story and done better.

Nostalgia: Good!

Voice acting: Very good!

Plot: Good.

Drawing team: NOPE NOPE NOPE!

I'm sorry, but the characters have so few details in their faces, and I'm seeing a severe lack of facial expression as people are talking. The amount of detail is like season 1 of Archer at times.. And they NEED to stop zooming in awkwardly or showing the back of characters who are talking to avoid challenging drawing animations. We see what you're doing.

Good animation is kind of like casting good actors. It affects an entire series if the actors are bad. In the exact same way you need good animators to make the characters come alive.