Remembering Saban's X-Men Cartoon During The 90s

Things can get pretty strange, can they? Marvel is currently owned by Disney (BOO!!!!!!) and right now, I'm really not happy with all the bad storylines popping out with Marvel or what Disney has to offer fans with how it handles Marvel. Before that, remember Disney also had the rights to Power Rangers then we have Saban Entertainment and Toei Ltd. Toei once had a license with Marvel when they produced the Japanese Spiderman and Marvel co-owned Battle Fever J with Toei. Then Saban Entertainment not only had a license with Toei but also with Marvel Comics. Strange? Well I could talk about Saban's involvement with cartoons.

I'll never consider myself a Power Rangers fan but I'll give credit where credit is due. I think Saban's actually shown Marvel more respect than Disney ever did with its current media. One of them was the X-Men cartoon series during the 90s which lasted for 76 episodes. The story were loosely based from the comics. If you think about it the X-Men comics are a lot more violent and isn't for children. Some stuff are simply removed like Cyclops' marriage with Madelyne Pryor or that Cable in the series is simply written in a similar way that Future Trunks was written rather than him being introduced as Cyclops' son whose now much older than his father. These stuff were removed due to the extreme nature of the media where it's adapted from.

As said, don't rely too much on the comics or say, "That's not what happened in the comics." While I wish they did retain Callisto going after Angel than Cyclops but I don't think it would be appropriate if Angel's original transformation into a Horseman would have been put into the cartoons. In the comics, Angel lost his wings due to the Marauders before becoming a Horseman. Another thing that I like is the change that they added towards Sabertooth and Mystique. In the comics, Sabertooth works for Mr. Sinister while Mystique never worked with Magneto (or even Apocalypse) in the comics.

True there was a lot of censorship in U.S. cartoon media. Would have Toei been the one to get the license, there could have been more brutality but Saban airing it in America would mean having no choice but to heavily edit it. So I guess it's partly good in some way that Saban didn't have to pass through Toei but through a fellow American company to produce the show. In a way, Saban Entertainment managed to produce something that I'd say is better than Power Rangers. Power Rangers tends to be watered down in terms of plot and action than its parent Super Sentai due to U.S. standards. But for the X-Men cartoon it's been adapted from Marvel but they started everything from scratch. It's not like how Battle of the Planets was an edit from the Gatchaman Trilogy. 

The difference can also be how the cartoon show was made. Saban didn't need to edit footage from Japanese media like he did with Power Rangers or some Japanese shows that were localized with a license. The beauty of this show (and his other cartoon series produced with licenses from other American companies while taking note, he was also part of the Super Mario Bros. TV show and it's a Japanese license) is that all footage was made by them. They took time to draw and animate to create the whole show. Even more, I feel that some newer Marvel-based cartoons don't have as much as good drawing or animation as them. Disney just mocks Marvel with stupid stuff while Saban Entertainment made decent Marvel media.

The success of the X-Men cartoon is still something to be remembered. Right now, only if Marvel can get a reboot because too many nonsense stories are being created. So why are they now trying to write off Magneto's paternity to his children when it was established for so many years or why kill Jean Grey and pair Cyclops with Emma Frost? Even so, too many bad storylines have been established that only if Cable can go back in time and stop Disney from purchasing Marvel. Hmmm...