SDCC2010: Marvel Anime and G4 Go Excelsior

On Friday at the San Diego Comic Con, Marvel presented the long-awaited debut of the new Iron Man anime series co-produced with Sony and Madhouse Studio. The episode was shown in Japanese with English subtitles. In the new twelve episode series, Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, goes to Japan in order to unveil a new ARC Reactor project, launching a world peace initiative. Stark also announces the retirement of Iron Man and the mass production of a new Iron Man armor. As one can guess, Stark's retirement cannot last for long with sinister machinations afoot involving the new Iron Man Dio armor.

Following the Iron Man screening, Marvel's Head of TV, Jeph Loeb, participated in a panel with Madhouse Chief Creative Officer, Masao Maruyama, and G4 Senior Vice President of Programming, John Rieber. Loeb and Rieber officially announced that G4 will be broadcasting all four of the planned Marvel anime shows on the network in the US. The other three shows being written by scribe Warren Ellis are Wolverine, X-Men, and Blade. New designs were shown for the next Marvel anime series which will be Wolverine. Fans that were dissatisfied with the design and look of Wolverine in the trailer shown at San Diego Comic Con last year will be happy to know that Wolverine's design has changed significantly for the final product. Wolverine's design is a more traditional look for the man also known as Logan, without his X-Men uniform. Character designs were also shown for Omega Red, Yukio, and Mariko Yoshida, who will all be appearing in the new series. Maruyama-san discussed the approaches to producing Marvel comic characters in an anime format. Maruyama also mentioned there will be a traditional samurai character in the Wolverine series named Kikyo.

The Iron Man anime series will hit G4 sometime in 2011. Rieber is not sure yet if an English version of the series will be made, stating that G4 likes to show material from other countries such as Ninja Warrior as much in its original format as possible with English subtitles, adding that this is something television networks rarely do. Rieber did add that discussions would be held at a later date about English versions of the shows.

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