Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes

Review fantastic four worlds greatest heroes

In the wake of Fox's 2005 FANTASTIC FOUR movie, marvel commissioned a new fantastic four animated series. This time, marvel rode on the wave of Japanese anime and turned to Moonscoop animation, a French studio famous for such anime styled cartoons like Martin Mystery. They even got voice actors who were best known for dubbing anime to portray the characters here. The result is a decent blend of East and west, traditional 2D art and CGI animation. Decent yes but no where near fantastic.

Visually, FF: WORLDS GREATEST HEROES or FFWGH as I will call it, is a real treat to watch. The vibrant colours have this luminescent glow and The art is pretty to look at once you get past the whole anime styled designs. No it's not all doe eyed little girls and big breasts. This show takes its visual cues from anime aimed at an older audience. Yes there is spikey hair, yes the characters look anorexic and a little on the long side but nothing that sexualises them. The animation itself is smooth for a TV show and with a decent level of art detail: there are action lines, freeze frames and a few cost cutting measures but nothing as obvious as the typical TV anime.

At 26 episodes, each episode features an original story not directly lifted from the comics but containing elements inspired by the comics. They are relatively self contained with only thin threads of continuity like Doctor Doom's recurring presence. Other than that you get guest stars like Guardians of the Galaxy's Ronan the accuser, AntMan, and even the Incredible Hulk (whose brawl with The Thing is always something fans look forward to). With original stories comes the good and the bad: it's original so it allows for some surprises. However it does not achieve the level of storytelling that the comics did instead choosing to go with an overall light hearted juvenile tone. There is no sense of peril no matter how many times the world is at stake. There is no thrill seeing as how formulaic each episode can get. Then There are episodes that left me bored beyond belief and it wasn't for a lack of action.

It was the lack of chemistry. Touted as "marvel's first family", the FF here are more like "marvel's college dorm buddies". You never get that sense of togetherness and most of the time they come across as flat archetypes. While the comics and some of the previous cartoons delved into their inner demons and insecurities, FFWGH barely skim the surface with story after story offering little depth and even less world building. It doesn't help that only half the cast do decent voice acting. TV actress Lara Gilchrist nails the role of Sue Storm and Brian Dobson does an impressive (for a Canadian) tough Brooklyn accent as Ben Grimm but Christopher Jacot as Johnny is a one note loudmouth and Hiro Kanagawa's Reed Richards sounds like he is on the verge of yawning half the time.

As history shows, Fantastic four once again got the short end of the stick. Mainstays like Galactus and Silver surfer were prevented from being used and Marvel promptly dropped the anime styled property to focus on direct to video productions and the more Bruce Timm inspired Wolverine and the X-men. FANTASTIC FOUR: WORLD's GREATEST HEROES is no travesty but neither is it a smash hit. Not bad, just unremarkable. Everything about it pales in comparison to other super hero animation of the era. So If you do come across a copy going for cheap, it wouldn't hurt to give it a spin just don't expect anything....you know....fantastic.

It doesn't seem to me that many comic book fans enjoy many superhero shows focused on humour itself, or maybe it's just me.

But quite frankly, this is not only by far the best animated series the FF were ever featured on, but also one of the most enjoyable superhero shows period. I say this not only due to the animation - which, fortunately, is mostly based on real drawings rather than 3D effects, mostly used for some background elements like cars -, but also due to the humour: everyone's expecting a high-tempered Thing and a prankster-like Human Torch, but my biggest surprise was the representation of the other 2, which really had no meaning to me until the release of this series. Reed Richards is a pure stereotype of "geekiness" which delves himself too deep into his own curiosity and ends up generally procrastinating; The Invisible Woman, on the other hand, is the "mother", most adult-behaving member of the group, and not afraid to take the spotlight when everyone else misbehaves - and I really end up believing that she is, in fact, the real leader of the group, rather than Reed Richards. Other than that, some of the ideas are well represented, Doom is a respectable villain - although a bit underpowered IMO -, and some special appearances of other Marvel superheroes are a breathe of fresh air.

To sum it all up, the show's funny and lighthearted, never taking itself TOO seriously, but isn't that one of the key elements in most of Marvel's Animation? - excluding maybe the X-men and Spider-Man animated series, which even themselves were sometimes able to add some laughs to the scene -. After all, isn't Marvel supposed to feature younger and more adolescent-like heroes we can identify with?

OK, I am a huge FF fan, but I will admit that the first episode had some problems. But this show has potential. The cool thing about it is that its new and different. It has an Anime style animation and blends in CGI as well. I like it overall but I have to get used to the voices, especially Reeds but the script was good and wasn't that cheesy. Also, another good thing about this is that it will follow the original comic story lines. And you must remember that this show is targeted for kids!! As for myself, I am an anime fan so I think this show combines 2 of my favorite things together. So, for my conclusion, I think this show will get better as it goes along and possible be the best run of the FF TV series so far, you just got to give it a chance.

I really hope the other poster was kidding when he said JLU was cancelled to put this on air.

Bryan Singer did so much to make Marvel a success in adaptations, but let's face it, it's always been DC making the running. First with Christopher Reeve, then with Kevin Conroy...

Why, oh why can't executives look at WHAT makes a series or a film a success and copy that, instead of looking for a source to butcher. Batman (conroy's) was all style (like West's), but with enough substance to sustain it. It had visuals, it had villains, it had stories and it had PACE. Plus, being a cartoon, they got the best voices available. All the things that were transferred into Superman and then Justice League.

Fantastic Four has none of these. The action (for desperate want of a better word) is so slow it nearly put me to sleep. The voices are awful, not necessarily because the actors can't act (don't know what else they've done), but, I suspect, because the directors haven't got a clue about emoting in English. The nationalities don't inspire confidence in this department. The scripts are almost passable, but the direction (see "action" and "voices") sinks everything.

I suspect I may be too old for this, as YouTubing Battle of the Planets brought me face to face with things my memory had edited out (such as the stupid R2D2 clone and his girlfriend on Pluto), but, given the acclaim and success of the recent DC animated adaptations across a broad audience spectrum, I'm willing to say this sucks.

There just isn't any joy in it. There is no way the cast are having fun recording the dialogue, you can hear it in their voices, or, rather, you can't.

A really cool Fantastic Four Show! This show had honestly some of the best storylines of the group! I liked the sub-plots and the characters, their relationships and the whole show!