Motendo/Lifedeath - Part 1

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?

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.

It is waste of time to put a filler in 10 episode show. Better to keep the main story to go forward instead to waste in some alt story.

If you want to make a fillers in such project just make a special with random events, stories for every single hero/heroin don't waste the view's time with some kind alt-bad story.

The whole episode could be better if was only about the Storm and how to recover her abilities that could be a way better way to do.

I really hope for the future they will avoid to put fillers because that is bad taste, it is showing to us they don't know what to do to, they don't have a plan for 10 episode so the best thing they knew to do is fillers!

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.

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!).