To celebrate the recent premiere of Wolverine and the X-men, I decided to write a set of articles about the three main X-men animated series: X-men, the Animated Series (TAS), X-men: Evolution (XME), and Wolverine and the X-men (WATXM). This first post is about the original, X-men, the Animated Series.

TAS ran from 1992 to 1997 on the Fox Saturday morning line-up and still shows today on DisneyXD (formerly ToonDisney). There are seventy-six episodes; like most X-men series, the main recurring character is Wolverine (since his VA is credited for sixty-five episodes). But what else could you expect? Anyway, it's definitely a classic: IGN rated it the 13th best animated show of all time, and it has an 8.9 rating out of ten on IMDB. Most fans remember it fondly. I was a bit young when it originally aired, but my love affair with X-men: Evolution meant I devoured any other X-men product at the time, and TAS was the most easily accesible. Anyway, onto the review.

As far as I'm concerned, TAS wins when it comes to the theme music. Everyone knows it, even people who don't want to. It's been sampled in pretty much every major X-men project (there are snatches of it in X-men the movie and in at least one episode of X-men: Evolution- either "Speed and Spyke" or "Spykecam," I think). It is instantly recognizable, what with that "you know this is gonna be intense" drum beat and catchy synth guitar. Just. Plain. Classic.

As for the animation... for a cartoon from the nineties, it's very typical, kind of meh. I do like that there are different backgrounds and different ways that the name appears for each character- kind of sets up what they're like for people who don't already know. Out of the three, this one is second-best for the animation. (I know this will be contested, but I have my reasons for thinking Wolverine and the X-men has the best opening animation.)

I honestly can't decide which cartoon has the worst animation, TAS or XME. I think XME probably gets the lowest rating of the three, though, because TAS mostly looks bad just because it's dated.

The main problem I have with the animation is that everyone, except perhaps Jubilee, LOOKS LIKE A MAN. Seriously. Look at Rogue or Storm. They all have huge shoulders and giant necks. It's like all the animators based the body types around Scott until they got to Jubilee and were like, "Oh, she's a teenager. I guess we'll have to use a different template." (Then, of course, there is the hilarious nineties clothing. But that can be forgiven- at least it wasn't the eighties.) Also, this is purely subjective, but I thought Professor X was creepy as shit. His eyebrows were the devil.

I haven't watched TAS in a while (I've seen most of the episodes more than once), but I do remember that the quality was fairly high, especially for a cartoon from back then. I'm sure there were some freaky things about it, but compared to some of the weirdness of the Evolution style (which I will discuss in-depth, believe you me), ain't no thang. If they had made the same show nowdays, I have no doubt that it would look as flawless as WATXM.

And, anyway, you have to give TAS props for going old-school comic book style instead of highly stylized like XME or WATXM. So TAS is second out of the three for animation style.

Geek Pleasure Factor

This one rates the highest. The main line-up is basically every classic character (except for Iceman, and he makes at least one cameo), and the range and scope TAS covered is just phenomenal: Galactus, the Phoenix, Genosha, the Savage Land, Days of Future Past, the Mojoverse... it's just amazing. Especially for a kid's show. It's like every X-men fan's wet dream.

On a personal note, I must mention that TAS definitely made me a happy nerd: there is some Storm/Forge (even though, if I recall correctly, future!Storm has that horrible mohawk), and any series with Morph in it makes me happy.

Voice Acting

I honestly can't put a comparative rating on any of the series' voice acting because they all have their strengths and weaknesses. TAS, however, definitely set the bar for what these characters should sound like. Every VA for Wolverine sounds like Cal Dodd; nobody has quite mastered Rogue's Southern twang nor Remy's Cajun charm like Lenore Zann or Chris Potter.

I haven't watched TAS for a long time, so I don't remember specifically any lines that made me cringe, but I know there were. I've heard the voice acting described as "wooden," and that would probably be the best description for the worst stuff. For the most part, though, passable.

Well, TAS is definitely a classic. And any rating I put on it is immediately going to get shot down, but personally it's my least favorite (don't kill me!). It's only because TAS does nothing new with the X-men: XME makes them all teenagers and does some interesting stuff with the characters (some good-interesting, some very, very bad-interesting), and WATXM is just... well, it would definitely win in a bar fight. So badass. If I want to basically revisit an X-men story word for word, I'll find a scan of the comic online. 

However, based on most of the ratings I gave, TAS takes a high second. And, of course, it will always be first both in chronology and in fans' hearts. ;)