Stan Lee and Marvel’s first foray into anime this year, “Heroman”, got tiring really fast. This new Iron Man adaptation stars Tony Stark, who’s a bit of a peacock but at least isn’t some random weak-ass kid with long hair, tight pants and a high voice always yelling the same thing over and over. Stark’s an adult – and confident with women – and at this point he’s already built and used the Iron Man suit to save the free world a couple times, as well as revealed his identity as Iron Man to the world.
There’s a nice parallel to the Iron Man franchise making the move to Japan while in the actual story, Stark is doing the same; developing huge arc reactors to provide clean, free power for Japan – ‘cuz he just can, I guess. Plus, he and I share similar sentiments about Japan: the food is tasty and the women are beautiful. The dynamic of Stark trying to get a handle on what Japan is all about and how to win the love of the people is an interesting one; I hope they go into more detail with this.
I’m not gonna lie here, this was nowhere near the showstopper Panty & Stocking was, and it fell a bit below my justifiably high expectations (this is a Madhouse production with a very big franchise behind it). Yet after the first episode, I’m left wondering: now that they have this well-established Iron Man universe, what are they going to do with it? I wasn’t turned off, but I was underwhelmed. Hopefully this first episode was just a sputtering start and future episodes will be more impressive. The raw materials are there, after all. This show will have to turn it around soon; I can’t afford to be patient this season. Rating: 2
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