Tag X-Men Evolution

Talkin’ Nerdy: What the What, X-Men: Evolution?!?

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Today Talkin’ Nerdy probes X-Men: Evolution.

X-Men Evolution

 

For the uninformed, X-Men: Evolution was a Canadian-American animated television series about the Marvel Comics superhero team X-Men, which originally ran on Kids’ WB! from November 4, 2000 to October 25, 2003. XME’s major selling point was that in this incarnation, many of the characters were teenagers rather than adults.

Original X-Men

That’s not so unusual, after all, the original X-Men were teenagers.

Also, the main X-Men attended Bayville High, where they interacted with ‘normal’ kids and teachers.

saved-by-the-bell-then-and-now

So it was basically X-Men Meets Saved by the Bell.

Since the principal characters were teenagers, the show quickly became a favorite among fangirl shippers.

Hyper Fangirl

“SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Magma should totally date Pyro! BEST SHOW EVER!!!!!!!!!”

My personal opinion of the show was…

Spongebob Meh

I thought the animation was pretty decent (Evolution was easily one of the best looking X-Men cartoons to date) and it was a refreshing change to see an X-Men cartoon in which Wolverine wasn’t chewing up all the scenery for once…

Wolverine

“Hey, Bub! It ain’t my fault that I got the skills that earn Marvel big bills!”

…But the high school setting just never gelled with me, largely because I’ve never been big on high school based stuff in general. As a kid I hated, Hated, HATED school, so the last thing I wanted to see when I turned on the tube was a show about kids attending school. Basically I agree with the Blockbuster Buster about X-Men: Evolution: it was an OK show, though you had to slog through a ton of high school BS.

Gilfoyle

“The show was badass…except when it wasn’t.”

However, even Evolution‘s biggest fans and most staunchest admirers have to admit that there’s a HUGE, GAPING HOLE in the show’s premise.

Black Hole

Namely, the main kids on the show attended Bayville High (a public school) in this series, yet they still lived at the Xavier Academy for Gifted Youngsters. Let me repeat that: they went to a public school while living at a private school. They attended one school while living at another.

chewbacca-defense

“That. Does Not. Make. Sense!”

Now usually when I bring this up, some fanboy (or girl) will pipe in with…

nerd

“Obviously they were learning regular school stuff at Bayville and mutant stuff at the Academy. Duh!”

Yeah, I got that. Great. Sure. OK.

Except…

On this show, the existence of mutants was kept tightly under wraps. The general public didn’t even know about mutants until they were publicly outed in season 3, so what did Joe and Jane Average think these kids were doing at the Academy while they were concurrently attending public school? These kids had non-mutant friends; didn’t any of them ever ask one of them, “Say, you go to school here and you live at that other school. So you’re in 2 schools? What’s up with that?” What did Xavier’s staff and backers tell the public about the Academy? That it was a day camp? Chess club? A campus for LARPing?

Cult

Or did everybody just think the X-Teens were in a cult?

I’m not saying fans of X-Men: Evolution can’t or shouldn’t enjoy the show. The ‘Mutant High’ premise wasn’t really my thing, but I know a lot of people who thought it was awesome. If the show tickles your fancy, fine, but you’ve got to admit…

BabsBunny

“It’s a plot hole big enough to drive a Mack Truck through!”

Cartoon Country: X-Men Evolution – “Walk on the Wild Side”

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Today’s Cartoon Country looks at the second season episode of X-Men Evolution titled “Walk on the Wild Side”, in which the female X-Men (specifically Jean Grey, Amara Aquilla aka Magma and Tabitha Smith aka Boom-Boom) get fed up with playing second fiddle to the guys, and form an all-female vigilante crime-fighting group called the Bayville Sirens. Shortly after our heroines form their new gang, this happens:

 

 

dude-wtf

-Not only did the story just randomly jump to Radio Disney for a second, but this sequence boasted a puzzling occurrence which was never addressed. The 3 characters who formed the Bayville Sirens were Jean, Amara and Tabitha, who did so out of frustration (and some unintentionally sexist comments from Cyclops). OK, got that, however, about a third of the way through that little dance party video thing, Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) and Rogue just show up, and for the remainder of the story the 2 of them are just there, as if they’d been Sirens all along, despite them having no stake in any of this and no participation in the story up to that point. There’s really no reason for Rogue and Kitty to be in this story at all, other than a) they’re girls and b) they’re main characters. OK, we’re not going to offer a logical, canonical reason for these 2 to just arbitrarily join the story? No explanation at all? Just not gonna address that at all, huh? Not even a throwaway line somewhere? Nothin’? M’kay.

Speaking of strange occurrences,

The_Riddler_3

RIDDLE ME THIS……

What is it about this episode that makes so many aspiring authors on the internet want to write fan fiction about it? The last time I ventured onto FanFiction.net, there were literally dozens of fanfics based on or inspired by “Walk on the Wild Side”. In one of them, in retaliation the male X-Men decide to start their own all-boys’ splinter faction called the Bayville Strikers.

UmmNo

Far be it for me to pass judgement on another author’s vision, but I gotta say, naw, that idea’s not working for me, bruh. We don’t need an all-guys’ X-team for the same reason TV doesn’t need a White Entertainment Television. Boys don’t need special representation in what’s already a male-dominated genre. We don’t have to imagine what a superhero team consisting of just boys would be like; we’ve already seen that, several times: that’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That’s Street Sharks. That’s Battletoads. That’s Ronin Warriors. That’s Centurions. That’s Super Hero Squad. I could go on, stop me before I sub-reference again. All-male teams are a dime a dozen, so that wouldn’t be anything special. If they were really going to have a girls’ vigilante team AND a boys’ vigilante team existing alongside of it, then you should just make one team and make it co-ed, which would just be the X-Men.

But that’s just my opinion. If “Walk on the Wild Side” revs your engine, then by all means enjoy the ride. Myself, if I want a Girl Power superhero team, I’ll stick with these ladies:

Powerpuff Girls

They have better costumes, anyway.