Nov 30, 2014
Taking the conclusion first: Disk Wars is very Toei. Which means: Episodic, formulaic, merchandise-y, full of recycleable sequences and of disputable art and animation quality. Having watched quite a handful of Toei series myself, I would say it's quite average - I've seen worse from them, but I've also seen far better.
What makes this show decidedly more interesting than most Toei shows is that the writers benefit from the developed and mostly interesting characters from the Marvel-verse. Everything that is good about this show is from Marvel, and everything that is "Toei original" is mostly bad.
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Story: 4 /10
The story starts with
...
Tony Stark announcing his new invention, the DISK system. To do so, he invites a bunch of civilians, including 5 children (the later main characters) to a prison island which turns into a desaster. Long story short, the Avengers get caught in DISKs which you can imagine like Pokéballs for heroes.
The main characters, gain the so-called Biocode which allows them to free the heroes from the DISKs, but it is damaged so they can only free them for 3 minutes or so. The children go home, but soon find themselves forcibly involved in the fight of the Avengers vs the super villains led by - who else? - Loki.
The first 12 or so episodes are pretty packed and actually not as episodic as one is used to from Toei. Other than main characters Akira and Hikaru, the children have their various reasons for not jumping headfirst into the fight, they have to be convinced, and they also need to collect the DISKs with the heroes one by one.
Then it starts to get worse. There are several arcs with changing villains, especially after Loki disappears and changing heroes. Toei make up weird plots to introduce about every Marvel character possible, ranging from the X-Men to the Guardians of the Galaxy (to promote the recent Movie, I guess) to Deadpool. It's a mess, and there is no clear line throughout the series expect that Akira and Hikaru want to find their father. They do, once, but then he gets lost again so the series can go on, because supposedly he as the main developer of the DISK system is the only person who can permanently fee the heroes from their confinement in them.
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Characters: 6 / 10
Let's start with the Toei Characters. We have a team of five young children. What sets them apart from Digimon is that they vary much in age (ranging from, I'm guessing, 8 to 17) and nationality (two japanese, a french and two Americans). They also have considerably different heights and body builds. Visually, they make an interesting team.
In terms of characterization... not so much. Akira is your typically hot-blooded teenager, much like Ash Ketchum. His older brother Hikaru is defined by his genius (he can supposedly do anything and is already at university despite being high school age at best) and his constant worrying about his brother - reminds me of Yukio Okumura (Blue Exorcist), but even Yukio is more interesting. Ed is the shy, weak boy and is mostly of use as the human Poké- sorry, Hero-Dex of the group. Jessica is most notably a rich girl, but as that surprisingly unspoiled and practical, so it could be worse.
Chris is definitely the most interesting out of the group - describing him in a few words is surprisingly difficult. He has some doubts in the beginning, gets frustrated with his situation, doesn't take his partnership with Captain America as given. It benefits him that he gets some of the most interesting plots - in the middle of the X-Men plot around Noriko he and Captain America have an argument and a strong reconciliation and out of the five or six episodes of the children destroying the plot of Red Skull one by one his is the darkest and the most realistic.
There is also Noriko. She is introduced because she falls in love with uh-so-perfect Hikaru at first sight, then there is a lot of drama around her being a mutant and fearing to be rejected by Hikaru, who one day after meeting him is like her only and most trusted friend. She is so boring and clearly just there to move the plot that it hurts.
Oh, and let's not forget the five humans that Loki has recruited. They have the biocode and are like the evil counterpart of the heroes. The concepts behind them is kind of interesting (one is a world-class cook, another a rock musician) but it just is never fleshed out. So all they do is stand around with their ridiculous masks and summoning villains from the DISKs who need to do what they say if they want to permanently be freed. They're one-dimensional villains of the worst kind.
Actually, most of the Marvel Villains are also quite one-dimensional in this show. They show up, they use their powers, they boast, and they lose. It's hard to take anyone of them seriously.
Then we have the Avengers. Basically, they save the show from being awful. They are adults, they have experience, they think about what they do. When the Kids are like "OMG, but we can't attack our mind-controlled ally!" they're like "We do what we have to do". Stuff like that. Some of the interactions are rather good - the dynamics between Ironman and Akira work surprisingly well, and I mentioned Chris and Captain America already. Here, the characters clash sometimes, and we can see their relationship evolving.
Some don't really work - like all that fully respectful bla bla between Thor and Hikaru or The Hulk as a mentor for Ed.
As for Jessica and Wasp, the relationship is not that boring, but it also doesn't really have much conflict. I guess pairing the female hero with one of the boys would have been more interesting.
So far, one of the most interesting short-time characters was deadpool - because of his constant breaking of the fourth wall, and because he was in that really good episode with Chris in the Red Skull arc. I mean, the villains have captured one of the heroes' allies and threaten to kill them if the main characters do anything - Deadpools reaction in that scene was about the most surprising action I saw in this series.
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Art : 3 / 10
Let's face it: Disk Wars mostly doesn' look good. You could see that the folks at Toei had to get used to drawing the semi-realistic character designs of the Marvel characters first, but even later, the characters are often off-model.
Then there's the animation quality. I would say it's decent, and some of the fight scenes actually look pretty cool, but it's not above average.
And then there is what we know from Digimon, Precure and other Toei series: Sequences of several seconds up to minutes that appear almost every episode. In this case, the sequence where the children "Smash" the heroes (get them out of the DISKs) and the hero says some supposedly cool sentence except for Hulk who, once in-character, just screams angrily.
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Sound: 6 / 10
I have not heard the full soundtrack yet, but there are indeed some cool tracks played in the show that are catchy and that you find you remember. On the other hand, I guess it's like two or three cool songs and the rest is just boring random soundtrack. But that's usually true for most soundtracks I know.
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Everything else is not really worth mentionig. I actually found myself enjoying the show more than I expected to because, well... it could be worse. They don't really make the Avengers incapable, they are still who they're supposed to be. The explanations for why children get to handle the heroes makes more sense than one would initially expect, and some of the character interactions are actually interesting.
Maybe it also helps that I'm not too much into Marvel Comics (actually all I really know are the more recent Live Action Movies) so mostly I can't compare the characters to their comic selves.
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All in all, I wouldn't recommend Marvel Disk Wars to anyone, but I wouldn't say it's an insult to the Marvel heroes either. It is what it is: A children's show that's mainly made to get japanese boys interested in Marvel and to sell some toy DISKs. If you keep that in mind, it's really not that bad.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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