By Nick Nitkowski

Long gone are the days of being a kid. Waking up early on a Saturday morning, rushing over to the TV while the parents stayed asleep, flipping over to your favorite channel and enjoying all of your favorite cartoon shows. Being a 90s kid, I’ve enjoyed countless Saturday morning cartoon shows including but not limited to the Marvel cartoons shows. Specifically, Spider-Man and X-Men.

Marvel’s “X-Men ’97” attempts to recapture the magic of its 90’s animated series. The question is, with Marvel Studios producing a lackluster legacy as of late, can it succeed in doing so?

Now, I have not seen every single episode of the original X-Men animated series, but I have seen quite a few including the last episode that aired in 1997. I also have not seen every single episode of “X-Men ‘97” this review will only cover my impressions of the first three episodes spoiler free, of course. It’s important to note that I also did not see the trailer for this show beforehand. I was sold just on the title alone.

Right off the bat, fans are going to notice many differences and changes between this new version and the original series. One of the things they’ll notice about this show is that while it attempts to look like the original 2D animated series, you can very much tell that it is 3D animation made to look 2D. This may not be bothersome to many, but it is noticeable. This may or may not take away from the fan’s experiences. To me, it kind of works to a certain degree. Although, I would have preferred it if they were able to utilize traditional 2D animation for it.

“X-Men ‘97” does maintain its classic 90s style in terms of the character designs, aesthetics, and even dialogue. It really made me feel like a kid watching my Saturday morning cartoons again. There are many differences and familiarities about this show. And yet, the main complaint I’ve been hearing is how Rogue seems to be lacking her… voluptuousness.

This show seems to take place where the last episode left off. If you watch the original X-Men series and then jump immediately into X-Men ’97, it feels like too many changes happened during a very short time span. For example, it seems that almost everyone got a costume update and Storm got a haircut during that very short time.

Needless to say, I can say that this show has many things that fans will love about it, and there are things the fans might not like about it. Again, these are solely based on the first three episodes. Perhaps as more episodes become available, the show will provide more to feed our nostalgia and despite my minor gripes towards the show, I look forward to seeing more.

X-Men 97: 3 of 10 Episodes Review’d this series will  be streaming on Disney Plus starting March 20th

4 stars