Iron Man, Wolverine and some other familiar faces are turning Japanese

Jeph Loeb of Marvel TV was at New York Comic Con this weekend to talk about Marvel Anime. Marvel will be transforming 4 of their most popular characters in to Anime. The first to be released will be Iron Man. Following Iron Man will be Wolverine, X-Men and Blade.

Teaming up with Marvel and Sony to produce all 4 of these series is animation studio Madhouse and writing the series will be Warren Ellis. Each series will get 16 episodes. Marvel is promising that all the series will remain "true to canon", however the stories will take place in Japan. Now don't worry, there will be clear reasons given to why they are in Japan so it will all make sense.

During their panel at New York Comic Con, the first episode of Iron Man was screened for the audience. IGN was in attendance and provided a brief summary of what they saw. SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!

The segment begins with a passenger jet flying over Japan -- it experiences a near-miss with another plane… Tony Stark's private jet, rather recklessly streaking across the sky. The episode title flashes on the screen in rudimentary English captions that are certainly reminiscent of certain animes: "Enter Iron Man."

On the plane, Stark says that Japan is the beginning of his dream. Touching down in the Land of the Rising Sun, he meets a textbook anime chick -- a beautiful researcher from someplace called Lab 23. She's working for Stark, and we soon learn that Tony is planning on retiring as Iron Man and mass-producing "Iron Man Dio" suits (no relation to Ronnie James we think) that the Japanese government will purchase. He's even training new pilots to use the armor

The Iron Man Dio prototype armor is blue and silver with a triangular chest plate. Three pilots are being trained, though they don't fare so well as the episode proceeds. First Stark breaks his word and decides to debut the new suit himself at a public showing, and then later the suit seems to malfunction while one of the new pilots is wearing it, leading him to repulsor-blast his two fellows before going off on a spree of destruction himself.

Stark theorizes that the armor has brainwashed the pilot (somehow), so he pulls the old red and gold armor out of retirement to take on the Dio suit. He defeats the new armor pretty easily (in an airborne battle scene which is the highlight of the episode) but is suddenly attacked by a giant, talking (mechanical?) scorpion -- one of the Zodiac it says. The thing looks a bit like the xenomorph from Alien. Stark beats it down as it screams/laughs, but when he returns to the Dio, the armor is gone and only the pilot remains. End of episode.

Look for Marvel Anime to start airing this summer on G4.

Source: IGN