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Madhouse's X-Men Anime Designs, Cast Revealed

On Tuesday, the Japanese television channel Animax unveiled the character designs for Madhouse's anime adaptation of Marvel Comics' X-Men superhero characters and listed the cast:

Cyclops: Toshiyuki Morikawa
Wolverine: Rikiya Koyama
Professor X: Katsunosuke Hori
Storm: Aya Hisakawa
Emma Frost: Kaori Yamagata
Yui Sasaki: Ryōko Sakakibara
Jean Grey: Yurika Hino
Hisako Ichiki: Yukari Tamura
Beast: Hideyuki Tanaka

The new X-Men Anime's voice cast is almost entirely different from the casts that dubbed the 1992-1997 American animated series and the live-action film franchise. However, Koyama is voicing the title character in Madhouse's ongoing Wolverine Anime series, and Hino had previously dubbed the character Jean Grey into Japanese for the live-action films.

According to Animax and Marvel, the story is set one year after the death of Jean Grey and after the X-Men organization has effectively disbanded. However, Hisako Ichiki (Armor) — a mutant middle school girl living in northeastern Japan — has gone missing. An emergency call for help is sent, and the founder of the X-Men, Professor X, summons his team from all over the globe. The reunited X-Men travel to Japan where they encounter a supremacist cult called the U-Men.

The series will premiere on Animax on April 1. Animax already launched an Iron Man and Wolverine Anime, and it is also planning an anime for Marvel's Blade character this summer. The American network G4 plans to begin running these four titles this year.



Image © 2011 Marvel Entertainment, LLC and its subsidiaries.

© 2011 Superhero anime partners