The X-Men, having found sleep capsules containing Hisako as well as Emma Frost, whom Cyclops saw manipulating Phoenix before she took her life, are released by Beast after Cyclops recounts to the others what he saw a year ago.  Emma wakes first and when confronted, she denies having been part of the Inner Circle’s attack on the X-Men as she’d already quit the organization by then.  She explains that she was to be Hisako’s teacher but had only communicated with the girl via the Internet.  Hisako awakens and is glad to see Emma as Emma explains how she was captured by the U-Men.  Cyclops doesn’t trust her and says as much. The U-Men, who’ve been observing everything said and done in the room, finally send in their robots for an attack.  The X-Men win the fight but leave the U-Men’s monitored path when Wolverine decides on a shortcut. This forces the U-Men doctor to go and take care of the situation.

As Xavier attempts to contact the X-Men telepathically, he has another vision of a young boy and feels he is connected to all of this somehow. Meanwhile, the doctor arrives, ordering the X-Men away from the harvested mutant organs the U-Men use to gain power. He quickly overcomes Cyclops, Wolverine, Beast, and Storm. Emma can’t do anything telepathically as the doctor is insane but Cyclops manages a massive optic blast which frees them. The doctor quickly recovers in his contraption but when he threatens Emma, Hisako’s armor mutant powers emerge and she defeats the doctor in a rage. Her powers go out of control as Cyclops attempts to reach her lest what happened with Phoenix happens again. However, it is Emma who reaches the girl, leading the other X-Men save Cyclops to believe her. Meanwhile, the surviving U-Men make a hasty retreat as the X-Men free the captured mutants. The doctor returns for one final attack outside the facility, forcing Emma to save Hisako.

This episode was much more interesting to me that the other two were.  I’m not sure why exactly.  Maybe it was because I was attempting to analyze what Emma Frost said and decide whether I believe her or not.  I do know now that Emma is a “good guy” so that weighs in her favor.  Plus, assuming she is telling the truth about the fight in which Jean killed herself rather than allow her Phoenix powers be used for evil, then there’s no doubt that Mastermind is behind all that.  It will be interesting to see how Mastermind is played here but down the road a bit, I plan on doing a piece on how he and the X-Men clashed in Japan in Uncanny X-Men #172 & #173.

Back to the anime episode, I’m wondering how in the world a mutant’s organs will give the U-Men more power.  Seriously, what organ of Wolverine’s has to be taken to give someone healing factor?  Is it just Cyclops’s eyes that allow him to shoot optic blasts or is it something more?  I can’t imagine what organ allows Storm to manipulate weather.  It just seems so freaking silly to me as a concept.  Now, if the U-Men were simply (even if brutally) experimenting on captured mutants to learn what gave them powers and then attempting to replicate that on themselves, it would make sense to me.  The way things stand now, I’m not buying it and I’m amazed Marvel came up with it. Maybe it will make more sense later.

Hisako’s power is somewhat surprising. I wasn’t surprised that she had an armor power considering the bloody episode title gives that away (but I suppose if you are a current follower of X-titles, you’d already know the character and what she does so the episode title wouldn’t be a spoiler for you).  What did surprise me is that it is almost like a cross between a samurai armor and a mobile suit, only made from her mental energy.  So while I expected Hisako to have strong defensive capabilities, I didn’t expect her to have much in the way of offensive capabilities.  As such, Beast is still the most worthless combat mutant of the six mutant characters (seven counting Xavier).

The one U-Man who urged patience was correct considering how the X-Men veered from the expected path and had to be intercepted.  However, it was a mistake allowing the X-Men to reach Emma and Hisako since the two of them add to X-Men’s fighting numbers.  Since Emma and Hisako are in the credits, both OP and ED, the cliffhanger ending attempted by the writers fails. We know that Emma and Hisako will be with the X-Men as part of the team, whether officially or unofficially.  So unless the doctor does something else to either one of them, then this ending is a non-starter for me and made me roll my eyes just a bit.  Well, I suppose they get credit for trying to make people want to come back. ^_^;

Finally, as an aside, would those unofficially translating X-Men have their heads explode if they knew Japanese honorifics were heavily used back in the 80’s comic books when Wolverine and X-Men were in Japan?  I’m just saying…^_~

So, an episode I found much improved over the first two. Hopefully, future episodes will be as good and remember that all action does not a good anime make.