X-Men – 11

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: <

Hisako feels the pain in her hand, which has been bothering her since she arrived at Sasaki-sensei’s place, and remembers her past with Takeo even as Mastermind attempts to get Takeo to release his power via the illusion he has Takeo trapped in. Said power would negate things like the laws of physics and thus Takeo could destroy everything around him. Hisako recalls that while engaged in a snowball fight, Takeo created a shield around him and deflected snowballs, now turned into fireballs, back to the school, burning it down. In his grief, the young Takeo unconsciously wiped the minds of the other children which is why Hisako had forgotten so much. Sasaki explains that she then closed the school and hid Takeo away to research his power and protect him.

Xavier awakes at hearing Jean’s voice and stops the Blackbird’s freefall while Hisako becomes enraged at how Takeo is being treated and frees herself from Marsh’s goo, inflicting heavy damage on him. This causes the others he’d trapped to become free as well, so Cyclops vaporizes him with an optic beam blast. Cyclops goes for Mastermind but is swallowed in an illusion where he sees all mutants, including the X-Men, hung on X-shaped crosses. Jean is there and blames him for this.  Realizing he’s in an illusion, Emma is forced to assume diamond form to prevent Mastermind from using her while Takeo’s powers continue to go out of control, trapping Hisako, Emma, and Storm again.

Inside Neuron’s trap, Beast and Wolverine figure to go on the offensive since Marsh is gone and the others are trapped. Wolverine has Beast beat him, which combined with Neuron’s sensory amplification, causes Wolverine to go berserk and even get stronger. He breaks free of Neuron and kills him before turning on Beast. However, the exertion causes Wolverine to return to himself. Inside Mastermind’s illusion, a second Jean appears to encourage Scott to blast her and Dark Phoenix. He does and breaks Mastermind’s illusion. Takeo’s power goes completely out of control and he kills Mastermind while changing the world and keeping the X-men from attacking. Xavier crashes the Blackbird but ejects safely and faces his son.

Thoughts/Review:

OK, so Mastermind wanted Takeo’s power to do what? Rule the world?  That was the supposed reason as I understood the anime.  However, Mastermind making Takeo go out of control in order to do this was just nuts. I kept thinking, “OK, you can torture Takeo with your illusion but how are you going to control him? Another illusion?”  For me, it didn’t make any sense and seemed like suicide. After all, while Mastermind is making Takeo go out of control, the fact that Takeo is destroying things around them and changing the nature of things was apparently no problem.  So, when Takeo kills Mastermind, that was about as surprising as greedy, lying politician being revealed as such.

With Mastermind gone, my thought that he’d end this episode seemingly on top is a bust. Now, the final opponent is Takeo and I still say Sasaki-sensei dies; possibly Takeo as well.

Speaking of death, this anime has actually killed every opponent the X-Men have faced, from the two U-Men to Hedgehog, Marsh, Neuron, and Mastermind.  That’s so different from how things go in the comic books, where characters rarely died and even if they did die, they can always come back. *_*  Glad that’s not happening here.

In the end, I was entertained by this episode but I hate the cliched stuff from Mastermind.