Did We Know Warren Ellis Was Writing the Marvel Anime?

I don’t know. I don’t remember. I remember hearing that Marvel was teaming up with the pretty damned good anime studio Madhouse to make four anime series, including one with Wolverine and one with Iron Man, and being pretty damn excited about it. It seems like if I knew Warren Ellis was going to write the series, I’d have been even more excited — at least, I wouldn’t have forgotten. Or maybe I didn’t give a shit about Warren Ellis until he wrote G.I. Joe: Resolute, which, as well know, will be an early standard for how good the live-action movie should have been, and, of course, made tender, passionate love to our childhoods.

The reason I’m excited is that by having Ellis write these things, the Marvel anime will avoid one of the biggest traps of Japanese-American anime co-productions — which is that Japan often doesn’t give a shit what American audiences what. I’m not saying they don’t know, mind you, it’s that when you get the good anime directors — like with The Animatrix, Gotham Knight, and that Highlander anime movie — those directors want to direct their own vision, which very well might contain no action whatsoever. Ellis knows what Western fans want — Resolute very much case in point — which means there’ll be a decent chance that these will be awesome, action-packed and beautifully animated. Which means the zombie apocalypse will probably occur just before they get released, because there’s really no way Evil Flying Jesus would ever allow such a magnificent product into the world. (Via Robot 6)