Guardians Of The Galaxy Just Made Its Anime Debut In Japan
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This weekend marks one hell of a milestone for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy as the movie will, according to estimates, pass the $300 million mark both abroad and domestically (becoming the first movie to break through that barrier in the U.S. this year). But that’s not all. We won’t be getting that animated Guardians series that we thought we were going to get out of San Diego Comic-Con back in July, at least not any time soon, but have no fear, there is apparently an anime version that may help tide you over until Guardians of the Galaxy 2 drops July 28, 2017.
The unlikely group of interstellar heroes/deep space outlaws comprised of Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot, just made they’re first appearance as part of a Japanese series called Marvel Disc Wars: The Avengers (which honestly only makes us want to see the Guardians team up with the Avengers even more than we already did). And we have to say, it sounds both a little insane and a little awesome.
From the various descriptions we’ve read here’s what we’ve gleaned about the story. Loki has captured all of the heroes and imprisoned in a bunch of little discs. Two kids find these discs and are able to unleash the characters for short bits of time in order to fight bad guys (kind of like how Pokémon works, I think), and the kids now have to travel the globe collecting all of the discs. That sounds suitably bizarre. Check out a sort snippet below:
Adding to strange nature of this, Marvel Disc Wars is apparently not bound by any existing contracts (I’m not sure how that works either), but that means that they’re able to do things like include Spider-Man in the Avengers team, as he should be, or even tap into the X-Men. Both of those could be a great deal of fun. This is also at least partially funded by Power Rangers creators Bandai, which might give you an idea of just what sort of madness you’re in store for, should you find away to get your mitts on this. That last part may be challenging, however, as “there are currently no plans for an international release.”
The Guardians made their first appearance on Disc Wars this past week, and you can tell that, while based on the comics, this incarnation of these characters is also very influenced by James Gunn’s film. There are some tweaks, however. Drax looks more like I think of him in the comics than he does in the movie, and Gamora is definitely rocking a different style here. The biggest difference, however, is obviously with Rocket, who looks way cartoonier, not to mention his cuddliness has been amplified a few notches. He still has a big ass gun, though, so that’s nice.
So this is no continuing Marvel animated series, but since that dream has apparently been crushed, this may be as good as we can hope to get until Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Assuming that you live in Japan, or have access to Japanese television.
