Talk to the hand.
If you read my introduction to Iron Man, you might have noticed that I’m kind of a big fan. Couple my love of the comic-book Tony Stark with my desperate need to see something good after the disappointment of last season, and you get some fairly high expectations that Madhouse needed to live up to. Thankfully, that’s exactly what they did, but not quite in the ways I expected.
Instead of retelling Iron Man’s origin story, the first episode introduces us to Tony Stark when he’s a well-established superhero. Stark wants to build one of his famous arc reactors in Japan, which he claims will give the country unlimited, free energy. The Japanese public, however, is skeptical. Since the arc reactor is what powers Stark’s Iron Man armor, who’s to say he’s not trying to build an absurdly powerful weapon under the guise of philanthropy? So, Stark–the stereotypical wealthy American who revels in excess and the occasional vice–is forced to figure out how to get the Japanese to like him while trying to dodge the tough questions and charm the pants off of a spunky reporter named Nanami Ota.
And then the Iron Man Dio, Stark’s prototype for a mass-production armor, somehow goes out of control and starts blasting the landscape. All in all, not the best day he’s ever had.
It is, however, a darn good episode, and I’ll explain why after the jump.
