Sound check 1,2,3: Roopanand Rick checks out the sound and voices behind X-Men Anime

For Roopanand Rick, lounging on his comfy sofa with his furry friends Paray, Gypsy, Max, and Dexter as they catch up on the latest mainstream or indie animated releases is still the best way to spend the weekend.


An avid follower of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s X-Men, I, Roopanand Rick, can’t help writing about Madhouse Studios’ adventures of the uncanny heroes entitled X-Men Anime.

Roopanand Rick Paray photo credit: Flickriver.com

Today, I focus on the sound behind the anime. Animation is not only about what we see but also about what we hear. No one probably knows this better than the Japanese do. Music in Japanese animation has become so much a part of the local music industry, and yet has created an identity for itself.

Roopanand Rick Paray photo credit: Ugo.com

Roopanand Rick and his cat Paray have followed the adventures of the X-Men heroes since their 2D days on Marvel’s pages.

It has managed to establish a whole new industry and genre known as anison -- a portmanteau of the words anime and song. The use of sound and music, or their absence, bolsters the visual narration by setting the right ambiance and eliciting the right impact in a scene. Interestingly, Madhouse masters Masao Maruyama, Osamu Dezaki, Rintaro, and Yoshiaki Kawajiri cho se the 1993 rock band Ambiance to perform the first season’s opening theme entitled Rising. Moreover, the animation studio ascertained to recruit only the best voice talents into their bandwagon. The voices behind the mutant heroes were as follows:

• Aya Hisakawa as Storm
• Hideyuki Tanaka as Beast (Dr. Hank McCoy)
• Kaori Yamagata as Emma Frost • Katsunosuke Hori as Professor X (Professor Xavier)
• Rikiya Koyama as Wolverine (Logan)
• Toshiyuki Morikawa as Cyclops (Scott Summers)
• Yukari Tamura as Hisako Ichiki
• Yurika Hino as Jean Grey

Roopanand Rick Paray phot o credit: Marvel.com

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