Reviews
Episode #14: Annihilation
Original Airdate: July 14th, 2007
The FANTASTIC FOUR fall into a trap and are taken to the NEGATIVE ZONE, where they’re attacked by ANNIHILUS and his warriors. But all is not as it seems - something in the Zone is affecting the Four’s powers. Things go from bad to worse when DOCTOR DOOM arrives, apparently in league with Annihilus! But Doom isn’t one to share power, and he takes Annihilus’ energy source back to Earth with him. But even if the Four can escape Annihilus, how can they defeat Doom, who now has the power to destroy the world?
Credits
Story By Craig Kyle and Chris Yost
Written by Chris Yost
Directed by Franck Miohel
Music by Noam Kaniel
Animation By Sunmin/ The Animation Studio/ Fantasta
Voices
Mr. Fantastic - Hiro Kanagawa
Invisible Woman - Lara Gilchrist
The Thing - Brian Dobson
Human Torch - Christopher Jacot
Review
Stu - The Fantastic Four return to The Negative Zone in this episode as another one of the Lee/Kirby ‘villains’ make their debut in this show, this time the world’s greatest heroes meet Annihilus and run into Dr. Doom once again.
We’ve seen a hell of a lot of Doom in this show so far but he’s done very little to be a gigantic threat that he should be. I realise it’s unrealistic to expect a great menace from him given the number of appearances he’s had but they seem to be having him building up to something which will hopefully come into play in some of his later appearances. Still, he’s much more entertaining than he has been in all the previous Fantastic Four cartoons. We’ll see if he tops his best animated appearance in the 1980’s solo Spider-Man show by the time we get to episode 26. At this point I’ve absolutely no idea if we’ll get more episodes beyond that, we can but hope…
Annihilus wasn’t really what I was expecting as he doesn’t appear to be a truly evil villain, simply a ruler amongst his people. Whoever voiced him (somebody please provide me with a damn cast list!) did a great job and they’ve obviously added some kind of effect to his voice that sounded great, if only because it was something a little different. Given how terrible the previous voice for Annihilus was, I’m glad to see that the show’s stellar casting is continuing. His design was great too! I much prefer this one to the comics design. It was a very detailed design which was no doubt a pain to animate but it looked spectacular in the episode. When Annihilus returns, I’d like to see him in a normal atmosphere as sometimes the weird colouring that takes place in The Negative Zone can be a little distracting. I’m glad they are making attempts to differ it from the regular reality that the heroes inhabit, however.
The episode is a little weaker than usual for this show, but it’s still perfectly enjoyable. At time of written, I’ve seen 13 episodes, which is a season’s worth for most cartoons and we’ve not yet had a truly terrible, or even bad episode. Some of them haven’t been too impressive but there’s a lot of good stuff to be found even in the episodes of lesser quality. Compare this to the likes of The Batman, Teen Titans and X-Men: Evolution and this show is on course to being better than any of them. I’d love to see a full run of 52 episodes eventually so hurry up and get them back on the air Cartoon Network!
Media
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