Season 5 On DVD
The fifth season of X-Men starts off with and two part story known as “The Phalanx Covenant.” This alien form who can disguise itself as anything poses a major threat, and the X-Men ultimately team up with Magneto and Sinister to combat it. Later in the season, “Descent” explores the origin of Sinister. The episode that, chronologically to the series would belong in volume three is “No Mutant Is An Island,” which focuses on Cyclops struggling with the loss of Jean Grey. Other episodes include Nightcrawler trying to help his mother, Storm getting hitched, and a great episode with Wolverine reminiscing about fighting in World War II alongside Captain America.
The collection of episodes is really on par for the rest of the series which equates to very entertaining, well written, and well animated action. For a complete episode synopsis, I would point you to a site like TV Rage.
Like the other volumes, this fifth volume comes packaged in a great looking case. The removable jacket is shiny and has a raised texture, it’s certainly eye-catching. The same front and back box art is used on the hard case, which includes both discs. Each disc has a gray label with the X-Men logo and disc number printed on it. Disc one is situated securely in a plastic ‘page’ that can be flipped forwards or backwards while disc two is on the back side of the case.
The presentation quality is exactly what you’d expect for a 90s cartoon on DVD. The show is presented in full screen and the image quality is fine — it’s not going to blow you away, but it isn’t bad either. From an animation perspective, I think the show looks great, plain and simple. The audio is a reliable Dolby 2.0 Stereo track with French and Spanish language tracks and subtitles included.
Once again, there are no extra features at all, which shouldn’t be surprising as the previous volumes did not include any either. It’s a bit of a shame, but, hopefully we’ll see a complete series set with a lot of bonus material. Only time will tell, but two years ago I never thought I would see an official release of the X-Men cartoon on DVD and look where we are now!
To the summary…