Character Designs for Madhouse’s ‘X-Men’ Anime

We got a glimpse of them in footage released last month, but now we know exactly what the X-Men will look like and who's providing their voices in the new anime series from Madhouse. Released this week by the Animax channel is a character design graphic featuring Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Beast and Professor X as they will appear in the series, which follows Madhouse productions of Wolverine and Iron Man.

Reflecting the influence of Astonishing X-Men as well as the New X-Men designs of Frank Quitely, the anime version of the famous Marvel superheroes looks a lot more sophisticated than anything we've seen on screen before, animated or in live-action.

Joining the classic lineup is Armor aka Hisako Ichiki, a mutant created by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday in Astonishing X-Men. In the new anime, Armor's kidnapping is what reunites the X-Men following the team's dissolution in the wake of Jean Grey's death. But as all X-Men readers know, the words "Jean Grey" and "death" rarely work happily together for very long.

The X-Men anime cast includes Rikiya Koyama, who reprises his role of Wolverine from the Madhouse sister show. Yurika Hino, who provided the Japanese language dub for Famke Jansen's Jean Grey in the live-action X-Men films, will also voice the character in the new cartoon.

X-Men premieres April 1 in Japan. An English version will broadcast on the G4 network sometime in 2011, along with Wolverine and Iron Man. Anime News Network reports that a Blade anime is also in development.

[Via Anime News Network]