When the 90's X-Men cartoon was brought over to Japan, someone must have thought "this opening animation stinks; nobody will watch if we leave it on." They made their own opening to replace it, and the X-Men must have been just as popular back East as they were here, because Japan making their own opening for a US program is an extremely rare occurance. A minute and forty-five seconds now exist that show what the cartoon would have looked like if it had been animated in Japan instead of Korea.

Blast you, Fox Kids....why couldn't you have ponied up the extra bucks?

This clip has been in demand ever since it showed up elsewhere, in the credits for the syndicated run of X-Men. Saban was given distribution rights and they replaced the original credits sequence (simply a reprise of the American animation) with the Japanese opening. For Americans, this appeared out of nowhere and several people thought it was a sign of "things to come," but no Japanese X-Men series exists.

The Japanese opening uses a different theme song--some J-Rock piece full of Engrish. It was also based on the first season, made apparent by the fact that Cable shows up twice and he barely had anything to do with the show after season 1. And where did all those rabid dogs come from?

Big thanks to "Funkatron" for donating this video.

SEE THE X-MEN FLY AROUND ANIME-STYLE
High quality, 6 MB...so it may require waiting