My Review of Batman Ninja (2018)

 

Written by Kazuki Nakashima And Leo Chu And Eric S. Garcia

Directed by Junpei Mizusaki

Batman: "This is madness."

With the sequel to this anime now released, I had to go back and rewatch this one. I'll admit I wasn't that taken with it at first but it's worth a second look.

Over the years, DC has embraced anime with the likes of My Adventures With Superman and Suicide Squad Isekai. This movie preceded both of those shows, though it had more in common with the latter, premise wise.

The film started with Batman (Koichi Yamadera) battling Gorilla Grodd (Takehito Koyasu) in Gotham City, only for the latter's Quake Engine to send him into Feudal Japan. Of course, it wouldn't just be Batman in that particular era.

This movie had not only Alfred Pennyworth (Hochu Otsuka) but also Nightwing (Daisuke Ono), Red Hood (Akira Ishida), Red Robin (Kengo Kawanishi) and Robin (Yuki Kaji). They made up Team Batman but what about the Rogues themselves? Again, this film didn't fall short.

There was Joker (Watery Takagi), Catwoman (Ai Kakuma), Harley Quinn (Rie Kugimiya), Poison Ivy (Atsuko Tanaka), the Penguin (Cho), Deathstroke (Junichi Sawabe), Bane (Kenta Miyake) and Two Face (Toshiyuki Morikawa). It's a fairly large gallery of baddies to use for this movie but great additions nonetheless.

Add in some original characters such as Bat Clan leader Eian (Yoji Ueda), Robin's pet monkey Monkichi (Anna Mugiho) and the latter's friend, Monmi (Juri Nagatsuma) and some rather cool battle sequences and I think I might have misjudged this movie. It's definitely a lot better than I remembered it to be.

- A mid credit scene had Catwoman selling weapons while we saw a horse drawn Batmobile.

- Yet another animated movie where Joker and Harley are a couple but we did get some Gotham City Sirens allusions here.

- The English dub actors are Roger Craig Smith, Tony Hale, Grey Griffin, Tara Strong, Adam Croasdell, Fred Tatasciore, Yuri Lowenthal, Will Friedle, Eric Bauza, Tom Kenny and Matthew Yang King

- Chronology: Present day Gotham City and Feudal Japan.

I'm glad I did give Batman Ninja a second chance. It's better second time around and there's some pretty good sequences throughout the whole movie, along with a good enough to keep it going. Now it's on to the sequel.

Rating: 7 out of 10