If I’m a hopeless fanboy of anything, it’s Batman, but like Two-Face’s coin (or Two Face himself for that matter), that’s double sided. With anticipation comes expectation. So Batman: Gotham Knight was just enough to tide over my geeky glee until the release of The Dark Knight.
Gotham Knight is a series of six short anime features with interlocking stories and different animators, writers and directors for each story. We get some of Batman from a distance, the urban myth, part as the vigilante, the Bruce Wayne in training throughout the world, and, of course, the hero. The impressive thing about this is that Batman is one of those characters who is such a cultural icon that everyone has a different idea of who he is, so to do six subtly different interpretations of the character back to back is fucking bold, and worth a standing ovation that they pulled it off. Granted Kevin Conroy voiced all six and, wishing no disrespect to Mr Bale, anyone other than Conroy pretending to be Batman as a voice performer is doing just that: pretending. The life that he is capable of breathing into an animated character is masterful
My only criticisms are based on what we were promised and what we got. In the original production teaser a lot of footage was spent establishing the villains, who all play a small part. Large amounts of screen time are spent explaining Killer Croc, then he is dispatched in a few seconds. It almost feels as though they are overcompensating for his cartoonish nature, and trying too hard to justify that he could exist in a storyline grounded in reality. Scarecrow makes what could only be called a cameo, and Deadshot is contained in a single episode. Also as far as leading into The Dark Knight, very little is even insinuated. There were two hitherto unknown detective characters who I assume will make an appearance in the upcoming film, and Scarecrow is now leading a cult in the sewers which might be brought up too. Some of this might make more sense once I’ve seen The Dark Knight, but that could be put down to trying to make this, and the upcoming feature film, stand alone narratives. As a segway Gotham Knight wasn’t as effective as say, The Animatrix was, but now I feel really geeky.
If you’re into anime check this out as it’s a rare hybrid of western and eastern animation. For me it’s very likely to get me into anime but also appealed to the side of me that never outgrew cartoons, and it was great to have a Batman cartoon aimed closer to my age group. Nevertheless, in three sleeps I’ll be ordering a long island ice tea and sitting down to watch The Dark Knight and the universe will be at high risk of imploding on its own fucking awesomeness.
