ANI-MOVIES, *Predator: Killer Of Killers

After 5 live-action movies and 2 crossover films, we finally get a full-length feature of the Yuatja. Predator: Killer Of Killers follows the path that The Animatrix and Batman: Gotham Knight did before it and took an established media franchise and made an anthology movie about it with most of the stories tying together into a single narrative at the end. We've seen this before in other productions like Halo Legends, however this one is actually canon to the Predator series, either that or it's in a parallel universe. This was directed by Dan Trachtenberg who had already done Prey, and then followed that up with Predator: Badlands, plus he wrote the screenplay for this with Micho Robert Rutare. 20th Century Animation created a gorgeous production, although the constant low frame rate gets tiresome with every animated movie trying to keep up with the Spider-Verse movies.

The first chapter is The Shield where the viking warrior woman Ursa takes her son on a quest to avenge her father's killer, only to be interrupted by a Predator, and she is taken prisoner by the other Yuatja after killing the alien hunter. Next is The Sword about the samurai Kenji who has a duel with his brother to settle a decades-long feud over their father's armor, but they end up working together to stop another Predator with Kenji's brother dying to save his life, although Kenji himself is also collected by the Predators and put on ice along with several other humans for centuries. The third story is The Bullet which is a WWII tale where a young American pilot named Torres manages to shoot down a Predator airship only for himself to later get abducted sometime after the war. All three heroes are awakened on a different planet where they all have to fight to the death to have the honor of taking down a Predator champion. However, the trio of Earthlings ally themselves to escape on a spaceship, but only at the sacrifice of Ursa becoming a captive again. The film ends with some other Yuatja taking some frozen leftovers from past Predator movies hinting that there will be a big future team-up for survivors in another installment.

As a Predator movie, this was pretty good, but as an animated action flick it's a little below average with its graffiti-styled graphics. The action is turned up to 12 compared to the other Predator films, but that's mostly when the humans are fighting other humans, with the viking chapter being especially gory, although that might have been the reason this didn't get a theatrical release and went straight to streaming. Pred-Heads will more than likely to get their blood pumping on this, but it doesn't have the lasting power of the previous good Predator movies.

BNA: Brand New Animal, The Pre-furred Choice

After SSSS: Gridman, the studio Trigger did their next original work directed by Little Witch Academia creator Yoh Yoshimari. BNA: Brand New Animal is a new take on the “animals living in the same city” that Zootopia made a bundle on. The downside to this is most anime fans initially saw this as a rip-off of Beastars, so it didn’t receive the attention it needed. This was written by Kazaki Nakashima that also wrote for Getter Robo, and the Batman: Ninja movies. BNA was a limited series, only 12 episodes long, but it got in, told an entire story, and got out in record time. The anime premiered on Netflix in 2020 along with a light novel and a one-shot manga. The show initially prospered when it premiered, although its fandom has settled down over the years, even among furries.

Set on an alternate Earth where certain humans are called beastmen because they can take on the form of an anthropomorphic animal. Humans and beastmen have been living together for thousands of years, but beastmen are trying to have their own town in Japan named Anima City in Japan, because that’s the only country that takes in this kind of messed up metropolis. This was established because beastmen receive discrimination and need a haven to thrive. The Japanese government agreed to this to keep beastmen away from human population.

The story stars young basketball fan Michiru who has somehow become a beastman, specifically a tanuki also referred to as a raccoon dog which according to Japanese mythology are trickster creatures with the ability to shapeshift. She darts to Anima City to seek refuge and a cure for her case which is called beastmanitis. Upon getting there, she comes across the stoic wolfman Shirou who is a special agent for the mayor that helps Michiru gain her citizenship. While getting used to her new home, Michiru discovers that she can morph parts of her body into different animal parts, such as wings, gorilla arms, and her tail can be used as a cushion for rough landings. These new abilities help her locate her missing friend Nazuna who also got beastmanitis and is currently acting as the idol for a religious factor called the Silver Wolf cult who worship a mystical giant wolf that has appeared throughout history to help beastmen. The true antagonist is Slyvasta whose pharmaceutical company is secretly working on an anti-beastman formula to permanently turn all the beastmen into regular humans.

Trigger brought their A-game when they were making BNA. There is fast-paced action and sparkling animation with literal sparkles, plus explosive colors. The characters in both humans and beastmen stand out and are particularly sharp and angular. The designs vary between sharp and lean but can change to being either musclebound hulks or cute fuzzy children. You can see a lot of the effort that was used to make productions like Promare and Gurren Lagann so iconic.

Comparisons of BNA to Beastars were inevitable as both shows feature life in a city full of anthropomorphic animals, although Beastars was set within its all-furry world, whereas BNA shares its world with the rest of humanity. Beastars social division stems from carnivores and herbivores trusting one not to eat the other, of which Zootopia also shares some aspects. BNA represents a more relatable discrepancy as the human prejudice for beastmen is clearly meant to replicate discrimination between races, sexes, and gender. Anyone who has any idea of the X-Men can see the similarities between the plight of mutants and how the beastmen are treated by humans. The animosity humans have is partially out of fear, but mostly due to them seeing beastmen as not even human but lower lifeforms.

When BNA first aired, Netflix premiered the first 6 episodes, with the remaining finishing out the series a few weeks later, and there is a tone shift with the second half where it gets deeper into political intrigue and government conspiracies. Instead of exploring Michiru’s transformation into a tanuki girl, the concluding episodes get bogged down in the doctrine of the Silver Wolf and how religion can be a double-edged sword giving people faith but also making them too reliant on what they believe and how they have trouble dealing with the reality of a critical situation. It’s possible that an extra episode would’ve given BNA enough room to lay out all its racial and religious allegories while showing the everyday life of an actual community of furry people.

BNA is an anomaly among Trigger’s productions like Kill La Kill as it steers away from a few anime tropes like gratuitous fan service or Dragonball-level fights, even though there is a big battle between two kaiju-sized wolves, one of which even has three heads like Ghidorah. There’s plenty to enjoy in this and the plot does move along swimmingly, although it has much more backstory and world building than a 12-episode series could handle. If this anime was given another season, it would have been able to accomplish what it set out to do. Michiru’s childhood friendship with Nazuna was borderline sapphic in the beginning, but we see that there was a bigger chasm between the two characters thus making any lesbian fangirls disappointed. Over the course of the series, you are given a satisfying watch with a fun anime with dynamic animation, but you’ll also feel a little left out as there was clearly more to this brand-new world than what we got.

MISC. MANGA, *Grendizer U: The Inception

Acting as the third stage of Go Nagai's Mazinger franchise, Grendizer (also known as Grandizer) took the giant robot epic to the stars and became a space opera up there with Captain Harlock and was so popular that it ended up in the Shogun Warriors toy line, plus the anime was part of Force Five. There is a Grendizer anime and manga that ran in the 70s, and then it was given a reboot in 2024 with a simultaneous anime and manga called Grendizer U, and the manga is titled Grendizer U: The Inception which takes place before the TV series. It's hard to say that it's a "prequel" per say as it was released at the same time as the anime. Go Nagai wrote this new interpretation and it was illustrated by 8 Key, although it's American release was by Titan Manga who instead of releasing a full-sized novel came out with a light thin book for the same price as a standard published manga.

The corrupt Vega Alliance has conquered a good portion of the galaxy along with the planet Fleed. Duke is a prince of the empire, and he is coming of age to take charge of the powerful robot defender Grendizer, but his right of succession is being blocked by his best friend/rival Gau Su, so the two of them have a duel to inherit the tile of official mecha meister. Gau Su wins the match by cheating and leaves Duke for dead as he takes Grendizer, but Duke survived and learns that his father the king caused the death of Gau Su's father. Duke reunites with Gau Su and vows to help him fight against the king, but an accident causes Gau Su to perish and Duke winds up on Earth with no memory of his past. Duke was conveniently found by Koji Kabuto, the pilot for Mazinger Z, along with fellow mecha driver Sayaka. They ask Duke to be part of their team even though he doesn't currently have robot of his own, but anyone reading this will figure out that he'll eventually get Grendizer back and help out in defending Earth.

The manga has a decent start, but the opening chapters take place on an alien world, and then the plot is dropped into the storyline of an adjacent mecha series, so there's a massive tone shift. 8 Key's artwork isn't as hard edged as Go Nagai's original art from the 70s, but it is effective for the first few chapters. Titan Manga's translation seriously lacks any emotion to it and needed some spicing up. Once more volumes of this comes out it will hopefully bear better fruit.

ANI-MOVIES, *Madagascar

After Schrek became a mainstay for DreamWorks, they were looking for their next cinematic franchise. In 2005, the first Madagascar film was put in theaters to a rising victory. Even though it's an original story, the concept borrowed quite a bit from various classic cartoons, specifically Tennessee Tuxedo and Hair Bair Bunch, plus plenty of callbacks to Looney Tunes. The conceprt was about zoo animals ending up in the wild, which turned out to be such an original idea that a year later Disney came out with their own hideously animated movie titled The Wild. The characters have a specific angular design to them which is a fresh take instead of trying to make them match an established motif. One thing that the film keeps dragging its feet over is the constant barrage of pop culture references, and the soundtrack is littered with incidental jukebox music. However, as an animated family film, it does reach what it's going for.

A quartet of animals at the Central Park Zoo in New York City are all buddies who despite whatever natural tendencies they have are all friends. The lion Alex is the zoo's star attraction, and his neighbors Gloria the hippo, Melman the giraffe, along with zebra Marty whose 10th birthday makes him wish to see what life is like outside the zoo. After four penguins plan to bust out of their captive habitat, Marty gets the idea to also go see the great wild world, so he takes a stroll out on the town, with his friends chasing after him which gets them all deported. The penguins take control of the freighter which lands the main characters on the coast of Madagascar, thus finally living up to the movie's title. After being greeted by a tribe of lemurs lead by the charismatic King Julien, the zoo castaways decide to stay, although this new change of scenery doesn't help Alex's carnivore cravings. The penguins eventually turn the freighter around to Madagascar and help introduce Alex to seafood which cures his want to eat his friends and seeing everyone as talking steaks. They all plan to head back to New York, although the film ends with no functioning ship to make the journey home, so that's where the sequels come in.

Madagascar lives up to its name for the second half of the movie, although it could've been titled something a little closer to the story like Zoo Break. The casting is on point, even if most of the actors were high profile stars at the time this came out instead of standard voice over veterans. The film contains vibrant animation, although the human designs look like rejected background characters from the first Incredibles movie. The entire film is an homage to spastic golden age cartoons in the spirit of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, so old school toon fans should appreciate it, and it's a great film for kids.

ANI-MOVIES, *Appleseed Ex Machina

Appleseed was the second of Masamune Shirow's manga that got anime adaptation back in 1988. Shoot ahead to 2004 and Genesis Survivor Gaiarth director Shinji Aramaki took the reins of an all-CGI animated movie remake. Despite the dated cel shading, this Appleseed was successful enough to get a sequel in 2007 by the same studio Digital Frontier. Appleseed Ex Machina had the additional bonus as being the only animated production by action film guru John Woo, and they let you know that at the beginning of the film with a flock of doves. The animation got an upgrade, even though it still maintains that mid-00s 3D which crosses the border between great looking action but uncanny valley.

Taking place two years after the original film, mankind survived a global war by creating huge metropolises made up of not only humans, but cyborgs, and bioroids that are artificially created humanoids with enhanced abilities. One of these cities is Olympus which is threatened by terrorists, so to combat this is the special E-SWAT force, two of its officers are from the last movie, the nimble lady Deunan and her giant cyborg partner Briareos who fought by her side during the war before he lost most of his body. Briareos is taken out of action after a hostage situation, so Deunan is temporarily teamed up with Tereus, a bioroid made from Briareos' natural DNA. So, now there's a slight love triangle going on with Deunan's devotion to her true partner who happens to be a big hunk of metal, and the new guy with the same looks and behavior of the man she knew before his accident. An underground organization called Halcon threatens to destroy Olympus as they planted nanites in the latest mobile devices that mind control its victims. Halcon plans on taking control of the world's satellites to subjugate the planet, so Deunan along with her old and new partner have to launch a Matrix-styled assault on the Halcon headquarters filled with flying robot drones.

Appleseed Ex Machina is a step up for a cyberpunk feature finally bringing some high-octane action to the mix and abandoning the heavy exposition that weighed down the 2004 movie. It's clear that Shinji Aramaki borrowed a little from the Wachowskis when he turned up the volume on the fight scenes, however you still get a gratifying feeling after watching it. The best thing about this movie is that you can see it on its own without seeing the original, in fact it's probably better if you don't. Aramaki followed this up a few years later with a pseudo-prequel titled Appleseed Alpha which was more of a post-apocalyptic flick instead of a cyberpunk thriller, but you could also skip that and just enjoy this one.

MISC. MANGA, *You & Me

Most American otaku from the 90s might be familiar with Hiroshi Aro's manga, Futaba-Kun Change, which was a gender-bending madcap comedy done as an homage to Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2, but one of his other titles managed to briefly appear on American bookshelves that also honored Takahashi's work, You And Me which was his own take on Maison Ikkoku. Hiroshi Aro has had the entirety of Futuba-Kun Change available in English on formats like Kindle, but You And Me only got seven single issues with no collected paperback when Studio Ironcat translated it in 2002 as the company eventually went defunct under the label IC Entertainment. The original Japanese title for this was Yuu And Mii which of course means "you and me", and oddly enough there is an unrelated manga titled You And Me, Etc., but this version is more of a fast-paced gag series filled with a constantly moving parade of mature situations.

Yuu is what's referred to as a ronin which is someone who has troubling getting into a university, so he moves into his own apartment to concentrate on studying, however his apartment building called Yaninarisou is filled with the peak of strange neighbors. For one thing, Yuu discovers he has a roommate named Mii who is the ghost of a sexy girl that doesn't mind randomly getting naked. Among the other spooky inhabitants are a musclebound shojo manga creator, a creepy loner who longing to make friends, another ronin who truly needs a haircut, an ex-masked female wrestler, and the landlord who always wears midieval armor. Mii takes a serious liking to Yuu and makes his life even more hectic than a teenage ronin could normally handle. From here, Yuu tries to keep his sanity while studying for college, fending off his horny dead roomie, and the other weirdos in this supernatural looney bin.

You And Me is on its own a spastic comedy that never slows down to get into anything deep like character backstory, so it's pretty good for today's swipe left generation. Other historical gag manga like Dr. Slump and Crayon Shin-Chan have gained fans over the decades, but they also had popular anime to back it up. You And Me is one of those lost manga that saw a glimpse on the other side of the Pacific which never got a good enough chance to develop a following.

R.I.P., Daveigh Chase

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Taro The Dragon Boy

In 1960, Miyoko Matsutani created a popular children's book titled Taro The Dragon Boy that went on to have its own anime series in the mid-70s. Cutting ahead to 1979, Toei Animation did an animated movie based on the book which was directed by the studio founder Toei Daga. Columbia Home Pictures picked up the movie for an American release, and it recently got distributed by Discotek Media. The English dub does have some voice over royalty with Taro being portrayed by Billie Lou Watt who originally did the voices of both Astro Boy and Kimba, but another actor that most people weren't aware of was none other than Earl Hammond as the Red Demon who any fan of Rankin/Bass will know as the voice of Mumm-Ra and Mon-Star. This is a simple tale not bogged down with any recurring villain and is more about a young boy's redemption with expressive scenery and kooky characters.

Centuries ago in Japan, a young boy named Taro lies around all day while his grandmother works in the dried up fields in their village. Tora's mother was turned into a dragon because she violated the law of the mountains and ate all the fish she caught and didn't share them with anyone even though she was pregnant at the time and working on her own as a widow. After giving birth to Taro, the mama dragon became blind and is spirited away to another lake leaving her son behind. Taro is out one day and meets a Tengu that gives him some of his private hooch which gives Taro superhuman strength but only when he uses it to help others. Taro befriends Aya, a girl from a neighboring village who gets taken away by the well-meaning Red Demon, but Aya is kidnapped by the larger Black Demon. The Red Demon helps Taro defeat Black Demon after he falls to his death, even though that never stopped a certain coyote, then Taro throws Red Demon up to the clouds where he can play his drums and basically is this movie's version of Raijin. Taro then goes on a crusade to find his dragon mother and along the way helps depose a wicked rice farmer who doesn't share any of her loot with any of her workers. Taro gets frozen by some snow women, but Aya shows up on a flying pony they freed from Black Demon. They find the lake where Taro's mother dwells, and they free her from the curse.

Taro The Dragon Boy is a slight deconstruction of various Japanese myths and legends, particularly with yokai playing a notable role in this story. The film is not exactly high fantasy, but clearly not set in the ordinary world as it has talking animals and magical beings. Even though it's based on a children's story, it's not completely for kids as there is some blatant nudity showing up here and there. If tales of the Monkey King stir your pot, you'll discover a likable hero in Taro.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Wonderful World Of Puss 'N Boots

Charles Perrault had adapted numerous children's stories such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, both of which had a young girl getting help from an outsourced miracle worker, but when it came time for Puss 'N Boots instead of it being a divine fairy it is a clever fast-talking cat with impressive attire who assists a young boy get the girl of his dreams. Toei Animation released their own musical adaptation in 1969 titled The Wonderful World Of Puss 'N Boots that was so successful that they turned the title character into the official company mascot. Directed by Kimio Yabuki who a year before did The World Of Hans Christian Andersen for Toei, the film stays fairly true to the original book up until a point but then the finale has a long chase sequence that went on to inspire numerous animators, including some of the movie's animation crew which was made up of Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. The film spawned a few extra anime features starring the fashionable cat, but this movie was the start of the whole craze, and its cartoonish style became a source of innovation for future Japanese productions including anime and video games.

In this version of beloved fairy tale, the puss in question is named Pero who lives in a kingdom of cats, and he becomes an outlaw after sparing the life of a young mouse which the film never bothers to show. Now on the run from a trio of henchcats, Pero teams up with the young Pierre who is cast out by his two older brothers after they cheat him out his inheritance. Pero hears that the King is looking for a rich man to marry the Princess, so he gets the idea to have Pierre appear as a prince so they can live the high life. Conscripting some help from a family of bandit mice, Pero arranges for Pierre to gain an audience with the Princess Rosa, although she already had another suitor stop by before him named Lucifer who turns out to be an ogre that uses a skull-shaped pendant to do magic and take on any form he wants including a rip-off of King Ghidorah. Unlike his fairy tale counterpart, Pierre decides to tell Rosa the truth that he's not really a rich prince, which works out okay for him as Rosa already had feelings for him. However, Lucifer appears and kidnaps Rosa turning the film into a "save the princess" story that the Mario Bros. made a career out of. The story gets to the point where Pero cons Lucifer into taking on the form of a mouse where in the source material Puss eats the mouse, but instead Lucifer changes back to his tall ogre form and the last 20 minutes are a huge pursuit around Lucifer's castle with all its various traps and revolving towers. Pierre catches up to Rosa and the expose Lucifer's pendant to sunlight which destroys the lusty ogre, and then the couple get married and live happily ever after while Pero is still being chased by the three henchcats sent to kill him.

Unlike the Shreck spinoff movie, Toei's take on Puss 'N Boots is more faithful to the original story with the addition of more swashbuckling and some familiar cat and mouse shenanigans. Either due to the bumbling henchcats or the mouse family, the plot is constantly in motion, and even the English-translated catchy music numbers are competent enough to keep up with Disney's quality. This is a confirmed all-ages feature that's good enough to entertain even the kids of today with dynamic movement and thrilling cartoon action.

Batman Yells At Cloud

ANI-MOVIES, *Mulan

From the 17th Century book of Wu Shuang Pu, the story of Hua Mulan has endured for centuries, so since Disney was looking to making their next features more appealing to Eastern audiences, they thought this story willed fit the bill. Former Hanna-Barbera animator Barry Cook and one-time Ralph Bakshi assistant Tony Bancroft both directed Mulan in 1998. For a saga that spans over a decade, the film tightens it up to an 88-minute-long feature too overloaded with comedy to be considered an epic adventure. Not winning any Oscars, Mulan did become a big hit with Millennials and eventually Gen-Z children. Despite the gender-bending qualities of the story, it didn't exactly become the pinnacle of trans representation you would expect, even though Donny Osmond's contribution to the soundtrack practically became an LGBTQ battle cry. The success of it went on to a made-for-video sequel plus a completely irrelevant live-action remake that nobody asked for. Mulan herself was of course drafted into the unconnected Once Upon A Time series, as well as being added to the Disney Princess line-up even though she's not a princess, this was despite the fact that the title character is rarely the focus of the story, similar to Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. A good portion of the plot is enraptured with the comic relief and side characters, so the comedy distracts from the coming-of-age war story it could have been.

Taking place during the 4th-6th Century in China, the Hun army led by the ruthless Shan Yu invade mostly because he hated the fact that they put of the Great Wall just to keep him out. All the active males are to be enlisted into the Imperial Army, but the head of the Fa family is still suffering from an old wound, so his rebellious daughter Mulan takes his armor and pretends to be his son Ping. This doesn't set well with the Fa family ancestors who plan to send a powerful dragon spirit to help her, but the demoted jive-talking minor dragon Mushu uses this as a chance to earn his spot back among the guardian spirits. Mushu and a lucky cricket eventually catch up to Mulan and help her blend in with the other men, especially with the Captain Li Shang and three of the more stooge-like soldiers. Mulan manages to keep her secret up until an encounter with the Huns on a mountaintop has her burying the entire enemy army under an avalanche, and her wound caused her comrades to discover her feminine side, so she is sent home by Li Shang without being reprimanded. Shan Yu and a few of his stronger men survive the snowslide and plan on sneaking into the imperial palace and kidnap the emperor which Mulan notices. She tries to get her former comrades in arms to believe her about the incoming danger, but they brush her off, so Mulan stops the remaining Huns and blows up Shan Yu in an explosion of fireworks. Mulan is praised by the emperor and has Li Shang follow her home because they never really set up a romance between the two of them.

Mulan seems like it should fit into Disney's blockbuster roster, but even the famed Szechuan Sauce can't erase many of its blatant faults. The soundtrack is limited with only 4 songs for a picture that is billed as a musical, and only one of those is remembered for Disney fans to sing loudly at convention karaoke sessions. The characters are interesting, but the main character is drowned out by the extended cast, so since this is Disney heroine that already had two animal sidekicks, the addition of her knucklehead trio of army buddies and the bickering bureaucrat outweigh any potential that Mulan might have earned on her own, but at least she didn't have magic powers in this version. The cast is decent with regular voice actors such as James Hong, George Takei, and June Foray, plus Ming-Na Wen makes her animated premiere here as Mulan, but the outplaced Eddie Murphy and several other Chinese characters being played by white actors doesn't help. The breakout of the film is the animation which was the first movie to be completed in the Walt Disney World studio as opposed to in Hollywood. Mulan on its own works as a single feature but trying to make a cheap sequel and a flimsy remake stretched its credulity.

Everything's better with Skeletor!

 

Batman-Caped Crusader: Back To The Past

It was well passed the time that we got a new animated series of Batman, especially if it’s being spearheaded by B:TAS forerunner Bruce Timm. For the new show titled Batman: Caped Crusader, it was made to premiere on Amazon Prime instead of a service connected to Warner Bros, plus this was produced by Bad Robot Productions in their first animated TV series. It maintains the dark deco style from the 90s show, but this time it takes place in the 1940s whereas B:TAS had a retro noir motif set in modern day. Instead of focusing on Batman himself, this new show targets the time it’s set in and makes it more mature with a psychological approach and how corruption plays a major part in people’s motivations.

First airing in 2024, the original season went on for a mere 10 episodes like My Adventures With Superman, with plans for the second season to have the same number of episodes. Caped Crusader came out a few months after Disney premiered their X-Men 97 series which also called back to a 90s animated series, but between the two of them X-Men seemed to score more fans partially because there are less people subscribed to Amazon. The saving grace for this was it took place prior to David Zaslav’s striking several Warner productions off for tax purposes, plus Amazon had already signed on for the second season.

Taking place during Batman’s first year, the show is period piece taking place probably prior to America’s entering WWII. This world this takes place in is an alternate reality where there’s less racism and same-sex relationships are more socially accepted. Gotham City here is one of the darkest it’s ever been, particularly with crime and how it depraves the citizens one way or another. The Batman shown here is still a little wet behind his pointy ears and not the seasoned crimefighter most fans are used to, however he still has the same ambition and drive even if some of the technology he used didn’t exist like wireless microphones and personal submarines.

There are a few of Batman’s regular rouges’ gallery here, but with a new twist. Catwoman isn’t the total pro cat burglar we’re used to, Rupert Thorne is the main crime boss, Clayface is Basil Carlo who can only change the shape of his face and not a full shapeshifter, plus a less ambitious Firebug. We’re also graced with the animation premiere of Nocturna and her brother Night-Slayer, although Nocturna is a kind of vampire and much younger than her Dark Knight boyfriend from the 80s. Penguin is the first criminal we meet, except here the character is gender-swapped with two sons. Another change is Harley Quinn who has no connection to the Joker who only shows up at the end of season one, plus here she is Asian American and openly a lesbian. We get a few guest villains who are normally the archenemies of other DC superheroes like Gentlemen’s Ghost and Onomatopia. Harvey Dent eventually becomes Two-Face by the end of the first season, although you can see his ego slowly leading him down the dark path even before his little acid bath. King Tut and Killer Croc make brief appearances, plus detectives Bullock and Flass show that dirty cops are also villains.

Some of the other cast is remade for this Batman incarnation. Alfred is slightly stockier, Jim and Barbara Gordon are both black with Barbara being a public lawyer, and all the potential Robin candidates are younger than they usually are. There are also appearances by other extend DC Universe characters such as Papa Midnite, The Spectre, Plastic Man, The Creeper, and even a Fleischer Studios’ take on Lois Lane who is regularly working out of Gotham instead of Metropolis.

The cast is exemplary with sitcom actor Hamish Linklater taking on the title role, John DiMaggio trading in Joker for Bullock, Tom Kenny as Firebug and as Eel O’Brien (aka: Plastic Man), Krystal Jay Brown as Barbara Gordon: Attorney at Law, Christina Ricci as the rookie Catwoman, Hayley Joel Osment as Night-Slayer, and former-Batman Diedrich Bader now playing Harvey Dent and totally sells it as a more unscrupulous take on the character. Cedric Yarbrough takes on the part of four villains as Rupert Thorne, Killer Croc, Papa Midnite, and Joker.

With animation covered by Studio Grida and Studio IAM, Batman: Caped Crusaders managed to capture the essence of the 90s cartoon series while paying homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood and pulp fiction magazines. Critics appreciated the darker tone that the show took with Batman and his extended cast, plus its open-minded approach to representation. Hopefully the upcoming second season will give the series a significant boost to justify another season, and at least Bruce Timm was able to keep his fanboy impulses down enough so Batgirl did end up sleeping with Batman again.