BATMAN NINJA. The Dark Knight in Feudal Japan

Western pop culture has been blending with its Far Eastern counterpart for decades. They intertwine, clash, and feed off each other. Usually, these interactions occur naturally, but there are also less subtle examples — like The Animatrix, conceived as a Japanese take on the Wachowskis’ universe, or Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla, which presented the traditionally Japanese monster through the lens of an American disaster movie at the turn of the century. A similar case can be found in the animated DC Comics adaptation — the ever-so-delicately titled Batman Ninja.

In this film, during a battle with Gorilla Grodd, Batman accidentally activates one of the mad ape’s devices and is transported through time and space to feudal Japan, where — as it turns out — his greatest enemies, including Joker, Harley Quinn, and Two-Face, as well as his trusted allies Alfred and Robin, have also been sent. Naturally, the masked defender of Gotham soon finds himself at odds with his eternal nemeses — led, of course, by the Joker — and unexpectedly becomes the key figure in an ancient prophecy about a masked warrior destined to lead the Land of the Rising Sun out of chaos…

What might have sounded like a hastily sketched but still promising premise for relocating the Caped Crusader to the era of samurai and ninja, in the finished film becomes an outright parade of absurdly stupid ideas, hurled at the audience minute after minute. Plot twists pile on top of one another, new characters and subplots keep appearing, and at some point the viewer feels that absolutely EVERYTHING is happening on screen at once. Giant robot castles? Bat gods? An army of monkeys merging into one colossal creature? A memory-wiped Joker living as a humble farmer? You got it.

And all of that occurs within a single fifteen-minute stretch. This scattershot accumulation of supposed attractions has disastrous results — the film doesn’t work even as a guilty pleasure. Instead, it bores and frustrates with every passing second.

Another major problem lies in the film’s painfully stereotypical approach to Japanese animation. It manifests through overly exaggerated character expressions and performances, gargantuan name captions flashing across the screen, the completely unjustified use of mechs in feudal Japan, and the objectification of every female character, reduced to cleavage-bearing fantasy figures (granted, the original comics aren’t entirely innocent here either). The creators also radically depart from the tone and spirit of the source material, resulting in a complete loss of any connection to the DC Comics universe — Batman here is “Batman” only because he happens to like the bat symbol. The inconsistent and often painfully artificial animation doesn’t help either. Ultimately, the viewing experience feels utterly pointless.

It’s worth noting that Batman Ninja wasn’t the first Japanese-American collaboration centered on the Dark Knight. Almost two decades ago (how time flies!), the anthology Batman: Gotham Knight was released on DVD and Blu-ray — a collection of short animated films inspired by Batman Begins and The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan.

That project wasn’t perfect — the individual segments varied in quality and storytelling — but it succeeded thanks to its balance between the original mythology of the character and a distinctly Japanese stylistic touch. No such balance exists (nor was it seemingly even attempted) in Batman Ninja. The result is a creation that manages to insult both the iconic hero and anime as an art form itself.