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Log Entry: May 28th, 2018 Erika came over to my place today, it's been almost a year since I last saw her I couldn't be any happier. Since there isn't much do at my house or the cow-town that I live in, we mainly just sat around and watched a few movies. We watched Batman Ninja, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, and some Tekken movie that I was only half paying attention to because I know jack shit about Tekken, but Erika loves the series so I didn't complain. Because I was becoming more interested in the DC universe, I was more excited to watch Batman Ninja. I first heard about from a crossover advert with Pop Team Epic my initial reaction to this was, "Oh so Batman is a ninja now? Sounds cool I guess." But then I later on found out the animation was being done by the same studio who did all the kickass openings for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, then I was completely hooked. Although perhaps I had too many high expectations for this film.  I have quite a bit to say after watching this film, some stuff positive, others....not as positive. Fair warning though I might dive a little bit into spoiler territory, but if you can give less of a shit about this movie about this guy in a bat costume suddenly be transported back to feudal Japan, then feel free to move on forward into this shitshow. ~Holy shit this movie is so well animated. I tend to prefer more hand-drawn traditional animation because most cgi animations tend to look really floaty and gross, but this is the one rare time it's done right. Kudos to you Kamikaze Douga. ~The character designs were real neat looking in my opinion. You really think the dark night would be running around Edo-era Japan in his regular old cape and cowl? Hell no! People would flip their shit! That's why the bat needs to adapt to his surrounding and wear clothes relative to the time period he's stuck in. ~All the former robins were here to give their batdad a hand. You never really get to see all of them together on one screen so this made me really happy. ~Seeing the current robin act a lot more happy-go-lucky compared to his usual angsty 10 year old self was a nice change of pace. Erika and I also got real excited when we got to see Red Hood's face, even if it was just only for a breif moment. ~What the film made up for in animation completely lacked in writing. Some scenes felt so confusing or out of place. ~It would've been nice if we got more screentime of the other villains aside from The Joker and a talking gorrila. It really felt like the only reason they bothered to put in Poison Ivy, Two-Face, The Penguin, and Slade was just to get their asses kicked first by The Joker and then again by Batman. ~Robin for whatever reason had a little pet monkey on him and I never truly understood why nor did the movie ever explain why Robin had this pet monkey. What's worse is that said pet monkey also had a fucking girlfriend. ~Near the end of the film when the gang finally returns back to Gotham, there's this one scene with Catwoman that was 2D, but then the next scene switched back to CG. This felt sorta cheap and threw off the entire balance of the film for me, especially since there was earlier scene that switched to 2D with a much more seamless transition. ~Probably just a personal nitpick of mine, but whenever Bruce Wayne wasn't wearing the Batman costume he had a giant chin which really bothered me.  All in all Batman Ninja is just your standard popcorn movie, the kind where they bring in a whole bunch of fan favorite characters to distract them from the lack-luster writing. Not that there's anything wrong with it though. To quote my highschool film teacher, "There's nothing wrong in wanting to see a dumb blockbuster movie. They were meant to be entertaining after all." It's just that I should've lowered the bar for my expectations. I wonder if Return of the Caped Crusaders is any better...   |