Well then anime , cartoon and comic book fans it's so rare that I get the chance to talk to all three of you at the same time. Depending on where your seeing this review you'll know that i've been on a bit of a Batman kick as of late and well that's not going to be slowing down anytime soon and so I thought that in order to give myself a challenge i'd review something that's a little bit different and so I chose the only anthology film to feature the dark knight Batman: Gotham Knight.
Like I just said in the intro there is not plot to this movie because it's an anthology so each short has a different plot to it. That said tho there are not recurring characters that appear in the shorts and that to me does make it feel like these shorts take place in one world rather then a different world for each of the shorts it also makes it alot harder for me to judge anything regarding plot so for this one time i'm not going to to judge any of the plots.
Now for the sake of my own sanity i'm not going to list every actor who appears in this film because each short has a different set of actors so i'm only going to list those who play the same character in a few of the shorts. So starring in this movie we have Kevin Conroy as Batman / Bruce Wayne , Ana Ortiz as Anna Ramirez , Gary Dourdan as Crispus Allen , Rob Paulsen as Sal Maroni , David McCallum as Alfred Pennyworth and Jim Meskimen as James Gordon and Floyd Lawton / Deadshot.
Even tho I cut down the list of actors who are in this movie that's still alot of actors and I have to say that for an anthology movie they got some impressive voice actors. Since this is a review I have to judge the acting and I have to say that the acting is freaking fantastic of course Kevin kills it as Batman I really can't think of a time when he's not been awesome as the character and in all honesty all of the actors are really good in this with some of the actors i've listed even showing up as other characters.
This film was animated by four different companies and they are Studio 4°C who worked on shorts one and five , Production I.G. , Bee Train and Madhouse who did shorts four and six. Now I honestly thought that the animation quality would be all over the place in this film given how many studios are working on each short film but I was shocked the animation for each short is is of a high quality and that was something that i didn't see coming.
Not only is the film full of great actors but the writer for this film is for a direct to DVD movie really freaking impressive. Writing shorts for this film are Josh Olson who's worked on the latest Jack Reacher before it was re-written by Christopher McQuarrie , comic book writer Greg Rucka , Jordan Goldberg , David S. Goyer , comic book writer Brian Azzarello and Alan Burnett. Regardless of what you think of these people as writers you have to admit getting them to work on a direct to DVD movie is impressive and it makes me wonder why WB don't get writers of this calibre to work on more direct to DVD movies.
One thing which I didn't mention at the start of the review is that the pacing for each of the shorts is actually pretty good. Each of the six shorts lasts around ten to fifteen minuets and so that means that none of the shorts have a chance to get boring but it also means that you don't get the chance to connect to any of the characters or to the story so it's a double edged sword. I personally tho would have loved it if the shorts were a little longer not by much only by like five minuets just because with that extra run time I feel you'd have a better chance to connect to the story and the characters.
This is an anthology film and this film is made up of six short films some of which do connect be it via story points or the fact that one short might end and the next one will be set right after it. That to me makes me wonder if there were plans to create something with a more cohesive story since there has to be reason for the film trying to connect these stories together and the only reason I can think of is if there was a plan for the film to have one story.
This film was advertised as being set inbetween Batman Begins and The Dark Knight clearly nobody told any of the people actually making the film because if they did then we wouldn't have got a film which is as far removed as you could get from either film. If you looked at the visuals then you wouldn't even guess that this is set in the world as The Dark Knight and i'm sure if they knew that then they'd make more of an effort to cast the actors from the film and make it look like those films.
I honestly have no idea why it's taken me so long to talk about this movie since I own it on DVD and watch it regularly so I honestly don't know why it's taken me this long to get to reviewing it. Now people say that Batman Ninja is the first Batman anime and while I do see where those people are coming from I personally see this as the first Batman film to be inspired by anime and I have no idea why people don't talk about this film.
Now since this is a superhero movie that means we have to talk about the action that's in the film and I have to say that i'm honestly impressed. For some reason action in anime just really doesn't do anything for me and so to see a film that's anime inspired have great action to me is a good thing even tho it boils down to who can hit the hardest it's so well done that I can look past it and just enjoy it's not often that i can do that.
Overall in my opinion this is a must watch for any Batman fan it's not the best Batman film out there but it offers something so different and so unique that you have to see it just to see how different this film is and for that reason this film gets an 8.5 out of 10 from me.