DC fans there are alot of shows out that feature Batman both animated and live action and there's going to be a lot more in the future. However there's one show that people seem to forget and honestly that's a good thing since this is so far the only animated show where they used CGI animation which is something I will get into later on in the review and so here is my review of the second episode of Beware The Batman called "Secrets" enjoy.
The plot of the episode is Batman has to find out who the new villain called Magpie as well as work out what her evil plan is and stop her before it's to late all the while Bruce Wayne has to get used to his new bodyguard / driver and a secret that Alfred has kept from him which changes nothing but we need a title. In all honesty the plot of this movie is really good and is a key example of what a Batman show can be like if it's well written but at the same time the plot felt like it was at times at least very fast paced.
Starring in the episode is Anthony Ruivivar as Bruce Wayne / Batman and Sumalee Montano as Tatsu Yamashiro. Also starring in the episode is J.B. Blanc as Alfred Pennyworth, Batcomputer and Lunkhead , Grey DeLisle as Margaret Sorrow / Magpie , Ian James Corlett as Joe Braxton and Police Officer , Kurtwood Smith as Lt. James Gordon , Tara Strong as Barbara Gordon and Cree Summer as Bethanie Ravencroft.
In all honesty the acting in the episode isn't that bad and alot of the voice actors do a solid job in the episode. The main issue I have is that I can't buy Anthony Ruivivar as either Bruce Wayne or Batman to me he sounds like someone who is trying to be Batman and not helping things is the fact that he does little disguise his voice when he's Batman which is a key thing for the character to do since it helps sell that Bruce Wayne and Batman are two different people.
Doing the animation for this episode and i'm assuming the whole series is Xentrix Studios and Oktobor Animation. I'm going to be freaking blunt here the animation in this episode looks cheap as hell and because of that it looks bad which is never a good thing even more so for a character who had a mega hit animated show in the nineties. You can tell that this was done cheap because there's very little to know characters walking on the street when ever there's an action sequence it's usually one on and and the episode is mostly set at night.
I say that these are ways to tell if it's done cheaply because the fewer characters you have walking on a street means you have fewer characters to animate , if an episode is set in night then it means that you don't have to light it that much and for the action just refer back to what I said about the characters walking because it applies here as well. Gotham City is meant to be the busy place and yet it looks freaking empty and so there's no reason for Batman to be around anymore because it looks like there's no people to save and thus no crime to stop.
To me this show looks alot like the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV series (which as you can tell by the poster is also called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) which is not a good thing. It's not a good thing because all it did was remind me that I could be watching a much better show and know where is this more apparent then in the design of Batman because just like what they did with the turtles during the action scenes they gave Batman no eyes which I guess works since it would be hard to explain why Batman has the same eyes as Bruce Wayne but at the same time all it did was remind me of a much better show.
It's honestly not that hard to see why this show was a failure because it has a lot of bad things just in this episode alone. Since this episode can be boring as hell which then causes you to question alot of the issues with the episode and possibly find more and so when you can't even make one episode of the show entertaining then I have to question how boring the other episodes of the show are or even how boring the series as a whole is.
I have to seriously wonder who this show is of because given that it's animation and that it aired on Cartoon Network for most of it's run one would assume that it's for kids but then there's villains like Magpie who as you can see by the above picture is wearing something that isn't exactly kids animated show friendly. She's wearing something that is the opposite of kid friendly hell i'm surprised that they got this episode past the censors with that outfit.
This actually had the shortest run of any Batman TV show lasting only one season with twenty six episodes. To say that this show is bad would be a huge understatement since Cartoon Network who will air hours upon hours of Teen Titans Go removed this show after its eleventh episode with the remaining episodes airing on Adult Swim which is where the show finished it's run with the final episode airing on September 28th 2014 and the show started July 13th 2013 with it's hiatus announced on October 23rd 2013.
Now even tho the above picture doesn't tell you this but this is an action show and there is action in this episode which means we have to talk about the action in the episode.There really isn't that much action in this episode at all most likely because this show was so obviously made cheaply that they just couldn't animate action scenes but what little action there is in the episode is at best passable which for a Batman show isn't good enough.
Overall this is a decent episode but given that the show it's from is considered a failure I have to assume that the over episodes aren't that good. I want it known that I have seen the first episode and I don't think very highly of it so this is more of an educated guess then anything but either way it's not a goof thing at all one episode being bad is OK but two your really pushing it as such this episode gets 3.5 out of 10 from me.
All images used in this review were gathered from either the official Beware The Batman fandom wiki page , the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom wiki page and the official Batman fandom wiki page. I really cannot recommend either website for images from either this show or this episode mostly because there really aren't any and the one's that they do have are the same quality on both websites and I checked there's very little images from this episode up on Google Images but if you like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I can highly recommend there fandom wiki page for images since alot of those are very high quality.