- Batman: Gotham Knight is a collection of new and interesting portrayals of the Dark Knight presented in the style of Japanese anime. In practice, anime is one of those "you'll know it when you see it" styles that encompasses a huge variety of looks and tones, and this production puts that diversity to good use. The film is structured as a series of 12-minute shorts, each with a different writer and director. Each short can be viewed independently, although the stories do share some mostly non-essential character and plot continuity.
- Admittedly, I initially expected that I would dislike this film because it would inevitably compare poorly with Batman: The Animated Series, the unquestionable pinnacle of American animated drama. Although some of the same people, such as the producer Bruce Timm and writer Alan Burnett, were involved in both projects, I remained skeptical that anime Batman would work and further worried that this project might suffer from its marketing relationship to The Dark Knight. Now that I've seen Gotham Knight, however, I must confess that my fears went completely unrealized.
- First, the art, animation, voice work, and music were all outstanding. These are not enough to guarantee the quality of an animated film, but failure in any one of those categories can be enough to doom a feature. The writing, too, was surprisingly good. There is, in my opinion, often a certain weirdness to anime plots that can be off-putting to someone who is admittedly not a huge fan of the genre. The plots were instead quite well-developed, although the dialogue was in some instances rather plain. Fortunately, Batman doesn't waste much time with words.
- Since reading a review should not take longer than watching the feature, I'll restrict myself to one sentence for each segment. "Have I Got a Story for You" is probably the most creative and fun offering, even if the basic setup has appeared previously in both comic and animated form. "Crossfire" develops a wonderful sense of foreboding, broken only by Batman's awe-inspiring appearance. "Field Test" is a clever and enjoyable illustration of the limits of Batman's gadgetry. "In Darkness Dwells" is an incredibly ambitious short that features fascinating and disturbing versions of Scarecrow and Killer Croc. "Working Through Pain" is artistically amazing, even if the story resolves itself in an odd way. "Deadshot" is, quite simply, the best and last part of a great collection.
- Do straight-to-video releases count as films? Yes.
- Kevin Conroy reprises his role as the voice of Batman.
