Okay, the new Batman animated DVD came out today. It's basically the Animatrix for the Batman movies, several short stories written by Americans but told by some popular Japanese animation studios. (But thankfully no Peter Chung. I still don't forgive him for Matriculated.) I could go into in depth examinations of it, but the reviews I wrote for it on my forum was really long, so I'll just give the give two sentence review for each story told.

Story 1: "Have I got a Story for You" - Fun story, a neat take on the B:TAS episode of Legends of the Dark Knight. Beautifully animated and the backgrounds made me freakin' envious.

Story 2: "Crossfire" - Decent story, but too short, as it introduced Crispen Allen and a "Renee Montoya/Ellen Yin" stand in for no damn reason. Seamless animation, but I wish it had been longer.

Story 3: "Field Test" - Not much happens and I'm not too fond of the art style here, as it doesn't seem to fit the mood of the series. Looks pretty, but too pretty as it's mmy least favorite of the stories.

Story 4: "In the Darkness Dwells" - Great story, returns the Scarecrow and what I think is the best version of Killer Croc to date. Wonderful animation if a little shallow on plot.

Story 5: "Working through Pain" - This should have been the best of the six, but it ended up falling flat for me, becuase it tried to tell a longer story in fifteen minutes. It's a great and intriguing tale, but with it trunciated like it is, it came across as unfinished, even if beautiful to look at. (And I believe a renamed Lady Shiva is in it.)


Story 6: "Deadshot" - My favorite. A fun story of Deadshot hired to kill Lt. Gordon, but with a small twist. It's mostly an action story with an interesting interpetation into Batman, as well as an refreshing new take on Deadshot, a mainly unused Bat villian.

The DVD is a decent package. The 2 disk set comes with four episodes of B:TAS, including Legends of the Dark Knight, Heart of Ice, Over the Edge and I am the Night. I would have included on an episode of The Batman and even an episode from the Lou Scheimer Batman cartoon from the 70’s. But that’s just me.

Overall a decent DVD to own. It's not as good as Justice League: New Frontier, but far from disappointing.

3¾ out of 5