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Warner Brothers cashes in on its Batman franchise with an awesome anime offering.

Like The Animatrix in 2003, Batman: Gotham Knight is an anime version of Batman focusing on different aspects of the character.  It’s great to see Warner Brothers take some chances with their products and let different creators play in their sandbox.  Batman the anime series is comprised of six different stories designed to build even more hype for the release of Batman: The Dark Knight.  Anime fans and true fans of the Bat will enjoy this but the casual fan will probably find this collection to be slow.

Each story is a different take on the Batman mythos.  From his early days of training to battling an arch nemesis, Gotham Knight delves into nooks and crannies of the character in short vignettes.  “Have I Got a Story for Your” has three children talking about their encounters with The Batman.  Each version is slightly more grandiose and Batman’s actions are more supernatural and superhuman.  The first kid describes Batman as a demon, the second a man-bat hybrid while the third has Bat’s as some kind of robot.  All three have Batman encountering the same villain and when Batman does appear, each child feels caught in a lie. 

“Crossfire” is written by Batman writer Greg Rucka.  We get Rucka taking on one of his favorite aspects of the Batman universe, the Gotham City Police Department.  Detectives Allen and Ramirez have to transfer a prisoner.  The problem is they have to go through a turf war between the Russians and the Maroni Cartel.  We get to see the seldom addressed issue of how the police feel about the caped crusader.  Ramirez appreciates his contributions while Allen thinks he’s more hindrance than a help.  Rucka’s script illustrates how divisive Batman truly is.

“Field Test” has a young Bruce Wayne working the Lucius Fox to test some equipment.  The new device creates a magnetic shield that causes bullets to ricochet off of him.  The problem is it also sends them off in a new direction.  This leads to some unforeseen issues and causes Bruce to adhere even stricter rules on no gun use.  I felt this is the weakest of the shorts and is easily the most disposable.

“In Darkness Dwells” has comic book favorites David Goyer and Yasuhrio Aoki.  This time we get Batman taking on two classic villains, the Scarecrow and Killer Croc.  We get to see Batman drugged and beaten fighting though it all to be victorious.  It’s a great lead in for “Working Through Pain”, where we seen Bruce as young man trying to learn how to fight.  Written by Brian Azzarello, it has Bruce suffering from the effects of Scarecrow’s poison as his mind flashes back to earlier moments in his life, which all plays into the final episode “Deadshot”.  The assassin Deadshot has been hired to kill Commissioner Gordon and in true comic book fashion, only Batman can stop him.  It’s the most action packed of the six vignettes and a fitting end to the DVD.

If you’ve enjoyed the other Batman animated offerings, Batman: Gotham Knight will look great on your shelf with the rest.  It would be nice if this isn’t a one shot deal and we see more like this coming from Warner Brothers.  The shorts are good but most feel they’ve ended just as they were getting started.  With a 76 minute runtime, it wouldn’t have hurt to expand the stories just a bit.  Since the average film last two hours these day, a 105 minute featurette would have been perfect. 

This two disc edition has a nice collection of bonus features.  There is an audio commentary with Kevin Conroy, Dennis O’Neil and Gregory Noveck.  The trio talk about the film but often fly off on tangents unrelated to the film.  The best extra is a 10 minute look into the Wonder Woman animated feature coming out soon.  This is worth checking out if you don’t watch anything else.  Bruce Timm and others talk about the project as we get to see storyboards and other bits related to the history of the character.

Disc two contains two featurette: “A Mirror for the Bat” and “Batman and Me, a Devotion to Destiny: The Bob Kane Story”.  Both featurettes total a little over an hour runtime and covers some nice ground.  The first featurette looks at the characters of the Batman universe and his rouge’s gallery.  “Batman and Me” is an excellent documentary about the life of Batman creator Bob Kane.  Lastly, there are four episodes from Batman: The Animated Series.  It’s a shame there isn’t more about the creation of the films and how the project came about.  Sure the episodes of Batman are fun but they don’t help sell the DVD since they’ve already been released on DVD.

Diehard Batman fans will want to pick Batman: Gotham Knight up.  It’s a great take on the character and shows how truly universal he is.  There are some interesting stories here that could have been fleshed out a little more.  I would highly recommend a rental and outright purchase if you are a collector of all things Bats.

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