Warner Bros
When I watched 2018’s Batman Ninja, I was pleasantly surprised to find that what seemed like tone deaf corporate synergy, was a loving homage to both the Caped Crusader and the tropes of Japanese animation.
Seeing Batman and his extended cast of assistants and rogues get “translated” into Sengoku era design philosophy was not only a hoot in and of itself but it played like a great updating of the classic DC trope of taking an issue to show us Superman or Batman and how they’d operate in another time or on another planet.
All in all, a strong animated feature.
DC and WB seldom neglect to follow up on a success where Batman is concerned and now, seven years later, we get Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League.
If the original Batman Ninja played like a tribute to the “alternate hero” stories from the 1950’s and 60’s, this follow up seems lovingly dedicated to Justice League of America Bronze Age Crisis on… stories, where our heroes were drawn into one of the manifold worlds of the DC multiverse to avert some major catastrophe working with slightly different versions of the heroes we know and love.
Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League picks up immediately after the events of Batman Ninja.
After defeating Grodd and Joker in feudal Japan, the “Bat Clan” return to present day Gotham to find it fundamentally altered: there are no other superheroes present, Japan is missing from Earth and the city of Gotham is shadowed overhead by a floating island run by the “Yakuza League”, a sort of Takeshi Kitano themed version of the Crime Syndicate from the pre-Crisis Earth-3.
This all ties back to a classic Batman villain, of course, and fun will be had in watching Batman navigate a group of Yakuza themed super criminals (complete with their own distinct animation style) and various anime callbacks and tropes (I’m a novice in Japanese animation but I did recognize visual callbacks to everything from the work of Akira Toruyama to Macross).
My first thought in sitting down to review this film was bemusement in how this now makes Batman Ninja, one of the wildest conceptual takes on the character WB has ever sanctioned, the “serious” entry into the series. This film is absolutely bananas from the word “Go.” Returning director Jumpei Mizusaki is seriously bolstered by the success of the first film and goes flat out for the biggest action set pieces he can possibly get.
Even that sort of undersells what loosey goosey fun the crew is after in this one: there’s a show stopping musical number, there’s Yakuza thugs falling from the sky, absolutely wild design sensibilities on all the major members of the Justice League and a plot that’s even less concerned with cohesion than the last one, and when you consider that the last one’s entire plot was “Gorilla Grodd sends everyone back to samurai times” that’s actually pretty impressive.
I was very disappointed that my favorite aspect of the last film, the casting of Roger Craig Smith and Troy Baker, as Batman and the Joker was not replicated here but while that casting served to “ground” a bizarre and idiosyncratic take on Batman and his world, here there’s no thought given to grounding anyone or anything. Joe Daniels and Scott Gibbs take up the roles this time out and neither one really distinguishes themselves.
Whether you like Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League is really going to depend on whether you enjoy the central conceit of the series (the DC Universe reimagined in an anime sensibility), and whether or not you’re down with the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach this sequel is going for. I thought it was technically more impressive than its progenitor with smoother animation, better designs, and bigger set pieces but perhaps a little too comfy in its camp sensibilities and juggling too much at once.
Extras consist of two Japanese language featurettes.
Recommended, if you know you’re in for a big spectacle and not as much substance this time around.
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