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Gotham Knight
After catching The Dark Knight earlier today and loving it, I decided to pick up Gotham Knight and give it a try too. One can never get enough Batman, right? Gotham Knight is a direct-to-DVD anthology of six short, animated stories that take place in between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, with each film being written by different writers and produced by different animation studios. What makes Gotham Knight so interesting is that each studio, and indeed writer, was given free reign to explore entirely different aspects of Bruce Wayne, Batman and indeed Gotham City itself. Each story is very different from the previous in terms of subject and visual style, but perhaps more interestingly each story reveals something different about Batman himself.
The first film, Have I Got a Story For You, was produced by Japanese Studio 6°C. Largely unknown in the states, Studio 6°C’s only recognizable work to us would be the 2008 Transformers animated television series, though I have not had an opportunity to experience it yet. “Have I Got a Story For You” tells a tale of a ongoing struggle between Batman and an unknown villain in reverse (Memento-style) from the perspective of four kids. Each witnesses a different aspect of the battle, and in turn has a completely different interpretation of Batman to tell their friends. One sees him as a monster able to shift in and out of the shadows, another saw him as a huge bat rather than a man, and yet another saw him as a robot (which was very cool, I might add.) The final kid experiences the last version of batman, the traditional capped crusader we all know, and helps him finish the struggle with the bandit.
I thought the animation style was pretty interesting, though it didn’t do much for me personally. Very gritty, and rough, and the character designs were shaped in a distractingly odd form. Still, it’s a fun story, and a neat adventure into the minds of Gotham’s citizens and how differently each see’s Batman.
Crossfire takes a different perspective to the storytelling than most of the films in this set; here you follow detectives Crispus Allen and Anna Ramirez as they deliver an escaped convict Batman has recently recaptured to Arkham Asylum. This film primarily deals with Crispus Allen’s unwillingness to trust in Batman, and his distaste for Gotham’s faith in him. I won’t reveal the plot, but needless to say Batman saves the two from a tight situation, and gain’s Allen’s confidence.
This story was produced by Production I.G., another Japanese studio well known to anime fans (like myself) for classics like The End of Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Blood+, and many more. These guys know their craft and they do it masterfully, and I was pretty satisfied with the way they produced this. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of that I.G. creativity when it came to designing Batman, as they opted to go with a pretty traditional character design for him, but they put ample detail into the other characters and the world itself to more than make up for it.
And so we come to my favorite story in the series, Field Test. I loved the animation style of this one, so it came as no surprise when I found the studio behind this one was Bee Train, a Japanese animation studio responsible for creating some of my very favorite animes (.Hack, Noir and Tsubasa Chronicle, to name a few.) I actually ended up watching this one twice before I moved on, I enjoyed it so much.
Field Test delivers far more Bruce Wayne than any other film in the series, and has the most unique (and coolest, if I do say so) Batman costume of them all. This one revolves around Wayne and Lucius Fox applying an electromagnetic field generator formally used in a Wayne Enterprises satellite to Batman’s costume. The device generates a field capable of deflecting any small arms fire. A problem occurs on the first night of it’s use, however, and a man is critically wounded from one of the deflected bullets. Batman, being the dashing hero that he is, rushes to save the man’s life.
Loved the animation, awesome character design, decent story. Favorite out of the bunch.
In Darkness Dwells was my least favorite of the bunch in terms of animation, but it had a pretty compelling story, and is the only film to have two classic villains from the Batman universe show up. I wasn’t familiar with Madhouse, the animation studio responsible for this film, but they have a couple of big animes under their belt (Death Note and Gungrave, among others.) Clearly they went for a unique style to stand out from the rest, but I’m not sure it was a wise move.
Darkness Dwells leads Batman through Gotham’s sewers on the search for a man-made monster known by the homeless as Croc (yes, that’s Killer Croc to those of you familiar with the Batman lineage.) Ultimately Batman’s search leads him to a struggle with Croc, and the discovery of the Scarecrow and a poisoned subterranean society that worships him. Batman gets poisoned, methane gets lit, shit gets blown up; I’ll leave the rest to you to figure out.
Yeah, wasn’t really feeling this one.
The second Studio 6°C production in the set, Working Through Pain is a flashback film in which Batman, critically wounded by a bullet to the abdomen, struggles to make his way out of the sewers and to Alfred for assistance. Trying to deal with the pain of the wound, he flashes back to time he spent in an undefined Indian country, learning pain management techniques from a rather beautiful woman. This story drips existentialism, so I’m not even going to begin to try to summarize everything that goes on here, but I really enjoyed the story, perhaps more so than any other in Gotham Knight. The animation style immediately reminded me of Aeon Flux and Reign: The Conqueror (which is surprising, given that Reign was produced by Madhouse, who did “In Darkness Dwells” and “Deadshot” for this anthology.)
Not my cup of tea in terms of design, but good, solid story.
The sixth and final film in the set, Deadshot was also produced by Madhouse. Once again, I was unimpressed by the character design and genuinely disliked the animation style. That aside, the story was quite compelling, and includes villain Deadshot as it’s protagonist. An over the top sniper, Deadshot is hired by the mob to kill Commissioner Gordon. Batman catches wind of this, obviously, and shenanigans ensue. No surprises in this one, but I did enjoy the action sequence quite a lot.
So, how do I feel about Gotham Knight overall? I enjoyed the hell out of it. It pays homage to the traditional Batman lineage, gives a great deal of insight into Wayne beyond the film, and while it doesn’t raise it’s nose to viewers who aren’t familiar with the comic book heritage, it absolutely has plenty for those of us who are to eat up.
I didn’t like roughly half the animation styles used in the anthology, but I understand what the studios were going for and I have to respect their interest in creating something unique and creative, especially when you’re up against studios like Production I.G. and Bee Train.
I give it a 4/5 — 
Suitable for comic book nerds and Batman newbies alike, it’s a great watch and definitely worth the time.
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