'Batman Ninja' Is a Refreshing and Fascinating Spin on Batman

Reimagining Batman as a ninja isn’t that much of a stretch.  The motif and quintessence of the character are simply perfect for it.  Minimum twisting is required.  Plus, various versions of his origin story – most notably in the film Batman Begins – strongly suggest that the way of the ninja is one the countless areas Bruce Wayne honed himself in before he adopted the vigilante identity of Batman.  So, surely, there must already be a couple of Elseworld tales out there wherein Batman is reimagined as a ninja, right?

However, it looks like DC’s latest direct-to-video animated feature, Batman Ninja, is just the first time such concept is truly explored.

In it, Gorilla Grodd builds a time displacement machine which transports him, along with Batman’s most dangerous foes – the Joker, Harley Quinn, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, the Penguin, and Deathstroke – to Feudal Japan.  Batman has been caught up with the time travel as well, but he arrives a few years later than the villains.  Thus, when he arrives, they have already divided Japan among themselves and have become tyrannical feudal lords of their respected territories.  Fortunately, Alfred, Catwoman, Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, and Robin have also been propelled by Grodd’s machine to this era.  So with his allies alongside him, Batman must learn to adapt in that time period, utilize whatever is available to him, and embrace the role of the prophesied Bat-ninja in order to save Japan from Gotham’s worst rogues and prevent history from getting irreversibly warped.

The most noteworthy thing about Batman Ninja is that it’s visually dazzling.  At first, I thought it was simply going to be rendered in a certain Westernized anime style, a la Batman: Gotham Knight.  However, the animation actually references or plays out through varying Japanese art forms and techniques.  The fight scenes, particularly, are so excitingly vibrant.

However, this movie is not just a “Batman reimagined as a ninja” production.  Yes, it contains moments that one would expect from a “Batman as a ninja” anime.  There’s even a climactic fight scene where he does some Naruto-style ninjutsu, complete with hand seals and all.  However, just as there are shifts in the animation’s art style, there’s also genre, thematic, and tonal shifting involved.  In these instances, it’s as if the movie is not strictly limiting itself to the boundaries of an archetypal “ninja”-themed period drama, but is also trying to allude to tropes and approaches found in other kinds of anime or Japanese storytelling.

I started contemplating this particular perspective when I noticed in one scene that the dialogue is seemingly getting cheesy.  Batman was saying things that were out of character.  At first, I thought it was simply bad writing.  Then I thought that maybe it was actually on purpose – that it was simply trying to channel the occasionally overdramatic dialogue in Japanese productions.  I became more convinced of this when at the third act, the movie becomes tokusatsu.  It was a thrilling development, but it was also so over-the-top that it could have completely derailed Batman Ninja for me if I did not subscribe to the notion that the film’s intention in this case is to display aspects of notable genres of anime and Japanese fiction (along with different Japanese art styles).  If this is so, then the movie feels multi-layered and artistic.  If not, then it comes off as messy and ridiculous.  I choose to go with the former.

Overall, Batman Ninja is a splendid offering from DC/Warner Bros.  With amazing animation and bold direction, it showcases Batman as we’ve never seen before.  And the result is quite refreshing and fascinating indeed.

That said, Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay is still my favorite 2018 DC animated movie.