Beware the Batman: "Safe" Review

Silver Monkey of the League of Assassins.

Hey everybody! I'm Ryan Howitzer and you're in The Line of Fire! today we're looking at another really good episode of Beware the Batman. This one features a very familiar group of villains in The League of Assassins.This was yet another really good episode. This show has really surprised me. Anyway, let's dive in:

The characters are once again really good. The one who really shines in this episode is Tatsu. We learn a little bit more about her past in this episode. In this one, we learn that a scientist has developed a new form of saving energy,and the League of Assassins want it. They send a team of assassins, but Batman and Tatsu save the doctor. Bruce Wayne (funding the doctor's research) invites him to stay at Wayne Manor. The League then sends Silver Monkey after the doctor. The mysterious and unseen villain Lady Shiva is really good.

Lady Shiva (Black coat, red shirt) as she appears in the comics

Finola Hughes gives Shiva a very calm but very creepy voice. I hope we see her and the league's founder Ra's al Ghul soon. This one lacked Gordon again which really disappointed me. Oh well, he''s prominently featured in the next one. The main threat of this episode is a assassin named Silver Monkey. From the research I've done on him, it looks like the show got him right. He's a world-class martial artist and an assassin. He works for the League sometimes too. The other characters are pretty good too. Alfred really gets to kick some butt in this episode.

Please give us Ra's al Ghul!

The animation is still great. This one features a lot of martial arts battles which look awesome in the 3D style. My only complaint is about the design of the guns. They look pretty bad. I know that after the Colorado shooting, they decided to go with guns that didn't look as real, but Alfred had a red and silver shotgun that fires lasers! Really? All in all, though, the animation is still solid.

This was another really good episode. The intro to the League was really solid. I hope we see more of Tatsu's back story. I also hope we see more of that awesome green sword she has. I give this one an 8/10. Until next time, this is Ryan Howitzer saying keep your head down, because you're in The Line of Fire!

Beware the Batman: "Tests" Review

Anarky, the main villain of the episode. Hooboy, we'll get to his outfit in a second

Hey everybody! I'm Ryan Howitzer and, as you well know by now, you're in The Line of Fire! Today we're looking at the third episode of Cartoon Network's Beware the Batman entitled Tests. This episode was a major step in the right direction. This one got everything right in my book. The characters, the actors, the villain, everything. This is the episode that proves the writers know what they're doing and the show can capitalize on its potential. But enough introduction, let's dive right in:

The plot of this episode is two-fold. The first part revolves around Anarky (Yes, spelled with a K. Poor literacy is edgy and anti-establishment!) recruiting two street "artists" (One smashes things and the other spray paints random words) as pawns in his game against Batman. The second part is Bruce putting Tatsu through a series of tests to see if she's good enough to join him. The plot is a pretty good one. The villain finally has motivations that actually match up to his comic book counterpart. This actually feels like a situation Anarky would create.

Anarky as he appears in the comics...his costume has always sucked

He's not just a stand-in for a better villain like the past three villains have been. He's a very intimidating and awesome villain. Also, the tests with Tatsu are very interesting. We see that she is very intelligent and that she can handle herself should the situation arise. She even pulls one over on Bruce and tricks him into giving her his hand print (which she uses to get into his secret library). I can easily see her becoming Katana. Speaking of which, we see she's hiding some kind of sword in this episode. Will that come up next time? Anyway, the plot is really good in this episode. I wish it had more Jim Gordon, though. He's always one of my favorite side characters in Batman stories.

The animation in this show is really growing on me. I still wish that Batman's costume had grey in it. I don't like the monochromatic batsuits. The fight scenes are AWESOME! Really awesome! They're almost on par with Avatar: The Last Airbender. The city looks great too. My only problem with the city is that it looks empty. Where are all the people? Where are the cars? There is one other problem I have with the visuals. Anarky looks awful. Really awful. He looks like Moon Knight with an anarchy A on his chest.

I mean seriously. Just like Moon Knight

Anarky is a character with a long history of looking awful (Seriously, in most comics he looks like a Catholic Cardinal with a gold mask) but it's possible to give him a good looking and modern costume. At least give him a red costume like he usually has! The show needs more color! If you look at the images from Batman: Arkham Origins that feature Anarky, he looks decent.

He actually looks like an anarchist here

I'm sure everybody out there knows or has seen an actual anarchist. How many of them dress like Jack Kirby's version of the KKK? Just make him look like the real deal. Even if that means his costume is a Guy Fawkes mask, jeans and a hoodie. Other than that, everything looks great.

All in all, this is my favorite episode so far. I'm really looking forward to what's next for the show. Maybe we'll start seeing more familiar villains. I'd love to see the show's take on Hush or Black Mask, but I digress. This is a really good episode with a really good villain...even if he looks like Hour Man fell into a bucket of bleach. I give this one a solid 9/10.

Beware the Batman: "Secrets" Review

Magpie as she appears in this episode

Hey everybody! I'm Ryan Howitzer and you're in The Line of Fire! I know this review is super late, but at least I got it out. Anyway, this week's episode of Cartoon Network's Beware the Batman was another pretty good episode. In fact, all the strengths of the last episode return on full force in this one. However, so do some of the weaknesses.

First of all, let's talk about some new characters that are introduced and explored. This episode gives us the first actual in-depth look at Lt. Jim Gordon (voiced by Kurtwood Smith). Gordon feels that Batman should be arrested because he takes the law into his own hands. Kurtwood Smith gives us a great performance as Jim Gordon...but not as good as Bryan Cranston. We also meet Barbra Gordon who is voiced once again by Tara Strong. Barbra is her usual cheerful, Batman-obsessed self and Strong is brilliant as usual.

Barbra as she appears in the show

 The two big characters we get to know in this episode are Magpie and Tatsu Yamashiro (Katana). Magpie is an acrobatic thief with multiple personalities and the main antagonist of the episode. She has a really tragic back story and she's pretty entertaining. Tatsu, we find out, knew Alfred when she was a child.

Oh how little you know about him...

 In those days, Alfred worked for Mi6 and was partnered with her father. Tatsu is not yet wise to the fact that Bruce is Batman. She sees him as weak and continually makes remarks about how boring her job is.

This episode has many strengths. Once again, the action is superb. The animation is looking better and better as well. We see more of Bruce's awesome detective skills as he pulls a Sherlock Holmes reading on Tatsu and even notes the features he finds attractive on a woman. Anthony Ruivivar and JB Blanc are still turning in solid performances as Batman and Alfred respectively. The story is very good at showing you both the big and small pictures simultaneously. The main plot of the episode is resolved at the end of the 30 minutes, but we already know that there's more in store for Batman.  However, my complaint about the villains still stands. Magpie felt even more like a stand-in for a much better villain than Pyg and Toad did. With her acrobatics, fighting, romantic interest in Batman, and Grey DeLisle voice, she feels like a poor man's Catwoman. With her multiple personalities and tragic back story, she feels like a poor man's version of Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman. I'm not saying that Joker needs to show up now (though that would be awesome), but make these D list villains act different from much better A listers. That being said, it was announced at Comic Con that more and more familiar villains will start showing up in later episodes. Hopefully, some of these D listers will actually be unique in later episodes too.

All in all, it's another solid episode. The show has tons of potential and if things continue to go the way they do, it'll be a great show. My only complaint is again about the villains. All in all, 8.5/10. Until next time, this is Howitzer reminding you to keep your head down, because you're in The Line of Fire!  

Beware the Batman Premiere Review

Series logo

Hey everybody! I'm Ryan Howitzer and you're in The Line of Fire! This past weekend saw the debut episode of a very anticipated and controversial animated series, Beware the Batman , on Cartoon Network. Much like other mega fans of Batman, yours truly had many complaints about the announcements that were being made regarding the show. In particular, the lack of Robin and the lack of iconic villains bothered me. However, after watching the series premiere I can honestly say that the show is well cast, well written, and has a lot of potential. Lets start with the animation. It's 3D animation this time around, which is a source of much of the hate for this show. However, much like the Green Lantern animated series (which unfortunately ended along with Young Justice) the 3D style grew on me as the episode went on. The character designs are pretty good. Alfred is bigger and more muscular than he usually is, but that's not too much of a problem.

Alfred as he appears on the show

 Bruce looks like he usually does. The Batman model is a combination of the 30's style cowl with the longer ears and narrow eyes with the Chris Nolan style suit.

Batman as he appears on the show

My one complaint about the Batman look is that the grey is too dark. It looks entirely black and if you know my taste in Batman costumes, you know that I prefer the black and grey color scheme. The villain designs are decent despite the fact that they have very little in common with their comic book counterparts appearance wise. The batcave looks cool though and the city looks awesome too. The batmobile could use a little help though. The animated fight scenes look excellent though. In one scene Batman dislocates his shoulder and you can kinda see it go out of place (this is a kid's show, so they can't show too much). All in all, the animation and character design is pretty good. Also good is the voice acting. Anthony Ruivivar provides the voice of Batman and Bruce Wayne and does a really good job. I was upset when they cast him instead of somebody like Kevin Conroy or Bruce Greenwood, but he proved to be pretty good. JB Blanc's Alfred is more cockney and less posh, but would you really expect a guy who looks like a 1930's bruiser to talk with a proper accent? The other voice actors do a decent job, although the guy who voices Mr. Toad irritates me. Speaking of Mr. Toad, lets move on to the story and villains. The story is fairly basic. Bio terrorists kidnap wealthy industrialists who have harmed animals and threaten to kill them. Batman then saves the day. The story is done well, but it suffers from one slight problem. That problem is the villains. The story involves bio terrorists which is clearly a call for Poison Ivy. Instead, the writers, who insist on using D list villains for some strange reason, throw in Professor Pyg and Mr. Toad.

Pyg and Toad as seen on the show

 Mr. Toad was introduced as a minion of Professor Pyg in an issue of Grant Morrison's Batman and Robin and was later unceremoniously killed off. Professor Pyg is a serial killer whose name comes from the play Pygmalion. Much like the doctors in the play, Pyg turns women into "dolls" (mind controlled minions called Dolltrons). Pyg, however, mutilates and tortures them. While mutilation and torture can't be shown on kids shows (that didn't stop BTAS or Batman Beyond from showing it though) mind control can. If you're gonna use a villain, use them right. Don't just throw them in there to be "different" because that's just asinine. the problem I see with this show continuing to use D listers as the main villains is that they're going to be doing things that actually good villains like Joker, Riddler, and Two-Face would do, but instead of seeing these writer's awesome take on those villains, we see villains that Dick Grayson beat up while he was still 12.  All things considered, the show is off to a great start. It has cool visuals, good acting, and good writing. The only thing it needs is the classic villains that everybody knows and loves. I give the premiere of Beware the Batman a 7/10. Until next time, this is Howitzer saying keep your head down because you're in The Line of Fire!