Catwoman: Hunted

I mentioned this movie in my last post rambling about Western Cartoons alleged to be Inspired by Anime even though I hadn't seen it yet.  Was any of my brief assessment presumptuous?

Frankly I might have been too generous in assuming it would at least succeed in looking like an Anime Artstyle.  It definitely looks like it's going for that, but still drawn by people not used to drawing that way.

As far as everything else, from it's OP it was clearly trying to go for a Lupin III OP vibe, which is what I should have expected,  naturally that's the genre of Anime one would reference for Catwoman, Fujiko Mine is basically Japan's Catwoman.  But as I said in the prior post what I'd like to see from Western Animation writers taking inspiration form Anime is them trying of the very genres or Sub-Genres that pretty much exist only in Anime and it's source materials so far.  For Catwoman as a Lupin III film I'd rather WB/DC just let people in Japan who've made actual Lupin III Anime give it try, ideally the staff behind The Woman Called Fujoko Mine definitely deserve a shot at doing Catwoman.

But let's go back to that OP, it and other music in the movie is trying to be evocative of Lupin III, but the Composer is still not actually Yuji Ohno, so it's like one of those rare Bee Train Anime without Yuki Kajiura, the Music is trying to sound like her, but it's still off.  Now the composer for this movie is Japanese and has done some Anime, but not exactly a lot and usually not Lupin style stuff.  Yoko Kanno is someone I could also see working for a film like this.

I also could have accepted the movie as Anime Adjacent better if it at least had Voice Actors I recognized hearing from Anime Dubs instead of the same kind of casting most of these DC animated movies go for.  Kelly Hu as Cheshire is perfect, and Elizabeth Gillies as Catwoman was pretty good (on a meta-level I'd love to see her Catwoman interact with a Poison Ivy played by Ariana Grande).  But everyone else ranged from fine to to bland, Kate Kane sounded flat and dull.

If they wanted to sell this movie as also a quasi Lupin III movie, why not cast a Fujiko veteran as Catwoman, there are quite a few to choose from, since this is part of a trend of modern depictions wanting Catwoman to also come off as vaguely Latina, Christina Vee could have been a perfect choice.  And since they seemingly wanted Kate to come off as Butch rather then Femme, just hire Erica Mendez to do her Haruka voice.  

If you just want to watch the film like any other DC animated film, the fact that the Artstyle was clearly trying and not quite succeeding to have an Anime vibe might still annoy you.  Other then that it's pretty good, about what you'd expected from a Catwoman solo project at first, but then starts bringing in fantastical stuff that really wasn't necessary.

I appreciated the incorporation of the Classic Purple Dress costume for the ball at the beginning, but when she changed to the main costume of the movie the actual line about "keeping up up with the times" I found odd considering this is the costume primarily popularized by Hush 20 years ago, have the comics really not introduced any new Catwoman Costume since?

As much as I ragged on the the DCAMU films, I certainly preferred their take on the Kate Kane/Batwoman.

I also wish they'd revived Red Claw instead of making the main antagonist of this Batman spin off film being the most overused Wonder Woman villain.  She could have fit the Anime inspiration because I've for awhile felt like she was a little bit Panther Claw inspired.