I had been for over a year wanting to write a blog post on how one of the things you only see in Anime are same gender Fraternal Twins. Generally writers are only interested in the plot device of Identical Twins and the mystical symbolic value of Male-Female twins. Only in Otaku media is it actually common to see Fraternal Twin Sisters like the Hiragi sisters or the Fujibayashi sisters or the Shikoueska sisters.
Then in December of 2019 I decided to finally check out the CW's Batwoman and low and behold the main protagonist and antagonist are Fraternal twin sisters. And I discovered this had been a thing in the Comics since before Flashpoint even, so that thesis always had this fatal flaw.
I like Batwoman over all, so it's unfair that the rest this post is gonna focus on some negatives, I do recommend checking it out.
I'm enjoying watching Alice because of the Actress, but she's kind of a text book example of what I think has been wrong with attempts to create new Batman villains in the last 25 years or so. Lots of villains who arguably worked as the Big Bad of the status quo shaking event that introduced them, but attempts to make them part of the regularly recurring cast of Bat Rouges do not work. Of course comics kind of don't tell simple villain of the week stories at all anymore which is sad on it's own.
Frequently people feel the most important thing for any Batman villain is that they be crazy. But besides maybe sometimes The Joker, the iconic Arkham inmates are people who have a method to their madness that puts clear parameters on how they should be utilized, the challenge for any new Batman writer should be how to make them fresh without breaking those rules, but too often writers want to just break the rules instead because now anything is praised if it "subverts expectations".
Alice is just crazy, randomly spouting Alice in Wonderland quotes as if she doesn't know there's already a Gotham Supervillian with that routine, but mostly it feels like this show just wants her to be The Joker to to Kate's Batman.
Because that's the thing, the show too often doesn't feel like a Batman spin off, it feels like Batman as a Woman rather then Batwoman.
When you pick up a Comic where the title character is another Bat-Family superhero, it's usually not a Comic about a point in the story-line where Batman is retired or gone for some reason. Batman is still in Gotham just dealing with something other then what this protagonist is dealing with. But for some reason on a TV show studios think the audience can't handle that. The early 2000s Birds of Prey show had the same problem, but interestingly the new Birds of Prey movie does not, there is no attempt to even hand-wave why Batman isn't here, they trust the audience to just assume he's doing something else, and I appreciated that.
The show is also based on the most recent version of the Batwoman mythos, even more recent then the New52. Frankly I hate the idea of giving Bruce Wayne cousins.
So those are really just complaints about bad Batman writing in general the show makes me think of. I'm hoping the show eventually gives us a Flamebird of some type.
I want to make a post about the Arrowverse's Crisis on Infinite Earths adaptations which I also really liked, but am having trouble thinking of exactly what to say.
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