DC Stuff I watched in August 2026

I've now watched Batman Nightfall Part 1.

I've never read the original Knightfall comics, the prior version I'm comparing this to is the BBC Radio Drama from the 90s. 

I'll start with the main positive, it was great finally seeing Tim Drake in animation. The DCAU's Tim was in name only and the Tim in the Unlimited movies was forgettable. 

What made Tim special among the Robins back when he was being written by Marv Wolfman and Chuck Dixon and Geoff Johns and Bill Wilingham (I haven't really read much from the Jon Lewis run yet or Peter David's Young Justice) is that he was being set up to be the Bat Sidekick destined to one day surpass Bruce as the World's Greatest Detective. Looking back on that now results in my making Shinichi Kudo comparisons. And in that area this Knightfall film didn't disappoint.

Now for my criticisms.

First of all they cut Film Freak.  Cowards.

Secondly I have mixed feelings on the Artstyle, why not actually try to evoke the arstyle of 90s DC Comics? 

To amend what I said earlier i have read something Knightfall adjacent, the Robin Flying Solo Trade.  This is not that Artstyle. Is Red River can successfully look like a 90s Anime, why can't this look like a 90s Comic come to life?

Third, I'm amazed by how structurally disappointing it felt.

This end about where Hour 1 of the 3 Hour Radio Rama ended, but it felt like less happened not more. In that both the set up of Jean Paul Valley and Bruce's deterioration felt way more successfully fleshed out.

The Caped Crusader season 2 failed to engage at all, couldn't finish one episode.

I've also watched the new Supergirl movie now.  It's a good movie, it's entertaining, but it's not the kind of movie I want for Supergirl.

It felt more like a Star Wars movie much of the time.

I like the bronze Age Supergirl. 

I've also been watching Lanterns since my family currently temporarily has HBO for free. It's good so far.

Batman has never been The World’s Greatest Detective on The Big Screen.

I know I’ve said this before, but I want to make this point the focus for a change.

The reason it so annoys me when part of the hype for Matt Reeves’ The Batman is it supposedly being the first Batman movie to really showcase Batman as a detective is that the same promise was made by The Dark Knight back in 2008 and as much as I love that film having for a long time called it the greatest movie ever made, it failed to deliver on that promise and so did The Batman. 

I don’t care that these two films have scenes that carry the aesthetic of an Investigation.  Batman doesn’t deduce anything until it’s too late, in one the villain never had a secret identity and in the other that identity was never uncovered prior to him being arrested exactly when he planned to be arrested. 

The pseudo Detective Film qualities of The Batman are because of what it inherited from what pre 2010 Fan Trailers thought Nolan’s take on The Riddler would be, a cringe awkward mashing together of Se7ev, Zodiac and Saw.

These kinds of Batman stories give you the edging of a detective story, but not the happy ending where the Great Detective actually outsmarts the criminal or exposes their perfect crime they thought was unsolvable. These are stories that make a point out of Batman’s victory being hollow or pyrrhic so much that in-spite of the nominal stopping of the villain’s plan it still feels firmly like the Hero was the one outsmarted every step of the way. 

I know some will be like "that's because they're Film Noir style detective stories not Holmes style Detective".  The Batman films being like a Film Noir when it adds an overblown actions sequence after the point when a Film Noir would end, The Dark Knight is better at that by saving it's bitter pill for after the triumphant action sequence. Batman earl yon even the Golden Age was a Holmes style detective not a Film Noir style since genre hadn't even fully formed yet. Batman is frequently a Holmes style detective in the Comics and that's what I want to see on screen. 

I’ve been thoroughly spoiled what for a Detective Story that also works as a satisfying Action film can be by the fact that I’ve seen all the Detective Conan films (well not the most recent since it’s still in Theaters in Japan).

I am the kind of Conan fan who sometimes complains about how the Conan films have become more Action oriented over time.  But make no mistake, I think even the most overly action bloated, explosion heavy and dumb Detective Conan film (Movie 16 The Eleventh Striker) is still a more satisfying Detective story then any live action Batman movie has ever been. 

And at their best the Detective Conan films are better Detective movie/Action movie hybrids then even the RDJr Sherlock Holmes movies. The top tier of Conan movies I view as movies 1, 3, 4 and 5, the next tier just below them are 7-9 and 11-12.  I also think movie 14 Lost Ship in The Sky makes a better Die Hard sequel than any actual Die Hard sequels and movie 18 The Dimensional Sniper was a great Swan Song for the guy who wrote 14 of the first 18 movies. 

If I had to pick an absolute favorite from that top tier of films, I’ve gone back and forth between picking the third movie The Last Wizard of The Century and the fifth movie Countdown to Heaven. 

The fourth movie Captured In Her Eyes is one I know some would criticize for not giving the audience a fair shot at figuring it out themselves, but as I’ve said many times that’s not what I care about in a Detective Story. What matters here is it does it feel like the villain was outsmarted in the end and not beaten ONLY by brute force. This movie is also the most like a Film Noir of any Detective Conan movies, it pulls that off without it conflicting with making it's protagonist a Holmes style Great Detective. 

The first film, The Time Bombed Skyscraper, you could argue has the opposite problem, I don’t see anyone guessing wrong about who the villain is. But that goes to show that you can have a satisfying Detective Film in the way I’m talking about even if the villain is an established member of Batman’s Rogues gallery. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s obvious to the audience who the villain if because he shares a name with a villain from the Comics, or the film was promoted partially on seeing this A List Actor play this Iconic villain, what matters is does Batman figure out who they are on his own or does the villain just reveal himself after jerking Batman around all film.

None of the ones I just singled out are the most accessible to watch legally in the United States right now, and I recently learned I can’t even count on the BangZoom dubbed movies I paid for to stay on Amazon PrimeVideo. The first 6 movies were dubbed by Funimation but aren't legally streaming anywhere, they all had DVD releases but they are out of print and so might be pretty expensive now.  Movies 7-18 have never had an English Dub release and have only ever been legally Subbed in the US when they were each temporarily on YouTube for a week last year. 

But perhaps none of the theatrically released Detective Conan films are the purest of detective films. Perhaps what people really want from a movie length detective story is something more like the 2 hour special episodes of the series, some of which are now part of the collections of episodes on Netflix.  

But also the 2014 feature length TV Special The Disappearance of Conan Edogawa is pretty great. It’s not afraid to move slowly at first, or be minimalist in its use of music.  And it contains one of my favorite Ran moments, which since we’re comparing them to Batman movies here I will say feels very Denny O’Niel.

Are animated Batman movies better Detective stories?  Some of them by a little bit, when the villain isn’t a standard rogue but someone special for that film. Mask of The Phantasm, Under The Red Hood, kind of Batman Beyond Return of The Joker and Mystery of The Batwoman.  But just like The Dark Knight and The Batman they are often too fixated on making Batman’s Victory not very victorious. Batman The Brave and The Bold’s Scooby Doo Crossover film is somehow actually the best Batman movie at being a Detective movie.  

Batman is great because of his variety.

The basic concept can be taken in so many different directions, you have so many different mutually exclusive takes on the same character.

So it’s interesting to think about how 20 years ago those who wanted to limit what Batman could be wanted only the Dark and Gritty and Realistic takes while now I’m seeing multiple YouTube think pieces about how the Fantastical stuff NEEDS to be there.  

It seems like people will say "yes different takes should be different" but only in cosmetic “style”.  That certain Fantastical Elements are absolutely required to show up or your Batman Universe just isn’t real Batman.

First of all there is so much stuff in the Batman Comics Lore that you can never fit all of it into a single film Trilogy or even a 7 season TV Series of 22 episodes per season.  Even an Anime with as many episodes as Detective Conan would struggle to find room for absolutely everything.  So simply saying, "this is a part of Batman so a Batman adaptation would be incomplete without it" doesn't work.

Are there a lot of Batman villains who could never have justice done to them in movies or shows done in the vision of Nolan or Matt Reeves, yes.  But there are more than enough who can fit just fine that you really don’t need to go beyond those to fill out a trilogy of movies and a few spin off Minserises.  Plenty of them are just normal criminals with a gimmick.

Some of these villains have changed so much over their history that toning down the fantastical parts of how they’re popularly viewed today would actually bring them back to their roots.  The Golden Age Clayface was just a killer in a costume.  And with Poison Ivy I kind of hate how fantastical she usually is now, I want to go back to her just being an Eco Terrorist who can invent some things that probably could never exist in real life but still is herself a normal human.  I'm tired of the green skinned plant monster Poison Ivy.  Still if Ivy can only be in one of these universes I'd give dibs to James Gunn because what I most want to see is Margot Robbie's Harley finally get her Ivy.

I will disagree with those who say Robin can't exist in a realistic Batman setting,  Dick Grayson is on the short list of characters who needs to exist in some capacity by at least movie three so I do dock points from Rises for doing it’s silly homage instead.

I keep seeing this argument that putting Batman in a realistic setting only draws further attention to how fundamentally ridiculous the concept of Batman is.  That it’s easier to take him seriously when he’s not taking himself seriously, and this is the kind of weird cynical “everything needs to be a deconstruction” logic I hate.

I'm not even really a fan of the Matt Reeves Batverse so far.  But given that we will be getting a Batman movie filled with Fantastical stuff in the coming James Gunn lead DC Universe it’s silly to sit here and demand Reeves force fantastical elements into his artistic vision if he doesn't want them there, it is frankly another case of Fan Entitlement.  

Thing is the last thing you want is for a character you're fan of to be adapted by someone who doesn't actually want them in their movie, that's the real reason for Spider-Man 3's flaws, Raimi never wanted to include Venom or Gwen Stacey, they were forced on him.

But again part of the fun of Batman villains is how they have such basic ideas behind them that they can be interpreted in a variety of different ways, including all over the spectrum of grounded to fantastical.  

Trust me as a lover of Anime I understand the impulse to consider the more fantastical take inherently more imaginative, but it really isn't, taking something fantastical and making a more grounded and plausible version of it that still feels true in spirit to what the original was takes it's own kind of imagination.  And that imagination is what I feel Nolan was better at then Reeves.

A Batman movie or series made by me would be more Fantastical then what Nolan or Reeves is willing to do, but there are also still a lot of things I would not include.

DC Animated projects I’ve seen recently.

As much as I present myself as Enthusiastic about becoming an Anime Zealot I do sometimes feel some guilt for how much I’ve semi Abandoned by older Nerdy interests.  But I haven’t abandoned them entirely.

The Crisis on Infinite Earths Trilogy is fine but I still feel disappointed.  I was fine with the first film not really leaving the Tomorrow Verse much at all.  But I was hoping by the end there would be more from prior Animated DC Universes than just some token cameos.

But even with the token cameos at the end I was disappointed by how few.  Why no love for the Fleischer Shorts? The actual birth of DC in Animation and very important to the history of Animation beyond that.  Or The Batman and Batman The Brave and The Bold which have more vibrant fan bases then the DCAMU verse.

And all the DCAU got was Batman and The Joker (and a Batman Beyond who may or may not actually be the same Terry).  What about the STAS cast who were also staples?  Or Static Shock which is important to the history of Black representation in the Superhero Genre?

I still haven’t seen much of My Adventures With Superman.  I want to change that but I remain cynical of Western Cartoons trying to pass as Anime.

Meanwhile Suicide Squad Isekai is vindicating the optimism I had for it from it’s inception.

Batman The Caped Crusader I wound up liking a lot, and I kinda went in biased against it, feeling very cynical about the implication of Timm saying he wanted to go further then BTAS ever could.  It turns out that really wasn’t anything to be worked up about and all the episodes are pretty great.

That said, I do have some criticisms.  But rest assured nothing that a certain type of whiner is going to complain about bothered me.  I consider one of the literary ancestors of The Penguin to be Casper Gutman of The Maltese Falcon and of the 3 movie adaptations made of that novel, the 1935 film Satan met a Lady already had a woman play Gutman’s role.  So the way I see it the possibility of a Lady Penguin was always on the table.

I kinda hope Barbara Gordon as a Defense Attorney leads to them bringing back a certain forgotten Barbara storyline of the 70s.

I’m glad they went the uniquely nuanced route they did with Harvey Dent, I just……

Spoiler Warning.

…I wish they hadn't killed him off.

With Harvey Dent so much of the discourse is about his origin story and then attempts to Redeem him that may or may not succeed.  Which is all interesting but I’m tired of him actually being an effective Supervillain getting skipped over.

Screenwriters deserve more Credit

When I started my Writers tag for discussion of how often Writers don't get enough credit and/or blame and Directors get too much, I always intended for it to eventually talk about more then just Anime but Anime was already becoming the main focus of this blog.

The YouTube Channel CinemaSix has some good videos on the forgotten Co-Writer of Quentin Tarantino's early films, principally Pulp Fiction.  Tarantino of course is legitimately a director whos' also a writer being a credited writer even on films he didn't direct.  I however feel like most of the time the Director is only also given a writing credit because of the way he changed the script on set, meaning they didn't Write anything so much as ignore what was written.  Other times the basic idea of the film may come from the director but they still needed a professional writer to actually make a script they can start shooting.

I specified Screenwriter in the title of this post because obviously when a film is an adaptation it's not at all uncommon to suggest it's enjoyable in-spite of the director rather then because of them.  Or even when not hating on the director everyone knows Mario Puzo wrote much of what makes The Godfather so quotable.  

It's writers who write specifically for Film and TV that only get respect when they also direct.

In the very Director obsessed world of YouTube Video Essays some writers will only get mentioned when it's something the Essayist doesn't like.  JustWrite argues that David S Goyer explains what AppleTV's Foundation and Man Of Steel have in common, but no one will talk about how much credit Goyer deserves for Batman Begins, how he's also the one who kept Nolan's realism fixation in check and is also why Begins has more witty dialogue then it's sequels.  If you're one of those who likes Begins the most of the Nolan Trilogy you're probably actually a fan of Goyer's writing but simply don't know it.

And that's not the first time a Batman movie's writer was screwed over.  Sam Hamm wrote the script for Tim Burton's Batman, and every deviation Burton made from the script was for the worse.  Burton is a good director, his style is a big part of why his Batman movies work, but they could have been even better if he hadn't over estimated his ability to Write.

And on the subject of Batman writers Alan Burnette was important to Batman The Animated Series success and had before that proven his skill at writing Batman by writing The Fear an episode of the 80s Superfriends cartoon.

Batman 66 WAS Bad Actually (but not for the reason you think).

The problem is that for a few decades everyone had the wrong understanding of why it was Bad.

For the last decade or so internet discourse about Batman 66 has been about defending it because it's okay to have Batman stories that are fun and goofy and not so Dark, and I agree with that.  The problem is from my point of view there is no darker take on Batman then Batman 66.

Chuck Dixon who was born in 1954 recounted once on the playground when the show started saying in reference to it "that's not my Batman"  An eleven or twelve year old Batman fan in 1966 before any truly Dark Batman stories ever existed (even those early Kane and Finger stories are not what you've been told they are) would not have been saying this on the grounds that the show isn't dark and edgy enough for him.

Saying the show was faithful to the Comics of it's time seems justifiable on paper at first when you narrow down "it's time" to being not the whole Silver Age but the Jules Swartz era that started in 64.  The problem is a specific aspect of the tone.

You see Silver Age Comics could often be goofy and silly and dumb, and were often I think self aware of how goofy and silly and dumb they were.  But the core premise of the characters themselves was never the butt of the joke.  They were sincere, as were the Schumacher Batman films, and the Brave and The Bold Cartoon and the Justice League Trapped in Time animated movie, there was a core emotional resonance they each took seriously just like my favorite goofy and silly and dumb Anime or The Princess Bride.

The 66 Batman show was inspired by William Dosier and his friends laughing at the 40s Batman serials, not laughing with them.  They were not an affectionate parody of the comics but a mean spirited mockery of them.

A Batman who's response to watching someone die is to make a lame pun is far more of a cynical deconstruction of the character then any dark and edgy stories where he kills, because most of those take the concept of Batman killing seriously and have something to say about it, the message in Batman V Superman is that Batman should not kill, the message in Batman 66 is "who cares it's a dumb premise you shouldn't take seriously" they never even consistently kept track of it's Batman's attitude towards a criminal dying.

But people of Dixon's generation who didn't read the Comics or weren't as savvy to all this developed Nostalgia for it without actually understanding what it was doing as did younger generations watching the reruns.  And then as the fans who resented the show wound up getting what they wanted from Bronze Age and Post-Crisis alternatives that were visually Darker at the same time they slowly forgot the real reason Batman 66 was offensive.  

Then came the backlash to the relentlessly Dark DC stuff of the post New52 era lead by youtubers who only see cynicism and nihilism in scenes that are poorly lite with blood and scowling everywhere and so to them Batman 66 must be a happy optimistic Batman because it has bright shiny colors and characters who smile.

Batman v Batman v Batman

I want to start off this post with a Confession, back in the era of the Nolan Batman movies being the culturally dominant take on Batman I was among those who chose to express my fandom of those movies in part by hating on Tim Burton's Batman movies, saying those were acceptable when that was all we had but now Batman's finally being done right.

I wasn't as virulent about it as some, I never denied that I'd enjoyed them and I even enjoyed re-watching them at the time.  But I was definitely one of those who felt the Nolan movies were more legitimately Batman because of what I personally prioritized in the Batman Comics that I personally liked the most.

So I'm Sorry, this is my Apology to the Burton movies and their fans who had to deal with a lot of crap from idiots like 19-27 year old me.  

I still have my criticisms of those movies and they may actually be relevant to a future post of this blog, but they are ultimately very good movies and legitimate takes on Batman.

But now here we are a decade later a new Batman Reboot is out and the cycle is repeating with people coming out of the woodwork about how Nolan's Batman movies were always cringe and embarrassed to be what they were and now Matt Reeves has finally made a legit Batman movie.  And now it's like Karma, I'm in the position of those I was once annoying to.

I don't hate The Batman, I respect a lot of what it does.  But it is in my current mental rankings my least favorite Live Action movie containing Batman characters, and the gap between it and second lowest is pretty significant.  I actively like every other live action movie with Batman characters in it that exists way more, including each versions of movies with more then one version, even the ones that were contentious when they were new.  And there are now a lot of those, it's kind of doubled since the time when Rises was the most recent.

One thing that amuses me is how they keep hyping up finally getting Batman as a Detective, and I recall how that was literally one of the hooks for The Dark Knight as well, the little subplot about the Bullet, and even when I was at my most blindly loyal to The Dark Knight I kind of had to admit that was it's most underwhelming aspect.  In The Batman he fails at being a Detective, every single time he doesn't figure out anything till it's too late.  We still don't have a good Batman Detective film, if you wanna see what one would look like watch a Detective Conan movie.

What this movie is more then any other Batman movie is Film Noir Batman, accept as I've said in a prior post that is undermined by the big action movie ending.

Trashing Nolan's movies in contrast to The Batman feels kind of sillier to me then trashing Burton's take to hype up Nolan's because Burton and Nolan absolutely had stylistically different approaches and because of David S. Goyer Nolan's movies drew on more actual Comics.  The Batman is largely drawing plotwise on the same specific Comics as Nolan's movies with a mostly similar gritty and realistic style.  And as I've also said before the entire premise feels like what online fans were imagining Nolan's 3rd movie would be before Bane was announced, people wanted it to be The Riddler doing some Se7en/Zodiac/Jigsaw knock off BS, a lot of those Fan Trailers are still on YouTube I think, and I was into them at the time but when I got older I saw how cringe that premise would have been, but now The Batman did exactly that and people unironically love it, though a couple people have done YT videos on why it's bad actually.

There are more reasons to prefer certain Batman movies over others then just recencey bias/generational bias.  A lot of the people who preferred Burton's take even when that opinion was at it's least popular liked that it felt like the earliest Golden Age Comics.  Nolan's movies, or the first two at least, while drawing specific plot points from other eras and writers, in their overall vibes and tone were like Denny O'Niel comics of the 70s, that's why O'Niel was chosen to write the Novelization of Begins.  While The Batman's stylistic vibes feel like they are going for the Scott Snyder audience, which is perhaps key to why it doesn't appeal to me, I've always hated Scott Snyder's Batman stories, even Court of Owls I never liked.

TheOverlySarcastic people went on about how obvious it was to them Nolan hadn't read any Comics till working on Rises.  And that's just laughable to anyone who actually remembers that era, how Nolan and Goyer were constantly talking about exactly what Comics they read, they talked about their love of O'Niel's stuff from the 70s, and his Man Who Falls story from the 80s, but also how elements were being taken from Year One and The Long Halloween.

Breadtube has long been criticizing the politics in Nolan's Batman movies, but The Batman is ultimately the same, it includes some systemic corruption as a plot device but in the end says ultimately most cops are good, it says the Police simply need to be reformed not abolished.  Both are at their core ultimately Centrist like most Superhero movies.  But at least TDK has an explicit rejection of Hobesianism that an Anarchist viewer can cling to.

The fact that Nolan's movies bent the No Kill rule has always been a little controversial, but at least the No Kill rule was part of the story.  In The Batman he doesn't kill but that doesn't mean anything, no one was trying to get him to kill or arguing that he should.  I'll take it actually being part of the story but having some holes in the execution over it never coming up at all.

All of that aside, I again do like aspects of The Batman, the performances are all good, and I think there's potential for it's sequels to be better.  But right now it's the cinematic representation of the Batman Universe I have the least fondness for.

Mostly this post is a cautionary tale, I want fans of Battinson to be prepared for what criticism their film will receive when the pendulum swings again, and to maybe stop themselves from going too far down this Nolan hating road, because we aren't at the height of where it could be yet, it was in The Dark Knight's year that the anti Burton stuff reached it's apex.

My tastes have changed enough since the Nolan era that those films are less my ideal take on Batman then they used to be, but as overall films I still like them the best even over the Animated Batman movies.  However my favorite Batman actor going off the performance itself is Ben Affleck now, especially in Suicide Squad and the Theatrical Cut of Justice League.

I'm now caught up on Titans

Clearly there are others who enjoy this show, you don't get 4 seasons on brand recognition alone, but they aren't the people making YouTube videos on it.

I talked about the first 2 seasons of the show on this blog previously giving them probably one of the most glowing reviews they'd had.  Now originally when I tried following season 3 as it aired I got frustrated, I got annoyed at them doing mostly Batman stuff instead of using more villains from the Teen Titans comics.

But just recently I decided to give it another chance, and it's fine, once we got into the latter half of the season Raven and Donna's returns made things a lot more enjoyable.  And also once they started getting into the head of this take on Scarecrow I decided that this is a pretty decent interpretation of the character, different from what we've seen before but still distinctly Scarecrow.

Season 4 is 4 episodes in and doing actual Titans storylines again, so the show is back on track.

This show is far form perfect, it is again far from what I would write, but I still maintain that it captures the Spirit of the Titans Comics I love better then the more universally praised mid 00s Cartoon.

A lot of the Credit for that goes to the Actors, the Actresses they got for both Raven and Donna embody the characters as I've always thought of them perfectly.  And most everyone else does a good job too.  

The show has real Heart to it, it flexes it's Edgy Muscles constantly but as someone who's watched Fate/Zero multiple times this show's darkness is child's play to me.

Party like it's Ninteen Ninty Nine

The previous post on this blog was about early 2000s Anime, but I technically mentioned a couple that are really from 1999, To Heart, Steel Angel Kurumi and the starts of Johto Era Pokemon and One Peice.  When you take stuff back to it's source material even more of what I mentioned there has it's roots in 1999, Comic Party's original Video Game and a lot of stuff based on weekly Shonen Manga that got animated in 2000.

At face value To Heart seems difficult to justify as relevant to the early 2000s at all, it's a single cour show that was done halfway through 99 and based on source material from 97, the others at least had active continuations.  But first of all it's directly relevant to Comic Party, I'd dare say it's almsot required viewing for Comic Party in the same way Haruhi is required viewing for Lucky Star.  But it's also simply that when I look at To Heart I kind of still see 90s style Animation but I more see how much of 2000s and even still 20tens and 2020s Anime is built on foundation that To Heart laid.  And it getting sequels in the mid 2000s proves it was at least in Japan consistently still popular all through the time in-between.

But those shows aren't the only examples of how much Anime in 1999 feels like the 2000s started early, Excel Saga, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, Corrector Yui, Ojimajo Doremi, Hunter x Hunter, Digimon Adventure, The Big O, and Turn A Gundam are all interesting examples of shows that started airing in 99 and ended in 2000.  And then for Detecive Conan January of 1999 was the Anime introduction of Ai Hiabara in episode 129 (136-139 of the international numbering).  And on the subject of Source Material for future Anime, Kanon came out in 99 launching Key and adding the next layer to the foundations laid by To Heart.

For the sake of organizing our memories we like to try to define drastic changes in culture as correlating to decades of the Gregorian Calendar, but 1999 sticks out to me as an interesting case study in how culture isn't actually paying attention to calendars when it changes.

As someone who used to be more interested in following Music then I am now, I've always noticed how 1999 was the year Eminem, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore and Jessica Simpson all became stars, all of them are now mostly more famous for stuff they did in the 2000s not to mention how much people who started their careers later were influenced by them.

In the world of Video Games the Sega Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure were released in late 98 but reached the U.S. in 99 thus starting the Sixth Generation of the Console wars.

Pro Wrestling at first glance doesn't seems like it fits what I'm talking but rather the opposite, the first year and a half of 2000s Wrestling feels like the end of 90s era Wrestling.  However I feel like mid 99 was a sever drop in quality for both WWF and WCW, I know I'm nearly alone in this, most pretend WCW stopped being good as soon as Sting vs Hogan was botched and the WWF stayed impeccable till the Invasion storyline was botched, but for me everything I dislike about post Attitude Era wrestling really did start happening in 99.  And of those that so amusingly both Anti Vince Russo people and Pro Vince Russo people will connect the quality drop  that happened in 99 to which company Russo worked for changing, but for me the problems on both sides started a couple months before that, it started in the Summer, October marked a noticeable change in WCW but not so much WWF.

In the world of Western Superhero Comics, the Batman No Man's Land storyline is definitely the beginning of what early 2000s Batman Comics were like, as well as The Titans run that started in 99.  And in the world of adaptations of Superhero Comics Batman Beyond and Spiderman Unlimited changed things.  Sonic Underground feels like it's of a similar zeitgeist to those shows.

When it comes to Theatrically released movies from 1999 there are three that I mainly recall, the first Star Wars Prequel, the first Stephen Sommers Mummy movie and the first Pokémon movie.  Again all three were first not lasts.

In Japan the first Pokémon movie was in 98, but in the U.S. the franchise as a whole made it's debut in late 98 and I'm pretty sure it didn't catch my attention till it was 99 already.

Detective Conan is the Batman of Anime.

In more ways then one, if indeed we consider Goku the Superman of Anime and Sailor Moon the Wonder Woman.  

In Japan Detective Conan is just as all consuming and ubiquitous a franchise as those shows and Pokémon.  Every show I'm inclined to compare to Batman is some similar ways are fairly popular but not one of the goliaths of the industry.

I'm qualified to say this because of my unique Nerd history.  Batman is my oldest fandom, many of the oldest memories I have are of watching Batman shows and movies and playing around as Batman characters with my brother, and I spent the late 2000s and Tweens calling The Dark Knight the greatest film of all time and yes I also read lots of actual comics, enough to have some unconventional opinions on which ones are good and not good.  

Then I got into Anime fulltime in my 30s but quickly felt like it was everything I'd been looking for and needed only a few years for it to take over my self identity.

Then this year I started watching Detective Conan and have increasingly come to realize it combines nearly everything I loved about Batman with much of what I love about Anime in an unbelievably perfect symmetry.

In general I don't think there's many other Anime that do the double life thing as similarly to Western Superhero Comics as Detective Conan, with the Teen Drama stuff making Spiderman perhaps just as valid a comparison. It's technically a factor in Magical Girl shows but tends to quickly not actually matter much, and shows like Code Geass being set in a more alt history setting makes it function differently to begin with.

I also remember one of the fun Memes of being a Batman fan in the 00s was claiming Batman can beat anyone because he's "always prepared" or something like that.  Conan is the Anime character who in my view has earned the same hype, not from being "always prepared" but from being able to use quick thinking to deal with what he was unprepared for, which in truth is more how good Batman stories work as well.

But some of what makes Conan like Batman is stuff film only Bat Fans haven't really seen yet.  The Batman was hyped as being a Batman movie that's finally a detective movie, but it's more Film Noir/Hardboiled Detective. In the Comics Batman can also be a Sherlock Holmes style detective who solves puzzles and defeats his adversaries by outsmarting them.  Detective Conan becomes like Batman by accident because of how he combines inspirations from some of the same sources Batman did.

I increasingly don't think it's a coincidence that Detective Conan has the same initials as the Comic Book anthology series Batman debuted in and which became the namesake of his publisher.

He's even done that disappearing act a few times.

I guess the only thing missing is that there isn't as diverse a Rouges Gallery of recurring villains, just the Black Organization and Kaito Kid who's not really a villain at all.

But the real core reason is that in Anime only Detective Conan has a similar relationship with the No Kill rule, believe it or not even Magical Girls don't follow it as consistently.  It is fairly rare for it to really be that much of an issue in an episode, but when it is it really is, in 649 (the middle episode of a 3 parter) Conan prolongs a crisis endangering his family because of his insistence on not killing the criminal.  It was also a big deal in Movie 24 [and Movie 25 now that I've seen it].  There is never any "but I don't have to save you" BS.

Episode 119 (126 of the old Funimation localization and Dub) is a filler episode that I'm often inclined to recommend to be a good first impression of the franchise for Western Comic Book fans.  On multiple levels I think it's an episode Linkara would love, I hope his Patreons eventually get him to watch it like they have a few Tokusatsu shows.  And SFDebris may like it as well.

Another place where you can watch these Early Detective Conan episodes is Filmrise's Anime section, where the show is still called Case Closed and the episode I just referred to is numbered as episode 13 of season 5.

Update: Did I forget to mention that the first Detective Conan movie has a "somedays you just can't get rid of a Bomb" sequence?  It looks like I did.

Update October 2023: I could just as easily call Atom/Astro Boy the Superman of Anime, his debut certainly the equivalent of Action Comics No.1 in starting Anime's Golden Age.  And the new Pluto adabtation on Netflix can make a good companion piece to Detective Conan.

Lupin The Third and Detective Conan Crossovers

I've now seen both of them.

The 2009 TV Special is structured like the annual Lupin III TV Specials while the 2013 Theatrical Film is structured like the annual Detective Conan movies, and that overall makes it better.  Lupin III's cast are inherently travelers and pretty fundamentally flexible in the kinds of stories you can tell with them and so I feel any Crossover with Lupin III will always work better if it's more throwing them into the other franchise's world.

In fact some fans think the biggest problem with most Lupin movies and TV specials is how they kinda follow the same formula, chiefly the Castle of Cagilostro formula.

Meanwhile Detective Conan is a surprisingly rigid franchise for something that has gone on this long and most content produced is technically filler.  So even in the movie the Detective Conan characters feel off sometimes.  For me personally the movie served as a fun introduction to Detective Conan going into it as a Lupin fan, but once I re-watched it as a seasoned Conan fan how the characters were off became more noticeable.

The Special is still sometimes enjoyable however, but it certainly feels off to watch a Crossover story and find the most compelling part to be the completely original characters.  Christina Vee does a great job as Ran's Princess Doppelganger.

Basically Detective Conan is not a franchise that lends itself well to crossovers, even it's connections to other franchises from the same creator are often questionable to the few actually versed in both lores.

Lupin The Third however is tailor made for Crossover potential and it's a shame it doesn't happen more often.  In the late 2010s DC Animation gave us a Batman meets Scooby Doo movie and a Batman meets the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.  I got the impression these kinds of crossover movies for Batman with not even DC stuff would become a regular thing, but it wound up being just those two.  I already commented on the Lupin III influence in Catwoman: Hunted, so since people at DC see the relation why not try and work with TMS to actually make a Lupin III meets Batman movie?

Scooby Doo seems to do crossover stuff more regularly, and given how many of their bad guys plans are kind of heists it too could suit a Lupin The Third Crossover well.

But chances are doing it with another Japan based franchise will always be easier to arrange.  What other Anime franchises are basically in the contemporary real world and are reasonably Episodic with pulp inspired elements?  That's actually a rarer combination then you'd at first expect.  Maybe Sailor Moon could work?

The Detective Conan Crossovers happened because they're both TMS, there really doesn't seem to be a third TMS franchise on their level.  But TMS is under the TOHO umbrella which opens the possibility of Godzilla.

Update: So the Lupin III project for 2023 is going to be Lupin III vs Cat's Eye an Anime about Classy Cat Burglars from the early 80s, which is a natural crossover choice.  But the image we have implies it'll be a return of Pink Jacket Lupin which is interesting.

That makes me think again about the prospect of Lupin III crossing over with Batman, as both Lupin and Batman have had different tones over the years.  

The Pink Jacket Incarnation of Lupin The Third is who I'd have show up in Batman The Brave and The Bold the same animated version of Batman used for the Scooby Doo crossover I mentioned above.  

I'd have Red Jacket Crossover with the DCAU/Timmverse Batman voiced by Kevin Conroy and other still working BTAS veterans.  

Green Jacket I'd have crossover with the Batman of The New Frontier Animated film as a late 60s/early70s period piece, preferably written and directed and drawn by the same staff as The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.

And Blue Jacket (Parts 4 and 5) with the up coming Caped Crusader show or the Tomorrow verse films being the most modern incarnations.  [Update: Turns out Caped Crusader went all in the Period Piece stuff to where he can't be contemporary with Lupin III, more like Lupin II.]

Update June 2025: I made a BlueSky thread on the Topic of Lupin III crossing over with Batman recently.

https://bsky.app/profile/kuuderekun.bsky.social/post/3lqxfzk6x3k2o

What movies I've seen recently.

The most recent movie I've watched is Morbius and it was good, I think the best live action theatrical Superhero movie since Endgame, it's refreshing to see one that isn't about the a plot to destroy the entire city or world or universe and also isn't a semi self parody.

The first almost 40 minutes were flawless, then when it became clear Milo was gonna be the villain I felt that could have been handled better.  Giving them the ability to Fly when they don't grow wings was stupid, and I didn't like the fridging at the end, but plenty of flaws comparable to those exist in great movies.

I think the hate this movie gets is mostly just the weird hate boner much of Internet fandom has developed for Jared Leto.  What flaws this movie did have were not on Leto at all, he was great.

I also re-watched The Batman, and I still think it's decent. I had commented before on it being the most like a Film Noir of any Batman movie so far, and it is.  But a pure Film Noir would have ended during the scene of Batman talking to Riddler in prison, a good Film Noir ending would have ended on Batman reacting to the revelation that he inspired the villain, and Riddler's hysterical reaction to learning his idol doesn't approve.  It even had already had a full feature length runtime.

The final act with the plot to drown the city is the typical Superhero movie BS, and I increasingly feel Batman is exactly the Superhero who doesn't need that.

I also finally watched Cloud Atlas, it was a great movie, but the best Wachowski film is still Speed Racer.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 was also great fun, I highly recommend it.

The Anime films I've watched I'm pretty sure I've already talked about on this blog.  Except maybe the latest Prisma Illy movie, that was pretty good, didn't disappoint, but I am getting annoyed at the cliffhangers and wondering when this Arc will finally end.

Incase I hadn't mentioned it anywhere, I also saw Redline and it was phenomenal.

I now own the Heaven's Feel movies on VUDU, I may give them a rewatch in the near future.

Mark Millar's Moonie denial

In JLA issue 27 cover date March 1999 written by Mark Millar, the Martian Manhunter disguises himself as a Japanese Woman and uses the name Rei Hino.  Bruce Wayne immediately knew that was J'onn because he recognized that name as having something to do with Mars.

Sailor Moon fans immediately deduced that J'onn was naming himself after Sailor Mars, and apparently Batman was also familiar with Sailor Moon.

Thing is Mark Millar has denied that this was an intentional Sailor Moon reference, saying...

"I was told it translated loosely as POET OF MARS, which is what J'onn's occupation was back on his homeworld. It had zero to do with Sailor Moon."

But that explanation doesn't make sense.  Rei Hino does NOT mean "poet of mars".

Hino means "of Fire", the Kanji for Fire in that name is also part of the Japanese name for the Planet Marts, Kasei which means "Fire Star" but is spoken differently in that word.  So in context Hino is a fitting surname to give someone you're associating with Mars, but it's not on it's own inherently a reference to Mars.

Nor does Rei mean Poet, according to Wordhippo the Japanese words for Poet all have "jin" in them.  The Wikipedia page for the name Rei lists many different Kanji and meanings for Rei, but none is Poet.

So either Mark Millar is lying, or someone lied to Mark Millar.  Who told him this name translated that way, and why were they offering a translation of this name specifically?

Millar wrote this individual Issue, but it's actually still during the Run of Grant Morrison.  There are things about Grant Morrison that make me suspect he would like a lot of Anime, including Sailor Moon.  So is it possible the real culprit here is Grant Morrison?

If I described the premise of the Black Moon saga (the Manga version not the 90s Anime) to a bunch of DC Nerds but avoided like names and stuff, they'd probably say "that sounds like a Grant Morrison comic".  But Naoko Takeuchi did that before it became Grant Morrison's thing.

Morrison's key theme for his JLA run was equating each JLA member with an Olympian deity.  So it's easy to imagine he was researching lots of ways those deities were used in modern pop culture, especially stuff that can be considered Superhero stories.

I actually miss Episodic Television

I watched a YouTube video on Smallville recently, and one of the complaints about the show of course was that there was "soooo much filler".  It's kinda funny coming back to Smallville discourse after spending years in the Anime Community where "Filler" has a mostly different meaning.

When I look back on Smallville comparing it to the modern state of Superhero TV shows, the "Filler" is exactly what I miss.  To me what makes Clark Superman is how he deals with small things as much as the big things.

If you follow the discourse among actual DC and Marvel Comic Book readers, you'll notice one thing that has been lamented about the state of Superhero comics for well over a decade now is how everything is "written for the Trade" and thus you don't get simple short one off stories anymore, not in the main continuity at least.

Well Superhero based TV is finally catching up to the Comics in this regard.  And while for now everyone is excited about the possibilities, I feel like the one person noticing that this is leading to exactly why so many of us Comic Book Nerds started preferring TV and Cartoons to the actual Comics in the first place.

Saying Smallville was good actually may be mildly controversial, but saying that about Batman The Animated Series is not.  Michael Baily has lamented how since The Joker killed Robin and crippled Barbara Gordon in the late 80s you can't just tell one off Joker stories anymore, not in the main continuity, he became too big for that.  In the 90s BTAS became the source for new short one off Joker stories.  And it did the same for all of the villains.

The reason none of the modern attempts at creating new Batman villains have truly become Icons like the ones who've been around since at least the 70s is because those classic villains had who they are and what works about them defined by tons of short and simple one off villain of the week stories.  Then later writers started trying to find ways to make them work in more Epic and long form stories with varying degrees of success.  But now every new villain is introduced as the Big Bad of a huge status quo shaking event, and they may have worked great for that event, but attempts to bring them back just reveal their short comings.

It's not just the Superhero genre though.  Perhaps with something like a High School Drama it's harder to easily tell the difference between something episodic and something trying to be a 20 hour movie.  But I can still sense that I generally prefer the former to the latter.

For hour long live action TV shows my ideal is somewhere between purely episodic and every episode being a huge earth shattering plot development.  I want there to be an overarching storyline in the background, but for most individual episodes to work as their own stand alone stories.  That was how Buffy/Angel, Xena and Smallville operated back in the day. and it used to be that was also how most long running TV Anime worked.  

Now it seems like if a new show did what I like it would be viewed as a step backwards.  I look at how Netflix's Daredevil was praised from season 1 as a new evolution of the Superhero genre making everything that came before and contemporary with it look amateur in comparison.  But all I see is how the potential for interesting one off stories with a Superhero who's also a Defense Attorney were squandered by the obsession with making a 13 hour Kingpin movie.  Season 2 I liked more then most people in-spite of not doing what I prefer, then season 3 won back the season 1 people and I hated it.

And even with Anime what I like is becoming rarer, with Light Novel and Visual Novel adaptations dominating the market.  And Manga meanwhile hasn't had the same history as Marvel and DC Comics, they were always "written for the trade" to some extent.  So it's mostly original Anime, or Anime that diverted from the source material in ways purists hate like classic Sailor Moon and FMA that are structured the way I most prefer.  The later of those mostly isn't allowed anymore, and even original Anime are often written for the Binge watcher even if it aired weekly since most Anime don't make their profits from the TV broadcast anyway.

I love plenty of shows that aren't structured this way, I'm simply sad that this kind of TV is dying out.  

Justice League, Both Cuts are good movies

That’s my double Hot Take, each has their advantages and disadvantages.

I wasn’t expecting to have this reaction.  I’ve always known I’m not as much of a Snyder Fanboy as I sometimes come off to others, but clearly I myself was overestimating our alignment.  So much of what I liked about the Theatrical Cut that is not in the Snyder Cut I really assumed would be.

I’m quickly growing to have a similar relationship with Justice League as I do Superman II where my ideal hypothetical version of that movie combines elements of the Theatrical and Donner versions.  However the differences in Aesthetic Style here make doing a Fan Edit not nearly as easy.

I can say that while the Theatrical Cut should have been longer, 4 hours I would not have tolerated for a movie theater viewing where I can’t pause it.  No Superhero movie should in theaters be longer than The Ten Commandments.  However like the LOTR Extended Editions home viewing is different.  The same runtime as the Avengers movies would have been the ideal.

The best “superficial” praise I can give the Snyder Cut is that every scene or moment which is on paper the same in both versions is better executed here, better editing and cinematography and special effects and definitely a far more cohesive Musical Score.  And a lot of the longer scenes, and other stuff one might say adds nothing to the “plot” and may therefore get criticized as padding actually helps the film’s Gravitas and Characterization.

As far as the actual story goes the chief improvement in the Snyder Cut is everything involving Cyborg and his Father and the characters connected to them completely cut from the theatrical, he is the heart of the film and who was most done dirty by the theatrical cut.  Most of what I now dislike about the theatrical version are the alternate scenes with them.

However there is one more detail of the Theatrical Cut I would be completely adverse to including in an ideal hybrid cut and that is the Flash landing on Wonder Woman’s boobs gag.  One of the few Anime clichés I’m glad I (usually) don’t have to worry about in a Hollywood movie.

The Flash is overall also done better by The Snyder Cut, but I also like everything with him in the Theatrical besides that one gag I just mentioned.  However I don't consider major extra Flash scenes to be necessary.

Aquaman comes off about the same in both versions, which is good, he’s cool.  

Steppenwolf I don’t care about either way.  He is different but I really don’t care about his greater depth.  As I said before in Super Team formation films I’m fine with the villain being just a plot device.  The DeSaad and Darkseid scenes I enjoyed as a Nerd, but I don’t think what they add to the film really matters, they were there to set up future films that still might never get made, and Darkseid is the kind of character I feel should be ominously mentioned for years before he's ever even glimpsed.

However what I would most prefer to be gone are the Injustice inspired bad future visions, and I now want that gone from BvS too.  I was hoping that storyline would be resolved by the end of this film.  I don’t want more Evil Superman BS, that was supposed to be done away with once this film finished Clark’s Hero's Journey.  It turns out Snyder was planning more than a Trilogy and that disappoints me.

The Theatrical version of Justice league for all it’s plot holes and imperfections is still a fun movie that gets most of the core characters right.  And compared to The Snyder Cut is far better as a Superman movie, or a Batman movie and sure as hell a better sequel to Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman films.

The Theatrical Version despite having less than half as much Runtime feels like it has twice as much humanity.  Patrick H Willems talked about how Whedon’s Avengers movies have more glimpses of the normal civilian population and their reactions to the Superheroes then the Russo films, and that same contrast exists here.  

That Instagram video of the kids recording Superman at the beginning, that goon Batman uses to bait a Parademon, the Opening Credits sequence, having civilians around they need to protect during the big final battle, and other little moments right before cutting to the end credits.  All of that adds a lot of humanity to the theatrical version that I missed here.

I want to talk briefly about the Mustache controversy of the theatrical version.  People keep saying it's something you can’t not notice, except when I first saw it I hadn’t heard about any of this and I indeed didn’t notice it.  That one particular screenshot people like to meme to me just looks weird because of Cavil’s facial expression, in a way lots of freeze frames in a film will.

I hate the inclusion of the Black Superman Suit.  A lot of people think it's a requirement for a Superman returns from the Dead storyline, but this isn't a direct adaptation of Reign of The Supermen.  I would have been fine with it if it was only temporary like in those Comics, but him having it in the closing shirt rip shot symbolizes what I’ve already complained about and feel betrayed by.  I’m one of many who defended Snyder’s choices for Man of Steel and BvS on the grounds that it's Superman’s beginning.  Instead The Snyder Cut has revealed that Darker Edgier Superman was the long term plan.

With Batman I’ve already praised that scene where he coaches Barry and how much I liked that.  I also liked that Lois calming Superman down was Bruce’s plan, in the Theatrical Cut that’s the pay off to Barry’s future warning, in the Snyder Cut it only adds to that to set up a final pay off later.  I also like when he says to Alfred that Clark is more Human than he is.

In the Snyder Cut Diana kills that British Terrorist, this isn’t exactly contradicted in the Theatrical but it's clear that’s something Whedon chose to cut because he knew it didn’t fit with how Jenkins’ Wonder Woman movie ended.  A lot of people have been praising the moment with the little girl soon after saying “how could they cut that?” they aren’t looking at the context.  There was no way to include that while still hiding that Snyder had filmed Wonder Woman killing someone.  In addition to that I also don’t like her being so determined to decapitate Steppenwolf either.

I also miss all of the interactions between Bruce and Diana unique to the Theatrical Cut.  I do not interpret them Romantically, Alfred is just being a naggy parent who wants grandkids.  I like that they talked about Steve Trevor, something only briefly alluded to in the Snyder Cut.  I like that Bruce is a dick in one scene but not going to Frank Miller levels.  I like that he sees Diana as the one who should actually lead the team.

As stand alone works of art The Snyder Cut is more “Auteur”, but both were in truth collaborative projects.  I appreciate both and I hope the Theatrical version is never buried and forgotten.

A New Batman movie is coming out this year, and I don't care

Only a few years ago I never would have thought that was possible.

The Dark Knight is still the most hyped any movie has ever made me, but Rises and BvS were also huge deals.  Now this year is going to give us the first proper simple Batman movie since 2012, and first movie with Batman in the title since 2016.  But it doesn’t feel like Batman has been absent the way he was between those films.

Some people feel the Superhero genre itself is going to die of oversaturation, but the Superhero genre is inherently diverse in what it can do in ways that I feel make that impossible.  But Batman specifically has been overexposed.

Batman has been in an Animated movie every few months and been tied to multiple TV shows. And we’ve had Theatrically released films featuring Batman characters and lore.  I'm not criticising any individual of those projects, of even the loosest definition of what can be considered a Batman movie the only ones I truly dislike are a couple of the Animated ones.

Disney has quickly done the same to Star Wars, a Star Wars movie is no longer an Event, instead it was an annual thing for a while.

And while DC has been giving all this attention to Batman, there still hasn’t been a Superman Animated series since the 90s.

Meanwhile I’ve gotten into Anime during this same time period, and while this may have been unthinkable to me in 2008, Batman arguably isn’t even my favorite Nerd Franchise anymore.

But in-spite of all that, I could have been excited for The Batman if they gave me the impression it would be a new different kind of Batman movie.  As someone who has been one of the biggest Nolan Batman fanboys, I always wanted the next Batman franchise to not be more of that, to move beyond the Gritty Realism obsession.  Instead it looks like Mat Reeves was inspired by one of those old 2009-2010 fan trailers of what a “Nolanized” Riddler would be like.

I don’t want a theatrical Batman movie that isn’t at all serious and has no “darkness” in it.  But I want one that is maybe not literally unrealistic but still has a fantastical quality to it.

What am I excited for?  As far as Hollywood movies go the final Jurassic World film, Godzilla vs Kong and The Suicide Squad are what I may check if we can go to theaters again at some point this year.  For Anime we should finally get the Sailor Moon Eternal films, the end of Attack on Titan and the Dub of the final Heaven’s Feel film.  That’s all I currently know to expect, with Anime what I often like the most a given year is what was totally unexpected.  

Update March 28th: Great, my very first post of 2021 wound up being an inaccurate premise, The Batman has been delayed to 2022.

Just how much have I changed?

So I posted some thoughts on Wonder Woman 1984, I overall like the movie but had some issues.  I'm not even at all surprised that other people's issues were the opposite of mine.

But what gets me is how often the criticism the movie is getting is frarmed as it being a "Richard Donner style" which allegedly can't work anymore.  And it reminds me of what I (and others) used to say about Superman Returns, calling it the worst movie ever made.  But WW84 isn't actually like the utterly boring Superman Returns? Is it????

I haven't actually watched that movie all the way through since 2006.  But what I like about WW84 is tied to my tastes in Anime not some reversal of how I feel about "Cheesy" Superhero movies...... but none of the Anime I'm thinking of here I had seen yet in 2006, a good deal of it existed already, but I'd still only seen a handful of shows.

And as I was recalling what I was like as a mid to late 2000s Comic Book Nerd on IMDB message boards it all came rushing back to me, I used to be an Edge Lord.  I used to be the type of Batman fan who wanted the legacy of Adam West and Joel Schumacher buried, and used Silver Age as a dirty word.  It's true I was not one of those Robin and other sidekicks shouldn't exist people, but that's because I wanted the stories where The Joker kills Robin and cripples Batgirl.  I got into DC Comics because of War Games and Identity Crisis and OMAC Project.  And yes I even specifically wanted Superman stories to be darker then what Christopher Reeve ever gave us, more then once I was disappointed at Smallville not killing Chloe Sullivan off.

Even the beginning of my relationship with Anime (besides the literal kids shows I got into in the 90s) was Darker stuff, that I still call Noir my favorite Anime probably gives a bad impression of my current tastes.  And after that it was the other Bee Train Shows, Witch Hunter Robin, Code Geass which has dark moments, Death Note, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, Attack On Titan.  The first Magical Girl Anime I watched to completion was Madoka Magica, then I saw Utena, then Rose of Versailles, then Le Caviler D'eon, then Gankutsuou.

I was never only into dark and edgy stuff, Pokémon for example was always somewhat of a balancing presence.  In fact I've always been unashamed to admit to still liking the kids shows I watched as a kid. Plus I've always been a defender of Superman IV and Batman Forever.  And there were always certain limits, I always found the first issues of Allstar Batman and Robin offensive, and the way season 8 of Smallville ended always bugged me.  I've always preferred a happy ending and I oddly valued Batman's no kill rule more then then I do now.  And I haven't lost the ablity to appreciate Dark stuff, I still like what I liked then and get crap for defending Zack Snyder.

But something has changed.  I've on this blog attempted to summarize the timeline of my descent into Anime before.  But I'd been trying to think of it as me simply being late to finding what I secretly wanted all along.  However the me who was super into every shocking thing DC was doing in 2005 would never have predicted I'd wind up defending the idea of having an epic super heroic battle to save the universe where no one dies.

When I watched Madoka and Utena for the first time, it was while the Sailor Moon revival was starting in 2014.  Sailor Moon had an on and off again presence in my life, but at that point I still hadn't seen most of the season finales, and I considered S the best season because it was seemingly the darkest.  (Now my Sailor Moon rankings are greatly different.)  Remember what I said about being concerned some westerners might learn the wrong lessons from Sailor Moon? well I'm remembering that that would probably have been me if I'd gotten to write a Sailor Moon knock off back in the 2000s.

Before the Sailor Moon revival kicked off, earlier in 2014, certain western TV shows I was watching had disillusioned me by crossing those lines I always had.  And the one I was starting to love more then ever before was in one of it's darkest hours.  So I think I was primed to appreciate Sailor Moon in a way I hadn't before, even though I wasn't connecting these things at the time.

2015 helped shape my modern sense of humor between how much I enjoyed the early episodes of Gotham and my at some point getting into Engaged to The Unidentified.  Meanwhile I started watching more Magical Girl shows too.

But 2016 was the major turning point.  My relationship with Batman V Superman is complicated, I wanted it to be the best thing ever, but after it came out I initially praised it but believe it or not there was a period where I was pretty down on it.  And that's when I watched Yuri Yuri and Lucky Star and began my relationship with slice of life Anime, they picked me back up.  And then I watched Haruhi to help me further appreciate Lucky Star, and then slowly but surely got into things like Fate/ and Nanoha and Steins;Gate.

All this did kind of coincide with some of the changes in my Theology and Politics, my becoming a Communist and a Universal Salvation proponent.

And then following seasonal Anime over the course of 2017 and 2018 further radicalized me.

So the question is, would I suddenly like Superman Returns if I rewatched it now?  I don't know, I still feel like it's largely boring in a way WW84 definitely is not.  But I guess I should give it a try some time soon.

However I now consider the worst movie ever made to be End of Evangelion.

I now have the Batman Death in The Family BluRay.

I first did exactly one route, I was trying to get the happiest ending possible so those who already know everything can probably guess what ending that led me to.  

My plan was to do one route at a time, but I honestly don’t feel like I even got a full movie experience out of only one route and that isn’t good, the total runtime of all the routes is 3 hours, so I felt each route should have no trouble being as satisfying as one standard 70 minute movie.  

There are a total of 7 endings the opening said, but I have a sneaking suspicion everything after the first choice I made leads to the same outcome.

Then I watched the rest of it and found one of my initial assumptions was the opposite of correct.

It was a pretty fun experience, the closest thing I've done so far to playing a Visual Novel.  If you liked the Under The Red Hood animated movie from 2010 you'll probably enjoy this as a companion piece.  But I'm not sure it's worth the full price, maybe wait to you cna get it used for a little cheaper.

I think more Sailor Moon fans need to check out other Magical Girl Warrior Anime

Back during the era of Nolan's Batman movies it was in certain places online like IMDB message boards very popular to express the opinion that Robin's existence is inherently bad for Batman.  That Batman should be a loner and throwing in this kid sidekick only dumbs the stories down.

I was always agaisnt that mentality, and today most major voices in the internet Western Comic Book Nerd community reject that as really narrow minded and know that you're really not much of a Batman fan at all if you completely reject such a large portion of what the Batman mythos are.

As someone who remembers all of that while currently being a Millennial Otaku in an era where our current Nostalgia cycle has brought a number of old 90s Anime back into public conciseness.  I feel like the Anime equivalent of that is the prevalence of Sailor Moon fans who wish Tuxedo Mask didn't exist, that position is nearly unanimous among the guests on the Sailor Business podcast.

I actually have more sympathy for this position even though it's less supportable (Tuxedo Mask was there from issue #1 unlike Robin) because my own preferences for female lead Anime and Superhero stories are often similar, I'm a Yuri Fanatic who likes watching Anime where it's possible to pretend males don't even exist in that fictional world.  But when it comes to Sailor Moon my position is Mamoru/Darrien is just as essential as Lois Lane is to Superman, or Mary Jane to Spiderman, or Iris West to Barry Allen, or Sif to Thor.

Now talking about Tuxedo Mask is complicated by how the 90s Anime handled him very differently.  This may shock some people to learn, but there are Sailor Moon Manga purists who hate everything about the 90s Anime, but this subject may often be where they'd start their rants.  He's in High School not Collage in the Manga (and in Japan the age difference between middle school and high school is smaller then it is here, they are in fact only 2-3 years apart) Mamoru isn't constantly a jerk to her early on, Usagi isn't nearly as childish and Tuxedo Mask actually contributes more.

That element also fits the Robin comparison, the rejection of Robin was partly from how for a long time the mainstream public perception of Robin was mostly Burt Ward and Chris O'Donnell.  And indeed I think the best western Comic Book analogy for those Manga purists who hate the Anime are people who still hate the Adam West and Shumacker takes on Batman.  Those of us who have read Robin(s) as written by for example Chuck Dixon or Marv Wolfman know the concept can be taken seriously.

However some people don't like Mamoru even in the Manga, or heck some even find him worse in the Manga.  These people simply hate the idea of tuning in to a show about a Superheroine (or "Female Superhero" as the CW's Supergirl pilot kept insisting on saying) where she is also constantly being rescued.  Now most of those "rescues" range from cheer-leading her to adding a little minor assist like female love interests of male superhero also frequently get to contribute, and the final climax of the original story-line is her saving him.  But these fans want male love interests to contribute 0% to their Superheroine stories.

Thing is that apparent contradiction is not a bug but a feature, it is kind of the entire premise of Sailor Moon.  Film Flux did a video on the Sailor Moon Manga that helped me to clarify this.  Superhero stories are at their core wish fulfillment fantasies, and like it or not many young girls fantasize both about being a Superhero and being a Damsel rescued by a handsome Prince (and some young boys have the same fantasies).  While most Mangaka might have written two completely separate stories to express those fantasies Naoko Takeuchi said Frak It and did both simultaneously, she wrote a story where an average Japanese school girl gets to be both Snow White and Wonder Woman at the same time.  The premise of Sailor Moon is foundationally about having your cake and eating it too.

Now you don't have to also be into that, my point is that this Prince Charming isn't something that's part of the story because of executive meddling.  (If anything it's having other Girls helping her that was, Takeuchi's original vision was a solo Super-heroine, it was Toei that wanted a team so they could sell more toys.) And so if you fundamentally don't like that, you kind of don't like the premise of Sailor Moon.

The reason why in America Sailor Moon is popular with many people who actually share only half of Takeuchi's fantasy is because on mid 90s American television she was the only Superheroine we had to choose from at all.

Thing is it's now possible for Americans to watch almost any Anime they want to, and the sub-genre Sailor Moon spawned has evolved to provide plenty of shows that can better provide what these Sailor Moon fans actually want.  I think there are plenty of people who might actually like the rest of the genre more but have still only seen Sailor Moon because they've never searched for Anime beyond what airs on Toonami, or because they're assuming them to be Sailor Moon knock offs with no actual creativity.  But the truth is even the ones most similar to Sailor Moon are still just as distinct as Green Arrow is from Batman.

All or at least most Pretty Cure seasons have no Tuxedo Mask analogue, a few have Het love interests who are civilians, like Peter Parker crushing on Liz Allan or Mary Jane in the Raimi films, but most don't even have that.  Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna Is A Hero and Symphogear provide no Het romance for the main character at all.  Pretty Sammy and Nanoha also work, and Prisma Illya is....... not a good one to start with.

Corrector Yui doesn't seem to have a Tuxedo Mask figure from what I've seen so far, on Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne there is one kinda but he's a rival thief.  On Saint Tail the love interest is the guy trying to catch her, so it's like Batman and Catwoman but if Catwoman was stealing things because God wanted her to do it???? I'm still not sure what that show's premise actually is.  In Galaxy Fraulein Yuna there is a Tuxedo Mask but she's a woman, so those of you who enjoy having your sexuality confused by the Takerazuka style Mamoru in the new Musicals might enjoy that.

Even Wedding Peach is distinct on this issue since the person who could be called the Tuxedo Mask of the show is not the title character's love interest.

So I'm hoping once these Sailor Moon fans can get their no Tuxedo Mask Magical Girl fix elsewhere they can be open to appreciating Mamoru once they've seem him portrayed correctly on Crystal( just make sure you're watching the BluRay rips) or even the Live Action show PGSM.  I also still recommend that Sailor Moon Fan Film from 2016.

The Killing Joke is about how The Joker is wrong

I just watched a video essay call The Killing Joke a "Deconstruction" and it pissed me off.  I didn't think I'd need to defend my earlier statement that it's not a Deconstruction, but here we go.

The Joker is proven wrong in more ways then one, the big one is that Gordon was not broken, and it's kind of funny how confidently The Joker assumed he was.  However The Joker's "one bad day" speech is also not really supported by the flashback sequences.

When it comes to The Killing Joke as a Joker origin story people like to focus on the "multiple choice" quote giving us permission to not take the flashbacks as definitively canon.  But even if we take them at face value, they do NOT vindicate The Joker's "one bad day" thesis.  That person's life was already miserable before that day came along and he was already demonstrated to be unstable.  That day was a tipping point but he was in need of help even if that day had never happened.

When someone says that Batman is a psychopath in The Killing Joke I go "what were you reading?"  The Joker expresses the opinion Batman is just like him, but the story is all about The Joker being wrong.

I partly blame this on that animated movie from 2016.  There is a meme going around that only the tacked on Batgirl story is bad but once it becomes a direct adaptation it is great.  That is false, Hbomberguy did a video on the subtle ways that the movie is a pale imitation of what the comic drew.  But I want to focus on one specific scene they didn't cover.

[Update: Unshavedmouse also recently wrote something on how bad that movie was.]

When Batman almost falls into the pit with the big sharp spikes at the bottom, the Animated movie has him intentionally throw a random goon down into it, making him a killer.  Now I knew even from having not read the comic recently that that must be wrong, but I kind of assumed that the comic at least had a goon fall into the spikes and that's where it came from.  But no, I just reread the comic before writing this post after watching the Video Essay I'm responding to, and there is no goon in that scene at all, the spikes just look like they might have blood on them already.

I'm not as dead set against letting Batman kill in adaptations as some people are, I'm fine with how both Tim Burton and Zack Snyder handled it.  However this was a direct adaptation of a specific story where Batman not killing was specifically part of that story's framework.

The interpretation that Batman kills The Joker at the end was something proposed in only the last few years, but this video essay went and stated it as fact claiming you have to ignore the final page to make it "canon" to an ongoing continuity.  The notion that the story was not originally meant to be in continuity is also false, the reason why we have the "cripple the b!tch" quote is because Moore had to ask permission to cripple Barbara Gordon, and then before the novel was published in the same month DC released a Batgirl Special that gave Batgirl a proper send off (the movie should have just adapted that for the Batgirl story instead of letting Tim indulge in his weird shipping).

[Update 2026: SalazarKnight has done a video proving The Killing Joke was Always Canon.]

Guess what, I'm not against interpreting Batman to have killed The Joker is a beloved late 80s classic that allows us any excuse to say he didn't.  Batman killed The Joker in The Dark Knight Returns, that is proven by following how the dialogue balloons' colors changed.  That interpretation is also controversial, but it's based on the text in a way that's pretty irrefutable once you've noticed it.  Saying he killed The Joker in The Killing Joke undermines what that story was entirely about.

I say this as someone who considers the story overrated.  And no it's not because I'm upset with it's treatment of Barbara on Feminsit grounds.  Overrated doesn't mean bad, it's overrated compared to other Alan Moore Batman stories (more people need to read Mortal Clay, that story is beautiful), and it's overrated compared to some more modern usually not Comics works that repeat similar themes and ideas. The Dark Knight is a better take on a story where The Joker has the same goal, and 2019's Joker is a better elaboration on what the flashbacks were trying to do.

Basically people go "the guy who wrote Watchmen, must be another deconstruction".  The truth is every good Deconstruction is written by people who also know how to play that genre straight.  Watchmen is Moore's only Deconstruction, every other hero he wrote is sometimes maybe flawed but still a genuine hero.

Another problem with that original video essay is talking about not liking when Superhero movies or shows are Cynical and Self Aware but praising the 66 Batman show when that show was the most Cynical and Self Aware take on Batman.