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.

Shy and Superhero Anime

One topic I talked about on this blog a few years ago is how as someone who was an American Comic Book Nerd for ages before Anime took over my brain, the Anime that to me have a similar appeal to my favorite DC Universe stories are not the ones explicitly drawing on American Superhero aesthetics like My Hero Academia and One Punch Man but rather shows like Code Geass, the Raildex franchise, Detective Conan/Case Closed, and I’d now add Durarara! which I watched this year, twice now.

However starting with the Fall of last year a new Superhero Anime has entered the fray, Shy who’s second season is currently airing.

While HeroAca and OPM put the aesthetic trappings of American Comic Book Superheroes onto a show that is essentially a conventional Battle Shonen, with Shy it is the Magical Girl Warrior subgenre putting on Western Superhero clothing.  That actually works far better because the Magical Girl Genre has its origins in part in western Superhero influences. 

Naoko Takeuchi has admitted to being partly inspired by Wonder Woman in creating Sailor Moon, something the recently re-adapted final arc makes more obvious with the Bracelets plot point.  But there’s also the additional indirect influence from how the Transforming Tokusatsu Superhero genre was inspired by Shazam and the 60s Batman show and so forth.

So Shy kind of winds up feeling like the Genre returning to its roots in some ways.

90s Magical Girl Warriors like the Sailor Senshi and Wedding Peach wear costumes that fit in with how we typically think of American Superhero Costumes from the Golden, Silver and Bronze ages in that it would not feel inaccurate to describe them as some form of “tights”.

Today however your default parody of a standard Magical Girl is more likely to be wearing a frilly or fluffy dress of some kind and that is largely the influence of Pretty Cure which in Japan has long surpassed Sailor Moon as the most popular Magical Girl franchise, (but it's Anthology nature means no single team has had as many canonical adventures as the Senshi).

And so Shy wearing a Western Superhero style costume coincidentally looks more like a 90s Magical Girl then any new Magical Girl Anime we’ve seen in 20 years.

But Shy is not completely removed from the subsequent history of the Magical Girl, it definitely shows some influence from the Post Madoka era of the genre, with what the villains are doing reminding me of Daybreak Illusion more than anything else.

The main difference between Shy and other Magical Girl shows, in fact the main reason it’s probably not officially going to be considered one, is that there are Male Superheroes.  Of course the Nanoha franchise also had males who had essentially the same abilities.  The British Superhero keeps reminding me of the antagonist of Superman Vs The Elite for some reason.

All of this kind of makes Shy the antithesis of how I’ve been thinking about the 2008 OVA School Days: Magical heart Kokoro-Chan.

As one of the very few American Otaku who loves School Days both unironically and not because I view it as some kind of “deconstruction” I was very curious to see what it’s take on the turn the little sister character into a Magical Girl spin off trend would be.  And what I got kind of confused me.

First it starts off by also having a sort of Sentai parody, which would be fine.  But then we get to this classroom scene where everyone starts talking about Superheroes.  And Makoto and Sekai started saying things that sound like J. Jonah Jamenson, in my head I was like “I dedicated one of the most overly long posts on my blog to defending you two and this is how you repay me?”.  Then Setsuna starts talking and I think “finally my Waifu will bring some sense to this” and then she starts spouting a “Superheros cause Villains” monologue.

Basically this Magical Girl Parody decided to have the metatextual commentary of a Western Superhero Comic.  In Magical Girl shows and Super Sentai the villains come first and the heroes are a reaction to them, the exact opposite of what Setsuna just said.

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.

I think 2019 has been the best year for (Hollywood) Movies since 2008.

2008 produced two of my top 4 movies of all time (The Dark Knight and Speed Racer), my favorite Narnia movie, my favorite Indiana Jones film, the only James Bond movie I've really seen, the start of the MCU, and other stuff that's probably good which I haven't seen yet.

I spent most of the last decade feeling pretty underwhelmed by Hollywood movies, compared to how easy to please I usually am.  For all of 2013-2018 there are only two movies that I really loved, Jurassic World and Infinity War.  

But then this year all of the sudden they really start hitting stuff out of the park, Battle Angel Alita, Detective Pikachu, Avengers Endgame and Godzilla King of The Monsters really wowed me, then Shazam and Captain Marvel were both above average.  Meanwhile I still haven't seen the new Spiderman movie.

2008 was followed by a few years that were almost as good, let's hope the same thing happens again.

Some predictions about upcoming Comic Book adabtations

I'm not claiming to have any inside info, these are just my wild guesses bases on the evidence available to everyone.

The Flash Season 3.

1. I think we'll learn that on Earth-Three where JWS is Jay Garrick, that Dinah Drake, Laurel and Sara's mother from Arrow, is The Black Canary.

2. I think at the end of season 3 Barry Allen will "die", and Wally West will take over as The Flash.  I think WB will want that so while their featuring Ezra Miller's Barry Allen in two movies that will come out during season 4 the TV Flash will be different.  But regardless I think that would be a good move, because that's part of the Comics history of The Flash.  Obviously a door will kept open for Barry to return, perhaps in the 100th Episode in the middle of Season 5.

Wonder Woman

1. The woman with the weird face in the trailer is Paula Van Gunther.

2. Bookend scenes set in the present will revolve around Diana talking to Carol Ferris (Christina Wren), where reference to Hal Jordan disappearing might be made.

Justice League.

1. Superman will return in about the middle of the film, but he'll instantly assume leadership, not unlike in Reign of The Supermen.

2. Green Lantern will show up at the very end, with maybe hints of his existence being made earlier.

3. Deathstroke will be in Justice League, he's who Batman will fight while the Superpowered characters fight aliens form Apokolips.  That's what the footage we saw is from.

4. Enchantress will appear, that's why Bruce also got her file also at the end of Suicide Squad.

5. We'll learn the father of Eisenberg's Luthor is still alive, but probably not see him yet.

Spiderman Homecoming

1. Zendaya is Michelle Gonzalez and/or White Tiger, not Mary Jane.

2. They will wait till he's in Collage to have him meet Gwen or MJ.  What I want to see when we get there is Gwen and MJ being friends.

The Flash movie

Will flop and not get a sequel

Aquaman

Will be a hit and get a sequel

Batfleck

1. The first movie will be a version of Under The Red Hood with Arkham Knight influence.  Harley and Joker will both appear.  Mat Damon will play a villain replacing Black Mask's role, maybe Hush, and he'll hire Deathstroke.

2. Then in the second Justice League movie.  Bruce will be "killed" by the Omega Sanction and the next Batfleck film will be Battle for The Cowl with aspects of Knightfall.

Update: The Official Deathstroke announcement came out right after I posted this.  It kinda doesn't change anything, we know he'll be in Batfleck now, but I hope he's not the main or only villain.