Well, That Was… Something

It’s not often I watch a film that leaves me absolutely stunned. In the few times it’s happened it’s because the film was a masterwork of cinema. A fantastic story, great acting, amazing special effects, stunning cinematography. Films can transport you to another time, another place, and absorb you fully into what they're doing, taking you on a ride you never could have expected and leaving you breathless at the end. A great film has the power to change you, but it’s rare to find that in a movie.

Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League is not that kind of movie. Instead, it’s the truly rare film that left me stunned because I absolutely do not know what any of the people working on the film were thinking. It’s a production of Warner Bros., created by Warner Bros. Japan and anime production studios Kamikaze Douga, YamatoWorks, Barnum Studio, and it is, quite seriously, the weirdest BatmanOne of the longest running, consistently in-print superheroes ever (matched only by Superman and Wonder Woman), Batman has been a force in entertainment for nearly as long as there's been an entertainment industry. It only makes sense, then that he is also the most regularly adapted, and consistently successful, superhero to grace the Silver Screen. film I’ve seen in quite some time. Weirder than the first Batman Ninja, which was already a strange film, and sillier, stranger, and more bizarre than anything produced for the franchise before. Yes, even Batman ‘66. This is just an oddball production, through and through.

Watching the movie I was left with one thought. Well, okay, two thoughts, the first of which was, “my god, this is so fucking anime.” But the real thought I had, once it was all over, was, “how did this get made?” People had to see the dailies, studio heads had to watch the film at some point. Somewhere along the way someone had to say, “are we sure making this film is actually a good idea?” And yet they went ahead and did it anyway. Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League is the most mind-boggling weird film I’ve seen in some time, and it better sell well on home video because, otherwise, this thing will absolutely ruin careers.

Having just gotten back from feudal Japan (see: Batman Ninja), Bruce Wayne and his son, Damien, discover something very strange: a Yakuza Hurricane. Quite literal Yakuza soldiers have started falling from the sky to attack Gotham, and yet no one, other than Batman (Koichi Yamadera providing the Japanese voice acting, Joe Daniels providing the English dub) and his Bat-family of Dick Grayson / Nightwing (Daisuke Ono, Houston Hayes), Jason Todd / Red Hood (Akira Ishida, David Matranga), Tim Drake / Red Robin (Kengo Kawanishi, Nathan Wilson), and Damian Wayne / Robin (Yuki Kaji, Bryson Baugus), seem to think there’s anything strange about this.

Checking in back at the Batcave, Bruce and Damien discover that Japan is missing. The whole of the country has disappeared, simply removed from the map as if it never existed. Weirder, though, is that there’s a city floating, upside-down, in the sky, but only Batman and his allies can see it. They theorize that this is because Japan disappeared after Batman and the gang came back from feudal Japan, and the remade country is now in a time-displaced rift high above Gotham. Only Batman and his crew can see it because they traveled through time. They have to investigate the rift and deal with the meta-human guardians of the Yakuza-run city above, with the likes of Zeshika the Emerald Ray (Ayane Sakura, Annie Wild), Ahsa the Aqua Dragon (Akio Otsuka, Cyrus Rodas), Bari the Fleet of Foot (Nobuyuki Hiyama, Benjamin McLaughlin, and Kuraku the Man of Steel (Takaya Kamikawa, Aaron Campbell) fighting against them. But Batman and his friends might just get a little help from one alternate warrior who, herself, fights the Yakuza league and doesn’t want to see these evil metas win: Daiana Amazone the Eagle Goddess (Romi Park, Molly Searcy).

There can be no doubt, Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League. It is a truly strange movie, even if its basic idea is a bog-standard concept from DC’s own Elseworlds imprint. Familiar heroes transplanted into a different time and place, becoming alternate versions of themselves is well-worn material, and it has worked in multiple kinds of tales (Superman: Red Son, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox). The issue isn’t in concept but execution.

Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League is very anime. Like painfully, over-the-top anime. The production studios clearly knew this and went all in on making it as silly, ludicrous, and over-the-top as they could. They functionally made a parody of Batman, as well as all the anime tropes they could think of, to make the weirdest, strangest Batman film I’ve seen in some time. If you ever wanted to see Batman and Co. dive into vehicles in a parody of the Voltron vehicle transformation sequence, only to then, soon after, have Wonder Woman sing a song of farewell as if it were the end credits of an anime, complete with a montage of her walking through the snow carrying a katana, then this film has everything you want.

The film, in short, is high camp, through and through. And I’m not saying there isn’t a place for that. I do feel like this film can’t quite manage to pull it off the way they want. It has the heightened kind of jokes and gags as, say, Airplane!, but it doesn’t have the same deadpan delivery. The film feels like it knows it’s a joke, so at every turn it has to face the camera and mug for it, showing it’s in on the joke, but that doesn’t make the joke funnier. It wants to be a parody of Batman and anime, but it doesn’t quite nail either and it kind of makes you wish it could have toned things down, just slightly, to be a more cohesive film.

There are some things that did work for me. As over-the-top and camp as the film is, it’s still animated really well. Done with a blend of CGI and cell-shading, the film looks great. It uses a bunch of different art-styles, not just CGI anime but also CGI used to look like woodblock prints, paper cutting art, and more, and it’s fabulous. This is coupled with character designs for all the remade Justice League members that look so damn good. If they were to make figures of Zeshika the Emerald Ray or Daiana Amazone the Eagle Goddess I would buy them in a second. These are really interesting character designs.

I also think the voice actors did a solid job with the material. I watched the English dub, since I caught this on HBO MaxThe oldest and longer-running cable subscription service, HBO provides entertainment in the force of licensed movies along with a huge slate of original programming, giving it the luster of the premiere cable service. Now known primarily for its streaming service, HBO Max (formerly Max, HBO Max, HBO Go, HBO Now, et al). and I didn’t realize there even was a Japanese version, and despite having to deliver really stupid lines, the actors all did it with conviction. I don’t think anyone is going to win awards for this film, not for acting anyway, but as silly as it all was, the voice actors at least kept me focused on the story as best as they could.

I think, deep down, this film is just too anime for me. As I have noted before, I am just not an anime fan. From the storytelling style, to the tropes, to everything else about the genre, anime just doesn’t gel with me. I am not the target audience for this film, so things about the story that irritated me, that felt too over-the-top and like the anime thought it was being so clever might not bother other people. I haven’t watched enough anime parodies to know how that portion of the genre works (and, to be clear, I’ll never watch that either) so this could be perfectly of a piece with what anime fans want. I just know it wasn’t perfect for me.

This film is silly, and it commits to the bit, which I guess is fair. If that’s what you want from a film like this than Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League might just be for you. I just know that it’s so damn silly, strange, and exceptionally anime that it didn’t work for me. I can handle a lot, and I’m willing to laugh at a good parody, but this film didn’t click the way I wanted it to. There’s a lot to like here, but on the whole it failed to be cohesive enough for me to care.