DVD : Batman Gotham Knight (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

In association with Amazon.com

Rating:

- Nice story & backgrounds, but character design lacking.
I purchased this and was disappointed by it.

First the good:
* The DVD's do serve as a good bridge between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.
* Kevin Conroy does his usual excellent job as Batman's voice.
* The voice talent in general does an excellent job.
* The backgrounds and equipment designs are beautifully done.

Now the bad: The characters are illustrated so poorly that it looks like the majority of the art budget was blown on the backgrounds. The teenagers in the first episode, for example, look like they were drawn by an artist using a half-melted ice sculpture as his reference. The quality of the character animation and illustration does NOT improve as the series progresses.

Though not as poorly drawn as The Batman TV series, the apparent lack of effort put into illustrating the characters destroys all my enjoyment for this DVD series. It's too bad, because the voice talent, background illustrations, and storylines are all excellent.

Rating:

- Too many huh moments
Looks great on the plasma, but several of the stories left me with many "huh" moments!

Rating:

- On par of Animatrix...
Animatrix was done in the simlar fashion. However, there are no special effects of CG (in Gotham Knight) and was done very well. It's actually worth watching through once or twice to get an idea of the expanding universe of the Batman series. However, this planned trilogy really stands on its own as it has no relation to the graphic novels of latter years. No parrallel universes nor joker in sight, but the gritty reality and dark themes that it sets to deliver flow well. This is a good transition between the first movie and into the second one.

However, some of the animations, were not my cup of tea. I think I'm being nitpicky about just one of them. (I'm afraid you will know it when you see it) However, it doesn't remove from the actual presentation as it a side story of sorts and has no really backstory to aid. Sans the first animation everything else was very good.

Rating:

- Great bridge to "The Dark Knight"
I purchased this because I had heard it was similar in structure to the Animatrix. This is actually a more cohesive single story told from several writer's and artists viewpoints. There is an underlying main theme and several recurring characters.

Rating: