It's time to talk about Batman: Gotham Knight - no, not Gotham Knights, the new Batman game, and no, not Gotham Knights, the ill-timed CW series coming out in the same year. It is time, however, to talk about Batman: Gotham Knight, an anime anthology from 2008 that is a high point in the caped crusader's history of animated stories.
Gotham Knight was a hype vehicle in many ways, meant to hype up the release of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight while featuring the talents of Kevin Conroy as Batman from the animated series. The project was six short films, produced by four different animation studios and seven directors, each with its own unique take on the caped crusader, both the man and the myth. Nowadays, animated anthologies are all the rave, between Love, Death + Robots taking the internet by storm or Star Wars Visions breathing much-needed life into the franchise, with season 2 on the way. Even when anthologies weren't as prevalent, the ones that were released, such as the Animatrix, were well regarded and got even more praise as the years went on.
Have I Got A Story For You
Studio 4°C | Directed by Shinjiro Nishimii
This first entry is amusing, not only for its plot setup but how it's one that Batman has done previously. In the Batman Animated Series, there was an episode where a bunch of kids share their stories about the caped crusader. Each one is drastically different from the last, as the kids aren't the most reliable narrators and their imaginations take over.
This first short film is the same premise, but whereas the animated series' take used each kid's story to parody a distinct era of Batman media, this short creates wholly unique portrayals of the character. The kids are a group of young skateboarding street kids all sharing their stories about when they saw Batman.
The catch is that all their stories are from the same day when Batman was chasing a particular criminal. Told out of order, the audience sees Batman from all their perspectives while piecing together the order in which the events happened. It's a layered story with a lot of details to catch, and Batman's portrayal goes from that of a phantom to a beast, and more.
Nishimi's character design work in films like Tekkon Kincreet and the like has always been off-kilter but charming in how the characters' movements become so alive and full of character. The same detail is present here, with gorgeous background art of Gotham during the daytime.
Crossfire
Production I.G. | Directed by Fugoshi Higashide
Episode 2 is a far more traditional-looking Batman story but reveals the catch of this anthology. Big or small, each short is connected to the previous in some way, and the antagonist from the first is a prisoner in the second. The story follows two detectives transporting them to prison and then getting caught in the middle of a shootout between two gangs.
The story and performances are on the whole entertaining, but the artwork suffers from art design that clashes with the shading and coloring, which seem to battle for dominion. It's as if the film can't decide how dark it wants to be. That said, when Batman arrives, he elevates the story and the artwork along with it.
Field Test
Studio Bee Train | Directed by Hiroshi Morioka
Fans of Batman: Arkham Knight will recognize Batman's outfit from this short as an outfit DLC from that game, a stylized suit by character designer Toshiharu Murata. The story follows Bruce testing a new gadget designed to deflect bullets, only to discover it's not all it's cracked up to be. While Crossfire's story felt simple and quick, Field Test has a larger story, paced effectively to include an investigation leading to the climax.
Despite Bee Train's reputation for middle-of-the-range productions over their lifetime, their art design here has much more impact. Bruce might look a little too young to some, but his design has a lot of character and the emphasis on Bruce out of the suit is a nice change of pace. The story continues the gang war plot from the previous short while having a moral lesson for Bruce to learn in the process.
Anthologies don't often carry over details from film to film, often because the stories are so different that tethering them together would feel laborious. However, with each story being a Batman story, some consistency to link the shorts together makes the whole anthology feel like a connected story.
In Darkness Dwells
Studio Madhouse | Directed by Yasuhiro Aoki
The fourth short wastes no time in expressing Madhouse's pedigree for style with camerawork and character designs that immediately make an impression. What's more impressive is the visual abstraction with which Batman is presented, like how his form creepily warps as he descends into the sewer. When Batman is as creepy to the audience as to the antagonist, that is a job well done.
It's surprising that even with such wild visuals Aoki hasn't directed more. The action, the use of slow-motion, and the constant dedication to wilder and wilder visuals are either the mark of an underutilized talent or a director who put everything they had into this production. Either way, this short is easily one of the highlights of the anthology.
The way this collection was marketed, it was almost meant to exist within the world of Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. Seen through that lens, the anthology mostly works, as the supernatural is grounded as good as the writers can manage. If it can't be easily grounded it's a hallucination or the metaphorical perceptions of characters.
Working Through Pain
Studio 4°C | Directed by Toshiyuki Kubooka
A throwaway line in the fourth short, "I work through pain," became the entire focus of the fifth. Bruce is injured in the present and recalls lessons about fighting pain from his past before he returned to Gotham. The story is one of the strongest, teamed with another impressive visual showcase by Studio 4°C and the director of the Berserk movies.
This anthology is at its best narratively when it challenges Bruce's morality and his mortality in the fight against crime. In Field Test, it was about why he's willing to put himself on the line and here it's about the struggle he endures because of it. It's a complicated struggle that - like the best Batman stories - begs questions about him and his mission.
It's by far the darkest story, ending with the most poignant connection to previous shorts. Had it ended there, it would have been called a sad ending, but the creators had one last story to tell, and for many, it was the one that's been remembered the most.
Deadshot
Studio Madhouse | Directed by Jong-Sik Nam and Yoshiaki Kawajiri (uncredited)
It's unclear why Kawajiri is uncredited for this short, but the style of the final story is undeniably inspired by their work on Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and Ninja Scroll. A feature-length film in this style would be a stroke of genius if this story is anything to go by.
In Field Test, a man throws a gun into the sewers, and then at the end of Working Through Pain, Batman finds countless guns tossed aside. This final story ties the gun metaphor together, first with a surprising monologue from Batman acknowledging the allure of guns, followed by a confrontation with a villain known for being the best at shooting them, the assassin Deadshot.
From the vistas of Gotham to the striking artwork of the characters, to the feast for the eyes that is the final battle atop a train, Gotham Knight ends firing on all cylinders. It is the culmination of a journey that's been in the background of the whole anthology, re-affirming who Batman is and what he believes in.
Batman: Gotham Knight isn't just a great animated anthology, it's one of the best out there for how it transcends the typical format of the anthology to tell a meta-narrative across all the films. Anthologies are special because each episode has mostly complete creative freedom, but a unified theme or a theme that is explored in different ways across a collection is something more anthologies could borrow from this one.
Batman: Gotham Knight is available for streaming on HBO Max.