Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League’ on VOD, A Ridiculous Batman Anime That Spoofs Two Genres at Once

2018’s Batman Ninja was a presumed one-off, but its direct sequel, Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) renders it a bona-fide TWO-OFF. Director Jinpei Mizusaki and writer Kazuki Nakashima return – with new co-director Shinji Takagi – for this nutty-ass thing set the day after the first movie, and bent on turning the DC Universe upside-down for 89 minutes. Literally!

BATMAN NINJA VS. YAKUZA LEAGUE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Damien Wayne, aka Robin (Yuki Kaji), awakens to his phone alerting him to a pending “yakuza hurricane.” Hold on, I’ll explain: It’s a storm that occurs from time to time over Gotham City where it rains yakuza henchmen, who parachute into the city to clash with cops. (I know. Are there enough drugs? No.) Thankfully, Batman (Koichi Yamadera) can explain. He can explain anything, and does so frequently in this movie. It’s like a running joke. Has to be intentional. Has to. Anyway. Something something time travel something. That’s the explanation. Please don’t ask me for details. Things aren’t the same with this reality as they were before the events of Batman Ninja. All you have to do is look at Japan, because it’s not there. It’s just ocean. But it is inverted and floating in the sky above Gotham, which explains why it’s raining men, hallelujah, but no one ever said that an explanation needs to make sense.

So Batman and Robin hop in the Batwing to investigate, and learn that there’s a fissure in the space-time continuum between this Earth and the upside-down Japan above. And so it’s populated with alt-universe heroes and villains, some with reversed good/evil polarity, because each is affiliated with the yakuza families who rule this anarchic version of Japan. And each has a crazy Japanese name and a yakuza name that I just won’t acknowledge from here on out, lest this review become a long boring list of proper names. So, thankfully, the alt-Wonder Woman (Romi Park) remains noble, and allies with Batman. But Aquaman (Akio Atsuka), the Jessica Cruz version of Green Lantern (Ayane Sakura) and the Flash (Nobuyuki Hiyama) are bad guys now, and so is (uh oh) Superman (Takaya Kamikawa), who’s the right-hand man of Ra’s al Ghul (Kazuhiro Yamaji), who kinda oversees all the bad guys, I think. I mean, the details zing by ratatatatatat, and none of them matter in the least.

Now is when I’d get into the veritable shitloads of this plot (go ahead, chase Gorilla Grodd’s quake engine around like the MacGuffin it is) a bit more, but there are more characters crammed in here and I’m obligated t- wait, Superman is evil and is somebody’s toady? Yeah. It’s kind of a big deal. Like I said, everything’s upside-down. And it’ll take a little help from Batman’s friends, namely, the Bat Family – Red Hood (Akira Ishida), Nightwing (Daisuke Ono) and Red Robin (Kengo Kawanishi) – to get this shit sorted. Harley Quinn (Rie Kugimiya) and the Joker (Wataru Takagi) end up in agent-of-chaosing around this thing, too. Am I forgetting anybody? Nope. Sorry, Hawkman and Arm-Fall-Off-Boy, maybe next time.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice meets Battling Seizure Robots. (Or should it be Batmanttling Seizure Robots?)

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Your cackling at all the inside jokes. Note I said “your.” I got a few of them, but hey, I’m fairweather when it comes to Batmanime.

Memorable Dialogue: Not sure which character offers the most direct throughline from the writer’s room when Ra’s al Ghul says “Let’s complicated things!” or when Robin says, “This is dumb. You guys are out of your damn minds!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Thank the deities that these Batman Ninja outings are tongue-in-cheek, because the world doesn’t need a grim Batman in a ninja tunic moaning to his therapist about his dead parents. In fact, nothing about this should be taken seriously at all, as it’s clearly self-aware, acknowledging its out-of-control comic-bookiness and heavy spoofing of hyperbolic anime tropes. You know how fighting anime characters tend to pause mid-pose and bellow the name of the fancy-ass move they’re about to make? Well, a character in Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League unleashes “Science ninja technique: vending machine!”, apparently because he knows the Flash has a weakness for snacks. 

Seriously, by about the third time Batman delivers a round of mind-addling explanatory minutiae – or when Wonder Woman calls his cadre of Robinesque dudes the “Bat Cartel” – it’s pretty clear that this is intended to be a comedy. It’s repetitious and it knows it’s repetitious. Beyond that, there’s action, which is the crux of the movie – chases, showdowns, big explosiony whatnots, all leading to the part that all Batmans on all timelines dream of, a mano-a-mano with an evil version of Superman. It’s pretty monumental, full of explanatory blither-blather and features not a single utterance of the word “Martha.” Might be worth a watch just for that.

Our Call: Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League does not care about continuity, legacy or any of the other tropes of comics or anime, and is all the more amusing for it. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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