2018âs 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 â with new co-director Shinji Takagi â 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 âyakuza hurricane.â Hold on, Iâll explain: Itâs 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. Itâs like a running joke. Has to be intentional. Has to. Anyway. Something something time travel something. Thatâs the explanation. Please donât ask me for details. Things arenât the same with this reality as they were before the events of Batman Ninja. All you have to do is look at Japan, because itâs not there. Itâs just ocean. But it is inverted and floating in the sky above Gotham, which explains why itâs 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 thereâs a fissure in the space-time continuum between this Earth and the upside-down Japan above. And so itâs 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 wonât 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), whoâs the right-hand man of Raâs 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 Iâd get into the veritable shitloads of this plot (go ahead, chase Gorilla Groddâs quake engine around like the MacGuffin it is) a bit more, but there are more characters crammed in here and Iâm obligated t- wait, Superman is evil and is somebodyâs toady? Yeah. Itâs kind of a big deal. Like I said, everythingâs upside-down. And itâll take a little help from Batmanâs friends, namely, the Bat Family â Red Hood (Akira Ishida), Nightwing (Daisuke Ono) and Red Robin (Kengo Kawanishi) â 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?: Itâs 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 âyour.â I got a few of them, but hey, Iâm fairweather when it comes to Batmanime.
Memorable Dialogue: Not sure which character offers the most direct throughline from the writerâs room when Raâs al Ghul says âLetâs complicated things!â or when Robin says, âThis is dumb. You guys are out of your damn minds!â
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Thank the deities that these Batman Ninja outings are tongue-in-cheek, because the world doesnât 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 itâs 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 theyâre about to make? Well, a character in Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League unleashes âScience ninja technique: vending machine!â, 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 â or when Wonder Woman calls his cadre of Robinesque dudes the âBat Cartelâ â itâs pretty clear that this is intended to be a comedy. Itâs repetitious and it knows itâs repetitious. Beyond that, thereâs action, which is the crux of the movie â 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. Itâs pretty monumental, full of explanatory blither-blather and features not a single utterance of the word âMartha.â 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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