ニンジャバットマン対ヤクザリーグ
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DIRECTED BY: Junpei Mizusaki, Shinji Takagi
FEATURING: Voices of Kôichi Yamadera, Romi Park, Yûki Kaji, Takaya Kamikawa, Rie Kugimiya, Kazuhiro Yamaji; Joe Daniels, Molly Searcy, Bryson Baugus, Aaron Campbell, Karlii Hoch, John Swasey (English dub)
PLOT: The morning after returning to contemporary Gotham from feudal Japan, Batman finds an ominous landmass floating in the stratosphere and an entire nation wiped from the globe.
COMMENTS: It is another normal day in Gotham. Batman, Robin, Red Robin, and Red Hood are assembled in Wayne Manor. Yakuza are falling from the sky. This unlikely weather has been plaguing Gotham for the past month, claims Commissioner Gordon, who at least is spared the sight of the islands of Japan floating ominously above the city. Batman, as befits a Detective Comics hero, suspects that something isn’t quite right.
Junpei Mizusaki and Shinji Takagi pick up where Batman Ninja left off. Gorilla Grod, it appears, was not the mastermind behind the diabolical doings which grafted DC’s rogues gallery to feudal Japan. Grod’s space-time disrupter has apparently switched gears to plant the Justice League into a facsimile of contemporary Japan: one ruled over by warring yakuza clans, which are in turn lorded over by the erstwhile crime fighters. As Batman comes to terms with this development, his family team of good-doers square off in grand comics-cinematic style against the West-meets-East imaginings of impossibly powerful villains.
The filmmakers pull off this stunt with aplomb and plenty of explosions. There is never a dull moment as the plot twists along its appropriately circuitous path. Exotic delights abound, be they Green Lantern’s “death dice” tumbling their luminescent emerald destruction down upon one of the heroes, Robin being trapped inside a claw machine filled with California rolls, origami folds of space and time shifting disastrously in the arch villain’s lair, or more prosaically when evil-Aquaman tumbles to the ground after sparring with time-shifted—but thankfully, still Justice-League-y—Wonder Woman. (The subtitle options obliged me to watch the Japanese-dialogue version with “English for the Hard of Hearing”. This kept me informed of explosions and music, but regrettably did not provide the written explanation, “Massive Thud of a 20-Foot Silver Catfish Crashing to the Ground.”) Whoever may have had the power to restrain the creative team her obviously had no inclination so to do, which reminds me that never before have I seen an orbital yakuza launcher powered through a cycling gyre manifested by the world’s fastest man.
It’s all pretty nuts and a whole lot of fun. The surprises found in the interpretations of this solidly American franchise throughout the two parts (Batman Ninja / vs. the Yakuza League) are plentiful enough that I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that both films together would fit nicely in our Apocrypha: their voracious vim, endless excesses, and infinite ingenuity make this epic adventure a mighty Boff! Bonk! and Pow! right to the brainpan in manner you don’t see over here on the boring side of the Pacific.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
Catwoman arrives, too. She is a geisha with a kitty puppet, and she makes Dolly Parton look like an A cup. Oh, and she bought Alfred (not me, Bruce Wayne’s butler), too, and the Batmobile. Smartly, Misuski and company resist the boring temptations of Batman traditions. They get a new use out of the Batcycle, turning it into a suit of armor. When the battle begins, Batman has an arsenal of batninjas backing him up. Grodd, the Penguin, Poison Ivy, Two-Face, Deathstroke, and sumo wrestler Bane (!) all exist in feudal Japan; each has his or her own territory, and they are fighting for control—a bit like the mafia in Godfather.