Batman: The Animated Series
 

We got off track in the Batman crossover thread and the latest movirs seen thread talking abourmt this show so I thought it was brst to create a thread for it. This show more than any other iteration defines Batman for me. Not the WB! season, but the three seasons worth of 85 or so episides front the Fox run. It has Robin and Batgirl gurst starring, though not enough. Love those two characters and would like to have seen more individual focus with them. The character designs are iconic and the tone is nearly perfect. As said before I have a handful of nitpicks of this show, but it oresents Batman and co. better than anything before or after. It captures nearly all of the villains as victims of society, sympathic and colorful. Even a few episodes that shelf the traditional villain un fa or of an episode that focuses on humanism. So what are your tboughts?

I think its the best animated Batman ever made. The Superman and Batman World's Finest crossover movie is awesome. Mark Hamill has another winner as The Joker, first winner being Luke Skywalker.

Kevin's Batman is the Batman voice to me. That's how I think he should sound.

What is that supposed to mean? The last season of 24 episodes is a direct continuation of B:TAS, and its largely considered the same show on the DVD sets and by Bruce Timm.

Best version of Batman ever.

Big drop-off in quality, though, and the redesigned art style was awful. Where the f*** did Joker's lips go?! :lol:

Exactly. Only about 4 episodes of that set do I care for personally and the redesigns are atrocious. I also felt WB!'s attempt to relate to the audience by getting a younger Robin was a bad idea as I feel put off by the Jason Todd 2.0/ Tim Drake hybrid and love Dick Grayson as Robin. I did like having Firefly added in even late in the run. I wish that Mr. Freeze did not appear in the fourth season wither. He got a good ending that was only ruined by further appearances. Sure we are made to feel sorry for the likes of Two Face and Clayface, but Victor Fries should at least get a good ending ot his storyline with the idea even if he was not cured he got back with Nora and reintegrated into society.

The creators said the hardest character to write for was The Riddler as to why he did not show up in season 1 and only made 3 full appearances along with his two cameos. Most of the rejected scripts for the series featured him. I can understand why as it is hard to make him a cerebral threat and Batman always get him in the end. I would argue Catwoman is the hardest to write for. Is she a villain? Is she an a protector with a compulsion to steal the finer things? How is her relationship with both Batman and Bruce Wayne? Honestly, aside from the blonde hair before the redesign giving her short black hair there is not much to nitpick over. Here are her list of appearances:

The Cat and The Claw Part 1- season 1
The Cat and The Claw Part 2-season 1
Cat Scratch Fever- season 2
Tyger, Tyger- season 2
Almost Got 'Im- season 2
Catwalk- season 3
Batgirl Returns- season 3
You Scratch My Back- season 4
Cult of The Cat- season 4

Yeah, I'm a huge Tim Drake fan, that's the Robin I grew up with, so I was a little bit tickled when I saw/heard they were using him in the show. Then I saw it was really just Jason with Tim's name and that turned me off a little bit.

I missed most of the "Redesign Season" when it originally aired and only caught it way later on. The whole thing just felt like a tacked-on addendum to a series that was already finished.

The final season had plenty of great episodes.

I wouldn't mind seeing another Batman cartoon series that takes influences from The Animated Series and adds in elements from other takes such as the comics, the 1966s series, Batman 89, Nolan, and combined them together.

I don't know if you have seen "The Batman" its probably the best thing sense Batman TAS.

I remember watching the show as it aired, and thinking it was the most amazing animation I'd ever seen....in terms of style and execution.

While the stories and voice acting remain amazing, wow the animation has not aged well. Having said that, it's still my default Batman chronology.

Yeah, it's not great, especially when it rains. The rain looks bad and odd.

People think B:TAS looks bad? Its animation is better than most modern looking shows.

Droopy nose Batman and Fat Bruce Wayne. Not my favorite designs in the pre-relaunch stuff.

Haha, sure pal. That's not the goggles speaking.

Love it, simply put. And mew, I don't need prime yo, I got youtube.

Aside from Dark Knight In The City and Batgirl Begins I could not get into it until tbe 4th season oremiee. Ironically with the inclusion of Dick Grayson it got darker and the entainment as well in The Batman. Black Mask makes his debut in The Batman is one Batman: The Animated Series left out.

If you want to see wither series go to kisscartoons.me.

I really need to re-watch the show and the DCAU in general, haven't watched them since the DVDs were being released so it's been ten years since i've watched some BTAS episodes, a little less for the other DCAU shows. Simply fantastic show and BTAS made me a fan of Batman as a kid. As a teenager it was JLU that got me to be a fan of cartoons in general again. The re=launch might not have as many highs as BTAS but it's probably more consistent than BTAS. I also loved returning to that universe years later and seeing what had happened in all those years.

The Batman got a lot of unwarranted hate but it has more than enough decent episodes and created some awesome original characters. It's darker than what people give it credit for but sadly it's legacy is tainted by the terrible version of the Penguin/Joker they have and select mediocre episodes.

I rewatch the entire DCAU every 2 years or so.

and the OT/2k3 too ;)

I really don't know how you do it. I just don't have time, I also don't like to watch things too soon since the more time passes the more enjoyable the next viewing is. I really need to get to the DCAU again though ten years is a lot of time but I'm overwhelmed by the amount of episodes and I already have plenty of new DC shows (Flash/Gotham/Arrow) to watch that take up my time for the foreseeable future to be adding even more DC shows. I can pretty much only watch one show at a time that I binge. For example I started Clone Wars around September and I just finished it. Now I can move on to another show.

For half hour shows its not that hard to do. Without commercials and skipping openings/endings, most shows are only 22 minutes long.

You can watch 4 episodes in just an hour and a half. Every night around 11pm I rewatch 4 episodes in a row of whatever show I'm currently marathoning. Within just one weeks of time you can get through a huge batch of episodes.

Ha. Yeah, I'll definitely take both the Batman and Bruce Wayne designs from the Later "New Batman Adventures" episodes over his designs from the earlier "Animated Series" episodes.

I like the design for the first three seasons carrying the look from '64-'95. I dont know why, but the dark blue just looks better.

The problem with Killer Croc is his character in a sense is a mutant crocodile and is one of the few non-realistic villains that Batman reoccuringly faces. He needs to be more of a human that has croc-like features. The design works for me.

Interesting that this thread was made- I'm currently in the middle of re-watching the series myself. I'm on volume two (season two, IIRC) which included many of my favorite episodes of the series. The Cat-Woman episodes are actually some of my favorites, along with anything the Joker and/or Harley Quinn appears in. I'm also in LOVE with that episode where Harley and Ivy went on their little crime spree "girls only" thing. I swear there are some LGBT undertones there. But two of my all-time favorite episodes were The Happy Fish and Joker's Wild. Hamill knocked it out of the park with his voice-acting. I also loved Mad As A Hatter, just for the almost tragic pathos of Jervis's love for Alice. Tyger, Tiger was an interesting study in what makes someone "human", and it led me to seek out the poem that was mentioned in the episode.

Like many others, this IS the most iconic version of Batman for me, the one I identified with best, and since I AM currently watching it, I can safely say the animation has aged just fine. It still looks just as good to me now as it did when it first aired. Some character designs I didn't care for- Croc being one, as well as Clayface- but overall, I loved almost everything about it.

I have been watching episodes for the last five weeks on kisscartoon.me. Its been fivevyears since aI have seen an episode. Now, I am tracking down 3 volumes to own.

Funny how you mentioned Tyger, Tyger. I just finished watching it. I like how it inserted something intellectual like a famous poem into a kids show.
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/tyger.html

I've only watched very few episodes of it. What made it good?

I really miss Beware the Bat.
Cancelled way too soon.

Same here.

The Batman didn't get good till Season 4. The first 3 seasons were basically a toy commercial.

Brave and the Bold was the best Batman cartoon since B:TAS, and that's because it did something different and didn't take itself seriously.

Sounds like both shows take the same approach as Nick's TMNT.

I really liked that show as well. I felt it had so much potential and it was definitely getting better with each new episode. To think something Batman related wouldn't do so well.

The Batman was literally, "Batman made to sell toys." The fact that it was the first new Batman cartoon after B:TAS ended also made everyone realize how dumbed down it was for kids and how boring it was.

None of the villains have any depth in The Batman, they're basically parodies of themselves. There are no complicated plots or things aimed at older fans like B:TAS had. Its literally, "Let's make a new Batman show for kids."

The show got better around Season 4 because Greg Weisman wrote some of the episodes, but overall its a lackluster show.

It incorporated characters of the then current and characters of the past and had the easy going Silver Age feel. Heck, the show itself was a tribute to simpler times. There were a a couple of dark episodes such as the notable such the all-star voice cast and creative team behind Chill of The Night. Only 6 or 7 episodes truly got my intention and I enjoyed them.

I do agree about The Batman. I hate The Riddler and Joker's character designs. The 4th and 5th seasons are terrific. Head and shoulders above the rest along with season 2's Dark Knight In The City and seadon 3's Batgirl Begins Parts 1 & 2.

Any thoughts on Mr. Freeze's story arc in Batman TAS?

Except Batman: The Brave & The Bold was about 100 times better than Nick's TMNT series.

I enjoyed most of the episodes in the series, but my fave episode was The Last Laugh.
Probably because of the Terminator 1 references that were used near the end of the episode, but mostly because
I like how Batty does away with Captain Clown.

I bet a lot of kids that watched that episode were more than happy to see Capt. Clown go away.

Give this man a pretzel.

I think The Batman is hugely under appreciated, people just expected another BTAS and didn't get it so it gets hate, but it tried to do plenty of stuff diferently, just another take on the character, the problem is that it was a bit too different for most people with their takes on some characters. People criticize the Blanka Joker and while he appeared too much and half his episodes were misses, the other half were fairly solid takes. The show was surprisingly dark in mood, the villains just didn't have tragic backstories like BTAS. Still I'd argue the character arc of Ethan is far more tragic than most villains in BTAS. Ellen Yin's character arc was also great. S3 with Batgirl was a lot of fun as well. S4 is the most praised season and yet I dislike it since that's when the show became "BTAS-lite" even if it was still good and S5 was just awful.


BATB didn't get good until the second season. And I also disagree with fans of the series, many people liked the "dark" episodes but those were by far the weakest for me, I also hated all the Batman family only episodes since to me Batman in this show wasn't interesting, I preferred many of the other heroes featured.


A part of me thinks that if I watch BTAS again I will be disappointed. The internet idolizing the show like no other will probably put my standards too high since I haven't watched it in a decade.

I'm a big fan of TAS, but can we talk about how bad "I Am The Night" is? Probably my least favorite episode, such insipid dialogue.

I always wanna get this so bad but the sets are so damned expensive. Maybe this next income tax check.

I think they re-released the series on DVD sets just recently, the older ones are long out of print.