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How do?

So did one for Doctor Who, which worked well. So this time, it’s Batman TAS, a landmark in Saturday morning cartoons which still stands out today.

I’m not gonna do a list of answers this time. Instead, just want to feel your froth. Tell me your favourite things. Could be episodes, cast members, plots etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
See, I love this show. It’s just sooooo good.

It picks up the baton from the Tim Burton movies, and just Forest Gump’s with it, off into the distance of high quality storytelling.

It also gave us Kevin Conroy and Mark Hammill, not to mention Harley Quinn.

I really think as a show it’s flawless. The art is fantastic. The tales pitch perfect for kids and adults to enjoy. I feel it did more for Batman than the Burton movies, simply because it sustained quality for far longer. And didn’t have Joel Schumacher undermine it.

yeah but it created Harley so its not all good...

So, it created an iconic villain and that’s bad because?


Answer on the back of a £50 note.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So, it created an iconic villain and that’s bad because?


Answer on the back of a £50 note.

not sure one note would be enough for me to bang on about the ongoing travesty of Dr Quinzell, admittedly she was okay as Saturday morning goonette, it's everything after that, but then again I'm an entitled wammin fearing white boy due to my dislike of one muddled Space film

but the animated show was most likely the high water mark for Bat-media as barring the first Nolan film nowt has come close, the 40's noir Gotham, snarky Alfred lifted directly from Dark Knight, the coolest Batmobile and the definative batvoice

Eh. To each their own. I think Harley was great, but if you don't like her that's fine.

The whole series was brilliant, but "Almost Got Him!" was my favorite episode.

Anyways.

Ignore the second, third and fourth post. And FROTH!

Indeed, Batman TAS was so good, the best episode of Superman's Animated Adventures had Supes put on the Bat-suit to go find Bruce Wayne and in the process go up against several of Batman's foes.

Needless to say, that went badly for Bane, the Mad Hatter, and the Riddler.

Then there's a little tidbit toward the end when they finally find Bruce. You get to see a villain who is normally completely unflappable get a heck of a surprise...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do?

So did one for Doctor Who, which worked well. So this time, it’s Batman TAS, a landmark in Saturday morning cartoons which still stands out today.

I’m not gonna do a list of answers this time. Instead, just want to feel your froth. Tell me your favourite things. Could be episodes, cast members, plots etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
See, I love this show. It’s just sooooo good.

My favorite thing about BTAS is that it brought us Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

Not to crap on BTAS - it's amazing - but it didn't take advantage of the pants-on-fire-crazy that is the DCU. Justice League Unlimited managed to redeem the Skull-in-a-Swamp Legion of Doom, for crying out loud.

Best BTAS episode is probably was Two Face (2 episodes, really), where Harvey Dent is shown as leading a successful and productive life despite dealing with mental illness. Of course things go VERY badly for Harvey and he descends into madness, but BTAS always maintained a sliver of hope that Harvey could one day recover. You don't expect that level of nuance from a cartoon show about a guy in a bat suit.

I can’t remember a specific favourite episode. I remember loving it. It’s probably why Batman is my go-to superhero, but I’ve always liked “regular humans” taking on super villains. Hence the Imperial Guardsman in me.

I am pretty sure it’s time for me to rewatch with my boys. They haven’t seen it yet and I wanted them to be old enough to remember / appreciate it.

I thought it was a great series.
Hard to pick a favourite episode though, it would probably be one of the villain origin ones (the show was great at making you feel for the villains).

It wasn't perfect though, it, understandably, got a bit kiddie at times (like when the Penguin got beaten up by a gang of 10 year olds) and I don't think it ever managed a decent Riddler episode.

I agree with the above comment that “almost got him” was just about the best episode. “This one time...I threw a rock at him”
...and then it’s actually Batman impersonating KC!! Good times!!

I think what impresses me most is that it could, and arguably should, have just been a cheap cash-in on the movies.

But instead, we got a well crafted landmark series, which set DC head and shoulders above Marvel when it came to animation. BTAS and X-Men debuted the same year, mere weeks apart.

Much as I enjoy the X-Men series, it really doesn’t compare here. It’s not aged as well, and felt far more cartoony.

Again, when they could just shrugged and phoned it in, that’s impressive.

I loved Batman The Animated Series but I've always hate hate hated the design change they went through for "The New Batman Adventures" (season 3 and 4 I want to say?), and that continuing design all the way through to Justice League, JL and even Fatal Five.

I just... can't stand it.

I have two favorites.
One was the episode with the Creeper but that's mainly because he's one of my favorite superheroes.

The other is (can't remember the episode where somebody was trying to drive him crazy. He kept hearing a voice calling him "Bruce", which tipped him off

 privateer4hire wrote:

The other is (can't remember the episode where somebody was trying to drive him crazy. He kept hearing a voice calling him "Bruce", which tipped him off

Wasn't that one in Batman Beyond?

Which was also surprisingly good for what it was. Not as good as TAS, but pretty good nonetheless.

 Vulcan wrote:

 privateer4hire wrote:

The other is (can't remember the episode where somebody was trying to drive him crazy. He kept hearing a voice calling him "Bruce", which tipped him off

Wasn't that one in Batman Beyond?

Which was also surprisingly good for what it was. Not as good as TAS, but pretty good nonetheless.

Yes it was. It was the second episode with the sonic bad guy Shriek. When Terry asked Bruce how he knew he wasn't crazy he said "Because I don't call myself Bruce."

Batman, The Brave and the Bold from the late 2000's
IT was just so fun, and a love letter to old campy batman. It didnt feel like it was belittling the character at all.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Batman, The Brave and the Bold from the late 2000's
IT was just so fun, and a love letter to old campy batman. It didnt feel like it was belittling the character at all.

I HATED the art style. But the show itself was very good and treated the characters well.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
a landmark in Saturday morning cartoons which still stands out today.

I don't know about there but in the States it wasn't a Saturday show but afternoon or prime time during the week.

After school, before supper in my neck of the woods.

The best part of TAS was how humanized Batman's villains were compared to a lot of other TV show villains at the time. Instead of bad guys being bad for the sake of being bad, we had guys with real depth and tragedy, like Mr. Freeze and Baby Doll, as well as to some extent seeing Harvey's breakdown into Two-Face. Batman fighting with people as broken as him was a big part of what drew me to the show.

It's really hard for me to nail a specific Batman episode that I would consider the best, but probably the Batman Beyond one where it shows that Terry is his biological father (technically a JL episode but its pretty much all batman) or the Batman: Mask of the Phantasm as it was Bruce's only real chance to put Batman behind him.

Pretty much the definitive Batman adaptation really. I think part of what made Gotham so uniquely brilliant was that it took so many cues from it, in terms of putting very human villains centre stage, rolling with the fact that Gotham as a city is just mad, knowing when to lean into the over-the-top and when to reign it in. BTAS also shares a lot with Batman 66 in some of those areas as well, though with the budget and art style to actually do the more expansive and demanding stuff than that show could do.

Best episode is hard to pick, and admittedly there are plenty I haven't seen, but aside from Almost Got Him, I'd probably go for Joker's Favour. Very little actual Batman in it, but just a tour-de-force from Hamill's Joker, with some writing that is innocent enough to go in a kids cartoon and clever enough to be darkly terrifying when you actually think about it. It's the epitome of The Joker, just picking a guy to drive to madness for no reason other than that it amuses him for a few moments.

The Mister Freeze episodes also deserve a shoutout, absolutely nailing the tragedy of the character while also making it clear he definitely is a villain. Really, that's a big part of BTAS as a whole, yes a lot of the baddies are sympathetic on some level but they're still very clearly villains rather than antiheroes.

The animation also deserves a lot of credit. While on a purely technical level it can look a bit dated compared to the modern stuff (incidentally, the animation in Batman: Hush is utterly superb), the art style and design work is just timeless. The heavy black backgrounds giving everything a darker and gloomier tone, the iconic silhouette or just eyes-in-the-dark Batman, tremendous emphasis on making every character's look give them an amazingly strong visual identity...

On that note, has anyone seen the blu-ray remasters of the show that came out a couple of years back? Since the show went off Amazon Prime I've been meaning to get it, and the blu-ray box set is awful tempting if the remastering is any good...

Just thought.

No BTAS.

No Arkham games? Imagine that. I mean, I don't wanna. Because those games are superb.

Great world building cartoon, and responsible for bringing us JL and JLU eventually.


Favorite episode of the series? The Christmas episode solely because of this exchange:

Dick Grayson "I can't believe you've never seen 'It's a Wonderful Life" Bruce."

Bruce Wayne "I couldn't get past the title."



JLU has my absolute favorite Batman moment, though, as Batman makes a rather significant sacrifice to get Wonder Woman turned back to normal in the episode "Piggy", with Bruce actually having a somewhat happy ending at the close of the episode.

 Just Tony wrote:
Great world building cartoon, and responsible for bringing us JL and JLU eventually.


Favorite episode of the series? The Christmas episode solely because of this exchange:

Dick Grayson "I can't believe you've never seen 'It's a Wonderful Life" Bruce."

Bruce Wayne "I couldn't get past the title."



JLU has my absolute favorite Batman moment, though, as Batman makes a rather significant sacrifice to get Wonder Woman turned back to normal in the episode "Piggy", with Bruce actually having a somewhat happy ending at the close of the episode.

Yeah, I had always wondered what had happened to Diana by the time Batman Beyond hits, as she's no longer part of the JL and she wasn't present in the montage of women Bruce has been with over the years when he reminisces. Always shipped them back when I watched JL and JLU, definitely liked their dynamic more than the Supes/Diana angle they pushed with the new 52 animated style universe.

 Vulcan wrote:

 privateer4hire wrote:

The other is (can't remember the episode where somebody was trying to drive him crazy. He kept hearing a voice calling him "Bruce", which tipped him off

Wasn't that one in Batman Beyond?

Which was also surprisingly good for what it was. Not as good as TAS, but pretty good nonetheless.

Oops. Shows how faulty my memory is.

Yeah, I believe “Shriek” was the villain. The sonic guy. Batman Beyond was a good “tie everything together” show that concluded everything while showing that everything continued on. It was like an “in the future” finale episode to Batman, drawn out over three seasons. But it worked well and was fun.

 Vulcan wrote:
Eh. To each their own. I think Harley was great, but if you don't like her that's fine.

The whole series was brilliant, but "Almost Got Him!" was my favorite episode.

A family meme is....

so I threw a rock at him...... It was a big one.


I loved the grey Ghost Episode as well.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Just thought.

No BTAS.

No Arkham games? Imagine that. I mean, I don't wanna. Because those games are superb.

unlikely as the first one (my fav, the others were good too but they kept piling gamey busywork bobbins in cos AC) lifts a lot from the Arkham novel, although admittedly almost everyone having the BTAS voice actors was one heck of a plus for the game, and of course being able to Batslap Dr Q cheered me up no end