REVIEW RELOAD: Pathos, established animation style highlight 'Batman: Gotham Knight' anime

Fanboys and moviegoers who are on pins and needles waiting for the release of "The Dark Knight" in movie theaters can get a 75-minute anime fix of what is to come on July 18 with the new "Batman: Gotham Knight" DVD.

The DVD consists of six action-packed, interconnected stories set after the events of 2005's "Batman Begins" that provide a brutally honest look at the emotional stability of Bruce Wayne, use established story-telling techniques to show how different people see their city's protector, and showcase fight sequences with some of The Batman's most infamous adversaries and formidable monsters.

Brian Azzarello's "Working Through the Pain"

The Batman (Kevin Conroy) lies wounded on a pile of garbage in a sewer waiting for his butler Alfred (David McCallum) to come to his aid. When the vigilante finds discarded guns in the trash pile, he remembers the day when his parents were gunned down in front of him. Young Bruce Wayne knew he had to conquer and control the pain their deaths created in him before he sought to prevent further senseless tragedies in Gotham City as The Batman. Azzarello, who wrote the Award-winning comic book "100 Bullets,” tells the story of how he accomplished this part of his training to become a crime-fighter.

Young Bruce seeks out the help of an Indian woman named Cassandra (Parminder Nagra) who helps in training his mind to resist the physical pain that his opponents may inflict on his body. 

Though the disillusioned young billionaire succeeds in blocking out this suffering, he fails to move beyond his emotional pain. Instead of learning to control it, Bruce utilizes the trauma his parents' murders created in him to fight against something he cannot control and that may eventually destroy him: The Batman's war on crime. 

What is most notable about this short film is how Azzarello illustrates that while Bruce Wayne is noble to dedicate his body, mind and wealth to prevent any other kid in Gotham from losing parents to criminals, he is a disturbed man who cannot or will not come to terms with what happened and thus will never move beyond the hurt he felt on that one bad day. All that matters to him is his mission. This is a stark contrast to past animated accounts of his training in which teachers encouraged his drive.

Josh Olson's "Have I Got a Story for You" 

Gotham kids hanging out at a skating warehouse share their individual accounts of The Dark Knight (Conroy) fighting it out with a formidable thief (George Newbern) wearing a green suit and red goggles malapropos known as The Man in Black. They fight from a building's rooftop down to one of the city's docks. 

The kids' accounts illustrate how Gotham citizens first see The Batman as mysterious figure for justice that seems to live within the realm of the imagination or the supernatural. They are not certain.

One of the skaters describes him as man-sized bat creature flying over downtown Gotham that ultimately rips the head off his opponent in front of bystanders, though her friend interjects that The Batman does not kill the criminals he brings down. Other accounts depict him as a living shadow or an automaton, an apparent nod to Killer Croc's theory in "Batman: The Animated Series." The robot theory, again? Well, they say he could be.

Olson, who wrote the screenplay for 2005's "A History of Violence," tells a story very similar to "Legends of The Dark Knight," which is a "BTAS" episode about three Gotham kids who tell their versions of the crime fighting exploits of Batman and his sidekick Robin. In fact, the kids in the "BTAS" episode relate to one another campy and post-Apocalyptic interpretations of the characters created by comic book legends Dick Sprang and Frank Miller. 

The "BTAS" episode in question is included in the two-disc and Blue-Ray editions of "Batman: Gotham Knight." Like in "Have I Got a Story for You," one of the kids theorizes that Batman is a man-sized predator. He is "a giant pterodactyl beast with big fangs and talons, and when he sees a bad guy he swoops down from the sky and carries him off," the kid says. 

Though "Have I Got a Story for You" is similar to "Legends of The Dark Knight," it is a welcome, more action-packed homage to a definitive animated series that showed respect to the nearly 70-year-old comic book legacy of The Batman character. Besides, it is very difficult to develop a Batman story that has not already been conceived. 

The "BTAS" episode itself is an inadvertent recreation of a comic book by artist and writer Frank Robbins. How the short film works best is as an explanation as to why the masked vigilante will not be treated as an urban legend used to scare criminals straight in "The Dark Knight." People have seen The Batman, but they do not know what he is or from where he came. 

Greg Rucka's "Crossfire" 

Detective Crispus Allen (Gary Dourdan) of the Gotham City Police Department's new Major Crimes Unit feels as though all he does is play courier to The Batman, who drops off The Man in Black in the office of Lt. James Gordon (Jim Meskimen) for he and his partner to escort to Arkham Asylum for imprisonment. The detective is also soar because he does not trust a masked man who operates outside of the law.

Allen and his partner Anna Ramirez (Ana Ortiz) get caught in the crossfire of a turf war when they arrive at the asylum, all of which now encompasses the entire Narrows island. The shootout is between the Sal Maroni crime family, which is now run by Sal Maroni (Ron Paulsen), and the gang of a new rival known as The Russian (Corey Burton). The Batman ultimately saves their butts.

It is similar to the "Superman: The Animates Series" episode "Tools of the Trade" in which Lt. Dan Turpin (Joseph Bologna) of Metropolis Police Department's Special Crimes Unit feels that his job is threatened when Big Blue (Tim Daly) gets more results catching bank robbers that carry some high-tech offensive hardware.

"Looks like Superman has turned the SCU into a cleanup crew," one of the reporters on the scene says. At the end of the episode, weapons dealer Bruno Mannheim (Bruce Weitz) is about to kill Superman with a powerful blaster from Apokolips when Turpin tackles him to the ground. The two men later become trusted allies.

The theme of the short film indicates that it should have been called "Trust" instead of "Crossfire," but the latter title must have sounded more appealing. Anyways, it is a minor complaint about an appropriately violent story about how the city's altruistic cops come to rely on The Batman based on no more than an unspoken understanding of solidarity. After all, it is not who he is underneath the mask, but what he does that defines The Dark Knight."

Field Test," written by Jordan Goldberg, briefly explains the moral reason why Bruce Wayne does not utilize what could be a very useful technology developed by his company to combat criminals. 

"In Darkness Dwells" by David S. Goyer and "Deadshot" by Alan Burnett are even more action-based short films in which The Batman fights the criminal Killer Croc and the hired hit man Deadshot respectively, so fanboys should get a kick out of that. 

Goyer, who wrote the screenplay for "Batman Begins," tells a story about what happened to The Scarecrow after the movie."Batman: Gotham Knight" has many amazing visual elements that cannot be accurately described with words such as the menacing, demon-like look of The Batman when he walks through fire to rescue Allen and Ramirez in "Crossfire;" the gritty, Gothic images in the church and sewer of "In Darkness Dwells;" the refined, intense look on The Dark Knight's face before he wallops Deadshot.

While the six films tell stories indicative of certain aspects of Bruce Wayne's transformation into The Batman and of his exploits from certain perspectives, they show how much depth of character may be missing in “The Dark Knight," as the movie seems to focus mainly on him trying to decide how to defeat The Joker's destructive rampage in Gotham City.

Popcorn rating:

(4 1/2 out of 5 pieces)