Also, I don’t think the Wachowski Brothers became anime fans after The Animatrix, rather I think they were rather huge fans before hand and pushed to produce it out of a desire to promote anime in the West. That’s probably why they managed to attract so many big names to direct too. In comparison, all the directors used for Gotham Knight were relative newbies, character designers and animation directors.

@Wildcard: I know, I was disappointed too. I’m not so pig-headed to assume that you absolutely won’t enjoy it, and I guess a lot of it depends on whether or not you’re really excited about Batman as a character. As far as I’m concerned, it could of been so much better, and it’s fairly “decent”, but never approaches the quality of The Animatrix.

@ThatQuebecGuy: If it was as good as the Animatrix, I think it could have done *something* to conceive, maybe, a couple more thousands anime fans, which is always a good thing. That this is finding its way into the hands of ‘non’ fans is quite important, so it’s just a shame that they couldn’t have produced something with a little more depth. Also, I know what you mean about scorning substance if it means being able to enjoy a great visual style, but something about this is inescapable empty, both in terms of style and substance, it just doesn’t ‘ring true’ in the way that something like “Comedy” or “Beyond” does, as if there’s a clinical disconnect between the show and any semblance of human emotion.

Perhaps the directors were restricted by the Batman concept? Such a popular franchise may be difficult to expand on, too much expansion and imagination could contradict something and annoy western sponsers. At any rate, I feel really let down to hear it couldn’t take anything further than the moderate success of The Animatrix.

I guess this was just a shrewd form of marketing. A disappointing missed opportunity, but not much of a surprise. If the animation is beautiful then it will be worth the download for me.

@Kim: Exactly. That the Gotham Knight is mediocre is fair enough. Usually I just ignore the stuff I’m not interested in, but what’s frustrating for me is that it’s this kind of thing that influences the public perception of anime, and therefore, it just smacks of a missed opportunity. There’s so much they could do with this, so much they could do to showcase the diversity of anime, yet its just the same old cliches again and again. I, for one, would have loved to have seen what the staff working on Baccano! might contributed to this, but no, instead we get the faux-Ninja Scroll anime again. Baccano! doing Batman would be awesome!

@qwertypoiuy: Hey, long time no see! I’m hoping to write a One Piece post at some point in July. Might finally get around to Hunter X Hunter too!

@dengar: Rental is a good idea. If you’re a big fan of Batman you might like it a bit more than I did.

thats all

But I agree with you that titles like this do lead to more stereotypes. For one thing I think too many non-anime fans think anime is all about the look and its “cool” factor. They don’t realize how many genres anime covers, how many target audiences it reaches and in fact there isn’t one style that defines anime.

I don’t care that people enjoy this because hey everyone has different tastes but I do think it is a shame that something like this will get seen by so many more people than so many more worthwhile anime series.