I am a great fan of the Batman comics and I became disappointed when I could no longer find Batman: The Animated Series on TV anymore. I was excited to learn that there was going to be a new Batman cartoon on TV. I watched the first episode the day it premiered and I was very disappointed.

First of all, the animation is very poor. It looks like a cheap, crappy Japanese anime. Then again, just about every modern-day cartoon is like that.

The character designs are even worse. Batman looks more like Birdman, Catwoman looks more like Chihuahuawoman, Bane looks more like a red version of the Hulk, the Penguin is a Kung-Fu master, Mr. Freeze is some undead thing with an iceberg on his head, and the Riddler is a Gothic Marilyn Manson look-alike (which is funny because I don't expect people who are obsessed with riddles and puzzles to be Gothic).

The worst character design is that of the Joker. They turned him into a monkey/demented Bob Marley/Kung-Fu fighter! The Joker is supposed to be Batman's deadliest enemy, but in this show he hardly poses a threat because his crimes are so stupid and pointless. In one episode his plan was to put his Joker venom in dog food! Oh, how evil! Batman is a fascinating and complex character because he is haunted by the deaths of his parents, which is why he fights crime. This version of Batman doesn't seem haunted by his parents' deaths and is not interesting at all. He's also not a detective, just a fighter. If there's an enemy he can't defeat, he won't study the enemy to find out their weak points like a detective would, he'll just build a giant fighting robot to defeat them. A lot of times this show doesn't even feel like a Batman show, just another brainless anime that's nothing but pointless fighting.

What I hate the most about this show is what they did to the villains. They've taken away everything that makes them likable and relatable and turned them into stereotypical evil bad guys. Man-Bat is the biggest example. In the comics, he's a tragic scientist who studies bats to find a cure for his deafness. When experimenting on himself, he accidentally transforms himself into a giant bat creature. In this show, he's a mad scientist who wants to purposely transform himself into a giant bat creature for no apparent reason. Just about all the villains are like that; none of them, with the exception of about one or two, have an actual motive for their crimes.

The worst characterization is that of Mr. Freeze. In the comics, Freeze was a just a mad scientist until the genius writer Paul Dini wrote the BTAS episode "Heart of Ice", which gave Freeze a new origin that made him a more tragic, three-dimensional, and likable villain. The episode was so popular that fans accepted it as his actual origin and it was even used in the comics as his origin. Even that crappy movie Batman & Robin used it as his origin. In this show, he's a petty jewel thief before becoming Mr. Freeze. After becoming Mr. Freeze, guess what? He's STILL a petty jewel thief! Great origin. No wonder they used it over the one Dini created.

As a Batman fan, I don't dislike this show just because it isn't like the comics because I also liked BTAS, the Batman cartoons that came after it, Tim Burton's Batman films, and obviously, the superb Christopher Nolan Batman films. None of them were 100% loyal to the comics, but they were still very good. The problem with this show is not that it's not exactly like the comics or BTAS, it's that it lacks any sort of depth that makes other Batman media so popular.

I've given this show so many chances, but the more I watch, the more I find that disappoints me. I miss the good old days back when Batman cartoons were something everyone could enjoy.

Sentiment: negative