In Night of the Ninja, Kyodai Ken was a garishly dressed figure amidst an urbanized world of art deco refinery. The mesh of Gotham City landscape and Asian martial arts rendered each end of the spectrum too distinct, and there was no way for the two to blend in a believable manner. But Day of the Samurai is better if only because it removes Gotham City entirely, fully embracing the oriental details that accompany a good samurai story.
Both are tales of revenge, but now that Kyodai inhabits an authentically Japanese environment, the narrative lacks simple-mindedness and becomes a vehicle of cultural delights. When previously Kyodai Ken simply had to match physical skill with Bruce Wayne, now he seeks a stratagem that might help him overcome his opponent. It is not an enactment of revenge so much as an archetypal face-off between nemeses.
How the art design so spectacularly trumps that of its predecessor. Bruce’s meditation room is adorned with stylized nature imagery, shaded green-blue to befit a monochromatic blue color scheme. The fluorescent orange sun instills within the rooms of the dojo a bright orange sepia tint, and the wet streets of the city reflect in them all of the ostentatious market signs that jut out from the skyscrapers. And how the bright orange lava drains the saturation of all colors but the dark reds of Kyodai’s belt and tattoo.
Blue Pencil animates with surprising vivacity, surpassing their earlier effort in If You’re So Smart Why Aren’t You Rich? The rubbery inconsistency remains intact, yet when once it looked sloppy and unsound, now it yields robust poses and fluid martial arts movements. There are errors; this is not TMS. Yet it is a breath of fresh air compared to the latest output from AKOM and Dong Yang. Regardless of some technical imperfections, the look of this episode marks for me a return to discussion of animation and artistic merit in general, when lately my focus has been primarily on story. That alone is a remarkable feat.
The climax compensates for its banality with a volcanic eruption that shapes the setting while Batman and Kyodai face each other on unstable terrain. The demise of the villain is conventional in its open-endedness, and there is a lot of hoopla about an ancient deadly martial arts touch, legendary for its ability to kill a man in a single stroke. But when such a battle is set amidst flickering reds and oranges and a busy soundtrack, it makes up for its faults and beckons the audience to bask in its originality and ambition.
The end attempts a character statement about Batman’s character that gives purpose to the whole Kyodai Ken affair. Night of the Ninja never gave so much weight to what it is to be a ninja, but Day of the Samurai draws a crucial distinction. Ninjas lie and cheat; samurai abide by a strict code of honor. The literal attributes we associate with the ninja are the concealment of his identity and his choice to strike from the shadows. Batman is like a ninja in the literal sense, but on the higher plane of personal integrity is a samurai in spades.
I like that the amplified importance of honor in the tradition of Japanese history befits a more abstract meaning of who Batman is. The sensei’s words are concise, but their meaning resounds for all who value Batman as more than a man in a costume.
Kyodai Ken is back, and this time he is after a scroll that instructs in the way of a powerful touch of death, a martial arts move that is performed effortlessly and instantly renders the target dead. It’s kind of an absurd notion, but it suits the reality of the episode quite nicely. The only person who knows its location is sensei Yoru, who instructed both Kyodai and Bruce. After Kyodai kidnaps the sensei’s daughter, the old man calls Bruce Wayne to enlist Batman’s help.
Most of the action is a slightly tedious, and I never particularly cared for the character of Kyodai Ken, but I feel that ‘Day of the Samurai’ does such a better job of sticking to the Japanese ninja themes than did ‘Night of the Ninja’, and it’s not just because the episode takes place for the most part in Japan. There is a greater sense of the danger Kyodai possesses, a more prevalent idea of a code of honor, and a lot more focus on the martial arts lifestyle. It feels more authentic and more stylistic in its depiction of the importance of Batman’s past as a dojo fighter, even without the flashbacks of the prequel. While the episode is a predictably linear buildup to an inevitable showdown, these cultural themes keep it entertaining.
The episode actually does convey a message about Batman, which I find kind of shocking for an episode so lost in taking on the identity of a martial arts serial. It’s not near the level of insight of ‘Perchance to Dream’ or ‘Beware the Gray Ghost’, but it’s a nice little reflection that fits the episode’s atmosphere and does make sense in regard to Batman’s character. As Bruce talks to his old sensei for the last time in the episode, his sensei tells him that he has much respect for Batman. Bruce finds this a bit surprising, as he sees Batman, a warrior who fights in darkness, as more of a ninja, or at least he’s pretending to have that opinion to suit his Bruce Wayne persona. Anyway, Yoru tells him that because of Batman’s honor and his willingness to help his opponent, he truly resembles the dignity of a samurai, despite his physical attributes. I personally think it’s a great way to end the episode and makes it feel a bit more worthwhile.
This episode has some of the most rubbery animation of the series. It’s not like an AKOM episode, though. The characters aren’t as sloppily animated, it’s just that they feel like rag dolls in the majority of the action scenes. In spite of the animation, I feel like Timm did a fine job directing this episode (the only episode he ever directed that wasn’t written by Paul Dini). I also think that there was a good effort to make Japan feel like Japan. The backgrounds and designs do a good job of making the shift in setting feel real. The animation most certainly hurts the episode, but I think that a lot of the minor artistic details do a good bit to better it.
I think that ‘Day of the Samurai’ is a fairly average episode. It’s slow moving, but it’s attention to detail and interesting themes keep it from sinking. Kyodai Ken isn’t a character that I think deserved a second episode episode, but in surpassing ‘Night of the Ninja’, this episode definitely feels like it was worth making.
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