Already in Timm and company’s second entry in their new Bat-verse, many of the permutations and overhauls of the previous series are taking their toll. In fact, Sins of the Father is possibly the single episode of TNBA most populated by new problems, each of which is invariably tied to the new directive for faster paced Saturday morning packages, the move to Warner Bros. clearly imposing a commercial restraint for every censorship rule it lifted.
The first is that it is marketed as an origin story, and as the episode immediately following Holiday Knights it almost seems posed to immediately console many of the confused fans that saw the series debut in disbelief. As such, it is wholly devoted to serving its explanatory function without regard for artistic competence, as if the story of Tim Drake’s origin is a continuity roadblock that needs dealing with as soon as possible or paperwork that Rich Fogel is wearily completing as a prerequisite for writing better screenplays. And as this new series is a pre-ordered package of exactly twenty-six syndicated shows, the freedom to embark on multi-part storylines has significantly dwindled. It also defeats its own purpose of weeding out confusion that Batgirl’s affiliation with Batman raises as many questions about her as Tim Drake's origin answers about him.
Secondly, the animators’ rigid adherence to rigid models may mean that lips don’t slide out of place or that the characters don’t slosh around in motion, but it often does lead to robotic action and lopsided movements. If the angularity is intended as springboard for fluid animation and hyper-exaggeration—as admirably demonstrated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha’s animators in World’s Finest—then the team at Dong Yang failed to take notice and instead treated the model sheets as dictum. Unfortunately, Curt Geda’s direction and his team of storyboarders share much of the blame, who in their obvious detachment from the material fail to follow even the most basic rules of classical continuity, resulting in mismatched action and an inability to maintain scenic consistency from shot to shot.
Thirdly, as a story it cares more for types than characters. Tim Drake is a punk kid who wants revenge for his father’s death—an infantile fantasy that carries none of the metaphysical weight of Batman’s abstract vengeance that is more rooted in altruism than in self-gratification—Two-Face the arbitrary antagonist, Batgirl the peppy sidekick, and Batman at his most vacuous and cold-hearted. One of the few malignant side effects of the transition between series was Batman’s increasing apathy and smugness, and in Sins of the Father he is an unfeeling, monolithic machine who treats Tim like a background prop and can’t even spare an offhand moment of sympathy. Alfred picks up the slack in his efforts to console Tim, but even his paternal impulse is undermined by his less affective design.
As if compensating for this soullessness on the part of the rest of the production crew, Walker does try to enliven things through her music, an effort that unfortunately dismantles into reprisals of character themes that seem terribly out-of-place and unsuited to the moments they accompany, especially when she needs to find something schmaltzy to go with Tim’s unconvincing grief. This attempted sentimentality extends to the ending, in which Dick Grayson makes an impromptu visit to Wayne Manor.
Fans who complain about the growing Bat-Family, which is clearly sowing its seeds in these final few shots, seem to me zealously loyal to an image of Batman as a lone, stoic individual, a reductive mandate that fits Batman into a constrictive anti-hero, Clint Eastwood mold. I was always partial to the idea of a Batman gradually forming communal bonds and never felt that he should be barred from such relationships. However, this sudden, out-of-the-blue arrival of the old Robin met with awe and smiles and nudging foreshadowing stands as the most convincing evidence against such an enterprise should it be accompanied by unconditional, cornball camaraderie.
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