Justice League Unlimited

DC Animated strikes again. Staying true to the heroes, this show contains nearly every single animated hero from the DC verse. All done very well and some of the stories (such as the one where Kara/Supergirl remains in the future) are quite moving. Very well done.

The 2001 series was a Justice League fanboy's dream come true and a great series in general, but with its continuation "Unlimited" WB Animation's team reached new heights!

So much more is added to the DC Animated Universe: more heroes are brought on board without sacrificing quality of development, updating the animation, getting previous DCAU series significant treatments within JLU.

I loved it as an animation fan, superhero fan, Batman fan and a Comics fan in general.

I recommend it to everyone who loves action and good storytelling and every DC fan out there!

This review is actually for both Justice League and Justice League Unlimited because to me Unlimited felt more of a continuation than a reboot.

To start off this is probably the best place to see how the justice league should be like,not the movies, and while comics are great, this is still a cut above most of the justice league comics.

There is not a single episode that I would call bad, in fact all of them are good to great with some being one of the best episodes I have ever watched, and what really sells it is the characters, and not just the main seven who have some of the best character development around, but even side characters like the Question, Green Arrow, and Huntress to name a few, all get fleshed out quite well that you can't help but love them.

The art is not much to write about, but it gets the job done and when things start running the animation usually keeps up with some great scenes animated in there that help complement the well written story.

The story is where this show shines, I mean holy hell do they know how to write good episodes with some even deserving awards, they connect seemingly unconnected episodes to each other bringing the whole thing together as a package (this happens mostly in Unlimited) nicely tying it all up into something special, but that isn't everything, what really made me love this show as fan of comics and superheroes, is the way they pay respect to the comics, it is clear that the writers, voice actors, animators, sound designers and anyone who worked on this show love the comics and they show that love with great pride, and that more than anything is what, at least to me, makes a show something to write home about.

Brooooo, this is such an incredible cartoon. The animation is sublime, the lineup of characters...I can't even man. I won't even get into how amazing this show was it's too much.

To say that they should have had at least 10 seasons is an understatement. It's an absolute CRIME that they ended this gem so soon.

Excuse me while I mourn this loss.

When I watched this show as a kid, I thought it was the biggest show on television. How could it not be? It aired in the evenings and was so... mature, for lack of a better word. It had voice real celebrity actors who weren't just phoning it in, who were selling these dramatic stories without a hint of irony.

The writing was thoughtful and intelligent, reminding me of some of the other dramas my parents watched on the major broadcast networks... and yet it was a superhero cartoon. I am far from the first person to say that the dialogue and conversations on this show are so good, it's almost a disappointment when the inevitable earth-shaking superhero battles break out.

But the show pulls those off brilliantly too. JLU has some of the most exciting fights you are ever going to see these characters wage outside of the comic books. There isn't a single live-action fight in any of the DC movies that even comes close to the level of action this show provides on an episodic basis - and I don't say that lightly.

The three seasons of this show are an absolute love letter to comics fans, with dozens and dozens of ancillary DC characters getting the animated treatment for the very first time. It not only works from a narrative standpoint, adding more diversity to the classic lineup of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc., but it also creates a wonderful Star Trek-like feel on the Justice League watchtower. Plenty of scenes show characters commiserating and enjoying their leisure time on this futuristic moon-based headquarters, and it adds a fantastic familial feel to the show that, again, makes it feel more like a mature sci-fi show or broadcast drama.

I treasure this show, and I also fear that the respect and gravitas this series showed towards the superhero narrative is a thing of the past. Sure, it's easy to have a cheeky Marvel movie where the characters crack jokes about how stupid they look, and it's easy to have a self-serious DC film that tries to make viewers forget the heroes are wearing costumes. But it's tougher to actually pay tribute to the original comic books in a thoughtful, developed way, to respect the men and women who actually created the narratives from which these pop culture icons have stemmed.

That's something this show did day-in and day-out, episode by episode. It's why it stands apart from other animated American TV productions, and why it deserves every bit of praise I can give it.