Batman: Cruzado Encapuzado

Horrible. I wanted to watch a Batman cartoon, but practically 60% of the screen time was devoted to Barbara Gordon and the other female detective, whose name I didn't even bother to remember. Batman did absolutely nothing in this show; it was the others who did everything, and he only showed up in the last 5 minutes to fight the villain.

While expanding the roles of supporting characters can add depth to a narrative, it shouldn't come at the expense of the hero that the audience came to see. Batman deserves better than to be a background character in his own show, and fans deserve a series that honors the legacy of the Dark Knight by putting him at the center of the action where he belongs.

As a Batman fan in all forms, it pains me to say this. Considering the talent and pedigree behind this version of Batman, it is easily the worst. 30 years after BTAS, you'd think they could do better than this. Stiff limited animation. At this point a more fluidly animated version is more than possible along the lines of a Blue Eye Samurai, but Netflix then Prime didn't want to spend the money or make the effort. Generic art design and pseudo-art deco design. It's not entirely clear what decade this is supposed to take place in. They took some of the best and most innovative ideas from BTAS and squandered them. Unnecessary character gender swaps and incoherent villain origins. We deserve better than this. Absolutely awful!

After having heard so many good things about this, I was very excited to watch it.

Alas, it wasn't working for me at all. Action scenes were kind of boring, dialogue wasn't compelling, and sad to say that the voice acting didn't jump out at me as being particularly interesting, either.

The idea of an animated noir Batman series sounded great. But yeah, I couldn't get into it. Couldn't even make it through the first episode.

Don't care about the gender switching of a certain character, nor do I care what ethnicity certain other characters are. None of that makes any difference to me.

But when even a half hour show starts to feel like a slog, it's time to call it quits. I know I'm apparently in the minority on this, and that's fine -- don't mean to yuck anybody's yum, just giving my honest opinion of the show. I wish I liked it.

While exploring some interesting themes and with some really cool art-deco conceptual artwork, I found the animation itself to be really static and uninteresting. The opening shot of the entire series had a guy tied up in a chair, completely unmoving other than his mouth.

Since this show is being marketed as adult animation, I expected the quality of the animation to be higher. It feels like a kid's show that's peppered with more violence than usual - interesting but lacking the genuine emotion and higher quality animation that I would expect from a more mature show.

I do appreciate the art style, voice acting, and imaginative take on the characters we know and love. The music is also well done - sort of a classic orchestral noir vibe. However in my opinion it could do with less music overall, as well as an approach to the music that was less leading and manipulative.

There is a popular misconception that Bruce W. Timm was the mastermind behind the classic Batman: The Animated Series and the whole of what became known as the DC Animated Universe, which also comprised of Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, The Zeta Project, Gotham Girls, Static Shock, Justice League, and Justice League: Unlimited...However, that is false. In actuality, there were several hands that crafted the series and its spin-offs over the years, the most influence Timm had on it all was his designs for the characters and the world around them. He is for certain a fan of the characters, but not quite the DC encyclopedia many had assumed he was, in fact, he found the whole of DC's heroes and villains to have been rather dull in as a youth and gravitated more towards Marvel when he was buying and reading comic books. In the years since the DCAU technically finished with the final episode of Justice League: Unlimited, the fan-concepted belief of him knowing exactly what is right for the iconic characters began to diminish, with some unimpressive animated features and television series that followed, and now more people have come to the conclusion that he is an over glorified cartoonist. Batman: Caped Crusader proves this quite well as Timm has been given more creative leeway than he had before and most of the people who were involved in Batman: The Animated Series and its continuations are absent, and the lack of quality really does make it clear what is missing.

It is not technically a bad series. The animation is generally nice, though lacking the atmosphere Batman: The Animated Series presented. The voice acting ranges from good to great, with Hamish Linklater doing a fairly good job at Batman and guests stars like Christina Ricci shining in the part of Catwoman. The stories are conceptually interesting but delivered between the lines of "okay" and "good enough", with sprinkles of unimaginative and flat action beats that don't leave enough impact. And if you are a purist in how these characters are to be traditionally portrayed in media, you will not be very satisfied by the results, and to a degree very upset.

Could've been great and could've worse. This is really an "in-betweener" sort of program, whether or not you are a fan of these characters.