My Review of The Batman (2004) season 1 · 10:32pm Jun 25th, 2022

Rating Scale

10/10: Perfect season! Amazing and flawless!
9/10: Awesome season. It has minor flaws but has more positives than negatives.
8/10: Great season. It has several problems but not enough to ruin it.
7/10: It’s actually good. It has a lot of issues although mildly entertaining.
6/10: It’s decent enough to be passable.
5/10: It’s meh; neither terrible nor great.
4/10: Nah, it’s really bad.
3/10: What’s that mediocre smell?
2/10: Something is on fire! It’s a dumpster fire!
1/10: Mayday! Mayday! The season is rotting away!

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen! This is Mr. J back with my first cartoon season review for today! This is a special occasion as I will be speaking of the most underrated, most unique Batman show of all time: The Batman! As some of you may be aware, this is the very show that introduced me to the Batman character, and it became one of my favorite cartoons to watch when I was a kid. As much as I love Batman: The Animated Series, this cartoon will be my favorite Batman show to watch and cherish. It has a lot of great writing, awesome action, really enjoyable characters, entertaining villains, and so much more.

Now for this review, I will be analyzing the first season of the series before I jump into the next four down the road. So here are my thoughts on the first beginning step of The Batman!

This season introduces a young Bruce Wayne (26 years old) in his third year of being the Batman in Gotham City. We see how infamous and feared he is by the criminal underworld and hated by the police, considering the fact that he is a vigilante. But despite the differing views of the outside world, he continues to keep the crime-infested city under his watch every night. Considering the fact that this version of Batman is a lot younger, Kevin Conroy’s voice would not have fit him at all. So I was satisfied that they got a voice actor who sounds like a person in their mid-20s. Rino Romano was a great choice to voice him, and he did a great job voicing him throughout the course of the show.

I also love how a bit different this version of Alfred is. He actually wants Bruce to live a normal life outside of Batman and tries to be a source of reason and wisdom. Despite that, he still happily supports him in protecting Gotham City and being the Batman. This is one of the reasons why I love this show so much; there were a lot of things the show-runners did that seemed different or uncommon which not many people liked or enjoyed. Nonetheless, it worked for the show and made it so unique in the process.

One of, if not, the most common elements that made the show subject to praise or harsh criticism however is the design of the villains. The most notable of them all is this wacky version of my all-time favorite villain:

I LOVE this version of Joker. This is by far one of the best vocal performances of Kevin Michael Richardson in animated history. Don’t get me wrong, Mark Hamill’s Joker will always be my favorite, but this Joker is a very close second in my opinion. He actually looks like a mentally-deranged killer clown, and his dreadlocks and bare feet signify his insanity and psychopathy. He also is an actual fighter so that he could give Batsy a run for his money (not literally lol). At first, I didn’t like how his head was too big in the first episode, but I started to like him a lot more as he had some minor design changes later in the season as well as get that classic suit he’s known for.

The following episodes were pretty great episodes with solid storytelling and character development albeit with a few flaws. I liked this show’s version of Penguin (voiced by Tom Kenny), Mr. Freeze (Clancy Brown), Firefly (Jason Marsden), and Catwoman (Gina Gershon). I would have liked the show’s version of Bane a lot more if only he had more appearances therein and wasn’t just used for the third episode. After that, he almost became non-existent as a character which is a shame.

Towards the end of the season, we are introduced to Clayface (at least the first one who was previously Ethan Bennett). It was really interesting just how nearly similar the moral event horizon was to what Joker did to Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight; just like with Dent, Bennett was captured and psychologically tortured by Joker until he got infected by the gas that turned his whole body into clay—turning him into Clayface. The battle between him and Batman was a sad way to end the season, but at least it wasn’t without hope and victory.

So this was a pretty awesome season and an epic way to start an amazing cartoon. It gave us a lot of episodes that not only introduced a younger Batman but also developed his character and had him go through near-death experiences that somewhat almost made him quit being Batman. Still, he never gave up and kept pushing on. It was really well-written in my opinion. This season gets a 9/10!

Peace!