Plot summary: Kyodai Ken seeks revenge on Batman after mastering the fabled Onemuri death touch.
(Originally published on The Reel World December 6th, 2020)
Notes
Original Air Date: February 23rd, 1993
Directed: Bruce W. Timm (3)
Written: Steve Perry (2)
Animation: Blue Pencil, S.I. (2) (with inks & paints by Jade Animation)
Music: Carlos Rodriguez (5)
There are only five voice actors in the whole episode, making it the smallest cast in the series.
Kairi appears in a two-part episode of Batman Beyond, now an elderly woman who teaches Terry martial arts at Bruce’s behest.
Blue Pencil, S.I. went bankrupt making this episode, with Bruce Timm claiming you can spot the moment they ran out of money in the final fight. Jade Animation finished the episode for them.
Speaking of Timm, he has a serious aversion to seeing Bruce in just the costume without the mask so was grumpy to have had to direct an episode featuring such a moment. AND he had to personally storyboard it.
Recap
Warning in advance: If you roll your eyes when lefits critique #problematic content, maybe skip this one…
A young Japanese woman practicing martial arts alone in a dojo is startled by the appearance of a ninja. They exchange dialogue in actual Japanese with subtitles! Colour me impressed.
The ninja critiques her technique as they fight, knocking her out with a kick, pinning a scroll to the wall and kidnapping her. Yoru Sensei, Bruce’s mentor from the flashback scenes in ‘Night of the Ninja’, reads the scroll and gasps…
In Gotham, Alfred informs Batman that Yoru is on the phone, but before we can hear the conversation, we see Kyodai Ken unmask and laugh at his hostage (after slicing some fruits with his sick katana skills).
During their flight to Kurihara, Bruce and Alfred exposit about “giri” which means… sigh… “honour, duty, obligation.” Huzzah.
Bruce finishes drawing Kyodai Ken’s terrible tattoo only to immediately looks at it with disgust and screw it up into a ball. YOU drew the picture, dog!
Bruce pledges his help to Yoru, who claims to see right through the playboy façade. It’s up to viewer interpretation if he knows Bruce is Batman, but Bruce of course plays coy.
Alfred interrupts Bruce’s meditation with an offer of green tea and is rewarded with a story about a 500 year old martial arts style that was deemed unbeatable due to a ‘touch of death’. This f’n guy.
Deeming the style too dangerous, the master hid the only instructional scroll in a cave, passing its location down through his family to… Yoru Sensei. Thus Kyodai Ken wants to trade Yoru’s star pupil, Kairi, for the secret.
Kyodai Ken arranges a meeting in a rough part of town. Bruce suggests handing over a fake map, but gets lectured in the way of bushido. Ninjas lie and cheat, samurai do not. Honour!
The exchange goes terribly, with Ken kicking Kairi off a freakin’ building, forcing Bats to leap over the edge after her, allowing the villain to snatch the scroll with a kunai.
Bruce gives an enamoured Kairi a lecture (in Japanese) and then gives chase, but Ken escapes thanks to his pesky ninja skills.
Following the map, Ken navigates the mountain (which is an active volcano!) and uncovers the ancient scroll… which disintegrates in his hands!
It’s not a total loss though, as he makes off with an intact section that Yoru later reveals is the secret of the touch of death (or “eternal sleep” because it’s a children’s cartoon).
Feeling confident after practicing on a training dummy, Kyodai Ken kidnaps Alfred and calls Bruce to gloat and arrange another meeting.
Bruce trains a little before snooping around Kyodai’s abandoned hideout (he traced the call) to try and determine the part of his body he desperately needs to guard.
Thus the stage is set for the two to battle beside the mountain amidst dangerous volcanic activity. Ken is even able to convince Bruce to unmask as the two debate the merits of ninja vs samurai.
With lava raining down on them, the rivals exchange blows, and Ken is able to get the better of it and murdering Bruce with the Onemuri touch!
Oh wait, Bruce is fine it turns out. He tells him the technique is useless and they fight some more, with some impressive silhouette shots that likely cemented this episode into the nostalgic minds of many fans.
The rock formation the two are standing on splits apart, leaving Ken adrift in a sea of lava. Bruce tosses a rope to him in lieu of an olive branch, but Ken kicks it away, bows and vanishes in an explosion.
Bruce reveals to Alfred how he survived the Onemuri touch; by finding the soft spot on the practice dummy he was able to pad it below his costume. Cute.
Bidding farewell to Yoru Sensei, Bruce is surprised to hear his mentor praise Batman as a samurai despite his ninja techniques. Yoru points out that Batman offered aid to his opponent and refused to use the death touch against him. They bow to each other.
Best Performance
With only five choices to consider we can assess every one of them. Julia Kato’s delivery is much better in Japanese than English, but she barely has any lines. Likewise Goh Misawa does nothing but compliment Bruce, which is boring. Speaking of which, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.’s fish out of water shtick is vaguely fun, but Alfred only barely has more lines than Kato and Misawa combined (which is still not many!)
That leaves our two bitter rivals. Robert Ito is solid in two languages, but solid isn’t enough. By process of elimination, Kevin Conroy wins yet again. It’s not one of his best outings, but he again makes a commendable effort at Japanese pronunciation, graduating from single words and names to an actual sentence at one point. I’m obviously no expert, but I’ve heard worse. He’s also the best of a lacking bunch, so go figure.
Episode Ranking
While it’s far from perfect, I am again surprised by some of the cultural touches from a children’s cartoon made in the early 90s when it comes to the portrayal of Japan. If anything it goes a bit far the other way, with Alfred calling it Nippon and wearing a kimono. But the use of actual Japanese with subtitles and not feeling the need to explain terms like gaijin are refreshing touches.
Speaking of touches, the entire plot revolving around a forbidden technique feels unnecessary given a rivalry was already established between the two, and only leads to more stereotypes about ancient knowledge and hidden scrolls. Sure it leads to Bruce outsmarting his opponent and his refusal to use the skill on others earns him praise, but I feel we could have gotten to the same cinematic standoff a different way. You already had the kidnapping of Kairi, who they could have spent more time developing instead of tossing aside.
The highlight is of course Batman fighting a ninja on the side of an active volcano, which I won’t try to tell you isn’t a dope visual. But I could have done with some more substance to surround that aesthetic with, and in a perfect world a less fetishized handling of Japanese culture.
Still, even with all those faults it’s a better episode than ‘Night of the Ninja’, and the two do compliment each other quite nicely. The biggest improvement is in the visuals, which serve up some more memorable fight scenes, as well as a much less anticlimactic ending. It’s the kind of episode I think I would have loved as a child, but enjoy less through the eyes of an adult.
- The Laughing Fish
- Heart of Ice
- Robin’s Reckoning Part I
- Perchance to Dream
- Two-Face Part I
- Joker’s Favor
- Feat of Clay Part II
- Robin’s Reckoning Part II
- Beware the Gray Ghost
- Mad as a Hatter
- Heart of Steel Part II
- Vendetta
- Appointment In Crime Alley
- Two-Face Part II
- Heart of Steel Part I
- On Leather Wings
- Pretty Poison
- Feat of Clay Part I
- It’s Never Too Late
- See No Evil
- The Clock King
- Joker’s Wild
- The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne
- Eternal Youth
- Day of the Samurai (NEW ENTRY)
- The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy
- The Cat and the Claw Part I
- P.O.V.
- Christmas with the Joker
- Fear of Victory
- Be a Clown
- Night of the Ninja
- The Cat and the Claw Part II
- Nothing to Fear
- Prophecy of Doom
- Tyger, Tyger
- If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?
- Dreams In Darkness
- The Last Laugh
- Cat Scratch Fever
- Moon of the Wolf
- The Under-Dwellers
- The Forgotten
- I’ve Got Batman in My Basement
Rogues Roundup
Kyodai Ken (Robert Ito) (second appearance)
In his first appearance Ken presented the skeleton of a good character but there wasn’t enough meat on his bones. And while nothing is really done to flesh him out in his sophomore outing, his sense of physicality is certainly memorable. There’s also a feeling of legitimate rivalry with Batman that only Joker can really top so far. Plenty of the villains hold a grudge, but it feels like there is real venom here.
Still, I feel some people get a bit carried away with praising what amounts to little more than a generic cartoon ninja. I’ll bump him up a bit for the feud, but not being able to top a mutant tiger who learns morality in ten minutes isn’t great.
- The Joker
- Mr. Freeze
- Two-Face
- Clayface
- Mad Hatter
- Poison Ivy
- Catwoman
- The Riddler
- Clock King
- HARDAC (and Ronda Duane)
- Killer Croc
- Rupert Thorne
- Lloyd Ventrix
- Josiah Wormwood
- Scarecrow
- Roland Daggett (and Germs & Bell!)
- Tony Zucco
- Harley Quinn
- Hugo Strange
- Red Claw
- Arnold Stromwell
- Mad Bomber
- Tygrus
- Kyodai Ken (↑)
- Man-Bat
- Nostromos (and Lucas!)
- Cameron Kaiser
- Penguin
- Dr. Dorian (and Garth)
- Professor Milo
- Romulus
- Sewer King
- Boss Biggis
The Matt Signal 
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