Batman goes back in time and battles his familiar foes in Feudal Japan in Batman Ninja! Yes, Batman, along his friends, Red Hood, Red Robin, Robin, Nightwing, Cat Woman and his enemies including the Joker, Harlequin, Two-Face, Bane and others wind up time traveling from Gotham City to what was called Feudal Japan thanks to Grodd!

Pre the Warner Press release “Beginning in Gotham City, Gorilla Grodd’s time-displacement machine malfunctions, sending a crazed cast of tyrannical villains back in time to terrorize medieval Japan. The most depraved is Lord Joker, who seeks total domination of the feudal states and the final elimination of the legendary Batman. With his arsenal of tech diminishing, can The Caped Crusader gain the advantage to keep Lord Joker and the others from rewriting history?”

In my humble opinion, Batman Ninja is a mixed bag across the board with the animation looking fantastic and detailed, but inconsistent as it kept changing and, in some cases, difficult to enjoy or appreciate, especially the scenes with Joker and Harlequin were back to normal, sort to speak. The action scenes toward the end were the best part of the picture, but with a weak storyline, the film was hampered. There was a bit too much evil laughing from the characters that became unbearable at times. How often does Joker need to go “ha-ha”, every single second of the film?

Warner Brothers has given Batman Ninja a UHD 4K release. This movie was a native 2K production and has its own specific style with the film elements. Keeping that in mind, this picture quality is problematic in some areas and may not have been the best choice for a 4K UHD release. Yes, it is a slight upgrade, and Dolby Vision has made some improvements over the Blu-ray with sharper, bolder colors and a better encode, but due to the style of the animation, black crush and a few other issues occur doing the presentation.

The audio for Batman Ninja, which is an English HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack sounds terrific. The dialogue and various action noises and musical scores by Yugo Kanno are perfectly clear and balanced without any issues detected. The original Japanese audio for this release also is excellent, but it has English dubtitles. For those who have the 2018 Blu-ray, you are aware that release had English and English SDH subtitles which have unfortunately been removed for the 4K UHD release.

Batman Ninja has the same supplements that came from the 2018 Blu-ray, so if you have that disc, they have been ported over from that release:

East/West Batman

Batman: Made in Japan

New York Comic Con Presents Batman Ninja

I suspect many Batman fans have mixed opinions of this film and probably will also have the same feeling toward the UHD release; despite technically looking better than the Blu-ray has a few issues and the subtracting of the English subtitles was a disappointment! The extras were ported over, which is one positive. For those who have not seen the movie, I would say give it a spin!

Batman Ninja

Director – Junpei Mizusaki

Cast- Roger Craig Smith, Tony Hale, Grey Griffin (English dubbed voice actors)

Country of Origin-USA

Distributor –Warner Home Video

Number of Discs –1

Reviewed by – David Steigman

Date- 7/8/2025