BEWARE THE BATMAN “Tests” Review


In today’s Beware the Batman episode, fan-favorite villain Anarky makes his animated debut. Does that make for a solid episode?

Starting where the previous episode left off, Bruce Wayne (Anthony Ruivivar) is putting Tatsu Yamashiro (Sumalee Montano) through the ringer, wanting to make sure that she is loyal and ready to actually work for him. Meanwhile, a strange villain named Anarky (Wallace Langham) gives two delinquents the tools to show off their “artistic” skills.

Unfortunately, “Tests” isn’t as solid an episode as last week’s. Not that the episode was particularly bad, but the small things added up for me.

So far, Bruce Wayne’s “tests” are tepid at best, downright unnecessary at worst. I don’t understand why he wouldn’t trust Tatsu. Obviously, he has to be careful in his line of work, but if Alfred can vouch for her, that should be enough.

Meanwhile, we get the two most annoying characters in the show in the form of the young “artists”. They are loud-mouth punks who you will feel like punching in about two minutes.

But obviously, most of you will want to hear about Anarky. Well, I am sad to report that he suffers the same fate of Pyg and Toad. He might be more interesting in the comics, but he bored me here. He is yet another villain who wants to cause chaos for the heck of it, and forces Batman to make disturbing moral choices. Yeah. It was cool when The Dark Knight did it, but since then, I keep seeing these kinds of villains everywhere. In other words, he’s no Magpie.

Meanwhile, on the action front, another slight disappointment. The fights are still fine, but this episode’s animation in particular felt weaker than the previous episode, with some awkward animation in the fight scenes.

With that said, it certainly wasn’t a bad episode, but not up to DC’s usual standards.