Batman: TAS, episode #44: Day of the Samurai

This episode is an odd bird in the series. Not only is it a follow-up to an earlier episode, Night of the Ninja, without being a direct second part, but it's also the only one that I know of with non-English dialogue and subtitles, as many of the characters speak in their native tongue of Japanese; as does Bruce Wayne and The Batman at various points. Day of the Samurai is, to its credit, quite different in tone to its predecessor, despite being written by the same person (Steve Perry.) Like the previous post, it's not hard to see this genre as an expression of another aspect of the 1970s. When horror comics became popular (permitted) again, there was another topic bursting forth on the American mindset in film, TV, and comics, which was martial arts and East Asian cultures. Most of it was the Hong Kong action flicks of people like Bruce Lee or dim attempts at the American past in series like Kung Fu. Conics were no different, as characters like Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu because popular for a time. DC's answer was, of course, a White guy called Karate Kid from the Legion of Superheroes whose solo series lasted a whole 15 issues. To Shang-Chi's credit, his ran to issue #125 and 1983. (I chalk that up to the former being created by Jim Shooter and the latter being created by Jim Starlin and Steve Engelhart (of Laughing Fish fame.))

But also to Perry and the producers' credit, by the late 80s/early 90s when this was being written, a lot of people had tried to steer away from the often misrepresented aspects of Japanese culture. The most notable example in this episode was that use of subtitles, but also the exploration of concepts like giri ("obligation" or "duty") and a deeper exploration of Bruce Wayne's awareness of the concept of honor and how return villain, Kyodai Ken (James Ito), is besmirching it. Of course, little details remain important, where the idea of a self-avowed ninja wielding a katana isn't really in line with proper perspective (unless he's doing so as a deliberate insult?) but also when the entire plot of the episode revolves around the hunt for an ancient technique hidden away as too dangerous which is essentially the Touch of Death made famous by AD&D monks from the late 70s, where the only reason to play a monk (couldn't use magic weapons, couldn't wear armor, basically had no reason to be a looting murder hobo) was to reach level 13, whereupon you learned said Touch of Death and could kill things just by, y'know, touching them. This idea has lasted down the years in forms like the Five Finger Death Punch (now a band because why not?), the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, and so on.

One stereotype that Perry thankfully avoids (unlike the episode just before this one) is the question of The Batman's identity. Bruce notes that "fighting styles are like fingerprints" so Kyodai already knows that he and the Darknight Detective are one and the same. The fact that Bruce Wayne's sensei, Yoro (Goh Misawa) (occasionally misspelled as "sensi" in the subtitles) somehow doesn't know this, despite having trained Bruce for years, is something of a head-scratcher, though. Regardless, the high point of this episode is almost certainly the actions scenes between Kyodai and The Batman, since it's one of the few times that we really see fighting technique emphasized; not least in their final encounter, where our hero finally demonstrates his considerable superiority by casually batting aside Kyodai's attacks after revealing that his Touch of Death had no effect on someone who was prepared for it (Speaking of Karate Kid, this is where I was impressed to hear the writers of Cobra Kai have Daniel Larusso saying that the only reason the "Crane technique" worked in the original film is because Johnny Lawrence walked right into it...) Of course, the only way to provide regular drama in The Batman's regular martial encounters is to have him show weakness and, thus, create threat. But the number of times it seems to happen to average thugs on the streets of Gotham City gets kind of onerous over multiple episodes, so it's gratifying to see him display the kind of expertise that we'd all expect in this moment.

Despite the obvious poor choice of fight location on the side of an active volcano (which The Batman does point out), the visual of that final fight, taking place in front of the flowing lava and literally highlighting the motion of their two shadowed figures, was really well done. Again, small things mean a lot in this case and this episode was interested in focusing on those details. There's a lot of slower-paced story exploration here, which is a nice change from the often frantic pace of other episodes. This is one of those moments where you'd find editors talking about "character development" for both the hero and the villain, even if there's no traumatic exploration of either. In this respect, I much prefer Day to Night, even if we are talking about the scourge of Gotham's underworld.

Next time, we see another villain return in Terror in the Sky...