Batman the Animated Series Episode 35 Night of the Ninja
The story of this episode is an old one but a classic. A mysterious threat commits crimes and he reveals to be connected to the hero long ago. In this case, the nefarious ninja in this episode, Kyodai Ken trained under the same sensei as did Bruce Wayne, who would later become Batman.
The biggest difference between Batman and the ninja is naturally Batman used his training to fight crime, while the ninja used his training to commit it. Kyodai Ken is a rather tricky one as well but he does have some form of arrogance. He would never let things go so he just has to kidnap Bruce Wayne to put him in his place.
As it turns out, Bruce Wayne is in quite the pickle, as also Summer Gleeson, your neighborhood nosy news reporter, was kidnapped along with him. So he is in a balance, where he can’t fight too good because people might start asking the wrong sort of questions. However he can’t hold back too much, because he did have training after all.
Robin shows up to thankfully even the odds and drop a tarp over Gleeson, which allows Bruce not to be able to hold back. There is an interesting dynamic that continues from the Robin’s Reckoning Two Part Episode with Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, of some tension. It doesn’t blow up until much later. Indeed, Bruce beats the ninja, causing him to flee.
He will be back though. He’ll always be back. One thing that will come back to haunt Bruce Wayne a bit later on is that he fought the ninja as both Bruce Wayne and Batman. But that episode’s a bit down the line.
Batman the Animated Series Episode 35 Night of the Ninja was a fairly good outing all things considered, let’s throw a 7.5/10 rating on the pile right now. You can watch Batman the Animated Series Episode 35 Night of the Ninja on Batman the Animated Series Volume 2 DVD set and Batman the Animated Series the complete collection.
