It’s time to shake your weeabooty and get down with the weekly Japanese pop culture thread!

This week, we’re spotlighting the recently-released Batman Ninja, an anime film produced by Kamikaze Douga (curiously also the studio behind Pop Team Epic). It sees Batman transported back in time to feudal Japan where his nemeses have re-emerged as feudal warlords. Without his gadgets or technology, Batman must rely on his wits, his friends, and his sick ninja skillz to defeat his enemies and get back home.

Batman Ninja is very much an east-meets-west production. The character designs and the art style are lifted from Western comic books (just look at the detail work on their costumes!), but the animation is quite typical of anime (though impressively fluid), and there quite a few Japanese flourishes (including a watercolour sequence reminiscent of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya).

I highly recommend watching the film if you can. It’s 85 minutes of balls-to-wall ridiculousness, and it’s the most fun I’ve had consuming a Batman-related piece of media in years.

What have you been watching/reading/eating/playing/listening to/sneaking around lately?