Reports of a game set in the universe of Matt Reeves’ The Batmanare, apparently, greatly exaggerated. The internet was swirling with rumors of such a game’s existence on the morning of August 30, with many hoping that such a project was real. However, none other than James Gunn, the head of DC films, weighed in to set the record state.
Tears Of The Kingdom’s Newspaper Questline And The State Of Hyrulean Journalism
The rumors stem from an article on news site Puckdiscussing the state of Warner Bros. and the outlook of its CEO, David Zaslav, on selling assets. The article states that former Warner Bros. parent company AT&T decided against selling the Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment division responsible for games because it was “too valuable to unload.” The article goes on to claim that, in addition to the upcoming Penguin HBO show, there is a game in development “rooted in the 2022 The Batman movie.” This one line made fans theorize on what this could be, and if the game itself would be more closely tied to the movie or the Colin Farrell series. If true, this would be the first Batman game set in the Reeves’ universe. However, it seems the game does not actually exist.
On social media site Threads, a user directly asked James Gunn if there was any accuracy to the rumors. Gunn succinctly shut them down by saying, “Sadly there is no truth to this whatsoever.” For hopeful fans, though, the use of “sadly” may suggest that he does hope a project like this will exist at some point. Batman fans are long overdue for another great game starring the caped crusader. 2025 will mark the tenth anniversary of Batman: Arkham Knight’s release, which is arguably the last good Batman game Warner Bros. has released. If you are really craving another Batman game, however, the VR title Batman: Arkham Shadowis set to release this fall, and it actually looks kind of good! Still, hope springs eternal for another amazing AAA Batman game.
As Tales of the Empire digs its way through the story of Barriss Offee—and her quest to survive the rise of the Empire, at any cost—there comes a moment that climaxes a decade-plus wait for fans who’ve wanted to see what happened to the former Jedi Padawan after the shocking conclusion of her story in Clone Wars. It’s a moment long in the making, and one that was crucial to the actress behind her as well.
Cop-Proof Your Phones Right Now
That moment comes at the climax of the second of Barriss’ three episodes in Tales of the Empire, “Realization.” Having already accepted—and survived—the offer of joining the new Imperial Inquisitorius after the Republic’s fall, while on a mission to hunt down a Jedi in hiding alongside the Fourth Sister (Rya Kihlstedt), Barriss is horrified by the Inquistors’ violence and chooses to go rogue herself, flinging the Fourth Sister off a cliff face with a push of the Force, and throwing her own helmet down with her.
In the next episode, “The Way Out,” we meet Barriss as we’ve never had the chance to see her before. An undisclosed number of years later, she has had the chance to live and grow older. She’s cut her hair, and on a distant, icy world, she has become a spiritual healer, a wise woman who cures and advises the people who seek her in need. It’s a huge moment, not just to see Barriss flourish and thrive, but to see her committed to the the ideal of the Jedi—the ideal she’d so fiercely believe the Order had fallen away from in its participation in the Clone War—and become someone who knows when to fight and when to offer an open hand. She’s a long way from being a young woman so shocked and horrified by what she saw the Order becoming, her only response to its participation in interstellar war could be violence in kind. And for Meredith Salenger—who has thought about the choices Barriss made in Clone Wars for as long as fans have—it was a powerful moment to be a part of.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
“I mean, I think it’s like in life—as you go through your life, when you’re a teenager you’ve got this energy to fight, to become combative, and I think for Barriss, she was always so… methodical and conservative in her training and wanting to do the right thing, playing everything by the book,” Salenger recently told io9 about getting to see Barriss grow and become the wise woman we meet in “The Way Out.” “I think as you grow and learn, and as you get older, Barriss makes mistakes—wanting to do things the way they’re done—but all of it can only change if there is an underlying love for everyone and wanting to shift people’s perspectives to being more caring and more healing. Instead of doing this by violence, let’s do it by changing people’ hearts and minds and showing compassion. Helping.”
It’s a shift in perspective that gives Barriss an opportunity to be explored further in Star Wars’ future. In a mirror to the climax of “Realization,” when the Fourth Sister finally tracks Barriss down for her betrayal, their encounter culminates with the former accidentally managing to stab the later—and in doing so realizing that Barriss’ pleas to her to change and see a new path were possible. Tales of the Empire concludes with the Fourth Sister, reclaiming her former identity as Lyn Rakish, carrying a wounded—but seemingly still alive—Barriss to aid. It was a long time coming, but at last, Star Wars fans got to see what became of the wayward Padawan… and how she became a Jedi far beyond anything the Order she grew disillusioned with could imagine.
When we first met General Grievous 20 years ago this month in Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars microseries, it gave him an immediate, chilling presence. But then Revenge of the Sith, and with it the Clone Wars 3DCG series, constrained what could be done with the character. Grievous took on the air of a Saturday morning cartoon villain—twirling lightsabers rather than mustaches. Tales of the Empire is keeping the twirling lightsabers, but it might just bring back a little of that original menace, too.
Why is the Dancing Baby an NFT?
Today Lucasfilm released the first clip from the upcoming anthology series Tales of the Empire—its spiritual successor to Tales of the Jedi, this time focusing on stories of the Dark Side, including the life of Morgan Elsbeth before she joined Thrawn’s service, and whatever happened to Barriss Offee after her radicalization against the Jedi’s role in the Clone War. Leaning on the Morgan side of things, the clip sees Tales’ own riff on a particular moment from the 3D Clone Wars series—the season four episode, “Massacre,” when as part of an act of vengeance by Count Dooku, Grievous and an army of Battle Droids launch a devastating assault on Dathomir to try and wipe out Asajj Ventress and her Nightsister comrades.
Tales of the Empire | ‘Stay Back’ Official Clip
The clip is brief, but very fun—if Star Wars is to insist on returning to stories of Clone Wars as it so often is these days, at the very least being able to do so in animation, with the lessons and experiences learned since it came to an end in place, is nice. Getting to see this moment first glimpsed 12 years ago with modern visuals and style is great! But it’s also because, given free reign to act here as the catalyst for Morgan’s traumatic past, Grievous just gets to be unleashed as pure, sinister id.
Going up against Obi-Wan or other Jedi in Clone Wars—never Anakin, of course, because the two were not allowed to actually meet until Revenge of the Sith—Grievous was most often doomed to be a bit of a jobber. He had his moments here and there, sure (the early season one episode “Lair of Grievous” is always worth shouting out), but in Clone Wars Grievous was usually far from the charismatically petrifying agent of death he was when he first stomped into animated canon in the 2D series. It might only be for a brief while, but at least Tales of the Empire looks like it’s bringing at least a little bit of that edge back.
Tales of the Empire begins streaming on Disney+ May 4.
Adult Swim’s My Adventures with Supermanwas a pleasant surprise when dropped in last year, and one of DC’s best animated outings in some time. Audiences really seemed to get on board with the romcom antics of Superman and Lois Lane, and DC’s taking advantage of that momentum by giving it its own comic miniseries.
What Does James Gunn Want from His Superman Movie? | io9 Interview
Revealed earlier in the week, the similarly titled comic will be set after the finale of season one and the premiere of the eventual second season. Written by show co-creator Josie Campbell and drawn by Pablo Moreno Collar (Rogues), the comic sees Clark, Lois, and Jimmy in Metropolis during the holidays investigating a sewer creature able to absorb whatever it touches. Per Campbell, the story was something originally planned for season one, but had to be cut for time. Still, Campbell—who previously wrote The New Shazam for DC, along with several Wonder Woman issues and tie-ins to events like Knight Terrors and Lazarus Planet—said the comic would have the same qualities of the show.
“Being the producer of My Adventures with Superman and bringing Clark Kent to TV screens around the world has been nothing but a dream come true for me,” she wrote. “So I’m absolutely thrilled that Pablo and I get to bring fans even more adventures with Superman, this time in comic book form! Get ready for romance, comedy, super-powers, Jimmy Olsen talking a lot about how he’s super-rich now, and all the goodness of the show bundled into this action-packed miniseries.”
Image: DC Comics
“I was completely in love with Adventures the minute I saw the announcement of the series,” added Collar, “and I jumped at the chance to work with Josie on the comic. Superman has always been the reference and the symbol of all that’s good in us, and being part of something like this is a dream come true, and the whole team will give it our best.”
My Adventures with Superman (the comic) debuts with its first issue on June 4. As for season two of the show? No ETA at time of writing, but its first season is still over on Max.
Earlier in the week, My Dad the Bounty Hunter creator Patrick Harpin and Yuhki Demers, a visual artist on Sony Animation’s Spider-Verse films, revealed their concept art for an animated Batman Beyond movie they’re trying to get made. They’re both fully aware nothing might come of this, and talks are still happening. But it didn’t stop said art from going viral, both because it looks really cool, and also because it’s Batman Beyond, a fan-favorite character who’s always felt like he’s within spitting distance of a big bat-break.
If you work in a creative field, you likely have to pitch something to your boss before actually starting on it. That’s particularly true in animation, and that’s doubtful to change anytime soon. But there’s something ugly, for lack of a better word, in seeing Harpin and Demers have to publicly rally for support to prove their project’s “worthy” in this way to WB. It wasn’t that long ago that we learned the studio’s executives, led by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, are likely going to cancel Coyote vs. Acmewithout really considering any of the deals offered to them, or having actually seen the film. The people in charge of WB seem very anti-art in a way that makes this all come off as rather cruel, especially when folks have been so vocal about their love for Batman Beyond over the years.
Legacy superheroes have become so widespread nowadays, but Terry McGinnis was an early example of that working to great success. Separate from their love of Batman: The Animated Series, fans have had an affection for 1999-2001 animated series BatmanBeyond and Terry’s exploits as the Batman of Neo-Gotham. It wasn’t just that the show was offering a new take on the Dark Knight, it was also really good and not just coasting off the novelty of a teenager in a high-tech Batsuit. And while he briefly showed up in Justice League Unlimited, DC didn’t make any active moves to continue Terry’s story, and largely closed the book on him after JLU revealed he was Bruce’s son.
Comics-wise, Terry’s actually been doing fairly well for himself in the past decade, where he was weaved into the prime DC universe. In his recent solo runs, he’s crossed paths with more recent Batman mainstays like Damian Wayne and the Court of Owls, and he’s now at the point where he’s on his own now that Bruce is dead. Yet even with that, WB has never tried to give him a bigger presence outside of the comics: a live-acton Batman Beyond movie was junked several years ago, much like an animated one rumored in 2019. He hasn’t been revived via the animated movies that WB likes to put out three or four of every year, and he doesn’t even have a video game presence beyond being costumes for Bruce in the Lego or Arkham games.
Outside of comics, WB has always handled Batman’s supporting cast oddly. Sometimes it puts embargoes on specific characters so there can’t be multiple versions; sometimes other characters can headline shows for about half a decade or be a supporting player in the story of another, bigger Batman character. The studio constantly overcomplicates itself for no real reason, and the same is true here—it loves Batman to death, and DC’s often been at its best when animated. Harpin and Demers’ hypothetical movie checks both those boxes, and gives audiences something they’ve never seen in theaters before: Batman being a detective in the cyberpunk future is a cool idea! And again, folks have been clamoring for more Terry for years.
Image: Warner Bros. Animation
In a sane universe, a Batman Beyond movie in a Spider-Verse art style would probably be out by now. But this WB is trying to burn money and stall for time ahead of a likely buyout, so we’re watching an interesting idea by a pair of creators more than eager to work on it be held hostage. Batman Beyond isn’t owed this just because Harpin and Demers asked, or even because he’s been around for 25 years. What he’s owed is a legitimate chance to have something with him move forward with people who care about the property at the helm. But the focus on the bottom line means WB will be making moves that are more dystopian than the actual dystopia of Gotham City 2049.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: the Bad Batch find themselves up against, and running away from, some kind of giant creature. “Why,” grunts Wrecker, the team’s beefy strongman as he huffs along, “why is there always a huge monster?” It’s a fun gag, because really, with The Bad Batch, there almost always is a huge monster. But it’s also an awkward truth of the show at large.
Bad Batch has struggled to find a balance between telling a variety of one-off stories of the week (like, say, the perpetual huge monster the ragtag clones always seem to find regardless of what their mission was) and a larger narrative with its titular heroes.
Image: Lucasfilm
It’s why, for the most part, the series and its characters have largely felt stuck in place, even as the relentless Rise of the Empire encroaches further and further on the world and surviving characters of the Clone Wars—save for Omega (Michelle Ang) and conflicted team turncoat Crosshair (Dee Bradley Baker, perpetual voice of every Star Wars clone), the team hasn’t really grown in character beyond their initial introductions. It’s also why arguably the most interesting plotlines the series has developed so far—like seeing the young Hera Syndulla and the burgeoning re-emergence of Ryloth’s resistance groups in season one, or season two’s plotline about the lack of social welfare for Clones as the Empire turns towards its Stormtrooper program—have, by and large, not involved the Batch at all. The series has mostly kept its momentum restrained, content to only barely advance its world and characters as it distracts itself with another monster of the week.
All that changes in its third and final season—which returns today on Disney+ with a three-episode premiere, the first batch of 15 episodes—even though the huge monsters are definitely still there (in the first eight episodes, provided for review, there are at least five, depending on your hugeness threshold). Coalescing around the fallout of that three-part premiere, which itself focuses on the captured Omega and Crosshair as they reconnect and endure their separate lives in the underbelly of the Empire’s mysterious cloning research facility at Mount Tantiss, The Bad Batch’s final outing takes a more serialized approach than its predecessors, deftly drawing together plot elements that have built in fits and starts over the show so far. It’s been a long time coming, and occasionally to the show’s own frustration in the past, but even as season three moves on from one story to the next, everything feels like it’s coming together to focus on one particular endgame—one with potentially huge ramifications for both the characters we’ve come to know over the course of the show and the wider connective world of Star Wars in this tumultuous time period.
Image: Lucasfilm
Everything matters here, and not simply in a quantifiable, wikiable “canon” way—it’s just that instead with this tight focus on its endgame drawing together myriad characters and stories at the nexus of Mount Tantiss and what the sinister Doctor Hemlock (Jimmi Simpson) has in store beneath its peaks, Bad Batch finally feels like it’s making effective use of the time it’s got. From the big monster action sequences, to character threads coming home to roost as the Batch reckons with the loss of Tech in season two’s climax while also dealing with the return of the lost members to its fold, season three spends its first half in service of starting to dig back into its characters in ways it rarely has so far, using the pressure cooker of its overarching scenario to really put the screws on its characters, and explore in what ways they really have changed in the long days since Order 66. Once again, this is in large part done most well through the lens of Omega and Crosshair, but this unlikely duo doesn’t just bring out the best in themselves but also draws that out in the rest of the crew, leading to some really satisfying moments of character work that feel like earned payoffs given how scattershot the series’ episodic nature has been in service of those characters in the past.
And while yes, there are some fun one-offs in these first eight episodes—a particular highlight sees Hunter and Wrecker begrudgingly team up with Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) in a desperate bid for information—none of it feels necessarily “wasted,” in either distracting from the central plot or away from digging into its characters more, all weaving itself into this singular path towards Tantiss and Hemlock, again and again. It works, not just because it means we actually get to sit with our heroes and watch them develop and bounce off each other more, but because it effectively sets the stakes for the season at large as something that really matters—grand in the scheme of Star Wars itself, and The Bad Batch’s place in its timeline, but more crucially grand in terms of what matters to our heroes as people, especially.
Image: Lucasfilm
Where the show has previously struggled to make its most interesting worldbuilding personally matter to the Batch, season three marries the personal and galactic stakes together perfectly, keeping everything compelling as it ticks over from week to week. It’s a reflection of a much stronger, more confident show, one that feels like it’s finally ready to nail down the story it wants to tell with its characters and is laser focused on doing so. Time will tell if the back half of the season will effectively pick up on the strengths of its front—but The Bad Batch has set a stage brimming with potential for an incredibly satisfying end to this chapter of Star Wars animation if it sticks the landing.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch’s third and final season begins streaming on Disney+ today, February 21, with a three-episode premiere.
For 15 years now, people in Hollywood have been trying to get a live-action Robotech movie made. Specifically, a movie based on Robotech’s first and most popular season, which was a Western repackaging of Japanese masterpiece Macross.
Robotech’s original animated intro
In 2007 it was Tobey Maguire leading the charge for a Warner Bros. production that ultimately went nowhere. Eight years later Sony took a swing, with Aquaman director James Wan attached, but it too would eventually wind up cancelled. Now we’re getting a third and more recent attempt, with Sony trying once again, announcing in 2022 that Hawkeye director Rhys Thomas will be trying to get the adventures of Rick Hunter and friends on the big screen.
This third try might have a better chance of actually getting made; aside from regular Hollywood politics and economics, previous attempts were also plagued by a long-running legal standoff that had stymied Western releases of Macross products for decades. They were largely resolved in 2021, clearly paving the way for Sony’s renewed attempts at getting a Robotech movie made.
Anyway, enough background! This is an art feature, not a history lesson. But I needed to spell all that out so that we’re clear about what’s being showcased tonight: a collection of art from that middle project, Sony’s aborted first attempt that, after suffering a big setback in 2018 when Wan bailed to make Aquaman, was quietly cancelled in 2019.
Most illustrations focus on the SDF-1, Macross Island (whose vibes Price absolutely nails here) and redesigned Veritech fighters, though there are also some works showcasing original plot elements (like the oil rigs) that would have been new for this particular film.
Gif: Nintendo / Studio Trigger / Odyssey Interactive / Kotaku
There are just so many games these days it’s hard to stand out from the crowd and get the world’s attention. So, here’s one good way: Get world-renowned anime house Studio Trigger to make the trailer for your upcoming Nintendo Switch sports-action game.
The Week In Games: Galactic Refugees And Stone-Age Life Sims
Omega Strikers, developed by Odyssey Interactive, is a free-to-play online 3v3 soccer (football for readers across the pond) game in which anime-looking athletes compete in cross-platform online matches. Some of the dapper athletes are so anime AF in their designs that they’re not even human. By my count, there’s at least one slime girl, a gun-wielding lizard man, and a swole gerbil-looking bear dude. The soccer ball here is on fire half the time, so these characters being anime AF fits the bill.
Odyssey enlisted the help of animation powerhouse Studio Trigger (the studio behind Kill La Killand Cyberpunk: Edgerunners) to sell the hectic energy of its roster of footballers, what with their penchant to bend the rules of conventional soccer via unsanctioned weapons, with a cool opening cinematic music video. You can check it out below.
Nintendo / Studio Trigger / Odyssey Interactive
Studio Trigger anime tend to have themes of defiance against some sort of authoritative organization. For example, Kill La Kill and Brand New Animal saw its colorful casts openly defy the notion of socially acceptable clothing and racial prejudice against beast people, respectively. More recently, Trigger’s Netflix anime adaptation Cyberpunk: Edgerunners focused on a Latino boy named David Martinez’s journey to becoming a legend in a town that would turn a blind eye to his untimely demise.
Great for work or play This laptop boasts a 15.6-inch touchscreen, an Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, a webcam, and more. It also has a variety of ports for connectivity’s sake, making it versatile for use as a display or even a desktop replacement.
All that being said, Trigger animating an opening cinematic about a group of outcasts united by their passion to decimate their opponents just makes sense. I guess Omega Strikers players are defying conventional soccer regulations. Who are we to deny a pompadoured rockabilly his fun? Time will tell whether Omega Strikers will have an arena that lets its madcap group of soccer weirdos duke it out in space, as Trigger is wont to do. In the meantime, props for having such a stylish trailer.
Omega Strikers is slated to release on April 27 and is available for pre-order on the Nintendo Switch, Steam, the App Store, and Google Play.
Recently, “AI” machine-learning technologies have been creeping their way into artistic fields in both entertaining and harmful ways. While some AI content creators are just making videos for harmless fun, others, like the creators of a recent AI-generated anime short, wrongfully believe they’ve democratized the animation industry when they’ve really just come up with a more technologically demanding method of plagiarizing other artists.
Earlier this week, Corridor Digital, a Los Angeles-based production studio that creates pop culture YouTube videos, uploaded a video called “Anime Rock, Paper, Scissors.” Written and directed by Niko Pueringer and Sam Gorski, it revolves around two twins vying for the throne left vacant by their recently deceased father. Their battlefield? A game of rock, paper, “twin blade.” By leveraging the machine-learning text-to-image model Stable Diffusion, Corridor Digital gave camera footage filmed in front of a green screen a dramatic anime-like appearance. It’s basically AI-assisted rotoscoping. You can watch the video below.
“It’s part of our humanity to try and visualize things that don’t exist. Like, let’s talk about traditional 2D animation. Cartoons, the most creatively liberating medium, is also the least democratized. It takes incredibly skilled people drawing every single frame of your movie to make it happen,” Pueringer said in a separate YouTube video, titled “Did We Just Change Animation Forever?” “But I think we came up with a new way to animate. A way to turn reality into acartoon and it’s one more step toward true creative freedom where we can easily create anything we want.”
In a pinned comment underneath, Pueringer wrote that their AI-driven animation production technique isn’t meant to replace human animators but as a means to bring visual ideas to life without the “near-insurmountable mountain of work” that a large animation studio with a large budget would need to get the job done.
“Imagine one person, or a few friends, bringing their crazy ideas to life. Imagine if a traditional animator could automatically have their drawings inked and colored. Imagine eliminating the uncanny valley on CGI faces. These tools have the potential to do that. We’re trying to figure out how, and sharing our journey. If we want community-controlled AI tools, we need to develop them as a community, otherwise, they become proprietary tools locked behind a company,” Pueringer wrote.
Pick your processor, RAM, GPU, and more Whether you are in the market for a new laptop or desktop or if you a specifically looking to build something to game on, you can do so here and you’ll save up to 52% off.
In an email with Kotaku, Peuringer said that although someone can train an AI model to learn the styles of many artists, it’s incorrect to assume that is the technology’s sole use case.
“Through this experiment, we’re figuring out how we can use [our] own art with these tools to speed up the process. ‘Anime Rock, Paper, Scissors’ is the first step in our experiments [in] figuring out how any of this works in the first place,” Pueringer said.
Feeding an AI model data isn’t creating art
Despite how appealing the AI behind ‘Anime Rock, Paper, Scissors’ may seem to Corridor Digital’s fans, the group’s AI-powered anime is yet another harmful innovation in the animation industry because it steals from real artists in ways that seem little different than the prospect of other machine-learning technologies copying and selling actors’ voices without consent.
Unlike the breathtaking Dragon Ball Z fan film, Dragon Ball: Legends—which took the indie studio Studio Stray Dog four years to make—Corridor Digital’s attempt at recreating the passion and energy displayed in early-aughts anime comes off as violently hokey and embarrassing because it’s a soulless recreation of animation techniques haphazardly strewn together without any technical skill or artistic merit.
Despite acknowledging the fact that anime is about tying visual language to a story through stylized metaphors and art direction, Pueringer revealed that Anime Rock, Paper, Scissors’ visual style was made by feeding their Stable Diffusion AI model background art and character images they took from the early aughts fantasy anime film Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.
“We tried to grab frames of like different people, some face shots, some torso shots, full body shots, hands, hair, even some abstract things like flowers because, with all these different objects—with each picture effectively being a different object and a different character—when we train the model, it’s not going to learn any single subject. Instead, it’s going to learn the style in which all of these subjects were drawn,” Pueringer said.
Ultimately, Corridor Digital’s trained model shat out a TikTok filter-looking mess in which over-the-top shadow effects constantly clipped through character models, despite their technologies’ best attempts to prevent any kind of uncanny valley flickering you’d see in an anime-filtered Snapchat video. Claiming that you understand the visual language that anime studios strive to portray while blatantly copying the art style of anime studio Madhouse’s work literally frame by frame isn’t a “democratization” of anime creation. That’s just being a hack.
Corridor Crew
While many of Corridor Digital’s YouTube commenters see Anime Rock, Paper, Scissors as a means to make content creation more accessible, others viewers thought the video was an insult to human animators.
“This just seems like a way for tech guys to force their way into the artist’s circle while simultaneously stealing actual artists’ work to use for their ai to learn off of. They should show this to the actual animators that visit them, I wonder how they’d react,” YouTube commentator SouperRussian wrote in response to Corridor Digital’s “Did We Just Change Animation Forever?” video.
Many workers within the animation industry hate it
Unlike many of Corridor Digital’s social media fans, fellow YouTuber animator Ross O’Donovan thinks Corridor Digital’s AI anime is walking on thin ice with professional animators. O’Donovan advised Corridor Digital to find “a first aid kit” to prepare for the discourse that would transpire should it talk to an actual group of animation industry professionals. He specifically suggested Corridor Digital sit down with folks like the team behind Netfllix’s Castlevania series to hear what they think about the creation process of Anime Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Turns out Corridor won’t need to hit Castlevania director Samuel Deats’ line, because he’s already made his opinion known to the public. Deats disagreed with Corridor Digital’s claim that their AI tool was “one step toward true creative freedom,” that would democratize the animation industry. Instead, Deats tweeted that Corridor Digital are just “lazy thieves spitting on an entire art form.”
Deats wasn’t alone in his sentiments toward Corridor Digital’s advocacy for machine learning models in the animation industry. “This absolutely sucks, hope this helps,” Toonami co-creator Jason DeMarco wrote in a tweet. Ralph Bakshi, the legendary underground animator behind Fritz the Cat and the 1978 Lord of the Rings animated film didn’t dignify Corridor Digital’s claim with a response. Instead, Bakshi simply replied “no comment” in response to a tweet cheerleading Corridor Digital’s “incredible” AI-powered anime.
Despite the online backlash Corridor Digital received from folks within the animation industry, Pueringer believes that Anime Rock, Paper, Scissors isn’t any less ethical than the other pop culture-related YouTube videos they’ve uploaded to their channel “to tell their story.”
In a post on the r/Corridor subreddit, Peuringer noted that while sudden change can be a scary thing, “especially if it feels like your passion or livelihood is on the line,” Corridor Digital is exploring the use cases of their AI model as a means to “help shine a light into the fog for everyone” wanting to bring their imaginations to life.
“I see potential for tools like these to let an animator let this process propagate their ink and color easily across [an] entire shot, for example. It’s potential like that that gets me excited about this tech, and why we do these experiments in the first place,” Pueringer told Kotaku.
Anime and manga publisher Viz Media just made a handful of really big anime series freely available to watch on YouTube. If you’re looking for a good entry point into some really prolific shows, this is an excellent opportunity to dive into some stone-cold classics.
The company has uploaded six of the hit shows it owns rights for to YouTube and compiled them into helpful playlists. Death Note, Hunter x Hunter, Inuyasha, Mr. Osomatsu, Naruto, and Sailor Moon are all there, most in their entirety, for your viewing pleasure. Notably, these are the Japanese versions of the shows with English subtitles, so if you’re a person who likes to watch dubbed anime, this might not be what you’re looking for. But if you like to keep it original, there’s a lot to dig into here. I’ve personally always wanted to watch Death Note after hearing about it through cultural osmosis over the years, and even though I tend to prefer dubs, this is too good an opportunity to waste.
Let’s run down each show:
Death Note
Death Note is the shortest anime on the list, with only 37 episodes across its one season. It centers around the titular Death Note, a notebook with the power to kill anyone whose name is written inside. A teenager named Light Yagami finds the book and uses it to kill people he deems immoral and unworthy of life; this string of seemingly unstoppable, random murders eventually draws the attention of L, an eccentric, brilliant detective, leading to an electrifying, supernatural game of cat-and-mouse.
Hunter x Hunter
Hunter x Hunter follows Gon Freecss, a boy attempting to follow in his absentee father’s footsteps as a Hunter, heroes who track down rare creatures, seek treasures, and hunt down other people as well. Hunter x Hunter is famous for being near universally lauded by all who watch it, turning them into proselytizing advocates who really, really think you should check it out. The show is one of the lengthier ones Viz has put up on YouTube, with 148 episodes available across its six arcs. But there are a few that are even longer. Such as…
Inuyasha
Rumiko Takahashi’s Inuyasha follows the titular half-demon as he joins a high school girl named Kagome Higurashi to recover the shards of a shattered Shikon Jewel. A huge hit on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block back in the day, the show’s seven seasons come in at 197 episodes.
Mr. Osomatsu
Mr. Osomatsu goes way back to the sixties, when Fujio Akatsuka’s comedic manga was a cultural phenomenon in Japan. This anime adaptation is much newer, dating from 2015. It’s worth noting that Mr. Osomatsuis the only show Viz has uploaded on YouTube that doesn’t include its entire run. The currently uploaded first two seasons of the animated family comedy show make up 50 out of the series’ 75-episode run.
Naruto
At 220 episodes, Narutois nearly the biggest time sink Viz has put up on YouTube. The five-season show makes up the first Part of Naruto, which follows the titular character as he attends a school to become a ninja. These 220 episodes are followed by Naruto: Shippuden, which is another 500 episodes, and another sequel show called Boruto that follows Naruto’s child. So you’re opening up Pandora’s Box if you decide to sit down and watch this one.
Sailor Moon
However, the show with the most episodes in this (initial?) wave of uploads is 1990s bishoujo phenom Sailor Moon, which comes in with a whopping 238 videos across its five seasons. It’s the classic Magical Girl anime, and follows a group of teenagers who turn into superheroes and do superhero shit. She’s the icon. She is the moment. And her show is all readily available to watch on YouTube, free of charge. (The handful of specials and later movies are not currently available, though.)
If you’re not an anime connoisseur, there’s some really great entry points here, but if you’re a real sicko and have already seen these shows, you now have a real easy way to revisit them. Speaking for myself, I’m about to cue up some Death Note. It’s time I finally checked it out.
