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Batman Ninja vs Yakuza League trailer gives us our first look at alternate takes on your favorite DC heroes

The trailer already has more character than the first Batman Ninja film did.

Batman Ninja vs Yakuza League trailer screenshot — Image credit: Warner Bros. Japan

News by Trent Cannon, Senior Contributing writer

Published on Fri Jul 05 2024

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After 2018’s Batman Ninja, it didn’t seem like it would be long before we saw the Dark Knight once again battling it out in feudal Japan. However, the trailer for the upcoming Batman Ninja vs Yakuza League – first shown at Anime Expo 2024 – throws a bit of a spanner in the works.

The reveal came during Warner Bros. Japan’s panel at Anime Expo 2024, where they also revealed some of the key staff returning for the CGI animated sequel. Junpei Mizusaki, best known for producing the opening sequences for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, is back to direct the film as part of Kamikaze Douga, the company he founded.

What is most interesting is the content of the trailer itself, which shows Batman and Robin being transported to a new world and facing an alternate-universe version of the Justice League called the Yakuza League. Here we get heavily stylized versions of Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Flash, all with a futuristic Japanese flavor to them. They look wicked and we cannot wait to see them in action. Batman Ninja vs Yakuza League has the potential to inject some tongue-in-cheek humor into its plot and a deeper connection to the DC Universe that the first Batman Ninja film was sorely lacking.

The panel didn’t give a release date for Batman Ninja vs Yakuza League, so we’ll probably have to wait until at least 2025 to see it on our screens. Batman Ninja was released digitally in 2018 and eventually made its way to streaming services like Netflix, so we expect a similar release strategy for the sequel.

Here's our guide to every anime coming to Crunchyroll, Netflix and other streaming platforms during the Summer 2024 anime season.