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Gonna bring over some of my threads diving into specific BTAS villains. Maybe one every few days. I'll start with the Joker.

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How do you release another Godzilla film when Godzilla already died? Now it's a silly question, but it's one American producers tackled when they imported Godzilla Raids Again. Thus, we got Gigantis, the Fire Monster, which packs the flick with a painful dub and plentiful stock footage/music.

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Nowadays 1956's Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a little infamous for the way it chops up the original's human plot and for the scenes of actor Raymond Burr relaying the plot through chats with stand-ins. But Burr plays it straight, and the scenes of Godzilla's destruction are just as effective.

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Daniel Dockery @dandock.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

King Kong vs Godzilla is both a satire of TV commercialism and a wild monster throwdown. For years, it was rumored that there were actually two endings (In Japan, Godzilla wins. In America, Kong is victorious), and its massive success effectively kicked off the 60s kaiju boom period.

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Thrust into production a few weeks after the original's release, Godzilla Raids Again began the pattern of Godzilla battling a kaiju opponent in each film. Though there are some impressive camera tricks here, the effects are noticeably cheaper and the slow dread is replaced by frantic animal combat.

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You and I Are Polar Opposites will probably go down as one of my favorite rom com anime ever. I wrote about its final episode and its running theme of goofy small talk being just as important as big, dramatic moments: www.crunchyroll.com/news/feature...

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Last week, I took my wife to Japan. They made her leave - she wouldn't stop stepping on the buildings HEY I GET NO RESPECT.

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A masterpiece of nuclear anxiety and post-war angst, the original 1954 Godzilla uses the monster as a symbol of mankind's relentless atomic hubris. Feeling almost documentary-like in some scenes, its hellfire atmosphere stuns even today. It remains singular in the wider franchise.

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Daniel Dockery @dandock.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I think I've figured out what I want my next big daily thread to be. Let's talk about the King of the Monsters:

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The 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers deserves to be in the same conversation as The Thing and The Fly when it comes to providing new angles to the story. A pod people sci-fi/horror for a generation experiencing post-Watergate paranoia.

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Daniel Dockery @dandock.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Today would've been the sixty-fifth birthday of Yu-Gi-Oh! creator Kazuki Takahashi. It tends to get swallowed up in the enormous franchise it became, but I truly believe that his original manga can provide a valuable lesson to artists about process and work and improvement over time.

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Daniel Dockery @dandock.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

"And that's just counting members of the audience!"

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1) With Paranoia Agent, the late Satoshi Kon delivered a sweeping look at how fear can force society to devolve and an intimate glimpse into how we bear the weight of that tension in our everyday lives. Modern anxieties blend with primordial terror in 13 fantastic episodes.

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2) Proof that adaptation can sometimes enrich the source material, Batman: The Animated Series is, to many, the definitive version of the Dark Knight. Over the course of 85 episodes (and two films) BTAS gave us a glimpse of Gotham City that was both nightmarish and empathetic.

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3) Made with go-motion, Phil Tippett's Prehistoric Beast is a dialogue/narration-free glimpse into the late Cretaceous that sees a "Monoclonius" stalked and eventually attacked by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. With atmosphere to spare, it remains one of the best dinosaur films of all time.

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4) The ultimate tribute to movement and sound in animation, Fantasia is as transfixing today as it was in 1940. In a way, it feels a little like the Disney equivalent of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that you must allow yourself to be swept away by.

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5) The Hand is a Czech stop motion short about an artist working under the rule of the titular authoritarian "Hand." It's a troubling (and sometimes morbidly funny) look at how fascism restricts and manipulates art for the purpose of its own glory.

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6) Scavengers Reign is a thrilling, violent sci-fi tale that does extraordinary things with its environmental worldbuilding. The way it details the various cycles of life and balances them with this desperate, claustrophobic depiction of mankind makes it ceaselessly rewatchable.

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7) There's no better look at how we create our own little fantasy worlds as children than My Neighbor Totoro. How we invent a dream logic for ourselves that adults will never understand (and often beg us to grow out of.) It's simultaneously whimsical and poignant and is Miyazaki's masterpiece.

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I like it! A lot of Batman Beyond is really good. That said, the crush I had on Ten was absurd and all-consuming.

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"Growing Pains" is one of the most chilling, sad Batman stories ever told. Robin meets a young girl on the run from her terrifying father, a man whose secret will shake the Boy Wonder to his core. The kind of episode that you watch as a kid that haunts you for the rest of your life.

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It's hard to imagine a world where Big Trouble in Little China was immediately and overwhelmingly successful (and didn't eventually become a cult classic.) But in the decades since its release, it's revealed itself to have much more staying power than its stiff-lipped adventure peers.

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"I'm crazy enough to take on Batman, but the I.R.S.? No, thank you!" Based on a 1952 comic, "Joker's Millions" is TNBA in full-on caper mode. If you're looking for a deep dive into the agony of the human soul, look elsewhere. If you want Mark Hamill eating up every line of dialogue, check it out.

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As it turns out, some Batman villains are capable of "going straight." The Ventriloquist's former gang (and the specter of Scarface) convince him to return to a life of crime. However, this fun episode ends with Wesker being the one to pull the trigger on his old "dummy" boss.

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Nightwing makes his official debut and we're treated to the New Batman Adventures reinvention of Catwoman in "You Scratch My Back." It's a fun, flirtatious ("He's a big Boy Wonder now. A man Wonder, in fact") adventure tale that hints at just how much Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson have fallen out.

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Hey, look what's in the lobby of the Macmillan office!

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And #1 is Baby Doll! Baby Doll fits so naturally into the world of BTAS that it feels like she might've been a Golden Age creation. A product of profound tragedy and misguided hatred, Baby Doll only has one episode in BTAS and it's among the series' best. "I didn't mean to..."

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#2 is Roland Daggett! No one reflects Gotham's greed quite like Roland Daggett, a character that is constantly able to escape the law thanks to his wealth and constant backdoor dealings. Seeing him finally taken down at the end of BTAS is so, so satisfying.

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#3 is Harley Quinn! Perhaps the most famous superhero invention of the "modern" era, Harley Quinn has ascended into super stardom both with and without the Joker. Likable and naughty, devious and ultimately humane, she's a fantastic creation.

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#4 is Lock-Up! "What if Batman but leaning (even more) violent and authoritarian?" has been done quite a few times, but rarely as successfully as with Lock-Up. A creepy vision of vigilante tyranny, he feels troublingly prescient.

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#5 is The Condiment King! There's something oddly perfect about this supervillain parody. Yes, he's very silly, but he fits within the context of the episode and the show. Glad to see him pop up later as both a meme and a Z-list rogue.

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