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Rating:  -
It's a classic tv show with many heroes and villians some never
seen before on video.
Rating: -
I enjoyed both BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES and its Superman equivalent. And I thoroughly enjoyed the first two seasons of the JUSTICE LEAGUE series, which focused on the seven founding members -- Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern (the John Stewart version), the Flash (the Wally West version), the Martian Manhunter, and Batman (who resists being identified as a JLA member). At first I did not care for JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED. I felt that the early part of the expanded series was simply too diverse and focused on too many characters. Furthermore, few of the newer heroes were especially interesting. Then something remarkable happened. About halfway what had been a merely decent season, the show suddenly became great. How great? If pressed, I might call Season Three of JUSTICE LEAGUE (or Season One of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, depending on how you count the seasons) the single finest season of any show ever made for children (with apologies to ROCK AND BULLWINKLE).
By the end of the first season of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, this series did things that a children's' show was not supposed to be able to do. It had developed a string of emotionally complex and interesting characters. Novelist E. M. Forster in his famous study ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL introduced the distinction between flat and round characters. Flat characters are introduced full blown and pretty much the way they will always be. They do not develop, they do not change, and there is no real depth to them. Novels with flat characters are not necessarily bad. Virtually every character in all of Dickens novels are flat characters. Round characters change and develop and alter over time. They either are deep or acquire depth as they go along. Some novelists have mixes of them. Elizabeth Eliot in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is a round character while her mother (one of the great comic characters in literature) is a flat one. Some characters start off flat and end up round. A great example on television is Cordelia Chase in BUFFY and ANGEL. Probably 99.99% of all characters in children's TV shows are flat characters. So the appearance of a number of round characters on this show is almost completely without precedent. Also unheard of in a children's show is an adult romance, and in JLU we actually get a wonderfully complex and not easy to resolve love triangle (between an African American male, an African female, and alien though Caucasian looking female -- in talking with younger children I'm amazed at how much less conscious they are of racial difference, and given narratives like this is it any wonder?).
Almost every aspect of this show can be singled out for praise. The animation, while limited by the economics of the half hour television format, is innovative, interesting, and progressive. While they were clearly on a budget, the limitations of the budget do not make the impact one might have expected. There is also interesting blending of traditional animation techniques with CGI. This was one of the earliest places I've seen the two animation techniques combined.
The voice talent is nothing short of astonishing. Each episode might contain a long string of well known actors, not just voice over actors, but movie and television actors. Even a partial list of participating actors is overwhelming: Carl Lumbley, Michael Rosenbaum (who as the voice for the Flash in one episode does a mind swap with Lex Luthor, the character he plays on SMALLVILLE), Mark Hamill, Dana Delaney, Powers Boothe, CCH Pounder, Juliet Landau, Olivia d'Abo, Robert Picardo, Robert Foxworth, Gina Torres, Hector Elizondo, Kevin Michael Richardson, Ron Perlman, Michael Dorn, James Remar, Michael Ironside, J. K. Simmons, Amy Acker, Virginia Madsen, John C. McGinley, Dave Thomas, Elizabeth Pena, Scott Patterson, Morena Baccarin, Eric Roberts, Adam Baldwin, David Ogden Stiers, Dennis Haysbert, Robert Englund, Patrick Duffy, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Jeremy Piven, Mike Farrell, Daniel Dae Kim, Stan Ridgway (the musician), Julie Bowen, Fred Dryer, Pam Grier, Neil Patrick Harris, William Katt, Udo Kier, Michael McCean, Richard Moll, John Rhys-Davies, Stephen Root, Tom Sizemore, William Atherton, Dan Castellaneta, Enrico Colantoni, Keith David, Brad Garrett, Brian Doyle-Murray, Alfred Molina, Rob Paulsen, Ed Asner, Robert Forster, and Nathan Fillion (who took a secondary character, the Vigilante, and made him one of the more colorful characters on the show in a couple of guest appearances). And the list could have been extended by a large number.
All of this -- the writing, the production staff, the directors, the voice actors, the animators -- combined to make one of the most amazing animated shows ever made for children. The earlier BATMAN and SUPERMAN shows were also good, but in retrospect they were primarily training grounds for a production staff that learned how to make better and better shows. Much of this same crew, along with the voice over artists, worked on the forthcoming and highly anticipated Arkham Asylum console game. If it is only a fraction as good as this series, it will be great.
Rating:  -
The series is very good, but I would have thought twice about buying if I had known that the info the Amazon oage provides is WRONG: It has no subtitles at all.
Rating: -
Hi!
JLU is a great continuation of the JLA stories. The beauty of this series is that you get to see many of the DC Universe's (DCU) characters not previously seen in other places. I particularly enjoyed Supergirl and Huntress, two of my favorites from the comics. Lots of interplay between the characters and maybe a few surprises, like Huntress and The Question. All in all, as an adult who followed these characters in the comics, this was a fun series to watch. Recommended for DCU fans; you'll love it!
}:o)
Rating: -
I love this series. I am a big fan of the Superfriends but they were always agreeing witb each other and it was one big happy family. The Justice League series tends to be more real as they fight crime and deal with everyday problems. Great Stuff!!
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