Batman: The Animated Series writer/producer Paul Dini and Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy, speaking to Yahoo Entertainment, described the series enduring legacy. "I think it just looks better over time, it has that sort of permanence," Dini said.
The series, which originally aired from 1992 to 1995, was acclaimed for both its complex writing and noirish, Art Deco aesthetic, which introduced viewers to a Gotham where police patrol in airships and every adventure is introduced with a painted title card that puts Frasier to shame. The strongest mood in children's television, The Animated Series famously painted its backgrounds on black paper.
"The artwork and the full symphony score and the big casts and the scripts and the character development," Dini told Yahoo. "The quality of the show was not accidental."
The art was matched by a character-defining portrayal of Batman from Conroy, who loaded Bruce Wayne with a calm confidence, barely covering pathos. Facing off with the show's memorable rogue's gallery, including a fan-favorite Joker voiced by Mark Hamill, Conroy's Batman would show the cracks in his superhuman persona, making the psychic repercussions for Wayne as gripping as the evil plots he works to foil.
"I put myself in the mind of the character and the more I thought about it, the more the darkness of his childhood and his reconciling that and what that would turn him into, watching his parents killed before him, and he retreats into this cave existence," Conroy says, before switching to Batman's voice. "And this sound just starting coming out of me, this voice."
The Animated Series intentionally cultivated a sense of timelessness, right down to the indeterminate era reflected in its technology and fashions, which blended double-breasted 1950s menswear with computers ripped from retro sci-fi. "Let's peg it as 20th century sometime, but not any decade," Dini said, describing the "conscientious decision" made by the artists. "We fought the urge to go flat screen TVs or computers. So you look at it and it's like 20th century, anytime, and that gives it a sort of timelessness."
The show has continued to be an essential part of the Batman mythos, over 20 years and four live-action Batmans later. Fans still ask Conroy to recite favorite lines, with one above all others: "I am vengeance, I am the night, I am Batman."
Batman: The Complete Animated Series Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-ray is out now.
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