When Omac Attacks!
Original Airdate - October 16th, 2009 The all-American fighting machine
OMAC is pitted against the equally destructive Shrapnel
in a chaotic fight to the finish, but the architect
behind the battle is the mysterious, balance-obsessed
villain Libra.
Written by Stan Berkowitz Directed by Brandon
Vietti Animation by Dong Woo Animation Co.,
Ltd.
Review by Andrew
Media by Warner Bros. Animation
Cast
Diedrich Bader as Batman Dee Bradley Baker as
Brother Eye / Operative / Dove Jeff Bennett
as Buddy / OMAC Greg Ellis as Hawk / Kafka /
Shrapnel Oded Fehr as Equinox Keone Young
as Operative
Music
Theme Written and Performed by Andy Strumer
Music by Michael McCuisition, Lolita Ritmanis,
Kristopher Carter
Media Video
Clips
Review
This episode’s teaser is interesting because it doesn’t
tie into the main story whatsoever, but it shares a
similar theme; the conflict of Good vs. Evil. Of course,
they both handle it in fairly different ways, but it was
- as I said - interesting. Unfortunately, it’s the only
interesting aspect of the entire teaser. This time
around Batman is paired, or rather, tripled up with the
brotherly duo Hawk and Dove. The problem, though, is
that neither one is characterized well. The only one
that is given a worthwhile attempt is Dove, but only for
brief moments. They accompany Batman to bring two
warring factions to peace, but it’s never really
explained why or how they’re supposed to do this. All we
get to see is the pair of the brothers trying to one-up
each other, and eventually Batman solves everything off
screen. The teaser ends with the brothers still
fighting, leaving the entire thing with absolutely no
point other than a contrived and pointless usage of two
random heroes.
The main story fares far better,
despite being incredibly random itself. Starting off
with Batman being questioned by two faceless people,
apparently leaders of the “Global Peace Agency,” we’re
then introduced to a bumbling janitor that is apparently
Batman’s partner for the episode. As baffled as we are,
Batman questions this and is shown that his new, clumsy,
horrible-accented partner is transformed via satellite
into the One-Man Army Corps; OMAC. Personally, I would
have liked to see an updated, far more interesting look
for the character than the classic version as the
over-active cheesiness factor of his appearance tends to
be distracting, but I digress. OMAC and Batman set off
to stop a random General that is supposedly a War
Criminal. Incredibly quickly, they’re at the General’s
base and OMAC makes no hesitation to attack. Batman,
however, becomes distracted by the appearance of the
mysterious Equinox; last seen with the worst attempt at
a death-trap ever. Equinox goes into his usual shtick of
explaining his existence is to leave things balanced,
and that he is the one to set all of this into motion.
Batman, like us, eventually grows bored of Equinox’s
speech and finally joins the fight, just in time to stop
OMAC from attempting to kill the General. This causes
OMAC to accidentally destroy the factory, unleashing the
General’s unexplained goop and transforming the random
villain into an even more random super-villain named
Shrapnel.
At this point, the episode feels as
though it has hit an unredeemable low-point, due to it’s
lack of any explanation to anything such as the GPA, the
General, or even why OMAC tried to kill the General. The
episode never really explains anything, but it does get
slightly better as they return to the GPA so Batman can
be scorned without any explanation why OMAC isn’t
getting the scorning instead. Shrapnel manages to make
it to the GPA to begin an attack, which quickly leaves
Batman and OMAC not only split on strategies, but split
on the fight as, yet again, Equinox shows up to chat up
Batman. Nothing significant is ever truly revealed,
except that Equinox seems to have supernatural powers.
Eventually Batman again grows bored of Equinox’s
ramblings and joins the fight again, only to find that
OMAC and Shrapnel are battling it out at a nuclear
planet - which they’ve also damaged to the point of
threatening the city with a meltdown. Batman sets off to
stop the meltdown, meanwhile OMAC decides for no real
reason that letting Shrapnel tire out is the best course
of action. Somehow he turns out to be right, and defeats
the fatigued villain just in time for the satellite to
lose power, and he returns to his naïve, clumsy
personality. Not wanting to leave Batman in a fight, he
runs to help him against the now uber-being Equinox.
Batman uses this distraction to take care of the
meltdown, with absolutely no explanation given as to
how. Despite that, he pushes on into toxic radiation
that nearly kills him - quite the high point of the
episode, actually, to see Batman do something like that.
Of course, there is the ex dues machina in the form of
Equinox to heal him - supposedly for balance - and then
he disappears. The episode is left with an allusion to a
more important Equinox storyline, and unfortunately no
explanations whatsoever to anything that went on in the
episode. Due to this, what could have been a great
episode is left moderate because everything seemed too
random, and/or convenient throughout it. It probably
should have been a 2-parter, but despite that, I have to
say it was entertaining enough to deserve a watch.
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