Spoilers Ahead. This has to be the greatest Batman film ever made. It may be a cartoon but sometimes a great story is strong enough however it is delivered and this is a great example of this. It makes all the live action films look painfully silly, particularly the later ones and is truly worth hunting down.<br /><br />This is what and who Batman should be. Someone who is driven by vengeance, who cannot reconcile love and his obligations to protect, someone who uses physical violence and intelligence, not a plethora of gadgets that he just carries around to bail him out of that one in a million tight spot, to fight crime and restore order.<br /><br />The animation is good, it's the only cartoon drawn on black paper to aid in its dark feel, the music score is powerful, dark and brooding, the voice acting is top notch with Batman and Andrea played wonderfully by Kevin Conroy and Dana Delaney although the film is stolen by the Joker who is played by Mark Hamill from star wars fame. He brings something magical to the role, perfectly nailing the mix of being cool, funny, evil and sinister. Like the film, this is the perfect embodiment of who the Joker should be. The story is excellent keeping up with the mystery surrounding the phantasm and also telling Bruce Wayne's back-story, how he discovered the bat cave, bat car and what drove on his hunger for revenge.<br /><br />The ending with him standing dejected having lost his love and his foe and the world seemingly in flames is pure poetry. Batman is a character that should have everything but still not be able to obtain the small things that we normal folk hold dear. Someone that carries on his fight alone and doesn't 'get the girl' every time. We as the audience want to feel a connection to him and I feel I understood more of what was going on in this character then any of the live action versions.