Constantine: City of Demons (2018)
Dir. Doug Murphy
An animated solo adventure for Liverpool's most famous warlock that has him investigating the reasons why his oldest (living) friend's daughter has fallen into a coma. Originally presented in episodic form (5 parts) it was later merged into one feature-length production.
Matt Ryan is once again on voice duties, as he was in the previous year's Justice League Dark animated movie and the live action Constantine TV Series (2014-15). There are differences with regards continuity between the two formats, so I'm choosing to view them as separate things. But it's perhaps also worth noting that episode ten of the live action TV series (Quid Pro Quo) used the same source text as City of Demons does, namely the Hellblazer: All His Engines (2005) comic book by Mike Carey and Leonardo Manco.
It was nice to see Constantine reside in the UK, which is where his comic book counterpart was more often located, before the story takes him to America like the live action series did.
The dark palette animation is decent enough but not on par with DC's work on many of their superhero titles. It had an occasional old-school anime feel, which in theory fit the demon aesthetic but in reality seemed cheap and lazy. But even more damaging to the whole was the voice work, with many of the characters clearly lacking belief in the dialogue they were given.
It's fair to say that I didn't enjoy City of Demons very much, but I'd be happy to see Constantine's animated adventures continue because it didn't sour my enjoyment of the character in any way.
- There's a right-hand man joke in there somewhere; I'm almost certain. -
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