animated

Though the new animated feature “Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires” bears the name of one the most emblematic American superheroes, its creation was entirely a Mexican affair.

The action-packed saga reimagines the caped crusader as a young Aztec man named Yohualli, whose father is killed when conquistador Hernan Cortes arrives on the coast of what we know today as the state of Veracruz. By the time Cortes and his troops reach the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, the brave Yohualli has become a fierce warrior protected by the bat deity known as Tzinacan (an actual Aztec god that fits perfectly within this fictional narrative).

Produced by Mexico City-based animated outfit Ánima Estudios, a company at the forefront of the medium in the country for over two decades, “Aztec Batman” emerged as an attempt to expand Ánima’s relationship with Warner Bros. Ánima previously produced two CG-animated films based on “Top Cat,” the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon owned by Warner.

Released Sept. 18 on HBO Max, “Aztec Batman” was initially conceived as a miniseries, and eventually took the more concise form of a film. And while it’s a work meant to entertain, the creators hope that it also ignites new curiosity in younger audiences, particularly those in Mexico and of Mexican descent elsewhere, to learn more about Indigenous peoples.

“The movie seeks to generate pride because part of our roots as Mexicans are Indigenous cultures,” Ánima co-founder José C. Garcia de Letona said in Spanish during a recent video interview. “For many of us, the other part comes from the Spanish. We’re not passing judgment because we are a consequence of what happened, but rather giving a slightly more respectful place to the Aztecs and all Indigenous cultures.”

Why focus on the Aztecs out of the numerous civilizations that existed in the territory that now constitutes Mexico? “Because they were the ones who confronted the Spanish. As the name suggests, it was a clash of empires,” Garcia de Letona adds.

“The victors usually decide who the good guys and the bad guys were when they write their version of the story, but they always omit or diminish the other side. And this is an opportunity to tell this chapter of history from a perspective that isn’t often told,” explains director Juan Meza-Leon, a native of Ensenada, in the Mexican state of Baja California Norte, who has worked in the U.S. animation industry since the mid-2000s. While Meza-Leon has a story credit, Ernie Altbacker, a veteran in the world of DC Comics, wrote the screenplay.

Key to the aesthetic and historical authenticity of “Aztec Batman” was the knowledge that Alejandro Díaz Barriga, one of the most prominent historians of Aztec culture, shared with the production.

“Alejandro accompanied us from the script stage to the character design up to the final cut of the film,” explains Garcia de Letona. Díaz Barriga’s contributions included details on how clothing differed depending on the person’s social class, and letting the production know that the Aztecs didn’t have chairs, tables or doors in their daily lives.

The armor for this Batman took inspiration from Aztec eagle warriors and jaguar warriors, and integrated elements referencing the god Tzinacan. For example, the Batman insignia in the film is at once recognizable as an Aztec design, while also instantly identifiable as the superhero’s logo. “We wanted the designs to have that pre-Columbian quality, but at the same time to look appropriate for what they are: comic book characters,” says Meza-Leon.

The animation team behind “Aztec Batman” consisted mostly of Mexican talent with a few other artists in Brazil and Peru. “Many of us in Latin America, myself included, never imagined being part of a Batman project, and that excited us all infinitely,” says Garcia de Letona.

From the onset, Warner insisted “Aztec Batman” should be produced in Spanish first, and then dubbed into English. The Spanish cast includes actors Horacio Garcia Rojas and Omar Chaparro, while the English version features Mexican American actors Jay Hernandez and Raymond Cruz. U.S.-based Mexican filmmaker Jorge Gutierrez (“The Book of Life”) voices Yohualli’s father, Toltecatzin, in both versions.

Whether you watch with the original Spanish track or the English dub, the dialogue is laced with phrases and words in the Nahuatl language, the native tongue of the Aztecs. “Once the story was finalized, we collaborated with a Mexican writer named Alfredo Mendoza, who helped us incorporate the Nahuatl language to differentiate between the different empires since they both speak Spanish in the film,” said Meza-Leon.

Batman’s classic villains are also transformed into characters that exist organically within the Aztec context. The Joker, for example, becomes Yoka, a shaman and right-hand man to emperor Moctezuma who can communicate with the gods. Catwoman appears here as a jaguar warrior, since there were no domestic cats at that point in history in the Americas. Some creative liberties were taken — the Aztec wouldn’t allow women to become trained fighters. The dubious Cortes becomes Two-Face, while Poison Ivy appears as an enigmatic goddess.

“The idea wasn’t to make a copy of the characters, but to capture their essence, so you could say, ‘That’s the Joker,’ ‘That’s Two-Face,’ ‘That’s Catwoman,’ although we never called them by those names,” says Meza-Leon. “We also never call him Batman; it’s Tzinacan or Bat Warrior, but the spirit of the character is there.”

Since the project was originally developed as a series, Meza-Leon has already developed a larger world. If this first chapter succeeds with audiences, an “Aztec Batman” sequel is feasible. The film is currently playing in Mexican cinemas and streaming globally. “I hope it is successful enough for us to continue exploring this alternative version of the conquest of Mexico, because there are still many ideas left,” says Meza-Leon.

With the 1980s came an influx of Western women ascending in white-collar professions — and their increase in power demanded some formidable work wear to match.

As ruthless as she is seductive, Spanish businesswoman Marioneta Negocios (voiced by Pepa Pallarés) is among them. We meet her when she lands in Quito, Ecuador, to wreak havoc in Gonzalo Cordova’s stop-motion animated show, “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads,” Adult Swim’s first-ever Spanish-language program, which premiered Sunday.

In the South American country, cuys (guinea pigs) are part of the local diet, but the conniving Marioneta wishes to change the local mindset so that the creatures are seen as pets. Her plan angers Doña Quispe (Laura Torres), who makes a living selling cuys to be eaten, leading to a melodramatic feud.

True to her name, Marioneta is a puppet whose look is immediately recognizable as that of Carmen Maura’s character Pepa in Pedro Almodóvar’s 1988 “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” The show is profoundly indebted to Almodóvar’s universe.

Cordova, 39, lived in Ecuador and Panama until he was 6 years old, when his family moved to South Florida. He discovered American culture through copious hours of TV, with “The Simpsons” and comedian Conan O’Brien becoming key influences on his sensibilities.

“It’s just such a joy to have this TV show that mixes together all these childhood memories of Ecuador, but also TV and movies, smashing them together into one thing,” he says during a recent video interview from his home in Pasadena.

“Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” from creator Gonzalo Cordova.

(Warner Bros)

The genesis of “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” occurred at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cordova had been working on a Mexican American project, but he ached to create a story that specifically reflected his Ecuadorean background.

Having worked as a story editor and producer on the animated series “Tuca & Bertie,” Cordova had a relationship with Adult Swim, Cartoon Network’s programming block aimed at mature audiences. He pitched them his idiosyncratic idea inspired by Almodóvar’s ‘80s films, Ecuadorean culture and his love of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, an L.A. institution.

At first, Cordova did not tell Adult Swim that he intended for the show to be in Spanish. He tried to ease them into the idea. “I did not mention that in the pitch,” he admits. “They showed some interest and when I was writing the script, I started telling them, ‘This really should be in Spanish.’ But I always knew that was the correct way to do it.”

Executives were surprisingly receptive and allowed him to move forward with the pilot, with the caveat that they could change course. “I’m not going to lie and say that it was just smooth sailing,” Cordova explains. “But Adult Swim really listened to me and was very supportive. It has taken a big risk.”

The funniest version of this TV show had to exist in Spanish, he thought. His conviction derived from his experience writing jokes and testing them in front of an audience.

“I did stand-up comedy for eight years in New York, and if you don’t believe in the thing you’re doing and don’t fully commit, it’s not going to work,” he says. “The audience feels it. And to me, doing it in Spanish was just part of the commitment to the bit that I’m doing.”

The HBO Max show “Los Espookys,” which set the precedent that a U.S. production could premiere in Spanish, deeply emboldened Cordova in his creative impulse. “That show gave me a little bit more of chutzpah in asking for this,” he adds.

For Cordova, “Los Espookys,” created by Julio Torres, Ana Fabrega and Fred Armisen, conveyed “a Latin American sensibility and sense of humor,” which he describes as “a little offbeat and a little quirky.” That tone is also what he sought for his show.

First, Cordova wrote “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” in English over two months with an all-Latino writers’ room, where each person had different levels of Spanish proficiency. Writing in English, their dominant tongue, allowed them to “shoot from the hip,” as he puts it. “The show really relies on absurdism, which heavily relies on instinct,” he explains.

To ensure that the jokes were not getting lost in translation, Cordova worked closely with Mexico-based Mireya Mendoza, the translator and voice director on the show. Once they had made way in the Spanish translation, the production brought on Ecuadorean consultant Pancho Viñachi to help make the dialogue and world in general feel more authentic.

“Pancho started giving us these very specific, not only slang, but also Quechua words and things that would make it feel very specifically Ecuadorean,” Cordova says. “I took that very seriously too. We spent maybe as long translating it as we did initially writing it.”

That “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” is decidedly a queer show with no speaking male characters came from Cordova’s desire to further exaggerate the fact that in melodramas or classic “women’s pictures” the male parts are secondary to their female counterparts.

“Once you go, ‘No male characters,’ your show’s going to be queer,” he says smiling. “You wrote yourself into a corner because you can’t do a parody of these kinds of work without sex in it and without romance or passion. I was like, ‘The next step is to also make this very queer.’”

As for the decision to use stop-motion, Cordova credits Adult Swim for steering him in that direction. “Initially, when I pitched the show I wanted to do an Almodóvar film with marionettes and Adult Swim very wisely said, ‘This is going to create more complications for you,’” he recalls. “They suggested stop-motion and connected me to Cinema Fantasma.”

Based in Mexico City, Cinema Fantasma is a studio that specializes in stop-motion animation founded by Arturo and Roy Ambriz. The filmmaker brothers are also behind Mexico’s first-ever stop-motion animated feature, “I Am Frankelda.”

Cordova visited the studios throughout the production, gaining a deeper appreciation for the painstaking technique in which every element has to be physically crafted.

For Cordova, creating “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” entailed mining his memories of Ecuador in the late ‘80s, including growing up hearing over-the-top, partially fictionalized family stories. Those recollections also helped shape the look of the puppets.

“We used a lot of film references. That’s why some of the characters just looked like they come straight out of a Pedro Almodóvar’s film,” he says. “But I also sent Cinema Fantasma a large Google Drive folder with tons of family photos. And we started finding like, ‘Doña Quispe is going to look like this relative mixed with this drawing from ‘Love and Rockets.’”

In this scene, Marioneta leads a “guinea pig rights group.”

(Warner Bros.)

The prominence of cuys in the show also stemmed from remembering how seeing them at restaurants or in cages would shock him when he returned to Ecuador as a teen after living in the U.S. for many years. Now he looks at the practice with a more mature perspective.

“I understand that this is a food and it’s no different than being served duck in a restaurant,” he says. “The show tries to make that point, but also preserves my childhood perspective on it through other characters.”

The line between the creative and the personal blurred even further because many of the costumes were based on designs that Cordova’s mother created when she was studying fashion in Panama and thought would never see the light of day.

Though she was delighted by this homage, her thoughts on the show surprised him. “My mom’s reaction has been interesting because she was like, ‘This is just a good drama.’ The comedy elements are not on the forefront for her,” Cordova says with a laugh. “For her it’s like, ‘I want to know what happens next,’ which I didn’t really expect.”

By putting Ecuador in the forefront of his mind and of this hilarious work of collage, Cordova made a singular tribute to his loved ones.

“There are so many weird little moments in the show when my family was watching and they were like, ‘Oh, that’s your tía’s name, that’s your sister’s nickname.’” Cordova recalls fondly. “It’s almost like how in superhero movies they’ll put Easter eggs, these are Easter eggs for my family only.”

But there’s another opinion Cordova is eager to hear, that of Almodóvar himself. His hope is that, if the Spanish master somehow comes across the show, he feels his admiration.

“I hope that if he does watch it, that he knows it is just very lovingly inspired by his work and that it’s not a theft,” Cordova says. “I make it very obvious who I’m taking from. I may have borrowed from him quite a bit, so I hope he sees that it’s done out of a deep respect.”

Snoopy is the superstar of the “Peanuts” world, but Ben Folds is loyal to Charlie Brown. “I’m going to have to go with Chuck because he’s so emotionally compressed,” the singer-songwriter said when asked for a favorite.

Folds didn’t grow up poring over the Charles M. Schulz comics or memorizing the TV specials — “I can’t think of anything I really was a fan of outside of music” — but he loved Vince Guaraldi’s music for the animated specials.

He started studying Charlie Brown and the gang when he was hired to write the title song for “It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown,” sung by Charlie’s sister Sally in the 2022 Apple TV special. And he recently dove back into the world of these iconic characters when he returned to write the final three songs for “Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical.”

“I think it’s good that I came to fully appreciate the world of ‘Peanuts’ as an adult,” says Folds, although he adds that he was still starstruck about writing for Charlie Brown. “It’s a lot of responsibility,” he says. “I was asking the Schulz family, ‘Can I say this?’ and they’d say, ‘Yes, it’s yours.’”

Ben Folds performs in concert during the “Paper Airplane Request Tour” at ACL Live at The Moody Theatre on December 11, 2024 in Austin, Tx.

(Rick Kern / Getty Images)

Folds’ best-known songs, such as “Brick,” “Song for the Dumped,” “Army,” “Rockin’ the Suburbs” and “Zak and Sara,” may seem too sardonic or dark for the sweet world of Snoopy and company. But he sees it differently.

“There’s a lot of deep stuff there. ‘Peanuts,’ like ‘Mister Rogers,’ presents an empathetic and nuanced, not dumbed-down view of the world, and that is rare for kids programming,” he says. “I was able to say stuff in my songs that kids will understand but that will go over the heads of many adults.”

He also knows how to approach the storytelling aspect of musical writing pragmatically.

Within the show’s parameters, Folds is grateful to the creators for giving him his artistic freedom. “They give me carte blanche and don’t push back” Folds says, adding that when he puts in poetic imagery — ”I’m not calling myself f—ing Keats or anything,” he adds as an aside — director Erik Wiese would weave those ideas into the animation. “That’s really cool to see.”

“My ambition is to have them tell me that my lyrics meant they could delete pages of script,” he adds. “That’s what these songs are for.”

Wiese says Folds was the ideal person to “take the mantle” from Guaraldi: “He brings a modern thing and his lyrics are so poetic; on his albums he always touches your heart.”

Writer and executive producer Craig Schulz, who is Charles’ son, was impressed by both Folds’ songwriting and the responsibility the musician felt to the “Peanuts” brand. “He has a unique ability to really get into what each of the gang is thinking and drive the audience in the direction we want to,” says Schulz, adding that there was one day where the writers got on the phone with Folds to explain the emotions they needed a scene to convey “and suddenly he says, ‘I got it, I’m super-excited’ and then he hangs up and runs to the piano and cranks it out.”

The first song Folds wrote for “A Summer Musical” was when Charlie Brown realizes that the camp he holds dear “is going to get mown over in the name of progress. I wanted him to have the wisdom of his 60-year-old self to go back to ‘when we were light as the clouds’ to let him understand the future,” he says. So it’s a poignant song even as he’s writing about Charlie Brown looking through “old pictures of people he met five days ago. That’s the way kids are — they’re taking in a whole world and learning a lot in five days.”

(He did not write the show’s first two songs, though you’ll hear plenty of Folds-esque piano and melody in them because, Wiese says, “We wanted it to sound cohesive.”)

In the final song, Folds’ lyrics celebrate the saving of the camp (yeah, spoiler alert, but it’s “Peanuts,” so you know the ending will be happy), but he laces in the idea that these children are inheriting a lot of bad things from older generations, including climate change. But it’s not cynical, instead adding an understanding that their parents did the best they could (with a “Hello Mother, Hello Father” reference thrown in for the old-timers) and that this new generation will do the best they can and make their own mistakes.

Franklin, Marcie, Peppermint Patty, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock and Sally in “Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical.”

(Apple TV+)

Folds says it’s important for people in the arts and on the left to bring a realistic view but not to become doomsayers.

“I see how bad it could get, but there are two stories you can always tell that might be true — one way to talk about climate change will leave people saying, ‘We’re screwed anyway so I’ll just drink out of plastic bottles and toss them in the garbage,’ but the other way is to motivate people, to tell a story that shows an aspiration towards the future.”

That does not mean, of course, that Folds is blind to the perils of the moment. He stepped down as the National Symphony Orchestra’s artistic advisor at the Kennedy Center to protest Donald Trump’s power play there.

“I couldn’t be a pawn in that,” he says. “Was I supposed to call my homies like Sara Bareilles and say, ‘Hey, do you want to come play here?’” But he’s focusing on the positive, noting that he’s now working with other symphony orchestras with that free time.

Folds has recently also tried countering the turmoil of our current era: Last year he released his first Christmas album, “Sleigher,” and his 2023 album “What Matters Most” opens with “But Wait, There’s More,” which offers political commentary but then talks about believing in the good of humankind, and closes with the uplifting “Moments.”

And obviously, Folds knows that a show that stars a beagle and a small yellow bird that defies classification is not the right place to get bogged down in the issues of the day. Even when the lyrics dip into melancholy waters, they find a positive place to land.

“In this era I don’t want the art that passes through my world to not have some semblance of hope,” he says.

For decades, Pixar could hardly miss with its original animated films.

Whether the subject was toys, fish or a cantankerous old man, the Emeryville-based computer animation studio churned out hit after hit.

But since the COVID-19 pandemic, Pixar and other animation studios have struggled to break through at the box office with the same kinds of original movies that defined the industry. Instead, sequels such as “Inside Out 2” have ruled the genre.

This weekend, Walt Disney Co.-owned Pixar will face its latest test with the release of “Elio,” an original film about a young boy who seeks connection with aliens to make up for his loneliness on Earth.

The movie is tracking to bring in $18 million to $25 million in ticket sales from the U.S. and Canada during its opening weekend, according to box office analysis. (The film’s reported budget is in the range of $150 million to $200 million.)

That would be considered a soft debut by Pixar standards, indicating the dilemma the animation business — and the movie industry writ large — faces with original content. While audiences often say they want to see new stories, box office ticket sales show they gravitate toward sequels, reboots and other familiar fare.

“You need to be launching new franchises to keep the pipeline fresh,” said Doug Creutz, senior media and entertainment analyst at TD Cowen. “Since the pandemic ended, original animated films have just been getting killed at the box office … no matter how good they are.”

Pixar executives, nonetheless, say they’re committed to telling original stories, which are key to the future health of the industry.

“You wouldn’t have Pixar without ‘Toy Story,’ our first original film 30 years ago!” Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter wrote in an emailed statement. “And while we also love digging into new layers of familiar worlds and characters through our sequels, I’d say there’s a unique thrill in unearthing a new story.”

Disney and Pixar’s previous original movie “Elemental” made just $29.6 million in its opening weekend in 2023, causing many in the industry to write it off as a flop, before strong word-of-mouth reviews propelled the film to a solid worldwide gross of $496 million.

Sister studio Walt Disney Animation Studios has also recently struggled with originals, including 2022’s “Strange World” and 2023’s “Wish.”

The pandemic had a major effect on theatrical attendance for animated films. At the onset, studios including Pixar put their new animated movies on streaming services to give families something to watch during the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders and keep people from spreading the disease.

Movies such as 2020’s “Soul,” 2021’s “Luca” and 2022’s “Turning Red” were all sent straight to the Disney+ streaming service. Despite critical acclaim — winning an Academy Award for animated feature — “Soul” grossed just $121.9 million in worldwide theatrical revenue.

Even when movie theaters started reopening, families were slow to return due to health concerns and familiarity with watching movies at home, which dented animated films’ box office potential. Pixar’s 2022 “Toy Story” spinoff “Lightyear” did poorly at the box office partially due to this timing, as well as quality issues, marketing challenges and right-wing backlash to an on-screen kiss between a same-sex couple.

Other studios, too, face challenges with originals.

Universal Pictures’ 2023 original animated movie “Migration” also saw a soft box office total. The same year, Universal grossed more than $1 billion from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” based on the Nintendo game franchise.

Last year, Universal’s “The Wild Robot,” which is adapted from a 2016 children’s book, debuted to strong reviews, but grossed $333 million in box office revenue, compared with the $492 million reaped by Paramount Pictures’ “Sonic the Hedgehog 3.”

Now family films are ruling the box office.

So far this summer, many of the films that have propelled the box office are family-friendly — Warner Bros. Pictures’ “A Minecraft Movie,” and live-action remakes “Lilo & Stitch” from Disney and “How to Train Your Dragon” from Universal.

Last year, Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” hauled in nearly $1.7 billion in global box office revenue last year, while Universal and Illumination Entertainment’s “Despicable Me 4” grossed $969.6 million worldwide and Disney’s “Moana 2” made $1 billion.

The common denominator among these films? They’re all sequels, reboots or rely on known intellectual property.

But industry insiders and analysts say that simply focusing on new chapters of existing stories risks making the animation space stale.

“If you’re trying to grow the business, you need new content, you need new franchises, you need new things for people to be excited about,” said Creutz of TD Cowen.

But beyond the box office, Pixar original films can get exposure — and drive business — through other parts of the Disney empire. Movies eventually debut on Disney+ and characters will show up on merchandise or in the theme parks, which can expand a film’s reach.

“Pixar is in the long-term business,” said David A. Gross, who writes a movie industry newsletter. “They want to create stories that last, and if that works in bringing back a sequel, great, but there is enormous value for streaming for these pictures, whatever they do in theatrical. There are a lot of revenue streams.”

Pixar intends to release three movies every two years, and the company’s strategy is to make one original for every sequel, company sources said. For instance, “Elio” was intended for release in 2024, but was delayed by the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023. Instead, it swapped with “Inside Out 2” since sequels can be easier to move through the production process due to existing assets.

“Pixar was really instrumental in defining the look and the feel and the tone of computer-animated films,” said Christopher Holliday, a senior lecturer in liberal arts and visual cultures education at King’s College London, who wrote a book about computer-animated films.

The company “is now at one of those crossroads where they are trying to balance films that have an audience built into them,” Holliday said. “And then they’re also balancing their identity as a studio of innovation that is pushing the boundaries and the limits of computer animation.”

Next year, Pixar plans to release “Toy Story 5” as well as an original film called “Hoppers” about a new technology that allows humans and animals to communicate. In 2027, Pixar said it will debut “Gatto,” an original movie about a cat with multiple lives.

“We think audiences love originals too,” Docter said. “Sure, it might be a bit harder nowadays to break through all the noise out there, but if we do our jobs, and create something that people will love, we trust that audiences will show up.”

With his arm forming a 90-degree angle at his elbow, Shohei Ohtani clenched his right hand like an umpire signaling an out.

The actual home-plate umpire, Tripp Gibson, didn’t make the same gesture.

Fernando Tatis Jr. was ruled safe at home. Three batters into his first game pitching for the Dodgers, Ohtani was charged with a run.

Ohtani pointed his glove at Gibson. He screamed. He turned his head in the direction of the Dodgers dugout, waving his glove as if to urge the bench to challenge the call.

The Dodgers saw another side of Ohtani on Monday in their 6-3 victory over the San Diego Padres, but that entailed more than him taking the mound and throwing a couple of 100-mph fastballs.

Ohtani the pitcher, they learned, isn’t as playful as Ohtani the hitter. He snarls. He barks. He’s emotional, even downright combative at times.

This temperament could explain why Ohtani pitched the way he did in his first game in two seasons — why he threw as hard as he did, why he couldn’t control his fastball, why his sweeper lacked its usual movement.

Hitting is what Ohtani does for fun. Pitching is what he treats as work, and Ohtani was amped up to return to the mound.

“I was more nervous than when I’m just a hitter,” Ohtani said in Japanese.

His performance reflected that. In the one inning he pitched as an opener, he was charged with a run and two hits. He threw 28 pitches, of which only 16 were strikes.

Shohei Ohtani takes the mound for the Dodgers for the first time since signing with the team.

“My arm was moving a little too fast, so pitches were going more to the glove side than I anticipated,” Ohtani said.

His first pitch was a 97.6-mph fastball that was fouled off by Tatis. He averaged 99.1 mph with his four-seam fastball and 97.4 mph with his sinker, throwing 13 pitches at 98 mph or faster. He was clocked at 100.2 mph against Luis Arraez and 99.9 against Manny Machado.

That was considerably faster than Ohtani threw in live batting practice and considerably faster than the Dodgers were expecting him to throw in this game.

“I wanted to be around 95-96 as much as possible,” Ohtani said.

Ohtani gave up a single to Tatis on a 99.1-mph fastball that was left over the heart of the plate. Tatis advanced to second base on a 98.3-mph wild pitch and third on a single that Arraiz hit off a 98-mph sinker.

With runners on the corners, Ohtani thought he struck out Machado on a sweeper, but he was ruled to have checked his swing. Ohtani pointed at Gibson and appealed for a strike but to no avail. Ohtani unironically made a Joe Kelly pouty face.

Two pitches later, Machado scored Tatis with a sacrifice fly to center field.

“A little more animated than he usually is,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Ohtani.

Roberts already knew Ohtani would be like this, as he’d spoken to people familiar with Ohtani, including former Angels manager Phil Nevin.

“I guess as a pitcher, he shows a lot more emotion and gets frustrated when things don’t go well or he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do on the mound,” Roberts said with a chuckle.

Ohtani was more in control when he retired Xander Bogaerts for the final out of the inning, and he pointed to the at-bat as a highlight.

“I was able to relax and pitch,” he said.

Ohtani started by attacking him with a sweeper that was called for a strike. He followed that up with a 95.6-mph sinker that missed low, but forced Bogaerts to ground out for the third out on another sinker, this one on the inside half of the plate. That pitch was 95.4 mph.

After that, Ohtani strapped on protective gear and slipped on batting gloves while standing on the railing in front of the Dodgers’ bench. As a hitter, he finished the game two for four with a walk, two runs scored and two runs batted in.

In the batter’s box and on the basepaths, his demeanor softened. By the time he reached third base in the Dodgers’ five-run fourth inning, he was sharing laughs with Machado.