Love it or hate it the final season of the excellent anime-inspired Teen Titans is now in the shops. The animated Titans show has a fantastic ability to switch between brooding/dark and whimsy/light without missing a beat. I must admit I hadn’t seen this season until the review copy arrived so I’ve split this review in half so I can get my initial thoughts up before finishing the second disc.
DISC ONE
The fifth season of Teen Titans introduces us to the Doom Patrol – Beast Boy’s original team. Fans of the comic will know the Doom Patrol as a collection of freaks who debuted almost simultaneously with Marvel’s X-Men. While the X-Men grew into a massive franchise the Doom Patrol has remained something of a cult property and has often attracted a more innovative and down right strange form of superhero story. In the context of the Teen Titans Universe the Doom Patrol are the senior superhero team, a near legendary group of competent adult heroes led by the square-jawed Mento.
The Doom Patrol’s opponents are the Brotherhood of Evil who are led by the Brain (literally a brain in a jar). The entire season parallels the final season of Justice League Unlimited with a shadowy villain organisation gunning for the assembled heroes. It’s impossible not to draw comparisons between the Titan’s version of the Doom Patrol and the Incredibles. They’ve got the entire 1960s action-vibe and the Brotherhood of Evil’s initial set-up are very much in the mould of a James Bond villain.
The opening “Homecoming” two-parter is a classic rescue the family routine followed by a stop the villains heist. We’re shown in flashback how Beast Boy was harshly kicked out by Mento, then in the present day Beast Boy and the Titans are called in to free the Patrol from the Brotherhoods clutches. The action is really cool and its nice to all the heroes in action, but the new characters aren’t that sympathetic. Indeed they’re introduced to place angst on Beast Boy. It’s not something we’ve seen much of in the Teen Titans. Usually they’re shown operating completely free of any sort of adult authority and when adults appear they’re usually villains.
The defeat of the Brotherhood sets up the arc for the entire season as the Brain enlists an entire army of Titans enemies for his revenge. From the third episode the Brotherhood starts rounding up anybody who has worked with the Titans including the Wildebeast and Hotspot. That starts a world tour as the Titans touch base with various honorary Titans and run into different villains in new and varied locations.
The idea of the heroes operating in different parts of the world is interesting. I particularly liked the use of North Africa as a backdrop for the Hotspot/Madame Rouge confrontation in “Trust.” However, the inclusion of the Doom Patrol and the amount of time given to the Brotherhood’s activities actually leaves very little screen time for the real Titans in the opening episodes of their own cartoon. The fourth episode even features an entirely different set of Titans (the Titans East) fighting Film Freak.
The season arc isn’t too heavily stressed, but care is taken to make the Titan’s globe trotting logical. In episode 4 Cyborg is shown on the communicator dressed in warm weather gear when talking to Titans East and then in episodes 5 and 6 the main Titans team are shown in Siberia and at the North pole. It may not be obvious when watched separately, but it makes for a nice sense of continuity when watching the episodes back-to-back as I was.
Episode five, “Snowblind”, takes the Titan’s to Siberia as they track a nuclear powered outcast called Red Star through the harsh winter wilderness. It’s a fantastic episode and is one of the strongest of the season. The character I was most surprised to see was Kole. I never really cared for the comic book version – one of the classic dead characters – but here entrance in the euphoniously named “Kole” (episode six) is hilarious, definitely worthy of Stone Boy from the Subs. Episode seven, “Hide and Seek”, is Raven as Maria von Trapp looking after a gang of pre-school heroes. It’s a nice idea and seems rather formulaic at first, but gets pretty weird once Monsieur Mallah and Bobby show up.
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