Let’s talk about Teen Titans GO! for a minute.
Yeah, I know. This is a VERY polarizing series. It’s silly and nonsensical and loud and garish and seems completely inane to anyone beyond the second grade. No denying that. But what I don’t get is when people complain about TTGO! (and they do… a lot!), someone will inevitably chime in with something like…
“Teen Titans GO! is garbage! It’s a slap in the face to fans of the original dark and serious Teen Titans!”
Um…seriously?
This show was “dark and serious”? THIS SHOW?? The show in which 5 teenagers live together in a giant T-shaped tower with no adults and no discernible income who never take off their costumes (they even sleep with them on), call each other by their superhero names all the time, in one episode tried to stop a British fashion designer who’s stuck in the 1960’s from using his Yellow Submarine/Monty Python powers from turning the entire city stereotypically British and in another battled a wacky magician voiced by Tom “Spongebob Squarepants” Kenny who imprisoned them in his magic hat and they spent a bulk of the story as talking animals and in yet another episode fought a mound of living, talking tofu? You’re calling THIS show “dark and serious”??
Teen Titans GO! is very juvenile, I’ll give you that, but let’s not let our fandom cloud our memories and capacity for logical thinking, shall we? The 2003 Teen Titans series was a silly show that was occasionally intense, not an intense show that was occasionally silly. Selective memory much? Yeah, there were some intense, dramatic moments, but overall it was pretty darn goofy.
The show was like a group of kids playing superheroes, but the game never stopped. The kids stayed in character and play-acted all day and all night. Am I calling Teen Titans: TAS bad? No. But it was not “dark and serious”. The show did a Wacky Races spoof in one episode, for crying out loud.
On a similar note, when people bad-mouth the 2016 Powerpuff Girls reboot (and they do)…
…I’ll hear something like:
“This show is an abomination! It’s a dumb comedy instead of a serious action cartoon like the original PPG was!”
-Whaaa? You think the original Powerpuff Girls was a serious action cartoon?
Were we watching the same show back then? Or was there another show called The Powerpuff Girls that I’m not aware of? ‘Cause the PPG show that I saw was a comedy cartoon which sent up the superhero genre, like The Tick. I once said that very thing to some wanking fan, and said fan replied with:
“The Tick was a silly parody!”
And Powerpuff Girls wasn’t??
“PPG aired on Toonami for a little while!”
So did Hamtaro, so following your logic, that would also make Hamtaro an action cartoon.
Again, you can prefer whichever incarnation of PPG that you choose, but don’t hand me this malarkey that the original PPG was this hardcore action cartoon, because I know it wasn’t. I was there. It was a show about 3 color-coordinated kindergarten aged girls with crazy superpowers who spent their days fighting a super-smart chimp, a metrosexual demon, a big pink furry hillbilly monster and a gang of green skinned mutant juvenile delinquents.
Here’s today’s Unpopular Opinion. It’s actually a truism, so some of you hardcore super-fans might want to sit down for this one:
THE SUPERHERO GENRE…IS…SILLY!
No, I’m not denying that there’s some great writing and action and even drama in the better stories, nor am I saying that superhero stories aren’t cool, they most certainly can be, but let’s face it: the genre as a whole is inherently goofy and absurd. It’s a universe littered with muscularly fit guys and gals who somehow come into possession of crazy magic powers and mad skills, they give themselves silly names and don brightly colored pajamas with giant letters and/or symbols on them and use said crazy magic powers to do battle against bank robbers, space invaders, mad scientists and would-be world conquerors. Reality check time: superheroes are already silly as all get-out, so turning them into fun, strictly-for-laughs comedies isn’t really that big of a stretch.
I’m not saying people have to enjoy the likes of Teen Titans GO! or Powerpuff Girls 2016; chances are if you’re above the target age group for these shows and you grew up watching their predecessors, then these shows are likely not going to be your cup of tea, but before you attempt to claim that the previous incarnations of these shows were something akin to Lord of the Rings or 12 Angry Men, you might want to take these off:
NOSTALGIA GOGGLES. Now with 75% More Blind Ignorance!
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