Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo (2007)

DVD

I'm really surprised at the glut of animated material out there these days, save the major staples on primetime and Adult Swim. That material is targeted more for adults, and I'm surprised at the amount of animated fare out there catered to the younger crowd because, after reviewing several of these discs, it's pretty damn clear that these are all damn-near the same. I haven't seen any of the five seasons of the Cartoon Network show Teen Titans, but this straight-to-DVD alliterative title, Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo, only solidify's my theory's case.

The only difference between all these shows are the characters. Each show has different protagonists fighting evildoers and such, but the manner in which they fight them, and the way they set up their stories are so similar that they should just throw all the good guys and all the bad guys into one big huge crazy show and call it a day. The Teen Titans apparently dwell in L.A. or that roundabout area and this quintet of kiddies have a plethora of power at their disposal. Beast Boy (voice of Greg Cipes) is the energetic one and has the ability to morph into any animal, but for some reason his skin in human-ish form is green. Raven (Tara Strong) is the brooding one and she has some weird ability to create copies of shapes or something like that. Cyclops (Khary Payton) is the outspoken muscle of the group and he has this super-suit thing that can analyze stuff and shoot beams of energy at ya. Starfire (Hynden Walch) is the resident "hottie" and she's also the C-3PO too, an alien with a too-rigid speaking voice and the ability to learn anything. Robin (Scott Menville) looks just a wee too bit like the Burt Ward Robin, but he's the leader of this youngling band of heroes, who is smitten with Starfire. Anyway, this weird new villain, Saico-Tek, comes into town, with powers unlike they've seen before. After a long opening battle, they somehow manage to capture this weirdo and reveal that he was sent by an evil Japanese dude named Brushogun. So, they hop in their star-cruiser deal and head to Japan, only to learn that this Brushogun is considered a myth, an urban legend, and they must get to the bottom of this dastardly deed before it's too late.

This is a whopping 75-minutes long and, thakfully, they keep the pace snappy so it doesn't seem longer than that. While I'm sure it would be helpful to have seen this series before, I hadn't seen a second of it before and writer David Slack does a nice job of subtely filling first-timers in on the characters and their powers. Unfortunately, that's about all Slack does right here.

I know this kind of stuff is written far below my grade level, but these things all have the same little twists, the same love interests and, really, they're just the same characters with different names. You always have a pretty good idea what each of these characters are going to say, given the situation, like Beast Boy is the one who says dumb things at inopportune times and Raven always has that Daria-like touch of dry wit. They set up the story the same way too, with the big plot twist coming from a mile away. The only reason I watched it all the way through is to see if they'd come up with some cool special powers that I didn't know about, or something like that.

If you're a fan of the show, I'm sure this will be a fine addition to your DVD collection. If you're not a fan of this show, and you've seen any sort of programming like this in the past few years, you're really not missing out on anything new at all.

Not much here, folks. We get a Lost Episode where the youngsters have to take on a surly British guitarist called Punk Rockit who terrorizes people with a sonic-boom guitar thing. I guess these episodes are only like 11 minutes long, so yeah. It's not that bad, for 11 minutes I guess. The only other thing we get is Robin's Underwater Race Challenge. It's a little game you can play with your DVD remote, using the arrow buttons to avoid stuff. It's a neat little interactive game, good for killing a few minutes.

It's not a bad cartoon, per se, but it gives me the impression that these types of cartoons come in only one mold, and each show pours their different little variations of plotlines and characters to fill that mold. It's really quite annoying, actually.