Teen Titans S01E04 Review: Psycho Japanese Gods

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 4: Forces of Nature

Wow, what a weird episode. I remembered thinking this episode was sort of cool, but rewatching it, man, it really felt kind of weird.

Basically, the Titans encounter a pair of... Japanese gods, Thunder and Lightning, who run around riding clouds and launching lightning bolts and thunder booms everywhere. We don't really get an explanation to just what they are, and we don't really see the fact that they are actually capable of summoning storms and manipulating the weather beyond the small-scale lightning blasts they used earlier. They just seem to like dicking around and 'having fun', by blowing shit up. 

(The comics counterpart of Thunder and Lightning came to blows with the Teen Titans because they can't control their powers, which makes them feel like less dickwads)

This is supposed to parallel the focus on Beast Boy, whose attempt to prank Cyborg ends up hitting Starfire instead, and his justifications for "it's a prank" doesn't really fly until Beast Boy ends up apologizing wholeheartedly... and, well, Starfire's just kind of stringing him along, wanting to see the gesture of apology more than anything. Beast Boy also befriends Thunder, and tries to get him to realize that, hey, having fun on the expense of others is wrong.

But Lightning and Thunder ends up being coerced by a mysterious samurai man to have fun and strike random flags that... summons a giant skull-headed elemental demon of fire. Somehow. I don't honestly understand. Also why would they find blowing up random targets fun? We get some impressive action scenes courtesy of Raven and Starfire when they fought the giant fire demon, but Thunder and Lightning end up saving the day. Also, the samurai master's face is a mask, that hides Slade underneath. Who's wearing his mask under the fake face. Also Slade knows rituals to summon giant fire elementals. 

It's a really weird episode. Thunder and Lightning are flat characters who come off like kind of idiotic kids, and the attempts to parallel Beast Boy's own epiphany fell flat, because Beast Boy's lesson is "apologize to your friends" while Thunder's lesson is "don't blow up other people." Add that to the sheer oddity of having Slade disguise himself as a samurai and summoning an Infernal just adds to the rather bizarre quality of the episode. I did like Starfire and Beast Boy's interactions here, but it ends up taking a mere fraction of this episode.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Thunder and Lightning were twins (Gan and Tavis Williams) born to a human mother and an alien father. They were born conjoined, and separated with magic, because one backstory isn't enough for them apparently. This caused them to manifest powers over the weather that they cannot control, and came to blows with the Teen Titans that tried to stop them, before becoming their allies.