Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo
After the ending to season five, Cartoon Network released a feature film for Teen Titans, titled 'Trouble in Tokyo'. But I feel it works better as a standalone episode that happened after the Brotherhood of Evil stuff, but before the weird and reflective epilogue that's Things Change. Because, well, despite the higher production quality of Trouble in Tokyo, it still felt at its heart like any other Teen Titans episode, just one that's stretched over the runtime of an animated movie, and one with a lot of fancy backgrounds. It's not that impressive compared to more modern DC movie attempts, but it's still quite pretty to look at.
The plot is pretty simple. A mysterious villain, Saiko-tek, shows up and attacks the Teen Titans, causing them to bugger off and investigate matters in Tokyo, Japan. Robin is in serious detective mode, Starfire wants to explore their relationship in a more meaningful manner, Beast Boy just wanna read manga and flirt with Japanese girls while Cyborg and Raven are just kind of along for the ride. Of course, they find out that Japan's protected by this super-competent police force that take down Godzillas (quite literally a trademark-friendly Godzilla) every weekend, and Robin's only real lead is the mysterious urban legend of Brushogun, a superpowered villain that sold his soul to demons and was able to create anything he painted turn to life.
There's a bit where Robin was framed for "killing" a second Saiko-tek, and while Saiko-tek bleeds ink, the horror when Robin realized he might be beating down on what might be a living being is pretty well-portrayed. While the fact that the overly friendly and somewhat-dismissive head of the Japanese Defense Force, Daigo, ends up being the actual villain of the piece is honestly a bit obvious even as a kid, it's still a pretty decent twist. Brushogun is trapped in a huge printing press, forced to create monsters for Daigo to combat and make himself look good.
Oh, and all throughout this Starfire wants to become Robin's girlfriend, and actually confronts him on the rooftop for it, but Robin just refuses to let her get too close. Eventually, though, Robin realizes that he's a human being in addition to being a superhero, and he and Starfire kiss. It's not quite as well-written or well-handled as the 'Stranded' episode, but at least it kind of makes the coupling official. And with no more Teen Titans episodes left they gotta do what they gotta do. It's not as well-written as I would like, but it definitely could've been worse.
It's a fun romp that didn't quite deserve the big movie hype stamped onto it, and really felt like a two-parter or even a single episode that's drawn out to fill seventy minutes of screentime. A good chunk of it is mostly focusing on Cyborg and Beast Boy being funky tourists, a bunch of brief musical numbers, and the four non-Robin Titans fighting against ink demons that take different aspects of Japanese pop culture. Though that one multi-faced yokai thing that fought Raven was actually quite scary. But there's definitely a feeling of things being padded out in the middle of the movie.
I mean, yeah, I get it, they're paying homage to the anime inspiration of Teen Titans' animation style (and their Puffy Ami-Yumi soundtrack, which I don't think I've mentioned in the reviews) so they kind of have to try and make Japan seem bigger than life and whatnot. I did like how a fair amount of the background characters speak in actually pretty appropriate non-subtitled Japanese that got me a few chuckles now that I have somewhat of a decent grasp on the language.
It's overall a pretty basic, light-hearted adventure that felt odd watching after the huge epic that was the Brotherhood of Evil two-parter, or the somber and simply flat-out bitterweet Things Change, and felt like something that worked better in the middle of a season. But while it won't win any awards for being the best DC animated movie or the best Teen Titans episode, it's still a fun little story nonetheless.
The plot is pretty simple. A mysterious villain, Saiko-tek, shows up and attacks the Teen Titans, causing them to bugger off and investigate matters in Tokyo, Japan. Robin is in serious detective mode, Starfire wants to explore their relationship in a more meaningful manner, Beast Boy just wanna read manga and flirt with Japanese girls while Cyborg and Raven are just kind of along for the ride. Of course, they find out that Japan's protected by this super-competent police force that take down Godzillas (quite literally a trademark-friendly Godzilla) every weekend, and Robin's only real lead is the mysterious urban legend of Brushogun, a superpowered villain that sold his soul to demons and was able to create anything he painted turn to life.
There's a bit where Robin was framed for "killing" a second Saiko-tek, and while Saiko-tek bleeds ink, the horror when Robin realized he might be beating down on what might be a living being is pretty well-portrayed. While the fact that the overly friendly and somewhat-dismissive head of the Japanese Defense Force, Daigo, ends up being the actual villain of the piece is honestly a bit obvious even as a kid, it's still a pretty decent twist. Brushogun is trapped in a huge printing press, forced to create monsters for Daigo to combat and make himself look good.
Oh, and all throughout this Starfire wants to become Robin's girlfriend, and actually confronts him on the rooftop for it, but Robin just refuses to let her get too close. Eventually, though, Robin realizes that he's a human being in addition to being a superhero, and he and Starfire kiss. It's not quite as well-written or well-handled as the 'Stranded' episode, but at least it kind of makes the coupling official. And with no more Teen Titans episodes left they gotta do what they gotta do. It's not as well-written as I would like, but it definitely could've been worse.
It's a fun romp that didn't quite deserve the big movie hype stamped onto it, and really felt like a two-parter or even a single episode that's drawn out to fill seventy minutes of screentime. A good chunk of it is mostly focusing on Cyborg and Beast Boy being funky tourists, a bunch of brief musical numbers, and the four non-Robin Titans fighting against ink demons that take different aspects of Japanese pop culture. Though that one multi-faced yokai thing that fought Raven was actually quite scary. But there's definitely a feeling of things being padded out in the middle of the movie.
I mean, yeah, I get it, they're paying homage to the anime inspiration of Teen Titans' animation style (and their Puffy Ami-Yumi soundtrack, which I don't think I've mentioned in the reviews) so they kind of have to try and make Japan seem bigger than life and whatnot. I did like how a fair amount of the background characters speak in actually pretty appropriate non-subtitled Japanese that got me a few chuckles now that I have somewhat of a decent grasp on the language.
It's overall a pretty basic, light-hearted adventure that felt odd watching after the huge epic that was the Brotherhood of Evil two-parter, or the somber and simply flat-out bitterweet Things Change, and felt like something that worked better in the middle of a season. But while it won't win any awards for being the best DC animated movie or the best Teen Titans episode, it's still a fun little story nonetheless.
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