Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo

I was a Marvel-zombie, I am proud to admit. Yes, I was deeply-involved with all of the X-Men; yes, there was a phase where I purchased every comic with Wolvie or Punisher; I identified heavily with the poor mutants who were basically like everyone else, if only everyone else could see that!

I have the X-Men/Teen Titans crossover and several issues of the regular series, but I never really got into them. Teen Titans was, back then, really the only competition The Uncanny X-Men had. No, I take that back -- they were the only competition a few years before I was of the age that I started collecting seriously; by then, The X-Men had no competition. And those of us who were into X-Men endured all manner of slurs and condemnation for our blind devotion -- specifically from DC-loving Titans fans.

I did, however, get WAY into Justice League when it was revamped (Giffen's pencils), and so I checked out several of those episodes when they premiered on Cartoon Network sometime back and, as much as I hate to say it, I just wasn't that impressed. I loved the letterbox format and the animation was excellent, but it was too serious and tried too hard. That's why I had only ever looked at the Teen Titans series once or twice, and that was a mistake!

I caught a few episodes at 5:30 in the AM a few months back, when I was working overnight (right after the excellent, new Transformers Cybertron series, which was what I'd tuned-in for), and I was blown away! So, of course, they immediately replaced it with some kid what keeps dinosaurs in a bucket...

So I've been seeking them out in the afternoon and have now become addicted, not only to them, but also Grim Adventures and Ben 10 (both of which rock). And they moved Transformers: Cybertron to 5:30 and have been showing Teen Titans at 5:00 this week, as well as at 3:30 every afternoon. But I digress...

The greatest thing about this series is that it's anime -- not hentai or the trendy crap the Empty-V-affiliated companies have been shoving down the mass market's collective throat for the past several years. It hearkens back to manga like Xenon and Dirty Pair, with its deft mix of serious, reality-based animation and situations, and blatantly cartoonish expressionism. And while the expressionism is often used for comedic effect, this is not always the case.

It truly works the medium the way classic manga was known to do (which is what we all loved about it... like 15 years ago) and has really reminded me that animation is sequential art in its most finely-hewn form. Let's face it: Fantasia is the cornerstone of the realm (go on with your Fire & Ice -- great flick, though) and 99% of modern-day animation is 16-frame or straight computer-generation. Teen Titans freely uses emotives and expressions and integrates them into the whole of the cartoon, with characters interacting with them, facial expressions rendered to extremes -- the whole nine.

I sat right up in bed the other night, when Cyborg got mad and Robin walked up behind him and pushed the anger-explosion out of the frame! It's so perfectly artsy and iconic; and they didn't bother to use clunky dialogue to explain to the viewer, "In other words, Cyborg got angry and Robin calmed him down" -- the story went right on, without missing a beat.

Next Friday, Cartoon Network is premiering a full-length animated Teen Titans movie, Trouble in Tokyo, and I highly suggest you check it out. I'll be taping it, because I am the biggest kid I know.