Teen Titans GO! A love letter
Getting away with insanity while disguised as a “children’s cartoon”.
By Scott Rayner
On paper, Teen Titans GO! is everything I didn’t want cartoons to be as a child. With my first experiences of animation coming in the late 1980s, I grew up in the glory day of cool-looking action animation. Everything from ThunderCats to Transformers had a more serious sci-fi approach for children. Of course, I loved classics like Flintstones, Looney Tunes etc, but generally, I liked my cartoons to be cool. Not silly.
This sentiment was mutual from fans of the early 2000s cartoon ‘Teen Titans’: a show which, while having a sense of humour often leaning into silliness, mainly took a more serious approach. This enabled its visual and narrative style to adapt classic story arcs from the character’s comic backlog. The show was popular and looked to be taking an even more serious path for its upcoming sixth season. Then it was cancelled. Even worse, replaced. By something quite different, and far more comedy-orientated: Teen Titans GO!
While the announcement of Teen Titans GO! in 2012 was met with support following the success of its ‘DC shorts origins’, a vocal part of the original’s fan base online was not happy, let’s say. But when the new show launched in 2013, a near-unforeseeable scenario unfolded: Teen Titans GO! turned out to be…amazing. A top 20 cartoon of all time for me!?
So, what exactly makes that ridiculously sweeping statement plausible?
“We stopped writing for the kids about 20 episodes in, and just started writing for the parents…there are shows (episodes) about, you know, how not to get involved in pyramid schemes, how to buy a mortgage…for the children”
In short, it's the sum of its parts, and some of those parts happen to be awesome. To me TTG! works thanks to its radically unique adaptation of the source material. It could perhaps be labelled as a meta-SpongeBob meets 90’s Nickelodeon with splashes of Rick & Morty. These wonderfully nonsense ingredients combine to make a cocktail of slapstick kid's TV – which is often aimed at an older audience. My favourite acknowledgement of this comes from an episode of Blackman Beyond (the spin-off of Fat Man Beyond which Marc Bernardin hosts when Kevin Smith is away). Here, guest host Khary Payton (who voices Cyborg on the show) confirms as much (see caption above). This attitude is evident throughout every episode of TTG! And it’s an enormous factor in the show’s success (check out the YouTube version of the episode here).
The ‘writers-room-writing-to-please-themselves’ notwithstanding, TTG!’s main premise and set-up is the start of its magic. The show features (comedy-orientated) action, but the opening shot of each episode is often a variation of the show’s focus point: the Titan’s messy living room. This setting essentially makes for a superhero version of FRIENDS. And it works just as well. The shift in focus from end-of-the-world drama to heroes hanging out in their kitchen is a refreshing take on anything involving people in capes. It serves as the perfect tone establisher for whatever whacky things are about to come. And they get whacky. There is no structure to this show. I’m not sure what is off-limits. And it’s glorious.
Like Friends, or SpongeBob, TTG! to me has an “appropriate to view at any time” feel to it. Maybe that appeal emanates from its bite-sized episodes, or the warming pink/purple colour pallet often used to show the night sky outside the Titan’s living room. Whatever the source of that vibe is, this masterpiece can be viewed at 11 pm just as nicely as 9 am on a Saturday morning.
Reinventing beloved characters
One factor helping to hold the entire show together is rarely found in any form of media: a balanced cast of characters, both in quality and screen time. Surely challenging to achieve, especially considering that each of the five Titan’s unique personalities must be funny, individually, and collectively. The ensemble is almost always sharing the screen.
As the self-imposed team leader, Robin doesn't shy away from the character’s mixed perception in pop culture. It’s leaned into, creating an intentionally annoying persona (to his friends) who sometimes must drag the team out to save the day. Starfire happily moves away from the character’s often over-sexualised routes to embody one of the most fun fish-out-of-water stereotypes of an alien living on Earth. Mistaking customs, and charmingly prefixing most words with ‘the’ at the start. This is made more fun by the infrequent reminders of her wildly overpowered energy beam abilities, often in social settings.
Anyone aware of Raven’s origin as a darker, edgier character (whose father is a literal demon), would be forgiven for assuming this is the one that would fall flat in TTG!’s comedic setting. Masterfully, as with Robin’s cultural baggage, they lean right into it. Raven maintains both her dark powers, somewhat goth-like appearance, and attitude in the show. All tweaked just enough to sync its visual language and driven to apply in a plethora of scenarios, thanks to the show’s diverse humour and comedic timing. Like Starfire, Raven’s magical abilities are also wildly unfair, summoning (just about) kid-friendly demonic powers to meet any social or combat need.
The animal shape-shifting Beast Boy of this universe fully embodies a BRO who’s all about junk food and having a good time. And that’s fine because his friendship with Cyborg creates a double act allowing for all kinds of off-wall jock/surfer-dude/reluctant teenager commentary on the team’s hijinks. This pairing doesn’t limit Cyborg’s presentation though, far from it, as this version of the character is possibly the most versatile in its history. Moving away from any pathos or tragedy naturally carried with the hero who is 95% machine (the TTG! version has little more than 3/4s of his human head still intact, plus some neck), Cyborg here has the all-powerful capable-of-doing-whatever-the-writers-want powerset. This will range from transforming his arms into giant weapons to opening his chest to make popcorn. And that 3/4s head? It can detach from his body, which reveals short, unconnected cables representing Cyborg’s four ‘limbs’.
The Bold and colourful character design isn't just for comedy, or brand recognition. The simplified look is also a strong stylistic choice, allowing animation for the Titan’s powers, monsters, and other on-screen chaos to flourish in fun ways. (DC/Warner Bros.)
The Night Begins To Shine
If you know, you know. And those words likely just sent a wave of empowerment through your soul. For the uninitiated, this may be the best hill to die on regarding TTG!’s greatness. In season three episode 10 (40%, 40%, 20%), Cyborg becomes obsessed with a cassette tape (of course), which contains a song by the band B.E.R called ‘The Night Begins To Shine’. It's a real song predating the show, yet it became a sensation thanks to its inclusion in this episode. Created to intentionally sound like it was ‘made in the 1980s, ‘The Night Begins To Shine’ features all the electronic vibes and cliches you’d expect (and want) from an epic track from that synth-powered decade. And it drives the entire episode, as it becomes Cyborg’s motivational fuel, to the extent that he can no longer perform basic functions unless he’s listening to the song. You can bet your life I’m linking the heck out of this below, but to give a spoiler-free round-up, the entire song ends up being played to the most perfectly cliched sci-fi/fantasy animation possible. It sees the Titans transformed into an 80s nostalgia presentation more powerful than Stranger Things and Guardians of the Galaxy combined. You should stop reading this now to watch it. Come back after, or just keep watching it.
The popularity of The Night Begins To Shine later spawned a four-part mini-series, which dives even deeper into the awesome 80’s presentation of the Titans. A spin-off show based on it has also been announced. (DC/Warner Bros.)
The writing and animation aren’t the only creative powers working in perfect harmony to bring this show to life. The voice cast produces exceptionally consistent work across seven seasons. A true testament to the talents of Scott Menville (Robin), Tara Strong (Raven), Hynden Walch (Starfire), Khary Payton (Cyborg), and Greg Cipes (Beast Boy) respectively, who perfectly discovered their character’s individual voices, and developed their personalities over 380 episodes (at time of writing).
Both success and the nature of children’s animation have not only let TTG! live out many fantasies of the DC fandom on screen, but also seemingly fly some (less corporately popular) under the radar of the DC/Warner’s bosses who have often been opposed to various fan demands over the years. After 20+ years of wondering what could have been, the TTG! Movie finally helped fulfil one of Hollywood’s most infamous castings: Nic Cage as Superman. The Tim Burton movie may have never come to be, but some beautiful fan service in TTG! To the Movies allowed Nic to “go full Cage” and embrace becoming the ‘Man of Steel’ in what is likely a far more appropriate setting. Though surely nothing better signifies the fact that TTG! can get away with anything, than the inclusion of director Zack Snyder in season 7.
Announced in the summer of 2022, just over a year after the Justice League’s “Synder Cut” was finally released, TTG! didn’t waste much time - following his escape from DC exile – to get Zack involved. It’s perfectly on-brand for TTG! and very fitting that their Synder Cut version of the Titans delivers exactly what the show’s critics and OG Titans cartoon fans would like. Here the five heroes are removed from their comedic setting, and presented in a serious, dark animation style. In a brief battle scene vs Darkseid (the mega-villain who required years of Synder Cut fan campaigning to see the light of day), once again TTG! rewards loyal DC fans with layers upon layers of references and homages.
“We have garnered enough success that nobody cares what we do anymore – they kinda didn’t care what we did before anyway – but they really don’t care now, because when we went off the rails is when we started to find things”
I’ve found that writing this has made me just want to watch the show more and more. I’m hardly scratching the surface of examples of what makes this show so special. I’m sure I’ll revisit these whacky and colourful Titans. But for now, I’m going to end with a few random and ridiculous facts that help to illustrate that Teen Titans GO! isn’t just a recent success, it’s one of the all-time great cartoons:
- There’s an entire episode where the team debates (then fights) over whether the Metric system is the best or not.
- The Titan’s have an ongoing rivalry with Santa Claus.
- Everything about The Night Begins To Shine.
- An episode centres around Starfire falling in love with an ice cream scoop.
- Stan Lee’s appearance in the Movie “…wait this is a DC film?!”
- The show’s version of the Easter Bunny is so creepy the team resorts to taking a giant Voltron-style mech to battle it.
- Stan Lee’s second appearance in the Movie “I don’t CARE if this is a DC film, I LOVE cameos!”
- Cyborg’s power’s versatility: firing meatballs from his hands, retracting finger holes in his forehead (to become a bowling ball when his head detaches from his neck), being taken apart for cleaning then reassembled into a functioning toilet seat, to mention just a few.
- Easter Eggs: whether it’s the cute plushie of (one of comic’s biggest threats) Darkseid permanently on the Titan’s living room floor, or the head of (the genuinely disturbing villain) the ‘Batman Who Laughs’ in a jar, no DC deep-cut reference is unusable.
- The Titans love steamed broccoli and hate when being made to finish their ice cream first
- The final moment of the Movie where Robin looks directly to the camera and shouts “Kids, ask your parents where babies come from!”. I sh*t you not, that’s how the theatrical film ends.
- The Night Begins To Shine – yes, I’m mentioning it again, yes it is that good.
I rest my case.