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REVIEWS
Episode #51 - The End, Part 2
Original Airdate - July 9th, 2005
The stars are aligned. The sun is in eclipse. All of SLADE's labors are
about to reach fruition -- and the Titans are about to face their greatest
challenge ever. But is there really any hope of preventing the end of the world?
Reviews by Stu, Bird Boy
Media by Bird Boy |
Titans Writers
Written by Rob Hoegee
Directed by Michael Chang
Producer Glen Murakami
Producers Linda M. Steiner, David Slack
Music by Kristopher Carter, Michael McCuistion
Casting and Voice Direction Andrea Romano
Animation by Dong Woo Animation Co., LTD.
Titans Voices
Greg Cipes as Beast Boy
Scott Menville as Robin
Khary Payton as Cyborg
Tara Strong as Raven
Hynden Walch as Starfire
Ron Perlman as Slade
Kevin Michael Richardson as Trigon |
Note: The reviews by Stu are for each individual episode, while
Bird Boy's review encompasses all three.
Review (Part 2, by Stu)
Certainly more interesting than part one, by a long way but still not as good as
I originally hoped for. Teen Titans has been disappointing for a while, and
episodes like this, hell, most of this storyline honestly just feels like
padding until part 3. This review is for the individual episode (Bird Boy's
review will feature his comments on all 3 parts of this story) so I'm
honestly not sure if this story is going to be worth it yet.
The visuals, easily Teen Titans strongest feature, fell a little flat here. I
liked the designs, especially the 'evil' version of the heroes, Starfire in
particular looked awesome but the red backgrounds were simply distracting. Much
like "Revolution and" its Union Jack backgrounds, the red sky simply became an
eyesore after a while. I've always liked the simplistic take that Teen Titans
take with its visuals and its backgrounds were no exceptions but here… this
episode probably ranks up there as one of Teen Titans ugliest, despite the
animation reaching the show's typical, excellent standards.
The beginning was awfully slow paced, and the episode didn't really go anywhere
until Slade returned and The Titans discovered that Raven, God bless her, passed
her powers onto them. Before this particularly cool scene, it was merely Robin
jumping around the aforementioned ugly red backgrounds.
Whatever one's opinions on the show may be (if you've read my previous views,
it's give or take to me) one can't deny Slade's awesomeness. Slade is easily
more entertaining that most of the cast combined and quiet frankly, pisses all
over the rest of the villains on the show. None of them even compare in the
slightest. Even JLU lacks a villain like Slade. He's that good at being
bad. His motivation is finally revealed and he's finally unmasked. They say a
picture is worth a thousand words, so I'd suggest looking at the screen grabs,
because nothing I say will explain just how cool the visual was.
There's a low point to his inclusion in the episode however. After seeing it
done a million times before, we still get "Robin and co vs. army of mindless
villains". You get sick of it after a while, and for the end of the season, I
was expecting a little better.
Usually I finish with an overall comment, but I think I just said it in the
paragraph above
Review (Parts 1-3, by Bird Boy)
This marks the end to the fourth season of Teen Titans; it’s
certainly stronger than last season (which I still consider to be a pretty weak
season). It doesn’t touch what season one and two did—it was still pretty fresh
back then and I feel the show is running a bit low things to explore, in the
area of overall arcs.
A story this epic, deserves three parts—right? Sure, it’s about the end of the
world, but in the grand scheme of things, part two really could have been a
stand-a-lone episode. Raven was barely even in it (until the very end). Part one
set everything up, with Raven knowing the big prophecy was about to all go
down—it ends with her giving herself up. Part two, as previously mentioned,
could stand by itself. I’m not saying it wasn’t a great episode—it probably was
my favorite of the three, but it really served as more of a station for Slade
and Robin to talk, than simply more about Raven.
Part three is what wraps it all up. Unfortunately it throws in one of those
“easy plot endings” that season three was victim to: Raven magically goes from
being a little girl to her teenaged-self with long hair, simply by being
determined that she’d defeat her father. Like Cyborg’s magical destruction of
Brother Blood in season two, this just felt like a cheesy way out. Granted,
there are not many more routes you can take and with Raven it’s a bit more
believable, due to magic’s involvement.
As an overall story, it was pretty sweet. We saw some great episodes that set
the finale up (“Birthmark” and “The Prophecy”), with references to other
episodes (“Sisters”, “Switched”, “Masks” and “Aftershock” among them) and the
finale didn’t disappoint. The universe was borderline destroyed and the Teen
Titans saved the day once again. It’s a great story and those who want plenty of
action along with their fleshed-out characters won’t be disappointed. Teen
Titans is one of the best action cartoons I’ve ever watched and with a fifth
season on the way, hopefully it won’t disappoint.
A strange thing I just realized now, while looking up the episode names that
this story arc has referenced. In “How Long is Forever?” Starfire travels to the
future, where she finds all the Titans much older and very alone. In this
future, however, Raven and the universe still exist. Raven either wasn’t told
about this or simply forgot; otherwise she wouldn’t have felt both helpless and
hopeless when it came to fighting her father. Obviously taking that episode into
account would lessen the impact on the story arc, but it’s just something I
thought was worth mentioning.
One thing that was unbelievably strong in this three-part arc was the music. I
always notice the excellent work done in the series, but never quite as much as
in these stories. The music really carried the story along. In part two when the
Titans “evil” others come out of their bodies, you here wonderful hard-rock
music that’s reminiscent of Batman Beyond. Without this superb scoring,
these three episodes wouldn’t have been half as good as they were. All three of
the series music writers (Lolita Ritmanis, Michael McCuistion, Kristopher
Carter) were on board; McCuistion did part one, part two was done by McCuistion
and Carter and part three was done by McCuistion and Ritmanis. Of them all, its
obvious McCuistion deserves a healthy lump of praise for the recurring themes
throughout the episodes, knitting them together. Carter brought the hard-rock
sound to part two and Ritmanis did excellent work on part three as well.
Animation was as solid as always in Teen Titans. No qualms, no real
praises, it just flowed nicely along with the story. Sound and voice work was
great as well, with Hyden Walch providing some great delivery on Starfire’s
dialogue between Starfire and Evil Starfire’s battles and at the end of part
three, where she uses the tofu bacon to imitate a creature from her home planet.
Scott Menville continues his foray as the slightly pissed off, but still caring
Robin and Ron Perlman doesn’t let up on the menacing tone of Slade’s voice.
Kevin Michael Richardson voices Trigon and the voice fits the menacing design;
the man has some range on him, voicing fathers (Static Shock), insane
clowns (The Batman) and demonic lords (Teen Titans) and he does
them all superbly.
I’d recommend this story and season to any Teen Titans fan. Aside from a few
poor episodes (“Cyborg the Barbarian” and “TROQ” come to mind), it’s been even
more hilarious and action packed than previous seasons. Not one to be missed and
I look forward to getting it on DVD.
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