REVIEWS

Episode #53 - Homecoming Part 1 Original Airdate - September 24th, 2005 - Fifth Season When Beast Boy's former team The Doom Patrol is in trouble, the Titans must embark on a daring mission to save them. Beast Boy explains that this can only mean one thing: the Doom Patrol's greatest foes are back. The Brotherhood of Evil has returned. Reviews by Bird Boy Media by Bird Boy

Titans Writers Written by Rob Hoegee Directed by Michael Chang Music by Kristopher Carter Animation Services by Dongwoo Animation Co, LTD. Titans Voices Greg Cipes as Beast Boy Scott Menville as Robin Khary Payton as Cyborg Tara Strong as Raven, Elastigirl Hyden Walch as Starfire Xander Berkeley as Mento Peter Onorati as Robot Man Judge Reinhold as Negative Man Glenn Shadix as Brain, Monsieur Mallah

Screen Grabs Additional HD Images Pans Sound Clips "I know what you're thinking..." (MP3, 149kb) "All right!" (MP3, 77kb) "'Whoever you are'?" (MP3, 130kb)

Review Everyone look, it’s The Teencredibles! I don’t know how anyone who watches this episode can’t draw comparisons to The Incredibles. Not that it’s a bad thing, mind you; The Incredibles is an awesome movie and this is a neat little action-packed half hour with some good story telling. Between a few of the scenes, some of the dialogue and the music (some of which sounded like it came straight out of The Incredibles, with a bit more of James Bond thrown in), it’s hard not to draw the comparisons to last years Pixar blockbuster. But, let’s get past that element. Here we discover what Beast Boy did before joining the Teen Titans. It’s not really an origin story (which the producers said they didn’t want to ever do), as we don’t discover how he got his powers. It’s more of a pre-Titans Beast Boy story, where we see him much younger (in appearance, skill and voice) and with four other teammates that make up the Doom Patrol. The leader of this team, Mento, is…well, he’s a real hard ass. He doesn’t let up on Beast Boy for saving the Doom Patrol’s (and later, the Doom Patrol [again] and the Titans) lives, instead of going after the Brotherhood of Evil. Mento’s logic isn’t flawed; sacrifice the smaller group for the greater good. But Beast Boy and Mento draw parallels to the dialogue exchange between Green Lantern and The Flash in the Justice League episode “Maid of Honor” (“If I were them, I’d want you to save the world, not waste time coming back for me.” “Yeah but we’d come anyway.”). True, he may risk the world and others lives, but could Beast Boy do the job alone? In any case, the story was pretty strong; I can already kind of see where it’s going, but perhaps the writers will pull a fast one and leave us with an unresolved relationship between Mento and Beast Boy. We’ll find out next week… The fights, as always, were amazing. There was some awesome choregraphy and animation. The absolute coolest part was Robin flipping onto the frame, Raven rising up and then Cyborg flying out of her cloak. It was all so fluid and awesome looking…I could’ve stared at that piece of animation for a long time. The music, as I mentioned before, was very The Incredibles-esque. There were lots of old-timey sounds and some extra James Bond flavor thrown in. Don’t take that the wrong way, however—there was plenty of fun to be had with the soundtrack by itself. When you combine it with the episode, however…you got a nice package. Overall it was a great season opener. I haven’t really enjoyed the last two seasons of Teen Titans as much as the first two, but here’s hoping this one can redeem itself. I’m not big on Beast Boy, but as long as it can stay like this episode, I could see myself enjoying it all. Oh yeah…the whole tuba/bathtub thing always angers me too. I gotta get me one of those Tubeorkals…

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