TV Talk - Teen Titans: "The Quest"

Well, I’m starting a little late, but better late than never!  Every January, I look at media that features martial arts in some capacity. You got movies, comics, video games, and TV shows that revolve around the art of butt-kicking. Today, I thought I’d look at a show I haven’t talked about here yet: Teen Titans… and I’m not talk about the “Go” variety either. No one wants that crap around here.

Anyway, this show was airing while I was in high school and college. It looked weird since we had DC characters in pretty weird anime world,but It was fun and especially funny. We had the overly serous Robin, the gothness of Raven, the macho-ness of Cyborg, the oddness of Starfire, and the hilarity of Beast Boy.  While it was pretty funny and quirky, it could get pretty dark at times. Today’s not one of them, but maybe I’ll talk about the show later this year. Today’s episode is “The Quest”, the second episode of Season 4.

SYNOPSIS

The episode starts out as Robin faces down a thief called Katarou. Katarou’s pretty skilled and beats Robin. Before he leaves, he tells Robin about the “True Master” who taught him. This fight ends up leaving Robin (almost called him Dick) dejected since he’s already learned from the best. Determined to learn more from this True Master, Robin leaves Titans Tower and travels to Asia. While he’s gone, the rest of the team decide to play around with his many costumes. Hilarity ensues.

I hope I'm this laid back when I find out folk have been pilfering my room...

When Robin makes it to the village where the Master lives, and old woman makes him leave his belongings at the bottom and don a uniform. He faces three guardians as he goes up the mountain. Each talking animal (a bear, a snake, and a monkey) teach him different styles and give him advice. He makes it to the top, but he finds out that Katarou (who’s actually a failed student of the Master) followed him. The two fight once more and Robin uses his tricks to beat the thief. Katarou tries to cheat afterwards, but the old woman (revealed to be the Master) stops him and gets the guardians to take him off the mountain. Robin and the Master then train together. The episodes ends with Robin returning to Titans Tower and finding his teammates all decked in his uniform.

REVIEW

I thought this was a fun episode. We got some nice focus on Dick leaving the Tower to go learn more skills. Even though it’s pretty brief, his training was pretty nice. While it was kinda predictable that the old woman would be the Master, she was funny. The scenes at Titans Tower were pretty hilarious. Seeing all of them decked out in Robin costumes was funny. It made it even funnier when Robin shows up at the end and surprises them.

I wished he had a read headband too. He was this close to homaging Ryu!

While I did like the episode, I had a couple of qualms about it. First, Katarou’s a lame villain. Yeah, he gets the jump on Robin first and he has a nice callback to another comic book character (Iron Fist), but that’s it. He’s definitely no Slade. I also wish there was some mention of Batman here, but I know the show was constrained with what they could include at the time. It made me thankful for Young Justice when it premiered years later. Also, the plot did feel a little slight, but you can only do so much in 22 minutes. Other than those things, this was a fun episode. It may not be the best of the bunch, but it was fun.

Not only does he steal from Robin, he also steals Iron Fist's costume. I just realized that Nightwing's first costume might have been influenced by Iron Fist with they had that high-collar thing going on.

In the end, this was a nice episode. It kinda makes me want to check out the show again. It really has been a long time. It’s all on the DC Universe app, so a binge may come soon. For now, I got to go prepare my thoughts a critically-acclaimed movie that took me almost 20 years to see. Until then, Peace, God Bless, and be wary of any talking bears.