Owyn_Merrilin said:
The thing is My Little Pony is well written. The 2003 Teen Titans series, not so much. It was a pretty nasty blend of mediocre action and terrible comedy, which somehow managed to be worse than the sum of its parts. I was too old to enjoy it myself, and I'm a 23 year old man who never stopped watching cartoons, and was in middle/high school during the original run.
The new cartoon, however, is one of the funniest currently in production. Don't let nostalgic fans of the old show convince you otherwise, not until you've checked it out for yourself, anyway. Just keep in mind this one is pure comedy, it's even less of an action show than The Powerpuff Girls was back in the day.
TL;DR: I just don't agree. I can't help it, but I'm not going to act like an unreasonable fanboy either and personally attack you for that opinion. I just like the original show for reasons that are almost an exact opposite of your disliking. So, I ranted because it's such a strange dissonance I'm having. I suppose the 100% comedy vs comedy/action blend is what tilted the new show in your favor.
This confuses me so much. I'm so tempted to call you a troll, but the way this is worded and your reasoning, while I don't agree with it at all, tells me you're not. I can respect the opinion at the very least.
The original
Teen Titans didn't always have the best action I'll give you that. But when it was good, it was pretty good. At least, it wasn't overly flashy and lacking substance for the entire run of the show at every moment like other shows I could talk about. It introduced characters to a demographic that didn't even know they existed even if they weren't like the comic book iterations. The characters were diverse and all were interesting or had interesting things to say at one point or another; even if you knew that's what their character was all about and saw it coming, it was still fun to see it play out. They all had their arcs and character development. I liked the theme song too and how whether it was in Japanese or English indicated what kind of episode you were about to watch.
I find it funny you say it had terrible comedy when
Teen Titans Go! takes much of its comedy from
Teen Titans whether directly or simply in making fun of its dynamic. It makes it worse, but it sounds like you think it's parodying superheroes whereas I think it is directly copying the old show, adding or subtracting elements from the character to make them work better for the slapstick dynamic, and removing what was good. I won't pretend I liked much of the original's comedy but I didn't dislike it either. It fit. It went from beat to beat: It kept things moving. It's even listed in some top 100 best animated lists (no, not just IGN's since IGN is...I know this already). It may not be "THE BEST SHOW OF ALL TIME OMG" but it worked. The comedy and seriousness mixture wasn't jarring, they were executed at proper times; if you ask me people just wanted it to be jarring because of their deep connection to the comics or their tiredness of other shows that made them take it out on a show that walks a thin line between serious and comedic sometimes vs full out childishness. It had more serious bits anyway and was pretty damn mature more often than not. It was criticized for being too childish and then too mature (childish was more common I'll admit). The fact that it was criticized for both is what creates this dissonance between me and critics. It doesn't make sense.
On to my point: I actually gave
Teen Titans Go! a chance unlike some people who just hated it right away and I just couldn't like it.
Teen Titans Go! is just silly. It's good for kids I suppose and even then I'm not sure I agree, but that is a separate issue about how much disrespect and lack of acknowledgement and downgrade catering I think kids get, especially where I live, the U.S. Maybe certain very young kids.
The humor is pretty bad. It's blatant "let's almost exclusively examine their teenage lives when they're not superheroing (rather than provide the mixture people love about superheroes) and up the comedy times five without any subtlety or intelligence or real issue storytelling" cliche/trope. I don't like slapstick; slapstick is usually pretty bad humor and uninspired in my opinion, but I'm also told I have a very high humor tolerance. In other words it's pretty hard to make me laugh. I get that's kind of the point of slapstick, the broad, physical comedy simplicity,, but honestly slapstick works better in real life. I can chuckle easier at small jokes than laugh at better ones though and I just can't chuckle at this.
It adds nothing and is very easy to write honestly. I don't get why people here are saying it's an intelligent parody. I'm pretty sure, though I might be wrong about this, there was fan fiction similar to some of these episodes in terms of theme before the show even existed. I mean, come on. Think about that: Fan fiction. I wouldn't mind that a show like this exists, but instead of using the opportunity to create a new show they took an old one. The original series lacked closure and had a cult following for its fairly good mixture of serious themes with minor animeish comedy (like the brief chibi bits). I don't blame fans for being upset; many of them are very spiteful, unreasonable, and just plain toxic though so I agree there.
For me, it's not simple nostalgia either. Other shows from my childhood I have grown to like less. Nostalgia was never that strong for me compared to other people...except for the original
Star Wars trilogy and the
DCAU, which is inevitable. It's like they were created to induce nostalgia and eliminate criticism when fans got older. Just joking, though seriously pretty memorable stuff.
Now, will I start screaming to ban it and beg for Young Justice or the original Teen Titans back? No. I'm not that obsessive, spiteful, or messed up, in some of these fans' cases. I haven't even seen Young Justice. BUT, there are legitimate problems with the show. These kind of shows, if they must exist, I'd much rather they exist solely as a small little web series. As others have said, it's decent and for me that's just underwhelming and makes it worse than decent for me personally. I just had to rant. In my honest opinion, do whatever you want OP. If you're looking for goofy comedy then you'll like it: I can't say I do. That's just me. If I were you I'd just give it a chance on your own and see what happens like I did.