By: Peggy Sue Wood | @pswediting

I was having a conversation a while ago with a friend of mine about Teen Titans, a show we both grew up having watched and loved. The conversation drifted to other animated superhero movies and shows, but somehow came to Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go! where she mentioned that she wished they had stuck to the original’s anime-inspired approach. I was confused by her phrasing, because–as far was I was aware–Teen Titans Go! is anime-inspired. It’s just not the same style of animation and that lead to a whole other conversation that I’d like to bring you, the readers, into…

I think many people recognize how the original Teen Titans (2003) animated series was heavily inspired by Japanese anime aesthetics. It borrowed visual and tonal elements like dramatic character arcs, stylized expressions (the classic anime “sweatdrop” or chibi transformations), and even had an opening theme performed by Japanese artists, Puffy AmiYumi (Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura).

This version of the show was sort of a “first of its kind” in American cartoons at the time. Alright: maybe not the actual first, but certainly a first for many viewers growing up in the early 2000s. Around that time, Japanese anime was typically relegated to Adult Swim hours and so many were experiencing the heavier Japan’s anime-style capacity to mix comedy, drama, and action all with emotional depth for the first in an American show.

When watching the series as a kid, I don’t think there was anything comparable to it that wasn’t featured on Adult Swim at an hour most of us should have been in bed. This made it all the more engaging.

In thinking about that, I think people don’t recognize that Teen Titans Go! (2013) reflects a different kind of Japanese influence. Specifically that of short-form comedy anime, or tanpen series, which typically range from 3 to 5 minutes per episode. Shows like Bananya or Aggretsuko, but perhaps more similar to Pop Team Epic in terms of shorts put together for a longer run time. These shorts thrive on absurdity and rapid pacing, with stylized humor taking precedence over character development or continuity. Teen Titans Go! mimics this form with its exaggerated humor, rapid pacing, and episodic resets.

Both series are based on the same DC characters and both exemplify Japanese animation influences on American animation, but they go about it in very different ways—at least, that’s my understanding. However, I haven’t found a definitive statement on that in my cursory Google-searching…

So, to those of you reading this who have more anime watching experience: Do you feel that Teen Titans Go! is tanpen inspired the same way Teen Titans was inspired by other anime styles? Please let me know in the comments below!

On a related note, I think that Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go! offers an interesting case study in how Japanese media influences are filtered and reinterpreted through the lens of American industry standards and cultural expectations. The older series, from 2003, aimed to integrate Japanese-style storytelling into a serialized format that could appeal to teens and adults alike. The other seems to distill comedy into quick, easily digestible chunks like we see in tanpen series. It is interesting to me how these two animation styles in storytelling are approached in one kind of DC series. It is also interesting because Teen Titans was the far better watch but Teen Titans Go! has definitely been hanging around for much longer. I can’t help but feel that this might be due to how limited the American animation space still is in recognizing the value of short-form storytelling for audiences beyond children. Academics and writers do… but maybe the producers are still a bit hesitant? I don’t know.

Anyway… food for thought!