Teen Titans TV series, 2006
Anime was always going to win. It was just a matter of time.
I use the word “win” as if it was a contest. It shouldn’t have been, but American producers made it that way. We on the art side became their opponents, and we outnumbered them. So the results were inevitable. What am I talking about? Get comfortable…
I’m from the generation that was directly in the sights of Japanese animation, whether it was intended or not. I turned 20 in 1985, and by that time I’d gotten fatal doses of Speed Racer, Star Blazers, Armored Trooper Votoms, Macross, and others. These titles gave me everything I couldn’t get from American-made cartoons, and filled me with so much creative fuel I had to use it to make TV cartoons myself.
Thanks to a long and unpredictable chain of events (ignited by my comic book Grease Monkey), I got my chance in 1996 on a series called Wing Commander Academy. From there, I went to Sony Animation Studio and my career took off. The best part was meeting a whole army of compatriots who were all propelled by the same thing: anime. We watched it, we loved it, we emulated it. Our toolboxes were full of anime techniques and we applied them wherever we could.
On many occasions, this brought us into conflict with our bosses: producers from a slightly older generation that didn’t get the same infusion we did. They didn’t hate or fear it, they just didn’t have it in their vocabulary. So when we started plugging it into “their” cartoons, it didn’t sit right with them. Language is an apt metaphor for this; imagine you sit down in a movie theater expecting to hear everything in English, and instead you get Japanese with English subtitles. You can understand it, but there’s some discomfort.
When they felt uncomfortable, they told us to tone it down. But it turned into a Whack-a-Mole game; when they pushed it down in one place, it popped back up somewhere else. They couldn’t change the color of our blood.
Over subsequent years, the playing field began to clear. The older producers were fading away and younger ones were moving up the ladder. These were our people, those to whom anime was not a foreign language. It was only a matter of time before an American cartoon became so infused with anime techniques that they took center stage; a cartoon that proudly proclaimed its influences. That cartoon was Teen Titans.
The show was supervised by Glen Murakami, who got into the game five years before I did and cut his teeth on Batman and Superman cartoons at Warner Brothers Animation Studio. Cartoon Network wanted a Teen Titans series and wanted it to look and feel different from previous DC cartoons. Glen’s use of anime style was the look they wanted, so he was given the triple task of developing, producing, and designing. His work even earned its own nickname: Murakanime.
Happily, the audience for Teen Titans was ready and waiting. By the time it debuted in July 2003, anime had built up a good ten years of imports and US broadcasts that created a groundswell. 2003 was the year I joined Warner Brothers, directing episodes on the first season of Xiaolin Showdown. This time, when I wanted to plug in anime techniques, they were readily accepted. Glen Murakami had opened the doors for all of us.
Teen Titans enjoyed a long and healthy run of five seasons (65 episodes), airing on Cartoon Network and Kids’ WB from 2003 to 2006, closing out with a feature film titled Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo. It won awards and spawned merchandising. A spinoff titled Teen Titans Go! appeared in 2013 that led to movies in 2018 and 2019. These days, you can get it on Blu-ray or stream it on Prime, Apple TV, and Max.
So where do I fit in? After the first season of Xiaolin Showdown, I shifted away from directing to storyboarding and began a long run as a member of the WB stable. Xiaolin and the subsequent Scooby Doo & Shaggy Get a Clue were my main gigs, but at any given moment, I could be invited over to help on something else, and that’s where Teen Titans and I finally crossed paths.
In 2005, the fifth season was in production, and I was asked to sit down with Director Ben Jones. We hadn’t met yet, but hit it off right away. Ben is one of those low-key guys who feels no need to micro-manage and is happy to give storyboard artists plenty of leash as long as they stay within the style guide. I showed up in time to help him out on his last two episodes, and it led to several years of continued collaboration. He went on to direct part of Trouble in Tokyo, episodes of Legion of Superheroes, and every season of Batman: the Brave and the Bold. I was on his team for all of those, which lasted through 2011, and we reunited briefly on Samurai Rabbit in 2020. We’ll see what happens next.
Below is the work I saved from the two Teen Titans episodes I worked on. They are both thumbnail storyboards rather than finished ones, which will present to you the show I saw in my head when I read the script. Compare them to the finished episodes to see what survived.
RELATED LINKS
Wikipedia Trouble in Tokyo page
Click here to see my work on Trouble in Tokyo (and read another version of tale told above).
Episode 8: Lightspeed
Director Ben Jones, writers Rob Hoegee, George Pérez & Marv Wolfman
Aired December 3, 2005
While the Titans are away, the H.I.V.E. Five cause panic in the city, committing various crimes. However, Kid Flash interrupts their crime spree before being captured.
Since Ben hadn’t worked with me before, he gave me just a small sequence at the end of this episode to gauge what I could bring to the table. Fortunately, he liked what he saw.
See my thumbnail storyboard here | See the episode here (My segment starts at 20:00)
Episode 11: Calling All Titans
Director Ben Jones, Writer Amy Wolfram
Aired January 7, 2006
As the Teen Titans return to Jump City, the Brotherhood of Evil get ready for their final attack. When the Brotherhood make their move, the Titans have begun recruiting young superheroes. As the ultimate battle begins, Robin has a strategy of his own.
I got a much bigger chunk of this episode, which was pure joy to work on. It felt big and important with tremendous momentum. My bits were scattered around, since it’s customary to divide up scenes that involve specific characters and/or locations between different artists. Therefore, the episode cuts back and forth between my work and that of others. (Whenever you see an X in the board, it indicates a cutaway.) Most importantly, I found a way to include the Akira bike slide, which has become a rite of passage for all storyboard artists.
See my thumbnail storyboard here | See the episode here (My scenes start at 3:20 and conclude at 21:50)
Production gallery
There were a LOT of characters in this series, both heroes and villains, and they packed as many as possible into Calling All Titans. Here’s some what I was given for drawing reference…
