DC Nation’s intrepid animated series, ‘Young Justice’ (2011), opened its second season April 28, 2012 at 10:30 a.m. EST with “Happy New Year.” However, if you ask me, it could have been alternatively titled “Happy New Cast.”

Spoiler alert!

Season two begins with a time skip of five years into the future from the end of season one. At the end of season one, Superboy (Nolan North) and Miss Martian (Danica McKellar) were a couple, Kid Flash (Jason Spisak) and Artemis (Stephanie Lemelin) were a couple, Aqualad (Khary Payton) led the team, and Robin and Zatanna were starting to get closer.

Batman (Bruce Greenwood) organized their task force while Black Canary (Vanessa Marshall), Red Tornado (Jeff Bennett), and Captain Marvel (Chad Lowe) served as their mentors. The time skip tosses everything in the wind without any initial explanation.

In five years’ time, Robin, a.k.a. Dick Grayson, has become Nightwing and runs the Young Justice team, which has expanded significantly. Wonder Girl (Mae Whitman) and Batgirl (Alyson Stoner) are sent to help a political figure on whom Lobo, the main man bounty hunter himself, has accepted a contract. After a brief scuffle, Lobo reveals that the man he is chasing is actually an alien inside an android body and blasts off into space with his victim in tow.

Wonder Girl and Batgirl return to the Watchtower to discuss what happened with members of the Justice League. They find out that a scientist from Star Labs encountered that same race of alien that Lobo abducted. He was accidentally teleported to their planet where one of their scientists was trying to locate a colony of his people who were hiding on Earth in secret. These aliens have stolen technology, so the teams break up and go after them.

Robin, the cowl now worn by Tim Drake, Lagoon Boy (Yuri Lowenthal), and Blue Beetle stumble upon a gigantic colony of the aliens who immediately evacuate after they are discovered. However, the team is able to find a small group of people the aliens kidnapped to imitate with androids, though they are not sure why these people were chosen just yet. The next episode previews the other team’s journey to the aliens’ home planet to figure out why they were hiding out on earth and what their plans were.

If you recall in my last review, I am not a fan of ‘Young Justice’ for its many problems with sloppy characterization and frustrating subplots. However, I decided to give the show a second chance with the season opener, and while it removed all the problems I had with annoying characters, it still managed to drop the ball.

To make things simple, the time skip is just too abrupt. The episode opened with an almost entirely new team. Superboy and Miss Martian were present, but they are no longer dating, and the show does not bother telling us why just yet. There is no sign of Kid Flash, Artemis, Red Arrow, or Aqualad.

They are not even referenced. Granted, this appears to be a two-part season opener, but there are so many questions that are completely ignored in order to pursue new plot threads and new characters. It runs full speed ahead, and the result may be disorienting for many fans, at least in my opinion.

The expression “look before you leap” should be in play here, and yet, it isn’t. The show spent an entire season building up the characters and relationships between them ad nauseum in season one, then drops them in favor of a new cast at the beginning of the second. It feels sloppy and confusing, if viewed as a stand-alone episode. It forces fans to reserve judgment until the second episode premieres in case it clears up the initial questions we have about the team expansion and the change in its leadership.

It is certainly not the worst of season openers. The action is still solid, the voice acting is excellent, and the animation is nothing short of gorgeous. However, it is not enough to save ‘Young Justice’ from a whiplash-inducing introduction to the new season.

Episode two of season two will premiere next Saturday at 10:30 a.m. Hopefully, questions will be answered, and fears will be put to rest. Stay tuned.

Grade: 2/5

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My analysis of ‘Young Justice’ Season 1 continues with the problems I encountered with the characters and plot threads introduced through the course of the episodes.

Spoiler alert!

This leads us to the negative parts of the show, in my opinion, which consist of Miss Martian (Danica McKellar), Artemis (Stephanie Lemelin), and Superboy (Nolan North).

Miss Martian, also known as M’gann, is what some fans consider to be a Base Breaker: her presence divides the fandom into pro-M’gann fans and anti-M’gann fans. This is due to the fact that she is relentlessly annoying. She has an overused catch phrase that she stole from an old TV show she saw on Mars that she uses for more than half of the season; she has a dark secret that is honestly not that big of a deal and she has a pointless relationship with Superboy.

M’gann is one of the most poorly written characters due to her romance with Superboy because it does not have any firm roots. We are never shown why M’gann has such a crush on Superboy other than she thinks he’s attractive and mean. For the majority of the season, he is either completely emotionless or angry at everything.

Thus, it makes her seem shallow to be doting over someone who has attacked her on multiple occasions and almost gotten her team killed more than once. The romantic subplot honestly strangles any hope I could have had of ever liking her and she never gets any better.

Artemis is also an irritating character because she is rude, irresponsible and insecure to the point of endangering others just to cover up her feelings of inadequacy. She is the first to be suspected as the mole due to the fact that her sister is Cheshire, a nefarious martial arts villain and her father is Sports Master, another well-known villain. She also spends most of her time arguing with Kid Flash and pretending she isn’t attracted to him. While her archery is useful, her continued sour attitude and self-doubt make her incredibly annoying through the course of the season.

Superboy is a clone of both Superman and Lex Luthor. For the majority of the season, all he does is rip his shirt off, scream angrily and smash things. So, in a fashion, he’s a less powerful, less likable version of the Incredible Hulk. About halfway through the season, he finally develops a personality and for some reason reciprocates M’gann’s feelings for him. Once again, their attraction to one another is never justified or constructed well so we just have to assume he likes green alien babes.

He is later suspected of being the mole because he stupidly begins using patches that suppress the human side of his DNA so he can use all of his Kryptonian powers. These patches were given to him by Lex Luthor and also cause intense aggression every time he uses them. It is only at the last minute that he realizes the danger he is putting himself and his team in and confesses that he’s been using them for a while.

M’gann, Artemis and Superboy honestly drag down the quality of the show with their badly written character arcs. The prime example of their poor writing is in the episode where they stop lying to their teammates and each reveal their secrets. M’gann’s secret is that she is a White Martian, a rather gigantic hideous alien unlike her “uncle” J’onn J’onnz, the Martian Manhunter.

Artemis’ secret is that Sports Master is her father and Cheshire is her sister. Superboy’s secret is that Lex Luthor is one of his DNA donors. One would expect the other teammates to grapple with these revelations, but they don’t. These subplots, which have dragged on for the entire season, are resolved in five minutes flat. There is nothing worse than an anticlimax and ‘Young Justice’ pulled off one of the biggest anticlimaxes I’ve ever seen.

After that gigantic disappointment, we reach our season finale. Surprisingly, though, the finale was somewhat enjoyable because the team’s petty differences were pushed aside in favor of saving the League from the mind control of Vandal Savage. All of the action sequences were excellent and there are a few good emotional scenes.

Sadly, though, the reveal of Red Arrow (Crispin Freeman) as the mole torpedoes the episode back down to mediocre quality. We learn that Red Arrow, also known as Roy Harper, is actually a clone engineered by Cadmus to infiltrate the Justice League and implant the members with nanotechnology that would allow Vandal Savage to control their minds.

He was unaware of any of this and didn’t snap out of his programming until the deed was done. Cue teen angst and the revelation that the real Roy Harper is in a glass tube in Cadmus headquarters missing his right arm with no explanation to how he got there or why his arm is gone.

This storyline is the most disappointing to me because it feels like a soap opera worthy twist. It is tired and cliché and doesn’t add much to the story except to make clone Roy feel like a jerk for unknowingly betraying his friends.

Perhaps I have been tainted by other shows that have teen heroes with a better dynamic and better plot, such as ‘Teen Titans’ (2003) or ‘X-Men: Evolution’ (2000) where the characters are more balanced and less annoying. Either way, to me, ‘Young Justice’ ended on a fizzle rather than a bang.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.tv.com

The article ‘Young Justice’ Season 1 Analysis (Part 2) appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Cartoon Network’s DC Nation currently consists of two animated titles: ‘Green Lantern’ (2011) and ‘Young Justice’ (2011), both featuring DC Comics heroes. They premiere every Saturday at 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. respectively. While ‘Green Lantern’ still has another cluster of episodes before it finishes its season, ‘Young Justice’ wrapped up season one on April 21, 2012. Here is my analysis of what we’ve seen so far. I warn you: your mileage will definitely vary.

‘Young Justice,’ in my opinion, can be split right down the middle. Half of the show is enjoyable, engrossing, and fun. However, the other half is stuffed to the gills with poor writing, irritating characters and exhausting subplots that go absolutely nowhere. In the interest of fairness, we’ll start with the positive.

Spoiler alert!

In the corner for the good, we have Aqualad (Khary Payton), Robin (Jesse McCartney), Kid Flash (Jason Spisak), Zatanna (Lacey Chabert) and the Justice League.

Aqualad is the leader of the team: a wise, kind, levelheaded young man who is very good at what he does. He can be stoic at times, but he knows just when to reveal how much he cares about his fellow teammates. He always gets the job done and is a natural leader in nearly every situation.

Robin, also known as Dick Grayson for anyone wondering which Robin we have on this show, is the energetic brain of the group. He is the most developed and likable teammate, in my opinion, because over the course of the season, we have seen a wide range of capabilities and personal issues from him.

He is smart, dedicated, and fun loving, but he also has a deep love for his adoptive father, Bruce Wayne, aka Batman. One of the most touching scenes of the entire season happened when Robin shamefully admitted that while he loves Bruce, he doesn’t want to become Batman someday and feels guilty because he fears he may have to step into the role if Bruce retires in the future.

He also shows a hint of romantic interest in Zatanna after she joins the team and the two even share a surprise kiss in the season finale. It is, for lack of a better term, beyond cute.

Kid Flash, aka Wally West, has provided the laughs all season long and has improved the most from the beginning of the show. He starts off extremely immature and flirts so desperately with Miss Martian that it becomes annoying after a while until he finds out she is in a relationship with Superboy and eventually falls for Artemis instead.

Wally continues to be the funny, sweet member of the team who has a big heart and isn’t afraid to show it. He is also Robin’s best friend and the two share a unique relationship that is enjoyable to watch with each new episode.

Zatanna, a later additional member to the team, is a welcomed change from the likes of Miss Martian and Artemis. Her father, the famous magician and sorcerer Zatara, has trained her well and she is by far one of the strongest members of the team due to her extensive knowledge of spells.

Furthermore, she has an interesting tragic element to her character because she used the helmet of Dr. Fate, a powerful being who entraps anyone who wears his helmet and her father sacrificed himself in her place after making a deal with Fate. Thus, she feels guilty that her father’s soul is trapped in the helmet while Fate operates his body as if it is his own.

The Justice League is used well throughout the series and it never feels as if they are butting in on the young heroes’ screen time. Naturally, Batman (Bruce Greenwood) is the best of the bunch as he acts as the team’s taskmaster and surrogate father. He acts more like a father to Superboy than Superman, the boy’s biological match as Superboy is a clone and keeps everyone in line both in the League and in the team.

Black Canary (Vanessa Marshall) drops in every so often to help train the team and work with their psychological issues. Captain Marvel (Rob Lowe) and Red Tornado (Jeff Bennett) also share responsibilities checking on the team as they continue on their missions. Both are effective leaders as well as enjoyable characters.

That takes care of Part 1 of my analysis. Stay tuned for Part 2.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.tv.com

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