i will obey traffic rules

as you’ve probably realised by now, i’m quite a big teen titans fan. and i’ve been watching the series lately and its hard not to notice that in random episodes, the theme song is sung in japanese instead of the usual english. now, i thought nothing of this at first. i mean why would you? japanese themed show, comic book characters, makes sense to have a japanese theme too right?

but then i looked up the translation. now here was silly old me just assuming the japanese version was the same as the english version, just in japanese. i could not have been more wrong!!  please watch the video above and you will see the english and japanese versions with the english lyrics of both. the japanese lyrics are ridiculous! and hilarious. my personal fave line is “i will eat everything without likes or dislikes”. (maybe because it reminds me of the episode where cyborg gets a virus and calls the rest of the team “the nasty eggs who stole his waffles”. you kinda need to see the episode for that to make sense).

so anyhow, here’s me thinking “ok, crazy lyrics, kids tv show, thats alright”. but then i was reading through the comments thinking, “hmmm, maybe they’re just fake lyrics”, when someone mentioned that they used these joke lyrics whenever they had a completely random or insane or crazy or weird episode. so, of course, i tested this theory out.

and i got every single guess (ok, except 1) right! every single insane or weird episode starts with the japanese title sequence and every normal episode starts with the english title sequence. who would of thought that so much hidden stuff would be in a simple kids tv show? ah, the things you learn.

What decade are we in again?

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So, found this photo and just realized how true it is! I don’t know where all the time has gonna but somehow we’re a third of the way through the teens. Or is it Tweens? What exactly are we called this decade? And speaking of, what did we call the last one? The ones? The naughties? The unos? Anyhow, the point is that we (or maybe just I) barely even noticed this time disappear. And I think we just let this last decade pass us by. Yeah, we got all this fancy new technology and iPhones and all that stuff. But is that all we’ll remember?

I guess, the problem for me is I’m picturing the 90’s as my childhood. Movies and cartoons and toys and primary school. Which, in part, is true. But I was born in ’94 so by the time we hit 2000 I was just 6. Now, lets be honest, who remembers what they did from ages 0 – 6? So when I’m remembering my childhood or thinking back ten years, I guess even though I’m imagining the 90’s, I really am just thinking about the early unos. It’s so crazy thinking that within ten years I went from a little girl who loved Pokemon and teen titans and her tamagotchi to a year 11 student who still loves Pokemon (and plays the games on a Nintendo DS), knows how to download her favorite shows to watch them before they come out on tv and has her first iPhone.

So maybe more happened in the last ten years than I thought. The picture is still true. When I try and go back ten years, my mind immediately skips back to the 90’s, but I really am just thinking about the last ten or so years. Now I just wonder where the next 10 years will take us

Who is slade?

so, i’ve been watching a lot of teen titans recently (great show btw, if you haven’t seen it, check it out. if you like cartoons though. and awesomeness!!!!). anyway, the basic premise is 5 teenage superheroes who fight crime, their leader is robin (like, batman and robin, yeah, that robin). and in the show there are a lot of references to other DC stuff, like gotham city or metropolis and there’s even a fight scene on top of a Wayne Enterprises building. but what i didn’t realise until recently is there a quite a lot of connections to the green arrow.

for those who don’t know who the green arrow is, he is another DC superhero (who’s real name is Oliver Queen) and is an archer (hence the arrow in the name). i first saw him in the series smallville (tom welling anyone??? such a good clark kent) and now the CW has an awesome new series called arrow which is, you guessed it, about Oliver queen and his adventures as the green arrow, or, as they call him in the show, “the hood guy”.

so, i hear you ask, where am i going with this? well… teen titans features various random baddies (with some very odd superpowers might i add. like a guy who just shines light at people, or a piece of tofu from outer space that kidnaps cows) but the big bad of the first two seasons was this super evil dude called “Slade” who was robin’s arch nemesis and was hell bent on controlling the city and destroying the teen titans. you know, your average evil guy stuff. and he’s a brilliant fighter. like, he’s the first guy you see in the show able to take down robin. so anyways, not really sure what brought it up but i was just in my random, obsessive show phase of looking up everything and anything about a show i watch and i came across the wikipedia for slade where it said that in the comics he was originally called “deathstroke” but they changed it for the cartoon coz it was too dark. and that name sparked some little flicker of recognition. where had i heard deathstroke before?? (i’m sure you see where this is going).

and then i remembered!!! in Arrow, about a third of each episode is spent in flashbacks showing Oliver’s time that he spent stranded on a supposedly deserted island. but, as we, and oliver, soon learn, the island is in fact some kind of crazy prison/war camp or something (i’m still not quite sure yet) but all we know is there are some very ruthless baddies

on this island who posses incredible fighting skills and brutal strength. and of course, oliver manages to get himself tortured by the worst one of them all. and what was his name? you guessed it…Deathstroke!!! omg i felt so proud of myself for picking up on this connection.heres a pick of death stroke, you can see the similarities between the two characters.

but oh no, my curious brain didn’t stop there!! because then i remembered another character (and if you don’t want arrow spoilers, stop here) who oliver meets on the island. he was deathstroke’s partner in the army before they reached the island and deathstroke became a baddie. and what was his name??? right again…Slade!!. and they have matching creepy masks. (i’ve put a picture of slade below too, holding his mask, just incase any of you were interested. and he’s aussie too! well, the character is, i’m assuming the actor is too).

 

so there you have it!! crazy teen titans references in a current US tv show. although i guess really they’re all just from the DC world, not necessarily teen titans. but just a weird coincidence that i’m watching both at the same time i guess. oh, and another one i never picked up on when i first watch the titans series as a kid, but there are often episodes where the titans work with other heroes and one of them who appears a few times is this kid, very similar to robin. his name is “Speedy” and, yup, he’s an archer. turns out he is the green arrows side kick and they already cast someone to play speedy in the upcoming season of arrow!! ah, so much intertwiningness (that should deff be a word). anyway, hope you enjoyed that, although i’m probably like the only person in the world who really cares, i still think its cool. my one piece of advice, if you’re not watching arrow, you should be!!!