Young Justice begins with the same question as any other story that expands its roster. Do we really need more characters? The original Justice League cartoon had a handful of heroes and it was working fine. Justice League Unlimited increased the roster to several dozens and that took away a lot of the importance of the founding members by adding a lot more, less interesting heroes. And now atop of that, we get Young Justice, which adds even more heroes to the roster. They are a new generation alright, but what need is there for one, if the older one is still active, a hundred times more powerful, and 10 times more in numbers?
The new characters feel unneeded as they always get overshadowed by the old ones. It’s even worse when most of them are pale imitations of their mentors. Same powers, similar names, some are actual clones of them. If the OG team was dead or too old to fight, it could be excused better. But since in comic books and fighting shonen nobody ever stays dead permanently, the more they expand the roster, the less they make you care. They kinda try to mitigate this in the second season by having most of the old ones away in space on a trial, thus giving more focus on the new ones, but even then it’s just a cheap excuse to keep the heavy hitters away because of mind control and by doing something that normally wouldn’t last more than a few days.
It took a lot of episodes for me to start giving a damn about Young Justice because although it had heroes, it wasn’t about heroism. In the pilot of the Justice League cartoon, the heroes formed a team to deal with a threat they couldn’t defeat on their own. It was cool to see them working together; heroism in its finest form. Young Justice does the exact opposite and has the rebellious sidekicks disobeying the adults, and seeking freedom by going on a mission on their own. Basically, they split the team for what is not heroism, but rather teen angst. I am not watching superheroes for what is essentially a teen flick. They spend more time being sexually frustrated and angry at each other than saving the planet. And yes, this does make them flawed and more interesting than their picture perfect mentors, but because the mentors are constantly around and are far more capable than them, this gets to your nerves very fast.
There is a reason parents are not around too much in this sort of stories. Teen Titans (the original, not the horrible Go) was also about teenager superheroes making mistakes, nagging at each other, and going through the exact same issues. The difference is, there were no adults to constantly scold them. They had to deal with problems on their own, thus Teen Titans was fun to watch, while Young Justice is irritating. At least they both use mysterybait, thus they are not that different when they make the same mistake. Both shows have the villains calling every defeat “just a minor inconvenience” in their masterplan, when in reality they never have a plan. The writers never thought of one; they were just saying it for the sake of fooling you into watching more. And don’t tell me you actually think they do, because there is absolutely no way to excuse the Light using the Reach and then Darkseid as part of the same plan. They are making up shit as they go along, ok? Stop defending them.
Anyways, there were a few ideas I liked, and they were pretty much your typical fighting shonen. The young heroes learn to use teamwork, grow up, have relationships, that sort of thing. But as I said there was way too much focus on teen drama to the point of taking away the importance of heroism. Most of the internal conflicts in Justice League were about the bad guys challenging the ideals of the heroes. In Justice League they feel far more petty and silly. My mentor doesn’t think I’m ready. My father doesn’t trust me. My girlfriend doesn’t love me. My hair looks bad when I’m going on a date. What is this shit?
I mean, yeah, Spiderman was going through the same issues and I consider it to be one of the best cartoons. But Spiderman was not part of a team of superheroes protecting the planet every day. He was alone, having to cope with everyday problems, and most of his enemies were street thugs. The threat level was low enough to excuse the slice of life segments. Young Justice cannot be excused when the lives of billions depend on them. Stop worrying about your girlfriend wanting to break up with you and focus on preventing the earth from blowing up.
I understand how having everyday problems can make the heroes more real and relatable. The Justice League is distant to the most part because they don’t have to worry about the petty issues of everyday people. On the other hand, the writing does not support the approach to more humane heroes. If you want your characters to face more realistic problems, you should also make sure every event is also more down to earth, so the two of them can mess properly. Young Justice doesn’t do that. Almost every conflict is about mind control, cloning, teleportation, fake deaths, and a whole other bunch of lazily-written plot devices you could excuse better in the far less relatable Justice League. But not in Young Justice; there is tonal whiplash when constantly jumping from down to earth teen flick to epic superhero fights. And that’s why I didn’t like this show. Fight me!
