This is how you kill depth in a character.
The amount of depth just fucking butchered in Teen Titans GO! is absolutely fucking unfathomable, but I think the worst part is how the creators of TTG fucking belittled all the characters original deep, round, and natural characters and seem to only cater to of course, Robin.
Raven originally had depth deeper than the darkest regions of the sea, being a character so complex she gained the attention of so many people. Being born as someone destined to be evil but tries with all in her to be anything but what she was originally supposed to be, she battles with so many inner demons to do things for the good of others instead of fall in a dark path of destruction, damaging lives instead of saving them. What is she belittled down to in TTG? A bluntly rude and distant asshole with her character surrounding around being just your average teen angst character cliche who of course, for absolutely no reason whatsoeverfuckingever, obsesses over a pony show that she’s self conscious about everyone knowing about such.
Starfire is an existential being who’s love for Earth’s culture and just the littlest things about it simulate her and fascinate her deeply, being intrigued by everything and bringing in her own thoughts to give a different perspective to situations at time. A strong, dynamic character who knows the difference between light and serious subjects who always has a small surprise in her personality to look forward to every day, is of course, being feminine and naive, is belittled to merely just a stupid girl confused about Earth who is just Robin’s major crush that makes her nothing more than just a love interest in the show. Which is established very bluntly. Very. Bluntly.
Beast Boy got a good (or well, bad) belittling, changing him from a very active and animated character with small quirks and always seeming to boost some sort of movement or motivation for the team is…just turned into someone who eats a lot, is completely useless, and occasionally changes into animals for the hell of it? He’s practically just assumed to be nothing interesting despite being able to turn into animals sometimes. His interesting self turned into nothing but a joke, a comic relief character is anything. How carelessly Beast Boys character was turned to nothing but shit doesn’t need anymore depressing comparisons.
And Cyborg. Quite simply, he’s seemed to be made the bigger relief character to Beast Boy, being who Beast Boy clings to and they both simultaneously act lazy and stupid for a 2 second laugh in TTG…seriously? He basically becomes a pushover in TTG compared to his self from the original show and is barely ever showed questioning his half-robot attribute unlike in the original show which is originally a BIG part of his character.
Robin is put simply as just translating his one-man-army but leader skilled self to a…power hungry jerk who drools over Starfire…his ability to organize and solve problems is basically fenestrated so fast that your head fucking spins even hearing a line spoken by him in TTG. He’s made into a MAJOR joke and is simply put as a worthless, non-complex and just overall BLUNT DOUCHE in TTG.
In Teen Titans GO!, all the characters to the creators of TTG were just seen as non complex…quickly thrown together as cliche boring characters whos actual canon backstories are only brought up occasionally for useless plot that’s just forgotten and thrown away later. Characters with so much to them, their natural, human-like actions, thoughts, and motives were seen as either too complex, too boring, or just both…
And that’s honestly the saddest part about it. That their realistic personalities just seemed…not worth the time to focus on for today’s audiences? Because creators of shows assume that the masses of children are just dumb and cant understand complex characters. It’s disgusting and breaks my heart that younger generations are getting reused vomit portrayals of genuinely interesting characters that ARE funny and ARE intriguing. It’s just fucking sad.
