With the fifth and final season of the Teen Titan's animated adventures the young heroes go out with a bang.   Never really dipping in quality, the final run of 13 episodes is just as entertaining and exciting as the inagual season. With a large number of guest appearances (including an episode devoted to Kid Flash) and even a long-awaited origin story this is a season that fans won't want to miss.

The series is based on the revamped version of the silver age super-hero group The Teen Titans that was launched in 1982.  The Titans are five teenagers living together in Titan Tower.  Batman's sidekick Robin is the unofficial leader of the group. (Batman is never mentioned in the series though.)  Cyborg, half machine and half human, provides the muscle for the team, and Beast Boy, who can change into any animal, (previously a member of the Doom Patrol,) provides a lot of the comic relief.  The group is rounded out by a pair of women; Starfire an alien who can fly and shoot power blasts from her hands, and the contemplative Raven, a mystic with the power to levitate objects and create solid shapes with her mind.  From their base in Titan's Tower, a giant T shaped dwelling located on an island in the middle of a river, the group protects their city from whatever evil may befall it and bicker amongst themselves.

The season starts off with a two-part episode where Beast Boy gets an SOS from his old comrades, the Doom Patrol.  The World's Strangest Heroes had been hunting the Brotherhood of Evil, as they've done for years, when they were all captured or incapacitated.  With the Teen Titan's help the group manages to escape, but so does the Brotherhood.  Led by The Brain, literally a human brain in a Dalek-like container, and rounded out by Monsieur Mallah, a super-intelligent gorilla, General Immortus, a near-immortal tactician, and Madame Rouge, a woman with a rubber body who can steal anyone's appearance, the Brotherhood is a powerful organization.  Realizing the power that the Titans, as well as other young heroes have, the Brotherhood decides to stop them all before they can mature.

Most of the rest of the season is taken up with the Titans either fighting the Brotherhood or trying to warn other young heroes of the impending danger.  With a very large cast of secondary characters (much more than in previous seasons) the shows in this set never get dull.  The creators are willing to shake things up every once in a while too.  One episode is told from the point of view of a group of teen villains, The H.I.V.E. Five, who decide to go on a crime spree while the Titans are out of town (and hopefully join the Brotherhood of Evil.)  Unfortunately for the Five, Kid Flash shows up (a very powerful pre-Crisis Kid Flash at that) and easily defeats them.  A few times.

Another standout episode was Go!   This adventure tells how the Titans all joined together, quite by accident, when an escaped alien lands on Earth while trying to evade her captors.  But is she the real villain or is it the people who had her imprisoned?

There were some neat themes in this season, for those that like to look for that type of thing.  The beginning two part story with the Doom Patrol illustrated how both teams are very much alike (mainly populated by outcasts from society,) but yet totally different.  The Doom Patrol's leader, Mento, is strict and overbearing, and things that stopping the Brotherhood is more important than the lives of his team mates.  These older heroes are jaded, yet you can see where they're coming from.   If it's a choice between a friend's life and the lives of millions, you can't always run back and save your buddy.

One of the strong points of the show is that it's willing to draw upon the rich history of the DC Universe but it's not afraid to alter characters to make them fit into the context of the series.  The guest appearances all worked well, from The Doom Patrol to Kole, Jerico, and even Gnaark, and it was fun for ol' comic nerds (like myself) to try to recall some of the obscure people they dug up.

This set includes all 13 episodes from the last season on two DVDs in a single width keepcase.

There is one odd thing about these discs.  There are no chapter stops in the middle of the episodes. It would have been nice if they had included one after the opening credits and again half way through the show.

Audio:

There is an English stereo track on this DVD as well as stereo a dub in Portuguese.  (I'm not sure why they replaced the Spanish and French audio tracks that the earlier seasons had with Portuguese.  Surely there are more Spanish and French speakers in region one.)  The sound was very good for a TV show.  The explosions and fight scenes were fairly dynamic and there was some use made of the front soundstage.  There wasn't any noticeable hiss or other common audio defects.  There were also subtitles in English and Portuguese.

Video:

This show looked pretty good.  The fullscreen image was bright and clear, with nice looking colors and sharp lines.  There was a little bit of aliasing, causing some curving lines to have a stair-step effect, but this was minimal.  A nice looking show.

Extras:

The only bonus this time around is Teen Titans:  Friends and Foes, a 25-minute look at some of the Titans and their enemies.  Clips from episodes are interspersed with comments from the producer and writers.  It was fun to hear what the creators were trying to do with some of the shows and why the chose the villains and heroes that they did.  Well worth a watch.

Final Thoughts:

This final season of the show hits all the right marks.  Actually stronger than the preceding season, these 13 episodes are all entertaining and there's not a clunker in the lot.  Comic fans both new and old will enjoy these exciting and enjoyable episodes.  Highly Recommended.