#young justice cartoon

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We’re gearing up for the second showing of ep 23, come join us!

My review for Rocket’s arc in Young Justice Phantoms

Transcript under the cut

Hello!

This video will be a review of season 4, episodes 18-21 of Young Justice so there will be spoilers.

Okay  so I liked the arc decently well enough. There were parts that I really  enjoyed and parts that I found lacking. Which is how I feel about all  of the other arcs. Each one had things that I liked and didn’t like. Now  with this one, it’s Rocket’s arc and my main issue with it is that it  just didn’t focus that much on Rocket. I feel like we didn’t learn that  much about her as a character. I mean we kind of did with her  interactions with her son and such but we didn’t get anything at all  about her backstory.

Now in the comics, that being Milestone  Comics, Rocket - real name Raquel Ervin - actually becomes a hero by  talking a guy named Augustus Freeman into becoming a hero - this being  Icon. They actually met when Raquel broke into his house and tried to  rob him. Then she saw that he had superpowers and thought he would make a  great hero. She demanded to be his sidekick and she designed their costumes! But none of this is  mentioned in Young Justice so there is the possibility that this isn’t  her backstory on the show. Still, I would have liked to have seen some  backstory for her, whether it’s the same as in the comics or not.

In  the other arcs, we did get to learn new things about the focus characters, or  at least saw some of their backstory. With the first arc, we got to learn more about M’gann’s relationship with her family and that really added to her character. Way back in season one she mentions that she always wanted an Earth sister and implies that she didn’t get along with her sisters on Mars. And in her arc we got to meet one of those sisters and their interactions with each other really added a layer to M’gann’s character. In Artemis’s arc we see great interactions with her sister Jade and even flashbacks that add some context to some of their interactions in season 1. In Kaldur’s arc, there was an episode where he talks to his parents about the past and we learn more about his backstory which explains his personality pretty well. Zatanna’s arc is a little lacking in this area, the same with Rocket’s. We did get some flashbacks of her childhood but that was from her father’s perspective, not her own but it did still give us insight into her character a little bit. Now I do think Zatanna’s arc suffers from not focusing on her so much as it focuses on Klarion and Vandal Savage. I feel like Rocket’s arc suffers similarly by focusing a little too much on the Zod family.

I did like the parts in episode 19 when Lor-Zod was explaining his backstory and it was inter-cut with Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy telling the same story but from their perspectives. Like from Lor’s point of view, he is in the right for wanting to rescue his parents while the Legion thought he was evil for that because his parents are criminals. It was really cool to see differing viewpoints of the same events. I thought it was an interesting way of handling a lot of exposition.

Now I did actually like Lor-Zod to be honest. Didn’t really care for General Zod but I never really like him in any adaptation. He’s just not a character that I enjoy. Lor-Zod’s determination to get his parents out of the Phantom Zone was kind of  sweet though. Like yeah I know they’re villains and have done awful things but  still it was sweet. Even if it is kind of far removed from the comics. Lor in the comics actually fights against his parents and gets raised by Superman and Lois as a Kent. Maybe that could still happen in Young Justice? Time travel is possible so maybe Superman could travel in time and then take baby Lor away… uhm although that would be kidnapping… hmm so maybe not… Anyway. I found the song they sang in the Phantom Zone kind of cringy. I know that’s a small thing but when they started singing I was like, “Really? Y’all are doing this?” I get that it was supposed to be brainwashing Conner into being loyal to Zod but still. I felt like it lasted too long. I know it wasn’t very long but I feel like a couple of verses could have been cut and that little extra time could have been given to, I don’t know, Rocket.

I just feel like she didn’t get enough screen time for it being her arc.

A  big point of contention in the show’s fandom is how she handled her son  Amistad’s Autism and then how her feelings about that were mirrored to  her feelings about Orion. Now I don’t have Autism or claustrophobia so I  can’t really speak on how accurately either of those were portrayed.  I’ve seen people saying that Amistad was written relatively accurately  as an Autistic characters and I’ve seen people say that it wasn’t  actually great representation. I think it’s important to note that  people with Autism aren’t a monolith and each person is different. I saw  a lot of people saying that him eating the cookie in a specific way and  being sensitive to strong smells and not liking disruptions to his  routine were things that many Autistic people can relate to. Some were  more upset about how Raquel handled Amistad than how Amistad was  portrayed. I saw people say that it was accurate that parents of  Autistic children would be frustrated and I saw people say that Raquel  shouldn’t have been so dismissive of Amistad’s needs. I personally didn’t like that  scene at the beginning of episode 18 where she’s pretending to look for  his wool hat. Like she looks under the couch and stuff and keeps saying  “no hat” over and over which felt condescending. I get it was to show her frustration  and stress but still I kind of wish that part was left out. Even Amistad’s facial  expression during that scene showed that it was upsetting him. But you  can argue that this is just a character flaw for Raquel and that all  good characters should have some type of flaw, which is fair; characters should have flaws, even heroes. But still I  can understand why many fans didn’t like this aspect of her character or how the show handled it.

This  sort of plays into her judgement of Orion as well. So I understand her  calling him a monster after he becomes unstable and hits those two  larvae children. I get that and I don’t blame her for having  apprehensions about negotiating peace with him. The problem that I have  with her judgement of Orion is how she felt about him after learning his  biological father is Darkseid. I mean, she has several teammates who  have evil relatives. She’s friends with Artemis, isn’t she? And  Artemis’s dad is a villain and Raquel never seemed to judge her for  that. Granted, Sportsmaster isn’t quite on the level of evil as Darkseid  but you get my point. It just felt kind of out of character for her to judge someone for having an evil family member.

Though I will say, it was good that she acknowledged that they got off on the wrong foot and apologized. It was at the beginning of episode 20 and while it wasn’t actually Orion but Ma’alefa’ak, it was good that she realized they needed to make amends. She didn’t know it wasn’t actually Orion of course but it was still a nice gesture that showed Rocket’s maturity.

Okay, yeah Orion could be a jerk and stand-offish but really the only bad thing he did was hit the two larvae. And, yeah that was bad; he shouldn’t have done that but still. I feel like Rocket was a little too judgemental of him. Like when she got mad at him during the meeting for saying their off-topic conversation was of little importance. He was definitely a jerk in the way that he worded it but he was right. Them sidetracking the peace negotiation with talks of romance and birthdays was kind of… unprofessional. I think Orion was right to call them out for that. I get Bear wanting to extend his condolences about Superboy’s death but the conversation should have ended there.

The only really important thing we got from that off-topic conversation was that Forager was thinking of staying on New Genesis. But to be honest, I don’t really care much about that. Okay, a little bit of a tangent: I had some issues with season three and one of those issues was that I just didn’t care that much about the new characters. I didn’t care at all about Brion, or Helga, or Forager. I just didn’t care about them! The only new character that I even kind of cared about was Halo. And speaking of them, I don’t like that the writers had Rocket use the wrong pronouns for Halo. Okay, I know Violet said that they didn’t mind she/her pronouns but they did very clearly state that they preferred they/them pronouns. Now they only said this to Harper Row but I would have assumed that they could tell the whole team. I can understand the New Genesis gods not knowing and calling Halo “she” by mistake but I feel like Rocket should have referred to them with ya’know “them.” But I’m going to blame the writers for this.

Going back to Forager though, since I didn’t care that much about him in season three, I didn’t really care about the romance either. It was kind of cute. Them reading Shakespeare made me think of Jason Spisak’s YouTube videos of Wally Reading the Classics, which did warm my heart a little bit. (I’ll link on of them down below.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftf-sMzRuBY For context, Jason Spisak is the voice actor for Forager and Wally West so I liked the little reference to him as Wally quoting Shakespeare. He voices another character doesn’t he?….

OH! Razer! He also voices Razer. That’s something else  that happens. Boy do I have some  feelings about Razer. I LOVED seeing him again. Was not expecting it in the slightest. So Razer is a character who had only ever appeared in Green Lantern: the Animated Series. This was a show that aired when Young Justice seasons one and two were airing on Cartoon Network and were both canceled at the same time. Which is a real shame because Green Lantern: the Animated Series was actually a really good show. I’m not even a big fan of the Green Lanterns but I did still really enjoy that show. And now one of its main characters has appeared in Young Justice. Could this mean a revival for Green Lantern? Maybe? I could only hope. It deserves a season two.

Speaking of Green Lanterns, it was sad that Tomar Re died. And it was extra sad that he was killed by a Kryptonian considering he tried to save Krypton. I do love some irony. But he shouldn’t feel guilty about not saving Krypton because really what could he have done to stop a sun from dying? Oh and it was interesting to learn that he knew Superman’s biological father and uncle. So we have confirmation that Zor-El existed on Earth-16 so maybe his daughter Kara does too. It would be cool to see Supergirl show up at some point.

My only issue with that would be that there are already soooo, so many characters in Young Justice. It felt crowded back in season two and it’s only gotten worse. I think that’s one of the reasons why some of the arcs and story lines don’t follow their focus character all that much: because there are too many characters vying for lines and screen time.

Maybe if there were less characters, we could have gotten to see more of Rocket.

I  hope she’s featured strongly in the next arc, which I know will be  Nightwing’s, but that’s set up as being about finding Conner and Rocket  can definitely help with that since she now has some key knowledge about  the Phantom Zone projector getting destroyed and all. She did see Bioship’s lasers destroy the projector, even if she doesn’t know what it was. So maybe we’ll see a lot of  her in the last arc. I’m looking forward to it!

Let me know what your thoughts were! Did you love this arc? Hate it? Feel indifferent to it? Should there have been more of Rocket? Do you think they handled Amistad’s Autism well? Or not? Let me know! I’m always interested in what other people thought.

Bye!

drowning-moonlight:

my reaction to the Young Justice Phantoms finale

this is just a short live reaction. I don’t go into any detail about my thoughts as this is just what I was feeling while watching the episode for the first time.

it got copyright claimed but what ever