Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo is the first and hopefully not the last direct to TV and DVD movie based on the cartoon series produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The cartoon series was based on the DC Comics superheroes that came out in the 1960s. At the time, the Teen Titans consisted of Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad. They were all sidekicks to major icons in the DC Comics universe.

Later, Wonder Girl was added to the roster. As the popularity of the Teen Titans grew, more superhero sidekicks were added in the membership. Speedy, the young archer who was partnered with Green Arrow, joined the team on a semi-regular basis. He was quickly followed by Hawk and Dove, two brothers who had mystical-based powers that augmented their real life abilities. (Hawk and Dove were also featured in an animated Justice League episode. Just goes to show that all of these characters have remained popular for almost 40 years.) Beast Boy, fresh from the Doom Patrol, joined them and brought a whole new level of levity to the series.

After while, as most series do, the Teen Titans comics folded. In the 1970s, white-hot comic writer Marv Wolfman wanted to take a shot at creating a new Teen Titans comic. When he did he brought Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, and Beast Boy into the new series and added three new characters: Cyborg, half-teen, half-machine; Starfire, alien warrior princess with amazing powers; and Raven, whose heritage as half-demon was hidden from the rest of the team for a while.

Wolfman's vision of the Teen Titans lasted for years and introduced several characters and key concepts that were later used in the animated series. Characters like Deathstroke the Terminator, Brother Blood, the H.I. V.E. and many others came out of that series and found their way into the cartoons.

Warner's decision to render the Teen Titans as more of an anime style for the younger viewers met with a lot of resistance and derision. Diehard fans wanted their heroes to be treated as "real" as Batman and Superman had been. The camp style of the Warner Bros. cartoon series took a little while to catch on, but it caught on in a big way.

It wasn't long before everyone loved the Teen Titans. Diehard fans just accept the fact that this was a Teen Titans they had not seen before and decided to enjoy the series anyway. Young viewers who had never seen the Teen Titans fell in love with them. A conscious decision was made to never show the young superheroes in their secret identities. They were superheroes all the time.

Not only that, with the anime-style in mind, they were slackers, video game junkies, and connoisseurs of pizza. The characters were drawn more liberally, and they were played for laughs. Beast Boy became a perennial favorite because of his antics and his ability to change into animals. Raven was the perpetual downer, the voice of doom and gloom. Starfire was an innocent (a far cry from the warrior princess she had been in Wolfman's series) and so naive it hurt.