Review: Teen Titans Go! ”Little Buddies”

Spoilers Below

Picture a slightly younger skewing Jailbot from Superjail, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of who Painbot is. He’s a small machine with gadgets meant for one purpose…seek and destroy. As a matter off act, it has quite a bit in common with Cyborg and as a result the big bot decides to take on the task of keeping his new ”little buddy”. That said, the rest of the Teen Titans do NOT want Cyborg keeping a little buddy that wants to kill every one of them despite the fact that each team member has their own buddy. So there’s only one way to settle this…A BOXING MATCH!

Yep, it’s Painbot who takes part in a gauntlet boxing match with EACH little buddy. Pain Bot goes up against Beast Boy’s buddy Dave and he ends up scaring the wolf with its weaponry. Its next opponent, Foul Demon,lands a few hits, but the robot smashes the demon underneath a HUGE punching glove. Robin tells Talking Birdarang and BoomStaff to execute their patented maneuver, but the two begin to disco and are destroyed by Pain Bot. Multiple rounds pass with the Universe Tree being burned and Robin the Super Bird killed by a laser. Lastly we come to a showdown between Silkie and Painbot, but Silkie just swallows the robo-buddy whole leading Silkie to be the winner!

This week was one of the better episodes of Teen Titans Go! in a while. For starters, I love it when the show walks that tow line between kids and violence and Painbot was a personification of that. I’m also a big fan when the art direction gets a little whacked and this was on display with Dave earlier on in the episode and continued with the hysterically choreographed gauntlet boxing match. I did think there was one too many montages, but overall a solid effort.