To mark the Teen Titans Go to the Movies cinema release, I wanted to just post quickly about why I love the Teen Titans Go cartoon show so much.

Or, more accurately, try to work out why I love it so much – which is something I’ve been asking myself for a long time. I can never figure out if it’s targeted primarily at kids or at older people – probably a mix of both. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t targeted at my (over 30) age-range.

Yet the moment I first caught an episode of the show about three or four years ago, I’ve been hooked. Like, really hooked. Like, heroin hooked.

Thinking back, I remmeber exactly when I realised I was addicted to Teen Titans Go: it was when, one afternoon – and during what was supposed to be a serious meeting – I couldn’t get that stupid ‘Dance For Your Bees!’ song out of my head!

Intermittently, for days on end, I kept getting that song in my head – often complete with with flashbacks to the close-ups of Robin’s butt as he does the dance. If you know precisely what I’m talking about, well done – but that was the moment I knew I had genuinely acquired a Teen Titans Go problem.

Like a 10 year-old, I actually quickly found myself properly looking forward to each new episode, as if – in my mind – I was rushing home from school to catch it on time or trying to wake up early enough on a Saturday morning to not miss the latest episode: I would literally smile and have a burst of joy-juice in my brain just at the knowledge that I was going to be watching Teen Titans Go that morning or afternoon.

I never feel that way about anything anymore, as far as TV goes. And I realised the last time I can remember having that kind of excited reaction to – or anticipation of – a weekly TV show was when I was a child: and it would be for something like Thundercats.

So I guess what Teen Titans Go has done is to bypass my adult programming and re-activated my child-like younger self – literally making me feel like a kid every time I watch it. It’s as if the show creates a bridging-of-the-gap in time for my consciousness.

In fact, as I think about it, I think it manages to create a merging between my younger child-like self and my grown-up self – literally as if, for ten minutes, a past version of ‘me’ comes forward in time to inhabit the same moment or space as my ‘present’ self: and we can enjoy the show together, because it’s something we both love.

And then, when the show’s other, ‘he’ departs back to twenty years ago or whenever.

I also, on a related note, find myself frequently wishing this show had been around when I was a kid. But, that said, I’m glad it’s around now for me as a grown-up – because it puts me in-touch with my inner child in a way nothing else seems to.

There’s something utterly disarming about the show. While it is clever, and obviously has gags or easter-eggs in it to appeal to grown-up viewers (as well as, specifically, DC comics fans), it also has an endearing innocence about it too. Anyone of any age could watch this show: you could be a five-year-old or a forty-year-old.

There’s very, very few shows that have ever been capable of that kind of range.

It’s cute, even adorable – but not in an irritating or overly contrived way. And it is funny as fuck. The characters – Robin, Raven, Starfire, Cyborg, Beast Boy – are voiced brilliantly, brimming over with exuberance and personality. And the gags and premises rarely fail to pull you head-first and willingly into the wacky oddness and off-the-wall thought-processes.

The odd thing is that I haven’t really been reading much Teen Titans comic-book material – and wasn’t doing so even prior to getting hooked on the TV show. In fact, if there’s one ‘drawback’ to the show, it’s that I find it a tad difficult now to read proper Teen Titans books: because I keep seeing the characters as the comedic versions of themselves from the TV show.

I had this problem when I was recently trying to read the Raven: Daughter of Darkness series (though I fared better with the most recent run of the Teen Titans book). No joke – I was even slightly struggling to take Cyborg seriously in the Justice League movie.

But I’m not complaining – that’s a small price to pay for the sheer, unadulterated joyousness of Teen Titans Go.

I’m so enamoured with the show, that I’m pretty much an evangelist for it – constantly trying to get other people to watch it. They hardly ever do. It appears it’s quite tough to get people in their 30s to make time for a ten-minute cartoon show about the infant versions of five superheroes.

But it’s their loss.

I adore this show. I’m sure I’ll adore the big-screen debut just as much too. Though I have just the slightest, niggling concern that going beyond the 10-minute mark might result in a lessening of the magic. I’m probably worrying over nothing.