After a leap forward in plot, the Titans return this week with an episode that is basically the superhero cartoon equivalent to Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale sans blood, carnage, and Japanese high school students. Ok, maybe not entirely, but you get the point.

Neatly timed as the bookend to the first half of the second season, "Winner Take All" serves its purpose as a diversion in the "verse chorus verse" dichotomy that I anticipate the Terra story arc to fall into. I don't mean to suggest that the episode is mediocre in the slightest; as I said it is intended to serve as a distraction, and whoa boy, does it ever distract!

Robin, alongside Cyborg and Beast Boy, are transported to an alternate dimension where they are offered the opportunity to compete in the Tournament of Heroes. The self-proclaimed Master of Games has summoned a sampling of heroes to partake in the competition including Aqualad, Speedy, Wildebeest, Hotspot, and Gizmo alongside our three Titans.

Of course, anyone calling himself the Master of Games must have an ulterior motive behind a competition such as this, however this possibility doesn't initially occur to the egomaniacs summoned to compete, although seeing Robin and Speedy shake hands and swap trade secrets was hilarious to me.

The group is thrust into the first round of combat, pairing off the heroes into four simultaneous battles to the finish. The first round ends with Beast Boy, Aqualad, Gizmo, and Hotspot all chalking up losses and vanishing immediately following their defeat.

Continue?

Cyborg decides to establish contact with home to no avail, which makes him skeptical so he urges Robin to join him in snooping around. Robin suspects that this may be a ruse to tire him out on the eve of Round Two, so Cyborg must seek answers alone.

He learns that the Master of Games has claimed the fallen heroes as his prizes so that he may acquire their powers. Cyborg intervenes and is deemed disqualified and imprisoned alongside the other losers inside a ruby pendant worn around the Master's neck.

I don't want to spend too much time explaining each individual battle because I want to get to what I believe to be the essence of this episode: Speedy vs. Robin.

Glen Murakami's team has taken some interesting liberties with many of the characters in Teen Titans. Many fans seem to be turned off by some of the character reworking, namely Raven's goth persona, which seems to have evoked the most ire from fanboys.

I personally still find the necessary touches of Raven's character to be present, and making her goth doesn't really bother me because her demeanor never struck me as postured so much as a reflection of her absence of emotion, which suits her perfectly.

The most notable influence for the series and characters has come from George Perez and Marv Wolfman's run of The New Teen Titans during the eighties, but Murakami and company have never limited their focus strictly to this era in Titan lore.

Take Robin for example. Any viewer should immediately equate Robin to his role as sidekick to Batman from the crappy films we can all thank Joel Schumacher for, right on down to the flamboyant television show starring Adam West and Burt Ward as the costumed bat and boy wonder.

Interestingly enough, in the animated series we are never quite sure which Robin we are dealing with. Our Robin could be Dick Grayson, who eventually parted ways with the Bat and became Nightwing during the Wolfman and Perez run of Titans. Or he could be the unique and independent Tim Drake, the most recent to don a far more stylized Robin costume in the comics.

You're getting sleepy...very sleepy...

Truth is, our Robin resembles a mix of equal parts Tim and Dick. He definitely resembles Tim in appearance and attitude, and his leadership role and relationship to Starfire stems directly from Dick.

The creative team has applied the same sort of character consolidation to the likes of Speedy as well, and once again I feel it works well within the confines of the show.

In the comics, Speedy was also known as orphaned Roy Harper, a talented archer becomes the ward of Oliver Queen, who just so happens to moonlight as Green Arrow. It wasn't long before Roy donned a costume and shared in Oliver's superhero escapades.

Does anyone else see the parallel here? The comparisons between Speedy and Robin are remarkably similar, both are human with no superpowers, they are each sidekicks which was a pre-requisite in the early Titan days, and both served as leader to the Titans at times.

So it is only suiting that the Tournament of Heroes come down to these two in a grudge match, and in my opinion this has to be one of the greatest battles between superheroes depicted thus far in an animated series.

This isn't saying much considering that most animated superhero battles consist of clichéd means to confrontation between two heroes. This isn't one of those cheap plot devices where one hero must battle a teammate because they are unknowingly under the control of a villain via psychic mind manipulation.

In this case, both heroes are fighting for bragging rights, neither wants to lose, and each one is stubborn enough to give it their all. The sequence is entertaining and energetic, so much so that I may go back for a repeat viewing once I'm finished writing this. It was that good.

In the end someone must win, and as one might suspect Robin is victorious, but at what price? Each Titans episode must offer a lesson to be learned, and the one on the plate this time around is that winning isn't everything, sometimes friendship outweighs victory.

After realizing this and how blinded he was by hubris, Robin faces down Master of Games who is now equipped with everyone else's powers. He manages to defeat the Master with help from a freed Speedy and Cyborg, and in turn makes everyone except Gizmo (thanks to a mindful Cyborg) an honorary Teen Titan.

I know I rushed past discussing Aqualad's return, or Wildebeest's presence in the episode, or even the characterization of Hotspot, better known to fans as Joto in the comics. Trust me, this is Robin and Speedy's show, but overall the whole package is worth admission.

Next Week: The Bad News? Next week we won't be treated to the Tournament of Heroines that was teased at the closing of "Winner Takes All" in an "all new episode." Nope, the Titans are heading into reruns. The Good News? (If you want to call it that.) I haven't reviewed the previous 19 episodes spanning Seasons 1 and 2 yet, so I'll see you all here next week for "Divide and Conquer!" See you then!

Mario Anima