The biggest strength of season 1 is the familial bond between the Young Justice team. This is a group of people who really are a unit and it's achieved the team part of superhero team to even greater degrees than the Justice League Animated series does. There's a point where everyone starts having a psychic conversation with each other, accidentally completely excluding the stranger who joined them and it's a powerful moment that sold the whole series for me. It helps that there are a lot of clever ideas ringing through the episodes too like Megan's true nature or the idea that Batman trained Robin, not as a replacement but so that Robin wouldn't become like himself.
The three greatest flaws are
A mild inclination to annoying character traits (Superboys anger, 'Hello Megan!') but they're all partially recognised and have good reasons behind them.
Just like the Justice League, the stories are stretched too thin to delve into the excellent relationships as much as they should. Season 2's timeskip is particularly annoying considering this
Most of all, throughout season 1 the feeling is that the Young Justice are in trouble for as long as they decide not to call in the Justice League. Knowing that they can literally Batphone in a rescue whenever they feel like undermines a lot of the tension.
Season 2 solves the Batphone problem and manages to achieve a complex and believable threat, taking the story to several dark spaces and driving the story along at pace with intrigue and mystery. It retains the interesting ideas of the first. In particular Aqualad's situation had me feeling that it would be very normal and almost right to betray everyone, whereas in a normal story I would have dismissed it as a lame ruse.
But the grander scope interrupts the family feeling of the first and relationships were struggling to develop as they were before a time skip and an increased cast of characters. It's interesting that these were almost the exact same changes and problems in the last season of the Justice League cartoon.
Which is better? Despite the deeper and more interesting moral questions and plot of the second season, it was the characters and their interactions with each other that hooked me the most, so whilst season 2 is more edifying, I ultimately like season 1 better.
Seasons 1 and 2, both pretty good but for different reasons
The biggest strength of season 1 is the familial bond between the Young Justice team. This is a group of people who really are a unit and it's achieved the team part of superhero team to even greater degrees than the Justice League Animated series does. There's a point where everyone starts having a psychic conversation with each other, accidentally completely excluding the stranger who joined them and it's a powerful moment that sold the whole series for me. It helps that there are a lot of clever ideas ringing through the episodes too like Megan's true nature or the idea that Batman trained Robin, not as a replacement but so that Robin wouldn't become like himself.
The three greatest flaws are
Season 2 solves the Batphone problem and manages to achieve a complex and believable threat, taking the story to several dark spaces and driving the story along at pace with intrigue and mystery. It retains the interesting ideas of the first. In particular Aqualad's situation had me feeling that it would be very normal and almost right to betray everyone, whereas in a normal story I would have dismissed it as a lame ruse.
But the grander scope interrupts the family feeling of the first and relationships were struggling to develop as they were before a time skip and an increased cast of characters. It's interesting that these were almost the exact same changes and problems in the last season of the Justice League cartoon.
Which is better? Despite the deeper and more interesting moral questions and plot of the second season, it was the characters and their interactions with each other that hooked me the most, so whilst season 2 is more edifying, I ultimately like season 1 better.