And so we come to the end of January, and the end of the TMNT marathon, while thankfully avoiding the Bay turtles for now. However, something tells me I might not be able to do that next time I try and tackle this franchise. We've gone to the 80's, we've seen the 2000's grit, and now we come to a point in time where the ones who own the franchise is... the house of the annoying sponge. I'm honestly kinda surprised it took this long to get back to Nickalodian, and that my next review of theirs wasn't going to be Spongebob Squarepants. But alas, t'was not meant to be, and the sponge's time is not today. Join with me as we go back to the sewers of New York one last time (for now) as we tackle the 2012 reboot of the Turtles.
In terms of the Turtle's backstory, it's the original story. Hamato Yoshi becomes Splinter when he and the turtles are exposed to a strange ooze, mutating them into the characters we know. Throw in a rivalry between Splinter and Shredder, Purple dragons as nothing more than a street gang, and other small character tweaks, and you've got your show in a turtle's shell. The main difference though is with the Krang, as there isn't just one Krang like in the original show. Krang here is a species of alien who wants to take over the world, and are the bigger threat in the show compared to Shredder. Don't get me wrong, Shredder's still a threat, but more of a secondary threat due to the Krang. Which is both a good thing and a bad thing. See, while the Krang being the main villains giving more variety to stories, such as the monster of the week story that the plot becomes at one point, the Krang all have dull personalities because they have a hive mind like design. The one exception is Gilbert Gottfried. I know he has a real name in the show, Kraang Sub-Prime, but its Gilbert Gottfried in a performance that would be absolutely insane if I didn't see it with my own eyes. Imagine if Webby from the Ducktales reboot had Iago's voice.
One of the other major changes is that April and Casey are now teenagers, April even being taught by Splinter. To go back to that thing in the title. One thing I knew about the Turtles before going into this marathon was a character called Venus, a character from one of the live action shows (yes those are a thing) that many fans hated. She didn't attack, had an awkward design (by questionable standards, again this was a live action TMNT show before CGI was a big thing), and for some reason was telepathic. In this show, they gave the telepathy to April, along with combat training, and reduced Venus to a reference in the paint on the new van. Harsh. I will admit that I do like the new April and Casey as bringing them down to the Turtles' age is a nice change of pace and does lead to interesting character changes. Especially when the show decides it wants to make fun of 80's cartoons by bringing the original turtles, original Krang and original Shredder into the 2012's universe, leading to an unintentional meta level being given to the "wow this show has aged badly" title from the first review of the marathon. I had no idea power creep was a thing in cartoons.
In terms of the presentation, it took me a while to get used to it, but it is a style that works really well. The best way I can describe it visually is a 3D anime, complete with all the visual gags based on emotions that comes with it. Some of the models do look awfully flat, I can tell Splinter's fur is just a texture and not a render, but it's just detailed enough to stand out while being simple enough to lead to some great fight scenes. In terms of the music, it's kinda generic and while I'm not a fan of the intro (because I'm not really a fan of rap), it's still not as bad as the 03 intro.
The show is definitely solid, and things like this marathon show that the idea can still work in modern day. I'm honestly surprised the idea of the series held up as well as it did because I'll admit I went into this thinking it was not going to hold up. Kinda comes with the territory when the series name is called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
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