Liked it when it first come out, but after rewatch started to love this very less. Most of the episodes are boring and all turtles is annoying.
But some things from this is good - Best Splinter, several villains are good and second season is mostly great.
would've loved to have seen the end of times, that caused the world to turn into a 'mad max' wasteland. being a minute flash back was a waste. the last episode was good, but to have seen at least a 2 or 3 part'er where the humans died off and only mutants survived would've been kino. especially how donnie survived and how he dealt with the loss of april.
So I might as well start off with the positives. It does mostly the right things that I expect and want of TMNT, at least as far as the children's versions go. You do get a few decent moments of drama, a couple of nutty adventures, a decent enough redesign of the Turtles themselves, some cool ideas. For the most part it "gets" the appeal of the franchise and doesn't do too much to undermine that. As far as being the "face" of the franchise for the 2010's, it was probably about as good as one could have expected.
On the other hand... It's not really a good show by any objective measure, is it? Like really, are we sure the good actually outweighs the bad? I am not so sure that is the case. The plot goes in circles and what's actually accomplished throughout the series could have been done way quicker. This partially results in some of the more frustrating aspects of the story, like having Splinter "die" three or four times only for him to stick around as a ghost, or writing April's father out of the show four times because the writers didn't want to deal with the implications of April being a teenager. The emphasis on random mutant episodes also doesn't help the plot much, we are allegedly meant to think April is improving her ninja skills and psychic powers but because there was literally no time to show it, she essentially just happens to be more powerful after coming back from space. Then we have some really stupid ways some of the plotlines get resolved, like how they establish that anti-mutagen takes forever to synthesize but a single drop can be used to cure people and the part about all of New York getting transformed into monsters allows them to create an insane amount of it at random, meaning anyone who wanted to get cured could easily have been cured.
Animation also takes a bit of a hit, season 1 basically takes place in a ghost town and the series as a whole relies a little too heavily on these strange matte paintings that stick out as a sore thumb. The show clearly did not have the budget it needed to create the sort of world that is required of a series like TMNT. If I had to guess, Nickelodeon execs may have thought they were paying for a strict comedy and not an action/adventure type show and that's why it relies on these budget saving measures. So it appears that all the random mutants and monsters being introduced every other episode may have drained the budget that should have went into making the world a bit more vibrant and lively. The show also left several things unresolved as a result of constantly introducing monsters, as if they planned on making two or three more seasons but that never happened, which just makes it all seem kind of pointless.
As for more subjective aspects...
I don't think the comedy is all that funny, it mostly comes across like "Kids think screaming is funny, so let's have a lot of screaming". As an adult that's pretty grating but I realise the show just isn't made for adults in the first place and if kids find that funny, fine. But since it is amongst one of the weaker elements, why not just scrap or improve it?
I also don't like that it partially exemplifies the franchise's inability stop referencing the 1987 cartoon. I get that is what normies think started the franchise but it is hardly the peak of TMNT's quality or creative drive, so it doesn't need to constantly be used as a reference point and you don't need a dedicated crossover episode with it, certainly not four. It's fine to make a TMNT without Bebop, Rocksteady, Technodrome and a pizza obsession, it was done before and it got 156 episodes (longer than this by more than 30 episodes), you don't need that crap as a crutch.
>season 1 basically takes place in a ghost town and the series as a whole relies a little too heavily on these strange matte paintings that stick out as a sore thumb. The show clearly did not have the budget it needed to create the sort of world that is required of a series like TMNT.
Thats really the bete noir of every TMNT series really. even the 80's and 03 shows were weirdly empty
I appreciated how they wanted to develop the characters (except to Leo and April because those changes were obviously bad ideas that shouldn't have been attempted), but the execution fell flat for basically fricking everyone.
Admittedly Raph wasn't particularly more insufferable than usual. It took the next series for someone to finally frick him up spectacularly.
I thought it did a great job of separating shredder and Krang and being able to balance the villains out.
I was not really a fan of the show deciding to just copy the old stuff almost 1:1 after the second season. But at least they toned down the mutant sizes. All the season 1 mutants were 15 foot tall giant monsters.
Leo got too much special treatment, and while Splinter being more active was good, it made all the times he didn't do shit stand out more.
Relative skill levels didn't make much sense to the point where I thought it was a plot element that Bradford and Xever just decided to take dives after a while.
They had at least two interesting angles to explore with April (kunoichi and psychic) but didn't really do either, much less synthesize both.
I liked it, probably my favorite animated shredder, will always laugh at how butt hurt people were by the ending.
Liked it when it first come out, but after rewatch started to love this very less. Most of the episodes are boring and all turtles is annoying.
But some things from this is good - Best Splinter, several villains are good and second season is mostly great.
would've loved to have seen the end of times, that caused the world to turn into a 'mad max' wasteland. being a minute flash back was a waste. the last episode was good, but to have seen at least a 2 or 3 part'er where the humans died off and only mutants survived would've been kino. especially how donnie survived and how he dealt with the loss of april.
Way too long for the relatively unambitious plot. The worst Mikey ever.
A lot of potential and good writing really squandered, but worth checking out.
You know how people reacted to Rise? That how I reacted to 2012. I did like the Usagi and Mad Max stuff though.
My feelings on it are bit... Complex...
So I might as well start off with the positives. It does mostly the right things that I expect and want of TMNT, at least as far as the children's versions go. You do get a few decent moments of drama, a couple of nutty adventures, a decent enough redesign of the Turtles themselves, some cool ideas. For the most part it "gets" the appeal of the franchise and doesn't do too much to undermine that. As far as being the "face" of the franchise for the 2010's, it was probably about as good as one could have expected.
On the other hand... It's not really a good show by any objective measure, is it? Like really, are we sure the good actually outweighs the bad? I am not so sure that is the case. The plot goes in circles and what's actually accomplished throughout the series could have been done way quicker. This partially results in some of the more frustrating aspects of the story, like having Splinter "die" three or four times only for him to stick around as a ghost, or writing April's father out of the show four times because the writers didn't want to deal with the implications of April being a teenager. The emphasis on random mutant episodes also doesn't help the plot much, we are allegedly meant to think April is improving her ninja skills and psychic powers but because there was literally no time to show it, she essentially just happens to be more powerful after coming back from space. Then we have some really stupid ways some of the plotlines get resolved, like how they establish that anti-mutagen takes forever to synthesize but a single drop can be used to cure people and the part about all of New York getting transformed into monsters allows them to create an insane amount of it at random, meaning anyone who wanted to get cured could easily have been cured.
>Continue
>Continue
Animation also takes a bit of a hit, season 1 basically takes place in a ghost town and the series as a whole relies a little too heavily on these strange matte paintings that stick out as a sore thumb. The show clearly did not have the budget it needed to create the sort of world that is required of a series like TMNT. If I had to guess, Nickelodeon execs may have thought they were paying for a strict comedy and not an action/adventure type show and that's why it relies on these budget saving measures. So it appears that all the random mutants and monsters being introduced every other episode may have drained the budget that should have went into making the world a bit more vibrant and lively. The show also left several things unresolved as a result of constantly introducing monsters, as if they planned on making two or three more seasons but that never happened, which just makes it all seem kind of pointless.
As for more subjective aspects...
I don't think the comedy is all that funny, it mostly comes across like "Kids think screaming is funny, so let's have a lot of screaming". As an adult that's pretty grating but I realise the show just isn't made for adults in the first place and if kids find that funny, fine. But since it is amongst one of the weaker elements, why not just scrap or improve it?
I also don't like that it partially exemplifies the franchise's inability stop referencing the 1987 cartoon. I get that is what normies think started the franchise but it is hardly the peak of TMNT's quality or creative drive, so it doesn't need to constantly be used as a reference point and you don't need a dedicated crossover episode with it, certainly not four. It's fine to make a TMNT without Bebop, Rocksteady, Technodrome and a pizza obsession, it was done before and it got 156 episodes (longer than this by more than 30 episodes), you don't need that crap as a crutch.
>season 1 basically takes place in a ghost town and the series as a whole relies a little too heavily on these strange matte paintings that stick out as a sore thumb. The show clearly did not have the budget it needed to create the sort of world that is required of a series like TMNT.
Thats really the bete noir of every TMNT series really. even the 80's and 03 shows were weirdly empty
>Complex...
Keep this man away from time machines
Pretty good summary of the problems in this show.
I appreciated how they wanted to develop the characters (except to Leo and April because those changes were obviously bad ideas that shouldn't have been attempted), but the execution fell flat for basically fricking everyone.
Admittedly Raph wasn't particularly more insufferable than usual. It took the next series for someone to finally frick him up spectacularly.
I thought it did a great job of separating shredder and Krang and being able to balance the villains out.
I was not really a fan of the show deciding to just copy the old stuff almost 1:1 after the second season. But at least they toned down the mutant sizes. All the season 1 mutants were 15 foot tall giant monsters.
Pretty good.
It's overall the best TV version. Great balance of action/edge and comedy. Raph's my favorite turtle and he was portrayed best here.
Leo got too much special treatment, and while Splinter being more active was good, it made all the times he didn't do shit stand out more.
Relative skill levels didn't make much sense to the point where I thought it was a plot element that Bradford and Xever just decided to take dives after a while.
They had at least two interesting angles to explore with April (kunoichi and psychic) but didn't really do either, much less synthesize both.
April had a nice body
The art style was a huge turn off. I might eventually check it out.