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I have been a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ever since I first saw the original cartoon. Mind you, I was about 8 or something... at which I point thought cartoons were made without an actual background and without source material - thus assuming the cartoons were the real deal. So sometime later, my parents rented the VCR tapes of the first TMNT movies. Me being a full-on TMNT cartoon fan at that time was extremely confused at all the differences in them and thought they weren't true to their source... Which I still thought up to the point when I found the website The Official TMNT Website in 2005! It was on that website where I found the first original TMNT comic, which very much proved me wrong. Well, doesn't matter. The meaning of life is to learn, after all. :) And then later on, I discovered the 2003 TMNT cartoon series. As far as I know, that series is most loyal to the original comic, which I personally grew to love very much. This became my main reason to love this series... another reason is that the 87 series pictured the humans (the supportive human cast aside) as either ugly, stupid or both. It just feels to me that some things are missing to the 2003 series. For example, the 87 series had the Punk Rock Frogs. These frogs gave a bit more depth to the series in all (even though they appeared in very few episodes). Also, the 87 series gave Raphael a mutant reptillian love interest called Mona Lisa (who was a human at first). Now, while this also gave the series -and especially Raph- more depth, she also appeared in too few episodes to really make a difference. This brings me to a third incarnation of the TMNT; the Archie Comics series. This series introduced the character Umeko, aka Ninjara. Umeko was an attractive female warrior who belonged to an ancient Japanese race of fox-people. She and Raphael fell in love, so you can say she became Raph's quite literally foxy girlfriend. Another awesome plot point of the Archie Comics was a future saga: The Turtles, Splinter and Ninjara are taken to the future by the future versions of Raph and Don. Don explains how in the future, some time after Splinter's natural death because of old age, global warming has melted the polar ice caps and left most of New York City under water. The present Turtles have already seen this earlier, after a mistake by Cudley the Cowlick after their first visit to the Stump Asteroid, and said it was a possible future. This created a rat problem but Don invented robot traps to eliminate the rats, much to the Rat King's chagrin. His robots won Don fame and wealth, which he used to fund his company Turtleco, along with a talented young cat mutant named Manx. Manx began to enhance himself as a cyborg named Verminator X, obsessed with becoming immortal. He and Don soon became archenemies. Verminator X, Armaggon the shark mutant and a time displaced version of the Shredder (from after his battle against the Turtles after they got shrunk) broke into Turtleco, kidnapped the future Mike and Leo and stole Don's experimental time slip generator. When Raph attempted to stop them, his eye was blown out by one of Armaggon's missiles. Don built another machine in order to get reinforcements in the past. Armaggon works on powering the machine with Adolf Hitler's brain, the Roswell Alien's bones and the White Stone of Mecca so he and his cohorts can rule all of space and time. Splinter, Ninjara and the six Turtles ambush the bad guys with a time slip, but Armaggon escapes, taking Leo as a hostage, into his machine with both Raphs and the "present" version of Don in pursuit. While the remaining Turtles battle Shredder and Verminator X, the Rat King shows up to get his revenge on Future Don, using his powers to control Splinter. Luckily, the Turtles have a surprise ally in the future version of Merdude, tricking Verminator X to fire his blaster, destroying the wall and letting sea water come in to free Future Leo and Mike which turns the tide in favor of the Turtles. Don and the two Raphs pursue Armaggon in a mystical swamp land some local fairies call Thantia. The two Raphs use their shared training to kick Armaggon over a waterfall. They recover Leo and escape through a time hole created by Future Don, but leave Armaggon stranded in Thantia. (Source: Wikipedia: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures) Take and leave a few characters from that plot, and you'll get a much better future arc than Fast Forward (in my most humble opinion). Yeah, okay... the 2k3 series DID have this one plot point where 3 of the Turtles got killed in the future and all... which is extremely dark (and we all know I like dark stuff). But in my opinion, that was a bit too dark. I mean, no Turtles fan should like it when their favourite mutant reptiles get killed off! Another thing I noticed in the 2003 cartoon series is a severe lack of battle cries and catch phrases. Oh, sure they used numerous "Shell" puns, but they never really settled on an awesome battle cry (which even 2003 Mikey said is necessary for a heroic team in the first place =\) The closest thing they had to a battle cry was "It's Ninja Time!", which made me wonder if I was watching either my favourite team of Ninja or Naruto. Seriously... what happened to "Cowabunga!" and "Turtle Power!"? The original cartoon also had loads and loads of other mutants I thought could add more action to it with maybe a more dark heroic feel to it (a la Batman and Wolverine). I mean, who doesn't love Bebop and Rocksteady? Also, I tend to compare myself a lot with Raphael when viewing myself in my friends group. Why? I'm the angry one. No, really. This also brings me to the fact that Raph is my favourite Turtle (hence me rooting for him so much). He's the most relateable of the Turtles because of his outbursts of anger. And this anger usually comes from the fact that he knows he and his 3 brothers are unique as the only 4 living, mutated, sentient, male turtles. And since turtles are amongst the longest-living animals of our Earth, this taught him that they will one day be alone with no offspring, causing their unique race to eventually be extinct while watching loved ones die along the way. So having either Mona Lisa or Ninjara in the 2003 series would have given Raph something more to fight for. A much more understandable reason for his anger; the knowledge of losing his love. I've put the emphasis on "male" on that piece of material for two reasons. One: In most incarnations, the Green Team usually consists of the only 4 mutated turtles in the entire universe on the same side. And they're all male! Two: The only other three mutated turtles I can think of are Slash (though that one's originally an alien turtle), Tokka (who originated from "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze") and Mei Pi Chi, aka Venus De Milo. Who was introduced in "Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation". The former two are male and semi-evil, while only the latter is female. Now, I only sort of liked The Next Mutation... but never really loved it as much as the 2003 cartoon and even less than the '87 series when I was a kid. But it did give the Turtles an entirely new feel to it, with finally a female turtle introduced who even had an entirely different fighting style! And I also liked how they gave the Turtles even more distinghuishable differences with the masks and all. Either way, I'm a big fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And, Fast Forward aside, I absolutely love the 2003 cartoon of all incarnations. There are just some things I think it could have used from the original cartoon and the Archie Comics to make it a better cartoon. Oh well, at least there's still the really awesome Turtles Forever! |