Rise of the Ninja Turtles - The newest Turtles iteration by Nickelodeon

[Jewelsmakerguy]

is this one was animated by titmouse, i'd be surprised.

May have been like Breadwinners, where while the main studio is busy, they farmed it out to Canada.

Then again, I guess we'll have to wait on more production details at time goes on. I'm willing to bet it's either them or Bardel from the 2012 series.

 

[Panty Shroom]

I'm surprised no one here's mentioned black April yet. When the comics debuted, April was apparently modeled after Kevin Eastman's girlfriend, who was black so she had an African American appearence rather than the Irish redhead we're familiar with. Knowing this bit of history, I'm not too bothered that they changed her.

Raph is apparently the leader in this series, which is a... different take, I suppose. He still has an ongoing feud with Leo though, who's no longer-super serious and is even kind of goofy (we have Mikey for that, though?)

Their species have also changed: Mikey is a box turtle, Leo is a red-eared slider (all four turtles were originally this species), Raph is an alligator snapping turtle and Donnie is a soft-shelled turtle.

I can see why they did it; with modern animation software you can allow for more variety with character models so they took advantage of that.

I'm a bit bummed that this rules them out as being blood-related in this iteration (the turtcest shippers will love this) and as someone pointed out, it makes their origin story more confusing because I'm pretty sure pet stores don't have a pick 'n' mix of baby turtles that you can purchase before losing them down a sewer drain - this suggests that their backstory has been changed again.

Splinter looks ugly as fuck. Even for an old mutant rat. The animation looks okay, but it's pretty obvious that they're working with a reduced budget.

 

[Muttnik]

Leo was never my favorite turtle but I was impressed at how they handled him in the 2012 series. He was actually one of my favorites in that one. Seeing him suddenly reduced to second comic relief behind Mikey is really weird. I'm wondering if the person behind this is one of those autistic Raph-worshippers that hates Leonardo in everything ever and just wants him to look stupid in comparison. But whatever. At the end of the day, it's silly talking cartoon turtles.

 

[IdaRita]

I don't mind it, TMTN is one of those properties that is on air from 80s non stop, at least it's not "we rebooted it after 20 yeash, whee" thing.
I liked 2003 version the most, couldn't get into others.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Man this art style looks like shit. It's TMNT as imagined by the Butt Ugly Martians, only with Flash instead of whatever 3D software they used for ReBoot and it still manages to be inferior to that.

Now that I'm watching it, it's exactly what I'd expect from a cheap Mondo Media cartoon from five years ago, especially with the retarded attempts at making it look dynamic. The animation even has a low frame count too. They cut every corner, even trying to affect slo' mo' by holding on the same frame for forever. The official frames per second might be 24 but the reality is more like 8 frames per second.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Raph is apparently the leader in this series, which is a... different take, I suppose. He still has an ongoing feud with Leo though, who's no longer-super serious and is even kind of goofy (we have Mikey for that, though?)

Hasn't it been mentioned time and time again that Raph actually has the skills to be a leader, but he has been unable to control his temper and be a more rational person to become a leader? That's pretty much the main reason why he and Leo butt heads all the time even though we've seen plenty of times that the role of leader has a lot of stressful effects on Leo. This is quite interesting that Leo still manages to keep Raph in line with the others in spite of all that as it's (at least Mirage) Mikey who keeps Raph from pretty much going rogue, but Mikey being leader sounds disastrous even with his raw talent. So even though he still has his flaws and he still struggles to fulfill being a leader, Leo's rational enough to calm down quicker and easier and make wiser choices than Raph does even under Splinter's watch.

So if Raph is the leader in this incarnation, this should make for an interesting look into the "what if" scenario of him having to grow to be a responsible, rational leader, something that hadn't really been touched upon since the CGI TMNT movie. (Although interestingly enough, 2012 Splinter actually pointed out Leo was appointed leader--and later head of household--because he asked to be/volunteered, suggesting that had Raph spoken up about it earlier, he could've been leader.)

 

[TheClorax]

Their species have also changed: Mikey is a box turtle, Leo is a red-eared slider (all four turtles were originally this species), Raph is an alligator snapping turtle and Donnie is a soft-shelled turtle.

In the IDW comics, they were different species (somewhat) but they and Splinter are the reincarnations of an ancient family that were executed for Hamato Yoshi leaving the Foot Clan. Before he died, Yoshi swore revenge on Oroku Saki, and boom, they’re reincarnated as a rat and turtles, and remember everything. A good chunk of the comics revolve a lot around that subject.
If the new show does something with that, I’ll be fine with them being different species, but they probably won’t.

 

[ShittyRecolor]

Some of the animation and choreography is nice, like the ones at 0:08-0:12 or 0:55-0:58, but the weird coloring, crude, weightless line work and choppy, tweeny movement in the rest makes it quite an eyesore. It also looks like all the Turtles are desperately trying to be the funny one. Usually the distinct personalities of the turtles and how they interact with each other is one of the more fun aspects of the shows, hope this new iteration won't devolve into each of them trying to out-lolsorandom each other. Also, April's new design would suit Irma a lot better if you ask me.

That being said, I've also dismissed the 2012 show at first because I really didn't care for how the turtles looked, and only started to catch a few episodes after it got cancelled, leading to me realizing that is was actually quite a decent little series (Lone Rat and Cubs being my personal favorite episode). Maybe this new show will be able to change my mind in a similar fashion, but I'm not holding my breath.

Oh, and good job at creating the faggiest sounding opening theme in recent history.

Even though I was an OG TMNT fan from the 80s, I'm not going to waste a lot of energy of this latest mutation (pun intended) of the franchise. However, I am going to say I've never liked this overtly simplistic cartoon style which has prevalence over every single new kids cartoon these days. Gendy Tarkovsky was the only person which could pull it off and the rest are just copies of a copy of a copy (I won't put Jamie Hewlett's style in here because I believe while simplistic, his work has a lot of finer details).

Few other things:
- Weren't the Turtles supposed to be like pet turtles which fell into a sewer drain and mutated? Now they're like four different species of turtles? What, were they taken from the Brooklyn Zoo? Granted, this can just be waved off with a simple plot device, but whatever. Dun like it.

- I get the idea of Black April, diversity and all that fee-fee good shit, but at the same time when you're making Splinter so much of a stereotyped caricature that you're making Mickey Rooney's character in Breakfast at Tiffany's seemed subtle and nuanced in comparison, YOU FAIL.

Spoiler: Reference for people not familiar with things earlier than the late 90s

This new master Splinter looks like a mixture between Uncle Iroh and Mortal Kombat's Bo Rai Cho to me. Personality-wise I hope he's more like the former than the latter.