Not gonna act like this wasn't fun/funny/nostalgic/etc but it wasn't as good as I hoped it would be. They parodied the sh*t out of the Fred Wolf characters, IMO, more than Turtles Forever. & it felt like the Nick turtles were more rude to them this time. Considering their father is dead & they only have so few ties to the world, where's the brotherly love?
First of all, Trans-dimensional Turtles set them up as being a bit goofy/unorthodox, but competent. All of a sudden they're morons who can't fight? What's with that? They need to be completely re-trained? & two nut-shots for Donnie? Really?
Rather than retcon their skills, wouldn't it make more sense to just come up with a different sort of roadblock, like the two teams arguing over their approach or something? So that in of itself was irksome to me. But it's like, okay, who exactly are you trying to appeal to by doing that? You dedicate 3 entire episodes of the last season to Fred Wolf homage/pandering/whatever you wanna call it, but then you go and tick off it's core fanbase by making pansies outta the characters despite previously doing them better justice than Turtles Forever... Alright, so is the intention to appeal to stone-faced Mirage fans by saying "Haha, these guys are so useless and stupid, right? Right? Nudge Nudge!"? Can't see that landing properly because you, again, dedicated 3 entire episodes of the last season to Fred Wolf... Fans of the mature stuff still have to sit through wackiness, & fans of the wacky stuff have to deal with their version being made fun of, seems like lose/lose, no?
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have this than not, but I wonder why it really exists in the first place. Is Nick/Viacom pushing for it to boost ratings by trying to grab those nostalgic 30-somethings who remember nothing more than the voices? Ciro made it quite clear from the get-go he wasn't really a fan of the old cartoon at all, yet over time it became more & more like it. So is that Brandon's influence? The executives? Who? Is it forced, & this is their way of railing against it a little bit? It's weird to me, I dunno. I mean no disrespect to the creative team. There's obviously a lot of love put into it, not just ribbing.
My glass half-empty feeling aside, there were a lot of strong points. I laughed along the way, & was bordering on giddy when certain references were made/characters appeared.
-'87 Bebop & Rocksteady were a joy to see/hear. Looked great, sounded great, gave me warm fuzzies.
-What little we saw of the 2D animation was way better & far more on-model than previously, the Technodrome set piece was beautiful.
-Shoutout to the '87 Shredder/Krang musical cue they re-created for this.
-The Foot were an awesome addition. I was amused by their terrible Playmates posture & the inclusion of their toy-only weapon. The ninja moves were cool to see as well. They had Knuckleheads! Rad.
-The turtles' voices were their best in this series. Their initial cameo sounded a bit rough, second was quite close to the original, third was absolutely perfect. Much props to Cam, Rob, Townie, Barry, Pat, & Andrea.
-Nick's B&R deciding to stray from the path of evil, with the implication of a possible Mutanimals join-up was a very fitting send-off for the pair. I liked that.
-FW turtles meeting ICK & Chompy, having a little bit of hangout time in general is always nice.
-Donatello's favorite bo line was a great throwback.
-Loved the Chrome Dome shampoo bottle design.
As far as the story goes, I like the team-up of old & new villains, & the dynamic they had as a collective, but I wish they'd have done something different outside of that. The stakes weren't high enough, for me. I mean, a world ending event like Turtles Forever would just be further retreading, so it's not like I want more of the same, but perhaps instead they could've tried to merge the universes like in the Super Mario movie? I dunno. Plenty of possibilities.
I'd give it a 6.5/10. Competent turtles (& a somewhat less spineless Shredder) in the same story would've made it an 8 or 8.5, bit more variety/higher stakes = 10.
I've rarely been critical of this series, y'all know that. So don't give me sh*t for having an opinion once in a while.