Oroku Nagi: Who needs him?

[Candy Kappa]

Saki was around 8 years old when Nagi was murdered, the trained 'til he was ca 18 to avenge his older brother.

That's dedication on a Batman level.

[LeotheLateBloomer]

I hope one day we see Oroku Nagi in other TMNT media. Hopefully in the next cartoon or in direct-to-video animations.

[corvus]

I'm pretty sure theres a huge portion of TMNT fans who don't know Nagi existed

[Warboss74]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Blame/Thank the property becoming more mainstream. For the sake of movies and TV aimed (primarily) at kids, the protagonist and antagonist need to be much more cut-and-dry.

Although his brother getting killed hardly justifies Saki trying to rape Tang Shen in any way, let alone kill her. And I'm not a huge fan of Splinter as a douche. So I've always looked at the changes as improvements, really.

So much of Mirage #1 would likely have been written differently had they known they were building the foundation for another 30+ years of stories, instead of a one-shot parody book.

It's that kind of attitude towards characterization that results in making Greedo shoot first instead of Han.

[Leo656]

I didn't make the rules. Doesn't change the fact that, with rare exception, they exist. In this case, in turning TMNT into a cartoon/toyline/movie, there really wasn't any room at all to imply Saki is anything less than bad and Yoshi is anything less than good. The lines have to be drawn a lot thicker when you're marketing a product to kids and families. That's just how it is.

[Panda_Kahn_fan]

Nagi was important to the Mirage comics, but he is of little to no importance anywhere else. The cycle of vengence is exlusive to the source material, every other version has gone the Saki=Bad, Yoshi= good route. It become the 'common mythology' of turtles lore. If a writer has a story to tell with Nagi in a particular version, then he can be used. If not, he should not be shoehorned in by the magical words 'source material'. Like any other concept, the cycle of vengence hould only be brought into a version if it suits the intended narrative of the storyteller.

And I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you look across many diffrent stories and mythological cycles, the only signifgance the 'source material' usually has is it's the first version. A 'common mythology' ususally develops out of all the various adaptations, retellings, and additions later storytellers add. If you resticted storytellers to going back to the 'source material' well, the aurthian cycle, Greek/Roman mythology and the superman mythos would all be very, very diffrent. Once the 'common mythology' of 4Kids, Fred Wolf, the movies, archie, and all the others entered the public consiousness, it can be argued that Mirage simply became another ingredient in the 'common mythology soup' that superceeded it's primacy.

[Tazi]

Originally Posted by Panda_Kahn_fan

Saki=Bed Yoshi= good

wtf is a 'bed yoshi'?


ah figured, never mind.


but google thinks something else:

Spoiler:

[Panda_Kahn_fan]

Thanks, fixed.

And yes, there are the exceptions of bad adaptations, but bad aspects are usually ignored in the 'common mythology'. I would point to Harley Quinn, Jimmy Olsen, Kryptonite, and Sir Lancelot as not originating from the source material in thier rspective fictions, and migrated into the 'common mythology' from andaptations/retellings

[Warboss74]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I didn't make the rules. Doesn't change the fact that, with rare exception, they exist. In this case, in turning TMNT into a cartoon/toyline/movie, there really wasn't any room at all to imply Saki is anything less than bad and Yoshi is anything less than good. The lines have to be drawn a lot thicker when you're marketing a product to kids and families. That's just how it is.

I understand drawing that distinction in the cartoons even though 2K3 dabbled in it, but I don't think that's the case given the way comic book movies are made today. Loki's probably the most interesting character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and has a fairly large following. Large enough that they likely went back and changed his fate in Thor 2 when they did the reshoots with Hiddleston.

[The Fifth Turtle]

Originally Posted by corvus

I'm pretty sure theres a huge portion of TMNT fans who don't know Nagi existed

You can say that with confidence not uncertainty.

[Cipher]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Although his brother getting killed hardly justifies Saki trying to rape Tang Shen in any way, let alone kill her. And I'm not a huge fan of Splinter as a douche. So I've always looked at the changes as improvements, really.

Where did this rape thing come into play? Nagi was definitely being aggressive with Tang Shen (although the story only ever portrays him as beating her), but Saki just shows up at her door years later and kills her.

So much of Mirage #1 would likely have been written differently had they known they were building the foundation for another 30+ years of stories, instead of a one-shot parody book.

Would it? I don't know; if the idea was to create something with more mainstream, good-vs-evil appeal, definitely. And that's what's been done, time and time again as the franchise has been reinterpreted in new media and under different publishers.

But the Mirage series stuck to its guns on the content of the first issue and later (some fifty issues later, but still), pulled things together thematically so well that you could be convinced it was planned from the start.

[Powder]

In a panel of the origin her robe is open up top a bit which could vaguely imply sexual abuse was on the horizon. At least I think so. Been a while since I read it.

[Cipher]

Originally Posted by Powder

In a panel of the origin her robe is open up top a bit which could vaguely imply sexual abuse was on the horizon. At least I think so. Been a while since I read it.

Yeah, that's the panel with Nagi. I guess it's possible either way, but it doesn't much change the end result, nor our assessment of Nagi (who was beating her to death regardless). He's holding her up by her robe, by the way, which is why it's fallen open.

[Powder]

Ah, right. Well, clothes work that way, I suppose. At the end of the day I doubt E&L put much thought into the issue. He was portrayed as a bad guy, and was taken care of as such. While things can be left to interpretation, they weren't meant to be analyzed I'm sure.

[shuriken]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Although his brother getting killed hardly justifies Saki trying to rape Tang Shen in any way, let alone kill her. And I'm not a huge fan of Splinter as a douche. So I've always looked at the changes as improvements, really.

So much of Mirage #1 would likely have been written differently had they known they were building the foundation for another 30+ years of stories, instead of a one-shot parody book.

I don't think Saki (in the movie or original comic) ever tried to rape Tang Shen. I think he just straight up killed her.
Nagi on the other hand probably did or tried to. Saki was doing his duty as an agent of the Foot Clan, which was perfect for him since his target was Yoshi. I would have liked to see the building tension between Nagi and Yoshi, with little Saki maybe even looking up to both of them. But in his grief stricken state he garners a ball of rage within that culminates in him becoming that deadly ninja.

[Leo656]

Could be open to interpretation. I honestly only kind of accepted that there was an attempted rape after seeing other people say it over the years. I'm not the Mirage guy.

[Candy Kappa]

In #1 Saki only killed Shen, some implies or theorize that Nagi might have tried to do more then Just beating Shen up, not Saki. Saki was 7 years old and not present when Nagi attacked Shen and Yoshi intervened.

We never see Saki do anything with Shen to imply he raped her. Shredder kills Shen, waits for Yoshi to come home, introduce himself as Oroku Saki and kills Yoshi.

With Nagi in the story, it gives Shredder a proper motivation, Shredder is the hero in a different story. He is the young brother that avenges the death of his beloved older brother that got murdered by Yoshi and Shen.

Yoshi and Shen never stuck around to explain what happened.

[DrSpengler]

Originally Posted by Candy Kappa

With Nagi in the story, it gives Shredder a proper motivation, Shredder is the hero in a different story. He is the young brother that avenges the death of his beloved older brother that got murdered by Yoshi and Shen.

Yoshi and Shen never stuck around to explain what happened.

Aww yeah, this guy right here.

It was an underdeveloped plot point for the original Mirage Shredder, admittedly, but he had a sympathetic or empathetic angle to his origin story. Beyond just wanting to avenge his brother, the text even explicitly states that he was misinformed and manipulated by the Foot Clan hierarchy, making him a "victim" in his own right.

There's a lot of material in that original Mirage Shredder back story that could be used to flesh out the character. While I appreciate that Mirage didn't want to overuse the Shredder and employed him sparingly, at times it felt like a missed opportunity to mine some genuinely fascinating characterization from him.

I think it was... Tristan Jones (?) who said he even pitched a Shredder prequel story to Tales and got it shot down (might have been Ross May; my memory is foggy). Mirage editorial seemed pretty strict in their decree to leave the Shredder alone (save the Shark-Shredder, but that was explained in excruciating detail as not being the "real" Shredder). I get why they wanted to stick to that angle, but there were so many stories that could have been told that couldn't not be explored in other continuities (since, as noted, all other continuities have eliminated Nagi from the formula).

[Kurai]

He seems to be pretty interchangeable, seeing as I didn't even know the character existed until I actually read the first issue. I do agree that it'd be interesting if they used him in a story.

[Masterpiece]

First of all, Nagi deserved to die.
He almost killed Tang Shen because she didn't love him.
Having Nagi killed by Yoshi doesn't make Saki sympathetic either.

Nagi was a jealous it's-all-about-me thug.
Saki just refused to see his brother's faults.

Nagi is an unnecessary character.
And the Oroku bloodline are a bunch of unsympathetic, arrogant fools.

I'm glad the Original Movie edited Nagi out of the script (yeah, Nagi was in the script for those of you who want to know). All you need is Saki as the Shredder and that's it.

PS: You know how Saki trained for a decade before he went to kill Yoshi?
Yeah, Splinter would have already died by the time Saki arrived in New York.
The longest an un-mutated rat has ever lived for was 7 years. And even then that is 4 years over the average lifespan of a rat (3 years).

So it's also more realistic that Saki is the one who is Yoshi's rival for Tang Shen's love. Makes the story flow more quickly and Splinter would not have lived an abnormally long life as an un-mutated rat.