What would a "Kai" cut of the show look like?

[neatoman]

In case you don't know what that means, it's a reference to Dragon Ball Kai, an official cut of Dragon Ball Z that removed most of the filler scenes in order to better resemble the manga. Similar fan cuts exist of the Original Dragon Ball and Naruto as well, though I can't remember many similar official projects. Keep in mind, it's not as simple as removing episodes that are unrelated the manga, it's literally going in and removing as many scenes added as is possible, making for episodes consisting of scenes taken from multiple episodes.

Let's keep in mind here that doing something like that for this show would be much more difficult, considering new stories are intertwined with the adaptations. Not to mention that it contains changes that can't really be reversed with editing, Shredder would have to be an Utrom no matter what, there just isn't enough material to make it seem as if he is just a human.

Tentatively, I think it would go something like this:

1. Things Change (largely unchanged)
2. A Better Mousetrap (largely unchanged)
3. Meet Casey Jones (largely unchanged)
4. Darkness on the Edge of Town / The Way of Invisibility
5. The King (largely unchanged)
6. Tales of Leo / The Monster Hunter
7. Return to New York 1/2/3
8. The Search for Splinter 1/2
9. Turtles in Space 1/2/3
10. Turtles in Space 3/4/5
11. Secret Origins 1/2/3
12. Fallen Angel / The Ultimate Ninja
13. What a Croc / Hunted
14. City at War 1/2
15. City at War part 3 (largely unchanged)
16. Rogue in the House 1/2
17. Return of the Justice Force (largely unchanged)
18. The Big Brawl 1/2
19. The Big Brawl 3/4
20. Space Invaders 1/2
21. Space Invaders 3 / Worlds collide 1
22. Worlds Collide 2/3
23. H.A.T.E / New Blood
24. Nobody's fool (largely unchanged)
25. The Christmas Aliens (largely unchanged)
26. Time Travails (largely unchanged)
27. Mission of Gravity / Hun on the Run
28. Reality Check / Across the Universe
29. The Real World part 1 (largely unchanged)
30. Same As It Never Was / The Real World Part 2
31. Exodus 1/2
32. Cousin Sid (largely unchanged)
33. The People's Choice (largely unchanged)
34. Sons of the Silent Age (largely unchanged)
35. I Monster (largely unchanged)
36. All Hallow's Thieves (largely unchanged)
37. Samurai Tourist / The Ancient One
38. Scion of the Shredder / Prodigal Son
39. Insane in the Membrane (largely unchanged)
40. The Return of Savanti part 1 (largely unchanged)
41. The Return of Savanti part 2 (largely unchanged)
42. Tale of Master Yoshi (largely unchanged)

Just to be clear, this is just tentative intuition, not careful observation, in practice it could turn out to be too unevenly paced or still be longer than it needs to. It could even turn out it's about the right amount of episodes, just not structured in the right way.