Is it actually an improvement for Splinter to start out as Hamato Yoshi?

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by IndigoErth

Primarily the reason I prefer Yoshi as Splinter.


Oh, but wait, it's not my only reason.

The martial arts may be one thing -- albeit not entirely easy to accept a rat in a cage would ever be capable of teaching it later -- BUT... Look at the Turtles, they aren't a bunch of dumb slobs (relatably messy lair aside, esp as teens), they're relatively decent young men who have clearly had at least some amount of home schooling in other subjects, and other non-fighting skills including some semblance manners (albeit that varies per Turtle), as best a rat dad can manage given their situation.

Maybe we can pretend a pet rat can mimic martial arts moves and somehow teach it later... but it's even harder to accept that a pet rat grasped literacy, math, etc and would be able to teach it later, let alone learn it himself or even be interested.

I suppose if they watched Sesame Street as little kids like a lot of us it would have taught them something, but it would only be scratching the surface and never anywhere near enough.

I kind of feel like without human Yoshi still wanting the basic amenities of a human life he used to live (a home more or less, refrigerator, tv, beds, an education for his kids, etc) they aught to be living a rather different life had Splinter always been a rat.

I think you and I have given this subject way more thought than it merits, on account of we pretty much have identical feelings on this.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by IndigoErth

Primarily the reason I prefer Yoshi as Splinter.


Oh, but wait, it's not my only reason.

The martial arts may be one thing -- albeit not entirely easy to accept a rat in a cage would ever be capable of teaching it later -- BUT... Look at the Turtles, they aren't a bunch of dumb slobs (relatably messy lair aside, esp as teens), they're relatively decent young men who have clearly had at least some amount of home schooling in other subjects, and other non-fighting skills including some semblance manners (albeit that varies per Turtle), as best a rat dad can manage given their situation.

Maybe we can pretend a pet rat can mimic martial arts moves and somehow teach it later... but it's even harder to accept that a pet rat grasped literacy, math, etc and would be able to teach it later, let alone learn it himself or even be interested.

I suppose if they watched Sesame Street as little kids like a lot of us it would have taught them something, but it would only be scratching the surface and never anywhere near enough.

I kind of feel like without human Yoshi still wanting the basic amenities of a human life he used to live (a home more or less, refrigerator, tv, beds, an education for his kids, etc) they aught to be living a rather different life had Splinter always been a rat.

Who taught Mirage, New Line and 4 Kids Splinter reading, as he was left alone in the sewers after Oroku Saki killed Hamato Yoshi? No increased intelligence can teach you reading without interacting with someone else.

[IndigoErth]

Exactly, and the main issue I find with them and the original Splinter concept. I mean, it's not a bad concept and respect it as the original, and easily put aside just by dismissing it as a fictional "logic" and all and all it probably isn't an important detail, but when you think about it...it definitely raises some questions.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

Originally Posted by neatoman

As stupid as the "learned it all from a textbook" explaination from the PD movies is, it did make me realise something important, who ever said his time learning martial arts stopped with observing Yoshi? He had fifteen years between mutating and sending out the Turtles to avenge Yoshi, that's plenty of time to figure how to fight properly.

Rat Splinter may have had 15 years to learn Ninjitsu in the sewers through a book or remembering his master's movements, but its still nowhere as robust as Yoshi Splinter having already learned ninjitsu during his years as a human through more proper methods.

In a sense, 2012 Splinter has the best of both worlds.
He has years of ninja training as a human unlike most Splinters out there, and had 15 years in the sewers to refine his abilities unlike Fred Wolf Splinter who is implied to have been with the turtles for a short time (seeing as how they mutated directly into adults rather than children).

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by FredWolfLeonardo

seeing as how they mutated directly into adults rather than children.

I don't think the Fred Wolf turtles mutated directly into teenagers. All we see are flashback scenes, maybe just a product of imagination in April O'Neil's mind as Splinter tells her their backstory. (The same scenes are seen in the Archie Comic, where we're later exposed to events from their pre-teenage years).

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by Original TMNT Cartoon Fan

I don't think the Fred Wolf turtles mutated directly into teenagers. All we see are flashback scenes, maybe just a product of imagination in April O'Neil's mind as Splinter tells her their backstory. (The same scenes are seen in the Archie Comic, where we're later exposed to events from their pre-teenage years).

But then we still have the issue of Shredder waiting years to use his Technodrome... No matter how you look at it, the timeline makes no sense.

[victory_angel]

I kinda like the idea of Splinter and Hamato Yoshi being one and the same. I have nothing wrong with Splinter being just a loyal pet. However the downside is that rats live for roughly 2-3 years in the wild and 4-5 if they are store bought pets.

So Hamato Yoshi would not have had Splinter as a pet for more then two years. If you go by the 4kids version then Yoshi would have had Splinter for a year and a half to two years at most. Even if Splinter was able to mimic Yoshi?s movements he couldn?t learn everything Yoshi knew in that Span of time.

However asides from being Splinters owner, Hamato Yoshi is largely a non-entity as a character. Even though some incarnations such as the 4kids and IDW incarnations do try to give him some development as a character.

By having Hamato Yoshi become Splinter the story is able to flesh out Yoshi as a character outside of the love story that becomes the catalyst for the Turtles origin

[PizzaPower1985]

I would agree that Splinter as Yoshi first makes the most sense, but since TMNT was supposed to originally be a parody, a completely silly concept that was played straight (particularly the origin found in #1 way back a year before my birth), I think it worked for Mirage. IDW let us have our cake and eat it too with the reincarnation plot. Yoshi was a man in Feudal times but also in present day a lab rat gets mutated into a ninja master from Yoshi's DNA, so in a way it was giving 87 toon fans what they wanted and Mirage fans what they wanted and it all still works.

Splinter works better as a man first.

[Leo656]

Regarding ages and lifespan of mutated characters, it was always in my head that the mutagen provided them with more longevity. Just seems to make sense. It never stated outright anywhere but it can force a lot of things to make more sense if you choose to look at it that way. ((Shrug))

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Agreed. Even though my first real exposure was to the movie's origin, I always thought the FW one made more sense, especially considering the difficulty of a normal rat ever even being physically capable of doing certain fighting moves. Rat bodies are built very differently from human ones, and even after mutating, he would have had a great deal of trouble learning to adapt his body structure to perform some moves. So it makes sense that he would have to be human first to even LEARN them in the first place!

Same goes for the turtles themselves, though they at least had the advantage of Splinter's experience to teach them, but they would still have had to adapt or even drop some moves completely from their fighting training. For one thing, turtle shells are very rigid, so anything requiring bending the spine would either have to be adapted to fit around that handicap, or would be right out.

The biggest hurdle for me is how would Splinter ever learn to read, write, do math, or speak just from watching Yoshi? Sorry, but rats just aren't THAT smart. Even if he could learn the rudiments of spoken language, writing would be just marks on a page. It ONLY works if he WAS Yoshi.

[PizzaPower1985]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Regarding ages and lifespan of mutated characters, it was always in my head that the mutagen provided them with more longevity. Just seems to make sense. It never stated outright anywhere but it can force a lot of things to make more sense if you choose to look at it that way. ((Shrug))

Well that has to be the logic behind IDWs Leatherhead because he came from the 18th century (pirate times) and then was mutated and exists in current 21st century, so he obviously got some longevity because alligators live 30 to 50 years and crocs live a max of about 70 to 75 years.

[PizzaPower1985]

Originally Posted by MsMarvelDuckie

Agreed. Even though my first real exposure was to the movie's origin, I always thought the FW one made more sense, especially considering the difficulty of a normal rat ever even being physically capable of doing certain fighting moves. Rat bodies are built very differently from human ones, and even after mutating, he would have had a great deal of trouble learning to adapt his body structure to perform some moves. So it makes sense that he would have to be human first to even LEARN them in the first place!

Same goes for the turtles themselves, though they at least had the advantage of Splinter's experience to teach them, but they would still have had to adapt or even drop some moves completely from their fighting training. For one thing, turtle shells are very rigid, so anything requiring bending the spine would either have to be adapted to fit around that handicap, or would be right out.

The biggest hurdle for me is how would Splinter ever learn to read, write, do math, or speak just from watching Yoshi? Sorry, but rats just aren't THAT smart. Even if he could learn the rudiments of spoken language, writing would be just marks on a page. It ONLY works if he WAS Yoshi.

You are correct! The story doesn't really make sense unless somehow either Yoshi became a rat OR the mutagen made the rat somehow so human and so sentient that he automatically became a polymath and familiar with ninjitsu, literacy, mathematics etc.

[Leo656]

I often wonder if Kev and Pete ever wish they'd put more thought into their drunken, marijuana-haze scribblings from almost 40 years ago, simply because at the time they had no idea anyone would ever be taking this stuff so seriously?

I like to imagine Pete occasionally skimming this forum and then re-enacting the Shatner At The Trek Convention skit from SNL.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Lol! That would be too funny. I might even pay to see that!

As for their lifespans, I could see Splinter gaining a longer lifespan from the mutagen, which would explain why he still seems to be very old in most versions, but even if he was maybe 5-6 years old at the time of his mutation, that would still mean he would be far too old to do much fighting- or training!

[PizzaPower1985]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I often wonder if Kev and Pete ever wish they'd put more thought into their drunken, marijuana-haze scribblings from almost 40 years ago, simply because at the time they had no idea anyone would ever be taking this stuff so seriously?

I like to imagine Pete occasionally skimming this forum and then re-enacting the Shatner At The Trek Convention skit from SNL.

There's definitely A LOT of stuff that could have been better plotted and thought out after the initial issue. If the Mirage series as a whole had stuck with the types of storytelling that we saw in the first 12 issues, the Northampton introspective style, Return to NY and City At War, Eastman and Laird today would be regarded as the Alan Moore's of the black and white underground comics scene. There was a lot of genius in what they did (and other writers like Rick Veitch) but a lot of Mirage suffers from tonal shifts and stories that suck.

[Leo656]

Speaking of Veitch, ever read Brat Pack? I'm sure you have, but it bears asking. I'm always surprised at who has and hasn't read it.

Also, did we just compare Eastman & Laird to Alan Moore? Whoa there, chief, let's not say things we can't take back.

[PizzaPower1985]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Speaking of Veitch, ever read Brat Pack? I'm sure you have, but it bears asking. I'm always surprised at who has and hasn't read it.

Also, did we just compare Eastman & Laird to Alan Moore? Whoa there, chief, let's not say things we can't take back.

No. I'm serious. I think the best of the Eastman and Laird team in those books were as good as much of what Moore has done. Outside superheroes and V For Vendetta Moore never really captured my interest.

And yeah, I love Veitch so of course I read it. Wasn't it partly inspired by the death of Jason Todd?

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by PizzaPower1985

You are correct! The story doesn't really make sense unless somehow either Yoshi became a rat OR the mutagen made the rat somehow so human and so ts, literacy, mathematics etc.

He was never supposed to be a normal rat. Peter just says he... forgot what the plan there was.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by PizzaPower1985

No. I'm serious. I think the best of the Eastman and Laird team in those books were as good as much of what Moore has done. Outside superheroes and V For Vendetta Moore never really captured my interest.

And yeah, I love Veitch so of course I read it. Wasn't it partly inspired by the death of Jason Todd?

That I'm not entirely sure of. But it wouldn't surprise me, either.

You know Garth Ennis read "Brat Pack". I love The Boys (comic, anyway; less interested in the show as they changed way too much of the story to really be able to retain my enthusiasm, as I REALLY love the books and don't think they needed any tinkering), but upon reading it, it's like "Yeah, some of this feels... familiar." Not that that's bad, though.

I have not read everything Alan Moore ever put out, but between "Watchmen", "V For Vendetta", his Superman stuff, and "Lost Girls", he's on a whole other level, to me. I personally feel that Eastman, Laird, or a combination of same, would frankly need a rocket up their ass to be able to even come close to Alan Moore's ability.

Individually, neither Kev or Pete is a "great" writer. They definitely did better as a collaborative unit, but even then... I don't think their best stuff comes close to Moore's, or even Morrison's frankly.

I mean, you know, "opinions". I was like 20 the first time I read Mirage so I don't really have a romantic fixation with it. It's fine. I just notice that's a prominent variable much of the time. It wasn't one of the things that shaped my view of the TMNT or their universe and I came into it way after the fact, and I notice that to people with similar experience to myself, Mirage is generally "meh".

It's perfectly fine to not agree, though.

But regarding Eastman & Laird... between Vol. 4 and "Bodycount", neither guy makes my Mount Rushmore of Comic Book Writers. Just gotta be honest!

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

He was never supposed to be a normal rat. Peter just says he... forgot what the plan there was.

I knowwwww, but that's some "Dumbledore Is Gay" stuff. Postscripts don't count, if it's not in the official text it's not in the text.

That may have been an idea they had Once Upon A Time but they had 30 years to actually do something with it and they didn't. So it's stricken from the record.

Doesn't matter if Peter Parker was "really" the Clone and Ben Reilly was the "Real" Peter all along. That might have been The Original Idea, but that's NOT what happened, so it doesn't count.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Never a normal rat? Then what was he? An escapee from the NIMH experiments? (I am currently working on a short story using exactly that concept, as it happens....)