Does it bother anyone that Tokka and Rahzar aren’t paired up?
 

Pointless thread, sorry. But rewatching SotO in theaters got me thinking about this. What an odd choice.

Also occurred to me that this show established the pronunciation as Rah-zar (which April does day just once in the movie), instead of the old pronunciation of Ray-zar.

It did kinda bother me but the alternative of either mutating Fishface into a turtle or removing him as Razhar's counterpart seemed even more silly if we want Razhar alongside Tokka.

I might be in the minority for this, but I 100% preferred Dogpound over Razhar, design wise. I wish that Dogpound was kept and Razhar was kept a seperate characters which could've opened the door to using Tokka alongside him.

Yeah, I did think it was an odd decision to make when first watching the show. One day I’ll get around to rewatching it, though I don’t think my opinion will change on the matter.
It’s not so much the fact that they did something different with the characters. Fred Wolf Tokka and Rahzar are different from their movie counterparts too, but you can still tell they’re Tokka and Rahzar.
You could give their 2012 versions original names and no one would’ve batted an eye.

The "Double mutations" thing was always a bad idea in that show.

I agree about Dogpound.

I wasn’t in love with him, and I’m not crazy about the whole “Shredder must have two dumbass henchmen” thing but it is a tradition. Bebop/Rocksteady, Tokka/Rahzar, Koya/Bludgeon, and an argument could even be made for Hun/Stockman in the 4kids show.

Dogpound and Fishface were supposed to be those guys for the 2012 show, but then Bradford got double mutated and they started getting pushed out by the likes of Tigerclaw (a character I never liked) and a new Bebop and Rocksteady.

By the end of the show they were kind of just along for the ride and were both getting their asses kicked pretty easily. They would also get jobbed by Casey and April even. I feel like they never got a fair shake.

Hmm, people might have drawn the comparison with Rahzar. He’s clearly a wolf and resembles a skeleton, which you could loosely connect to his vague graveyard motif he had for some reason in his FW/Playmates version.

But Tokka? Yeah, hell no. Nobody would have tried to say that was Tokka if they used a different name.

I have said it before but I'm not sure if I've said it in this way, Tokka and Rahzar were likely not paired up because the show didn't really seem to care that much about what characters were "intended to be" so to speak. If anything, it's a little more concerning that Tokka is presented as an alien Gamera than being paired up with Rahzar, and that Rahzar in turn started out as a potentially more interesting character than the two mutant identities they gave him.

The show did this a lot, which is why changing Bebop and Rocksteady from a pair of American punks to a cat burglar and a Russian arms dealer barely registers, because it's somehow a small change compared to so much else they did. Making Mona Lisa an alien warrior, the Neutrinos microscopic golems, Wyrm into a genie and (what's essentially) Klunk into a horrifying pile of mewling ice cream are all really strange decisions that I don't really get because they might as well be original characters at that point. It really does not surprise that the people who made this show only seemed to think all Tokka and Rahzar needed to be was "Turtle and Wolf" with literally nothing else attached.

Anyway, it is honestly a little sadder to me that they even bothered with Bradford and his backstory/gimmick if they were just going to turn him into a monster after a few episodes, even sadder that decided he should be turned into a different monster later on. Not sure if "secretly evil karate instructor who looks like Norris" is the best idea for a character but clearly better than some beast who can't do anything other than action scenes. This part I know I have said before but it wasn't like making Bradford and Dogpound/Rahzar different characters would have been more expensive or anything, they could have easily had the more interesting character and the brutish beast at the same time since they needed to make both character models anyway. And it's not like Dogpound needed to be the same character either just because they were both dogs, they piled up the mutant henchmen and monsters anyway, literally dropping a countless amount of ooze canisters all over the city at the start of season 2 just so they could do that endlessly.

My issues with the 2012 series is how they create new characters, and then slap the names of the classic characters over them, For example Rahzar and Tokka are nothing like the original. Rahzar got the name after the mutant who was originally named Dogpound double mutated, and Mikey just decided to call him Rahzar for some reason, and then we have a giant space kaija type monster that was named Tokka for some reason. Again nothing like the original.

They did the same with Hun. For some reason the 2012 series made him to look like Bruce Lee.

Yes, it kind of bothered me. It would be like separating Bebop and Rocksteady, by having Rocksteady as a random mutation, and Bebop some kind of space pig that has nothing to do with Rocksteady.

They should have given Xever the double mutation treatment, too, and have him become Tokka. Then again, by doing so, he would have presumably lost his agility.

Xever ended up being a jobber anyway. But yeah, originally I also assumed he would get a second mutation like his pal.

Like... Into Tokka? I get a dog morphing into a wolf but I... Kinda don't see a fish becoming a turtle, at least not without some forced circumstances.

Still, trying to imagine a Cyborg Fish-Turtle-Human hybrid does seem like it would be an interesting looking thing to say the least.

I mean the mutagen in 2012 makes zero sense and basically has no rules. They could have had one of the turtles or Slash push him into a big vat and say it’s because he touched them last.

The real heavy lifting would have been… how would Mikey pull the name “Tokka” out of his ass?

:lol::lol::lol:

Snubbed his toe and screamed.

"Toe... Kaaaaah!!!!"

Well, it seems the "rules" don't apply to touching mutants, seeing as before Bradford and Xever were first mutated in "The Gauntlet," the Turtles were the last ones they were in contact with.

Fishface should of double mutated into Armaggon. A piranha mutating into a shark is much more believeable than mutating into Tokka. It worked for Pokemon (Carvanah to Sharpedo)

It bothers me that neither of the reinterpretations are great. Why is Rahzar a second mutation? Why is Rahzar Chuck Norris? Dogpound was a great character already, they just went with the rahzar name for nostalgia.

Tokka being gamera while neat, I don't know, it's not a great reimagining of the character either. I doubt anyone will ever say "I hope Tokka is Gamera again".

It does whatever the writers wanted them to do lol

I agree. Kind of dumb. Do it for nostalgia bait, but leave out the other half of the classic duo?

This one’s more defensible.

Tokka was originally based on that old Steve Bisette drawing of Terrorpin (and Snappy Warhol). Ciro learned about that from talking to tokka (Dave, the former Dromer) at a convention and got the idea for their Tokka and Chompy characters from that.

Interesting little full circle.

Honestly I think it would have been cooler if they had just used the names Terrorpin and Snappy.

Why should he have further mutated into anything? I raised this point before but Bradford, Dogpound and Rahzar could easily have been three different characters and it wouldn't have mattered, it might even have been better in the long run. So I don't see why Xever needed another mutant form when he could have just remained Xever, the human gangster.

Another option I was kind of expecting was Hun.

There is precedent for mutating him into a turtle and his name could have came from all that annoying Bruce Lee jibberish he used to never shut up with.

It was annoying how they would randomly slap classic character names on what are essentially completely new characters.

The show did that a lot. Introducing people like Steranko, Timmy and Falco only to turn them into Rocksteady, Mutagen Man and Rat King later on. I can't say too much about Anton since the purple mohawk was a dead giveaway.

The one that bugged me the most was Chrome Dome since he was a lazy re-use of Bradford in his Elite Foot gear. And none of the characters, especially Michealangelo who was a big fan of the guy, pointed out. It was one of those 'same character different actor' cases where the characters act as if nothing was odd.

Another thing the show did a lot was the 'new enemy is bad ass in his first appearance, becomes a chump afterwards'. Chris and Xever got multiple chances though starting out as dangerous threats as humans, then as mutants, then whenever Xever finally got his robot legs and then when Chris mutated a second time. The double mutation was an interesting idea, we never did see what happened to a mutant who fell into mutagen a second time in the old show. It was sometimes implied that it would de-mutate the turtles, but that never made sense.

I did like the idea of Shredder adding more mutants to his ranks rather than just keeping the same two with a 'guest star' or finding some contrivance to somehow replace Chris and Xever with Bebop and Rocksteady. I liked the eps where there was a full-on squad of Chris, Xever, Bebop, Rocksteady, Tiger Claw and Baxter scouring the city looking for the Turtles. I know status quo was big in the 80's, but it never made sense to me why Shredder stuck to just Bebop and Rocksteady, two mutants against four turtles. He never decided to mutate two more to round them out, or there was always some excuse so that Leatherhead, Slash or whoever wouldn't stick around to join the crew.

I don't see the problem with that. It's not like Mutagen Man has to be "Seymour Guts" (lol, which is just a name pun of See-More guts) or Timmy. And Rahzar being a double mutation was fine with me.

Chrome Dome has always been based on Shredder's armor (he's basically a robot Shredder in the original cartoon). So with Chris Bradford wearing Foot Elite armor, Chrome Dome just being a robot version of that is fine with me.

I was a bit iffy with Steranko being Rocksteady but they pulled it off really well I didn't mind. Plus he still had blonde hair and was white, and Bebop was black (the most important thing of all), so I think they did fine with their human designs.