Aspects of Splinter in the old toon i wished they focused more on...
 

Unlike the other incarnations of tmnt, Splinter is a human mutated into a rat.
In the first season, the tmnt are focused toward stopping shredder, and in "shredder and splintered", they actually want to help revert Splinter back to Yoshi.

Now I know this was a kids cartoon, but other than 1 episode, where don altered the mutagen to make Splinter human temporarily, the cartoon almost rarely showed splinter feeling depressed about his condition, or encountering anyone from his human past (that i recall) or dealing with his banishment from the foot clan or personal issues. Also, Splinter's enmity towards Shredder is not really acknowledged much after a couple of season. I mean, he usually tells the turtles to stop shreds evil scheme dui jour, but not much more than that.

I guess i came up w/this topic, b/c ep 5 was my favorite episode of the old toon, b/c the shredder/splinter feud was handled well, and one of the few times they fought seriously (i like the dialogue also)..

thoughts?

Watch (if it's not one of your top five) "Legend of Koji" an awesome Yoshi/Saki episode. "White Belt, Black Heart" is also a good episode. I hear season 7's the one to watch...:p

Notice that in "Splinter No More" he kind of didn't like returning to his human self after all. But that episode was rather strange in general.

I would have liked for the cartoon to get more into the whole Shredder and Splinter as teacher and student thing, and maybe show what exactly went down that made them become so bitter toward each other.

I also would have liked to see what Yoshi's life was like before he became leader of the foot clan, and see some of his young ninja adventures that he had.

I think the toon should have played up his forced abandonment from the human world a bit more. Also I don't know if any one caught on to this but the fact that the turtles where freaks that where ostersised from normal human society, and the fact that Splinter was there father/guardian and depended on him, pretty much ment that he couldn't have returned to human even if he could because that would have ment abandoning the turtles and leaving them all alone to fend for them selves.

it is a tough call, Splinter's involvement with the turtles ment that he would have to stay in exile from the world because it wouldn't be fair to the turtles if he got to become a human again and resume a normal life, and the turtles could not.

Splinter himself said that it was his "karma" and pretty much said that if this was his lot in life after both of those episodes, so be it, so I guess that explains it. He's realized that's the hand he's been delt, and he can do nothing about it.

Or, you know, it was the old toon and they had a pretty good pattern going with the whole mutants liveing together thing.

hmm, by karma I guess he means bad karma. I wonder what Splinter did to deserve be kicked out of the foot clan and then mutated into a giant talking rat. Must have been something pretty messed up to get the cosmic forces to sh*t on him like that :ohwell:

Nah, I think that Splinter didn't really mean what he said, and was just putting up a front so as not to distress the turtles about not being able to stay human.