Race and the New Toon
 

I really debated just posting this in the "deal breaker" thread, and if this gets out of hand, don't hesitate to kill this thread, but I was wondering...

The Fred Wolf series took Baxter Stockman and made him a Doc Brown-esque white mad scientist. Would you have a problem if certain characters were "race swapped"? If Casey was a Michael Clark Duncan style dude? If April was Asian? I guess there aren't any other characters to do that to, but yeah...Would you have a problem with April and Casey not being White Anglo-Saxon Protestants?

Oh I could see this turning bad really quick.

Yeah, I'm leary, too. I mean does it really matter? I wouldn't mind if Casey wasn't white. I just think we can be adults...

...

Um....on second thought.

april asian............................................. ...............yummmmmm

Powder, did you expect this direction? :P

No but I second his motion. Asian women are yummy. :tgrin:

I think the only "dealbreaker" when it comes to race changing is making Shredder a different ethnicity then Japanese (and Karai if she's in the nick toon). I think the majority of the other human characters are adaptable enough, that what skin color they have does not really matter.

I thought that way too. Oroku Saki, Tang Shen, and Hamato Yoshi have a very specific, story driven race. It'd just be silly to make them anything but Japanese

Was Shredder in 87 toon a Japanese? He didnt look like Japan people. He looked more like American than Japan.

He was supposed to be.

Can you please explain to me what "to look American" means? o_O

Seriously... The things you hear..

Anywho, I agree 100% with Kiwamu The Kappa. For instance, a dark skinned Casey Jones or a hispanic April O'Neil wouldn't bother me one bit. I'm all for change. Who wants a carbon copy of past TMNT versions anyway? Besides, modifying hair colour doesn't seem to have been a problem in the past so why would skin colour be an issue?

I really could care less as long as they stay true to the characters we know and love.

I don't care either, but I'm going to be the third to agree to an Asian April being quite delightful. :D

Well we all know April was originally black so no, it wouldn't make much diff to me if she were changed up. As noted, Baxter already has been swapped without much ado, and I could see Casey coming from a latin background (hey, all that misdirected passion comes from somewhere! :P) And who said they were Protestant? If anything, I would assume them to be Catholic since they are from the north east.

Splinter should be French and Saki should become a young, disillusioned Middle Eastern man who became bitter after his brother was killed.

We've known April/Casey the way they were so long, it would be odd to think of them as anything else.

Same thing with Shredder obviously having to be Japanese.

As for Baxter, it really doesn't matter if he's white or black. He never stays human very long in any incarnation anyway.

To quote Wikipedia' editors:
"This claim lacks factual verification.":twink:

Anyhoo, if I remember (can't offer any factual verification myself at the moment) it seems even Eastman & Laird weren't totally on the same page about April's ethnic background.

EDIT:
Steve Murphy discussed it on his blog, which is now defunct!
Here was the old link:
http://the-5th-turtle.blogspot.com/2...-of-april.html

Also, "there's a thread for that":
http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/showthread.php?t=24283

I love racial diversity in shows but I hate when they change race for the sake of diversity on established characters. I can live with it but it does bother me, I'd rather they introduce new characters of different races than shoehorn a race on an establish character.

Ditto.
♪If your thinking of Baxter Stockman♪
♪it don't matter if he's black or white♪
♪ee-hee♪

It wouldn't bother me in the slightest if the back stories of any of the main cast were shifted so that the cast wasn't quite so lacking in the diversity department.

I think all kids should be able to watch a cartoon and see themselves in the characters.

I saw the Stock they put in and Man I'm ok with it.;)