Shredder and the turtles being well known in their world....bad thing?
 

In the 2003 toon, the turtles and Shredder sneak around like real ninjas, no human in the city know they exist. They can easily be dismissed as an urban myth like Batman. The citizens in the 2003 show know Saki, but not his Shredder alter ego.

In the OT, Shredder and the turtles fight in broad daylight and in public.

Btw, was OT April exposing the turtles to the world a careless(and foolish) thing to do?

I prefer the stealthy TMNT & Co

Same here. I didn't really like it when the TMNT and Shredder were just able to walk around in the open on the OT. I like it when they stay in the shadows.

I kind of liked the idea of New York knowing about the Turtles the same way people know Batman exists.

Most of NY still hated or feared the Turtles in the OT, so they were never accepte and still had to wear disguises.

I think both work well in their respective universe.

Booorriing.

Zarius: The Anti-Andrew. Seriously you're bile against the Mirage books at every turn is just as obnoxious as Andrew's bile against anything but. Both are instrumental to the Turtles success.

I don't see how. Ninjas are suppose to hide in the shadows, not walk around in broad daylight.

The urban legend approach are nifty as well, you can't be completely successfully stealthy in a modern city, someones gonna see ya at least once

I think it's strange that the only traffic jam in the OT was in the Big Blow Out. New York City is bumper to bumper.

Shredder's schemes were too overly dramatic and outlandish in the OT. Things like the city floating in the are, building shrinking, robots attacking people, sooner or later people would realize it's the same guy doing all of this, and it's same group of people stopping him every time. Shredder and Krang also did the 'take over all TVs in the city to proclaim their evil plans' thing alot, so people would know it's the same bad guys causing trouble over and over again.

In the 2K3 show, the Foot and Purple Dragons did all the dirty work, so noone would ever know Shredder existed or was behind things. And since noone knew what things he was doing, noone knew mutant Turtles were stopping him.

But thanks to Burne Thompson, the turtles were the ones who got blamed, at least later in the series.

Couldn't have said it any better myself.

Fixed it for ya. :twink:

I tend to agree with this.

It never seemed consistent. Around Season 3 or 4 it began to fluctuate. Some episodes had the turtles recognised as heroes, some the public regarded them as villains or outlaws and some bizarrely had them not known by the people they encountered. The weirdest would be the odd episodes were they seem to walk around and interact with humans without them passing comment as if mutant were normal.

This is what makes April's reporter role important in this series. In Mirage/4kids, since April or some other Turtle supporter broadcasts' the Turtles as heroes, the Turtles/Foot tend to battle in more isolated and crime-ridden settings that are not regarded as safe or simply don't have many people around. For the original series, the Turtles' disguises help to mitigate the haters, so that when enemies tend to attack, the public generally runs away right before the Turtles take off their disguises and battle. But April for awhile helped to make the Turtles feel trustworthy, and when they did less Ninja fighting toward the middle of the series, the public didn't seem to mind as much. But when the Channel 6 building collapsed in Get Shredder, April was suddenly cut off from her full privileges of broadcasting, since Burne and Vernon clearly associated April with the Turtles and started to turn a bit against her, which may have persuaded her to leave Channel 6. This is part of the reason why Red Sky is watchable since it highlights the public turning against the Turtles after they allegedly believe that since a major TV station was destroyed and because the Turtles were praised so much for many years, felt that they betrayed themselves.

I think they both work well BUT, to put what Zarius said in a more "diplomatic" way, I think there's a limit to how far you can take the whole "sneaky ninjas" thing. Besides, as I've said elsewhere, people take the "ninja" part of TMNT WAY too seriously. It was a throwaway line, a gag, something Kev & Pete put in when they were trying to come up with the goofiest thing possible (and, I'd fathom a guess, were probably either drunk and/or stoned). I highly doubt they cared as much about the guys being "authentic ninjas" as a lot of the fans seem to.

TMNT is, and has always been, primarily a sci-fi action/adventure story with bits of comedy and drama thrown in in service to the particular story of the day. That said, I don't see the need to "keep it real" and only have stories take place at night, or in the shadows, just because "That's what ninjas do". I know TMNT has been the reason a lot of people have gotten into Japanese culture and history, and that's awesome, BUT that was so totally NOT what the creators had in mind at the time.

I've always seen the TMNT saga play out in my head more or less how it's played out across most other media: They start out in the shadows, either unknown or an "urban legend", and later on they get exposed through circumstance and have to deal with it, and the storylines adapt accordingly. Personally, I find it very unlikely that they'd NEVER be discovered. And in truth, if they WERE seen on the streets of NYC, nobody would even give a sh*t. Nothing fazes those people; at worst it'd be like TMNT II and everyone would think it was some elaborate gag.

I think the story should dictate whether the TMNT are known or unknown, not some arbitrary set of "rules".

2003 aliens
 

But aliens (Triceratons) can invade town and fight in public. The TMNT shall not fight in daylight-public, but rather in the dark night-shaddows of town, or rural forests (like Northamtpon, Massachussets or whatever rural towns exists on Earth) when they face humans. When they face aliens, they could do it on other planets, or inside the alien's spacecraft.

I don't like rules. Rules limit imagination.

So was the "mutant" part. Doesn't make it any less intrinsic a part of the Turtles as a whole. Heck, the whole thing was a gag, to begin with. That doesn't change the fact that we can and should have stories of the characters we love that we can take seriously, alongside the fun, goofy versions.

Regardless of what may have sparked the name, the ninja aspect is undoubtedly the coolest to me, besides the one that most incarnations seem to completely forget about or grossly misinterpret. I can see where you're coming from on the "rules" aspect, but for my full enjoyment, the "ninja" part of Ninja Turtles should be front and centre.

For me the gag is the"teenage", they've always seemed older than that, except on the new show coming up.