Is April a peer or a mother figure to the Turtles?
 

I was thinking about the family dynamic of TMNT across the incarnations and this thought crossed my mind.

I think in Mirage/the 2003 show/the 1990s movies especially, it's a little of both. But if they met, say, Casey first, or they never met her at all, would the story and relationship dynamics be all that different?

They're starting their lives as she is starting her career, so they can be seen as peers in that way. But at the same time, she is technically older than them.

I always saw her as a peer or even as a sort of mentor figure since she is older and often less immature than them.

I can't see her as a mother figure though, since the turtles have hit on her quite alot :lol:

I never really saw her as motherly, more along the lines of either a peer or a sibling.

The only time I saw her as motherly in the old cartoon is when the turtles were transformed into babies.

Even though the Turtles are meant to be teenagers and April's age ranged from early 20's to 30's prior to Nick, she never really felt much older than them because the Turtles all acted like adults.

The Nick series is the first time the Turtles felt like actual 15 year olds, but April was de-aged too to make her their sibling as well so once again she felt the same age as them.

In the original cartoon April is 28, she's like double the age of the Turtles but it doesn't feel like it. Same for Mirage.

She's all of it, a mother, sister, friend, peer, team-mate, just depends on the circumstance or iteration.

^This, it just depends on the incarnations and what the writers decide.

Big sister.

Pretty much this.

In the earlier episodes of the FW series she was a borderline mother, telling them how to act in public and such. It was funny :lol:

I like to think she started as a "Big Sister" then became more of a peer as the years rolled by.

I always saw her as a sort of big sister to the Turtles.
At least in most incarnations.
Particularly Mirage (#62 I believe) when Splinter refers to her as “daughter”.

And even then, they referred to her as an aunt.

As a kid April looked like my Mother, she was this way older girl, I associated her in the same age group as Thompson and Vernon, I probably thought she was in the "mother" age even if she wasn't married if that makes any sense.

As a kid anyone who isn't a kid or a teenager feel like really old, so I always associated April as someone really old but I guess it would've meant around in her 30s.

This is also why I found it so weird when I saw the internet having this fetish for OT April when I got online, to me when I was an early teen I associated that towards "milf" category and found it odd.

Wasn't April like 26-30 in the FW series? Burne was defo older than her, and I think Vernon was also older. he sure looked older than her.

Ofc to a little kid, someone aged 26-30 looks "old", but I never saw April as a "mother" per se. More like an older sister or so to the Turtles. Also, they kept saving her life. It's not like she was taking care of them, so she didn't give me much of a parent vibe except when she was scolding them for their behaviour in public in some of the earlier episodes.

Ofc when I was a little kid, FW April wasn't attractive to me. I wasn't attracted to women at the time yet.

^OT April was 24.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_O%27Neil

Most of the April O'Neal's from the comics to the OT, have her set as being a close friend for the Turtles.

2K12 April (as I see her in terms of age), seems to be more a peer for the Turtles.

I clearly recall her saying in the Leatherhead debut episode(the one with the youth fountain/lake" that she was 26. Strange. Where did 24 come from? Regardless... a bit odd that I'm now older than her. :teek:

Palladium's "TMNT & Other Strangeness" sourcebook (I just peeked at it) that was endorsed by Mirage and has Kevin and Peter's fingers all over it places her at age 27 in TMNT Vol. 1, #1. Sounds about right to me.

Hoag was 22 when she played her in the first movie but seemed much older.

Even in the Nick show, she seems weirdly more adult then them, but it could just be the contrast with Casey.

WOW, I had absolutely no idea that Hoag was that young when the original movie came out. She definitely looked older.