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Honestly, the Japan angle of the TMNT story has been so stereotypically superfluous from the start, I have no idea why people push so hard to have a man of Japanese ancestry play him in movies or whatever. The TMNT are named after Italian Renaissance artists by a mutant rat who learned and taught martial arts because it was the coolest thing of the early 1980s. And they are pastiches of whatever most adults think American teenagers of the day are into.
Who cares about the Shredder actor's ethnicity just so long as they put in a good performance. James Avery, Jim Cummings, and Kevin Michael Richardson have always put in solid work with very little attempt to fake a Japanese accent. Scottie Ray also did a fine job in the 4Kids show, though he made more of an effort to play up the accent amid all the hoarse maniacal growling.
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