Black April

[Jester]

Are black people a different species? I really can't wrap my head around why this is an issue. April's skin color doesn't change he from being the Turtles HUMAN friend and link to the surface. Making Splinter a hamster changes something firmly established in cannon. Splinter is specifically mentioned to be a rat. April's race isn't coded to her character the same way?

One wonders if this would even be an issue if Andre hadn't mentioned it, and we just met April and she was black.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Utrommaniac

Yeah, Raphael probably does suffer the most by being the least teenager-y, maybe followed by Leonardo. What I can see working is a 17/16/15/14 age mix, which would create allowances in some of them having more adult-like behavior and growing-out-of-childhood behavior in a spectrum. With Leonardo being the most adult in behavior and Michelangelo the least.

Well haven't people been arguing for years that the Turtles are of different ages with Leo being the oldest and Mikey the youngest? It even says on some bios doesn't it? It's borderline official at this point.

Originally Posted by Jester

Are black people a different species? I really can't wrap my head around why this is an issue. April's skin color doesn't change he from being the Turtles HUMAN friend and link to the surface. Making Splinter a hamster changes something firmly established in cannon. Splinter is specifically mentioned to be a rat. April's race isn't coded to her character the same way?

One wonders if this would even be an issue if Andre hadn't mentioned it, and we just met April and she was black.

I don't think sdp was implying that in his not so logical comparison.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Well haven't people been arguing for years that the Turtles are of different ages with Leo being the oldest and Mikey the youngest? It even says on some bios doesn't it? It's borderline official at this point.

Which is dumb as all can be, asking us to believe a pet shop in NYC had four entirely different batches of red-earred slider hatchlings and that one kid just happened to grab one baby turtle from each of them. Preposterous. And even if so, how in the hell would they even know who hatched first? Or second? Or third?

It's dumb, dumb, dumb. It's just people out there who aren't even thinking just wanting to find and grasp at anything they can to "improve" the Turtles' individuality. They don't need it, they're fine.

[plastroncafe]

Originally Posted by Jester

One wonders if this would even be an issue if Andre hadn't mentioned it, and we just met April and she was black.

You know it would have.
We fanboys are a conservative lot.

Conservative being someone who likes things as they are, and would like to conserve them, not in the political spectrum sense of the word.

[Candy Kappa]

Red-Eared Sliders mature individually by size not age, so it's entirely possible for them to be "different age" through different maturity rate

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Which is dumb as all can be, asking us to believe a pet shop in NYC had four entirely different batches of red-earred slider hatchlings and that one kid just happened to grab one baby turtle from each of them. Preposterous. And even if so, how in the hell would they even know who hatched first? Or second? Or third?

It's dumb, dumb, dumb. It's just people out there who aren't even thinking just wanting to find and grasp at anything they can to "improve" the Turtles' individuality. They don't need it, they're fine.

I wonder how you feel about those cartoon episodes where one of the Turtles' celebrates their birthday

But yeah, I agree with you. Although how can we even know exactly how old the Turtles are or even make an estimate? I mean Turtles live a long time don't they? What makes people so sure, including the turtles, that they're teenagers. I guess they were infants when they fell down the drain and the ooze initially gave them the human brains of children and then they developed maturely and physically like ordinary human children do? And by the time the actual series starts they're in the teenage phase of their lives?

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Prowler

I wonder how you feel about those cartoon episodes where one of the Turtles' celebrates their birthday

Only apathy.

But yeah, I agree with you. Although how can we even know exactly how old the Turtles are or even make an estimate?

Best guess they could do is call Mutation Day their shared birthday. I'm pretty sure that's the day the Turtles were celebrating on their (shared!) 18th and 19th birthday parties in Vol. 3.

I mean Turtles live a long time don't they?

Not red-earred sliders. Only about... 20-some years in captivity. A little more in the wild. Now, mutant red-earred sliders? Who knows. If Mirage is any indicator, about 130 years. But factor it like with Splinter. He's a brown rat, right? They live two years, max. In Mirage he lived about 30 years before dying of natural causes. That kind of gives you the multiplier.

Other turtles can live a long time. Alligator snapping turtles can live 200 years.

[IndigoErth]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Raphael certainly didn't sound like a teenager in the 2k3 series . As for FW, Zach was "almost 14" as he claimed. yet the Turtles clearly referred to him as "kid". Hell Raphael even called Carter a kid in the Red Sky seasons. Ad Carter was a college student, meaning he must have been around 18-21, I guess? A teenager calling a college aged student a "kid"?

Yeah, pretty odd and funny. lol At that point I just ignore the "teenage" thing and figure they've in fact aged into their 20s, even if it's never mentioned or acknowledged.

Originally Posted by Candy Kappa

Red-Eared Sliders mature individually by size not age, so it's entirely possible for them to be "different age" through different maturity rate

Something I learned from you guys here and has kind of become my own accepted theory on the age thing.

Same breeder/owner (of the parents), but different nest seasons and grew at different rates; Mikey the fastest (and youngest), Leo the slowest (and oldest), and Donnie and Raph just average (and probably from same nest, given it's always been unknown which is "older"), all reaching a sellable size around the same time.


Although as for how they'd even know... Who knows. Maybe the shop owner was able to supply that info on the year/month of hatching.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by IndigoErth

Although as for how they'd even know... Who knows. Maybe the shop owner was able to supply that info on the year/month of hatching.

And who would he supply it to? The kid's dad? The kid? How would they have ever passed this information on to the Turtles?

[Jester]

And thus the Nick series used Mutation Day as a stand-in.

[sdp]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Wait, why are we assuming April O'Neil identifies as female in the new cartoon?

I had mentioned this before and Plastron mentioned we may have already had our first trans April. My guess is movie April.

Originally Posted by plastroncafe

We fanboys are a conservative lot.

This is definitely true, just look at all the discussions for all reboots and their changes. Anyone remember Catwoman the movie? People went crazy, I didn't care since it wasn't meant to be Selina Kyle and her super powers made sense since it's in continuity with Returns whose catwoman also "gained powers". I think I'm the sole fan of that movie in all of the internet.


I'm actually really open to change and like new things, I'm usually a fan of the lesser liked examples of games and whatnot. but even I have my "established" ideas of what a certain franchise needs and shouldn't change.

[IndigoErth]

Hey, I said "who knows," didn't I? lol As much as I usually want to try to make logical sense of stuff myself, well some of it is going to have to be cartoon magic that what went on in a small pet shop in NYC in the 80s is an unknown.

[Powder]

Originally Posted by Jester

And thus the Nick series used Mutation Day as a stand-in.

Which I love.

[CyberCubed]

I wouldn't mind if "black April" looks like Angel from 2k3/IDW. Where she's dark skinned but basically ambiguous.

[Papenbrook]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I wouldn't mind if "black April" looks like Angel from 2k3/IDW. Where she's dark skinned but basically ambiguous.

What do you mean by "ambiguous"?

[CyberCubed]

I can see April looking similar to this.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Prowler

This whole "April might have been black" thing seems to be rather recent though, no? Not to mention she has been very white looking in incarnation since Mirage, so it just seems a bit odd for her to suddenly be black.

Ofc not mentioning her race means no one is certain for sure... except laird and Eastman, if they EVER had race in mind when coming up with her design that is. But tbh, she's statistically more likely to be White, considering her Irish last name. When people write novels they don't usually mention a character's racial history or anything. Just like if I watch anime I'm gonna assume people with Japanese names are fully Japanese until stated otherwise.


Well I'll be damned. Never ever have I seen someone argue this. I only remember Coola saying Shredder "acted white" in the FW series and that he knew people who thought he was always white. I dunno what he meant by that. And he also said the Turtles "acted white" as well, which I don't know what that means either.

Well... Shredder does act pretty white or at the very least totally American with all the jokes, insults and wordplay. I don't recall OT Shredder ever saying a Japanese expression. In contrast to that Splinter is stuck speaking like the stereotypical Miyagi speak.

Of course the turtles are white. California surfer dudes in new York. Even when it comes to Japanese stuff, other than Leo the rest come off as Americanized white dudes trying to do that wild and crazy Japanese thing. Though they sure had fun making Mikey talk black on the Nicktoon, son.

As for Black April, the 'feeling left out because she's black in an all white school' might work BUT no cartoon for kids is going to show such blatant racism against her. I bet they'll look for any excuse to have the schoolkids shun her other than race.

Now I do wonder just how much stereotypes this version of April is going to endure. We've never had a particularly cool and modern April before.

[CyberCubed]

Shredder talks about Japanese stuff in various OT episodes, and referenced Japan a lot of times. I'm not sure if he ever said any Japanese words although I might be forgetting something. Not to mention when Shredder's Mother and brother showed up in the cartoon, they were also both Japanese. Kazuo Saki and his mother was a Japanese woman.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

As for Black April, the 'feeling left out because she's black in an all white school'

Do those even exist anymore? I mean outside of, like, parts of Utah or something?

[Utrommaniac]

His quarters in the Technodrome are also shown to be very Japanese in aesthetic. And when he takes his mask off (or lazily puts a hologram of himself over it?), there's absolutely no doubt that he's from Japan.