How well/poorly has the 2012 show aged?

[ToTheNines]

Continuing Prowler’s thread series against neatoman’s better judgement

What does everyone think? As far as animation goes, I think all the action looks incredible. Some of the dialogue scenes from season 1 and 2 look a little rubbery, but everything after that looks great.

This version isn’t perfect, but it still holds up quite well. Season 1 is still amazing. The payoff from the season 4, followed by the Kavaxas arc and “Lone Rat and Cubs” is still some of the best TMNT stuff ever, if you ask me. This show really nailed the big emotional moments.

I do think this show feels incomplete, especially ever since the “Kraang Among Us” short comic came out last year. We never got a real conclusion to the Kraang story. They just kind of quietly went away after season 3.

I also think the Apocalypse arc/series finale is maligned for all the wrong reasons. But they definitely should have acknowledged or at least hinted at what happened with April and Karai.

[neatoman]

Oh boy, premature thread... Aw well, might as well:

The show had obvious problems even when it was still on the air. Not problems like letting it air with unfinished animation or easily spotted technical errors to cut corners, basically it's not like the show lacked quality control, but serious problems still. Writing yourself into a corner by making it clear the cure for mutation takes too long to make but still having millions mutate into mindless monsters, only writing yourself out by having a character create the solution by accident and being incapable of recreating, may not be the result of bad corner cutting or anything but it's still a problem.

By the way, that particular problem is what a 14 episode stretch hinges on (the first half of season 3 to be precise), so it's hardly nitpicking to claim that was a bad piece of writing as far as the overarching story was concerned, it's more than a tenth of the entire show and that's just one example. How about Karai becoming "mindless" and then turned evil again with a brain parasite, only for it to be removed and thus bringing her back to what she was right before becoming "mindless"? That stretch of episodes is even longer than one full season, 27 to be precise. What was the point of that? Did the writers get too far ahead on her arc or something?

While I'm on the topic, Karai's arc basically comes across like it was conceived by someone who can't even try to let things take their time and wants changes to happen immediately, which is the charitable interpretation of that. A more negative way of putting it is that it seems like this character's hero/villain status is not determined by a moral compass or broadening perspectives, but instead the main factor seems to be believing who her father is. I that sounds dismissive and there is lip service to there being some better justification, but that doesn't change the fact that Karai gleefully commits felonies, commissions killer robots from evil aliens and knowingly leads people into death traps when she believed Shredder to be her biological father. While the Karai who is aware Splinter is her biological father wants to restore the Foot to it's glorious past and wants to end the Shredder's operations at any cost, because of her long absences between learning the truth and coming back it really does come across like that is the only real development between these two characterisations, if something else happened it was off-screen and unexplained. I don't know how anyone can take it as seriously as intended, the character's behaviour seems to operate on an on-off switch.

I should note that these are just some problems, I could go on but I'm not sure I should put that much detail into one post. I will say though that they are examples of the show's typical writing problems. Other similar problems include Baxter Stockman somehow becoming more loyal after he's unjustly turned into a monster, and the earth blowing up with the "only" salvation being a one-time use of time travel (even though the show had already established time travel by other means). More could be said about these problems but it's best to move on.

More general problems are things like the first few seasons being set in a weird tiny little ghost town they insist is the same as a real world city that had nearly nine million living there at the time, even after people move in it's still seems to just be a few blocks. You typically just get to see a rather limited amount of areas, meaning you are either just meant to think they keep coming back to the same exact places or the audience is just kinda meant to think everything warehouse in the world looks exactly the same. It doesn't do a good job of making me think there is more to this world than a single town block is what I'm saying, the illusion just isn't pulled off.

The show also seemed to be strangely allergic to the idea of any major character being a normal human. When trying to think of characters who are introduced as normal humans, become a major player and remains a human until the end of the show, it's pretty much just Casey, isn't it? It might not seem like a "real" problem and it may be a bit difficult to explain but I'll try. The concept of TMNT and seemingly the show itself hinges on the idea that they exist within a world that is otherwise normal. Mutants, aliens and whatever else does exist but is not the norm, they're supposed to stick out. So when the show basically has no major characters who are just human, at least in the long run, it feels really weird. Now you could argue that most of these characters were based on action figures that needed promotion and wouldn't exist if that wasn't the case, and maybe that's true, but did the mutant characters and the human characters actually need to be the same characters? Like... Is there any actual reason Xever and Bradford couldn't just be human criminals working for Shredder doing human criminal things, while Fishface and Dogpound could just be seperate monsters? I can't really think of a good reason why Xever and Bradford absolutely had to be Fishface and Dogpound when we already know random animals could get mutated instead. The same goes for Baxter, Steranko, Zeck and quite a lot of other characters. I mean it's not like the human character models are used for much afterwards, so from a budget standpoint it seems kinda like a waste, considering how we're otherwise just meant to pretend the same set of docks are multiple ones. In many cases, they also become worse characters when it happens, for some reason Steranko and Zeck just become total idiots once they mutate despite being somewhat smart and competent as humans, I don't see why. It just feels like characters in this show aren't valued as actual characters but are more seen like excuses to make merch.


... Uh, yeah, I might come back. Feels like I have more to say...

I know that was pretty negative and might come across like I just hate the show or something, which I don't. The show does have good qualities but what's wrong with the show is so seriously wrong that it's harder to articulate what's actually decent about the show.

I don't think think the problems are the result of indifference, at least I can say that. There are plenty of children's shows that are bad because the people behind them don't care and think children don't really need quality, this is not that. Passion clearly went into this and the failings seems to be because of something else. It's a decent enough show for children and there is far worse out there, but in the end it's still no more than a decent children's cartoon. I don't think it's fair to attempt elevate it above that, it's not by any means "one of the best TMNT things" either, it's just OK for what it is. I don't quite understand how someone can call this show "great" and then dismiss Rise and Mutant Mayhem as trash, as much as the MM Turtles piss me off by being more pop culture spewers than characters and the "now they're in high school" ending is the lamest direction they could have gone with, the content and tone just isn't that far off from this show. So I don't really see what the problem is other than the main characters being better in this show than in that movie, it basically has the same idea about what the target audience is interesting in seeing and much of the plot comes across like something that could have been cooked up for this show. As for Rise, as hard as I try all I can think of is the possibility that it's just "too far off" compared to this show but that's it.

For better or worse, I can't think of this show as some "great revival of TMNT" or "The ultimate distillation of TMNT" or even "a wonderful passion project". I think of it as "the first of Paramount's series of kiddie versions of TMNT", it's kinda hard not to.

[ToTheNines]

You make some good points. As much as I love this show, I don’t disagree with much you said.

I think a lot of your problems more or less stem from too many episodes. Ciro said they needed 4 seasons to tell the story he wanted to tell. So obviously you use the season finales/openers to feature big status quo changes and location changes, but 26 episodes per seasons was probably too much and caused a lot of stalling and kicking the can down the road.

I wouldn’t change much about seasons 1 and 4 (or season 5), but 2 and 3 probably could have been tightened up to be closer to 13 episodes. But I still think the story of Shredder reigniting his feud with Yoshi and letting it ruin his life and ultimately leading to his death is good. The turtles going through hell and growing up together is good. Karai and April had serious problems and feel like incomplete arcs.

And again, The Kraang went away too easily and we know Ciro has that movie idea. I feel like it’s time for a reunion special soon.

And I still think this is the most successful thing overall from the Nickelodeon era, even if the IDW outlasted it.

[CyberCubed]

Besides some overall pacing issues:

1. Northampton arc should of been 2-3 episodes shorter. Could have easily cut the mutant car episode, the giant chimera episode...and that awful Bigfoot ep which is what I consider to be the worst ep of the entire show.

2. Kirby getting constantly kidnapped/mutated got old, but at least they realized that and stopped doing it.

3. April's backstory really needed to be explained better, I feel like Ciro had a better idea in his mind then what he could portray in the show.

4. Tone down Don's more creepy crush on April especially the later gags

5. Some of the excessive mutant eps could feel too same-y, I also feel Snakeweed should of had a real conclusion being the first mutant we saw.


Lastly I'm worried how much the CG has aged. Which is why I'm waiting for a blu-ray boxset, I fear this show will not be pleasing to the eye as the years and decades go on. Even when it was airing you saw people complaining some eps look like a PS2 game.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Besides some overall pacing issues:

Lastly I'm worried how much the CG has aged. Which is why I'm waiting for a blu-ray boxset, I fear this show will not be pleasing to the eye as the years and decades go on. Even when it was airing you saw people complaining some eps look like a PS2 game.

Oh yeah, the CGI has aged poorly, trust me. The show does well with camera movement and angles compared to the other shows but that is just the benefit of CGI, it's way easier to pull off and do it on a budget by simple virtue of being a simulated 3D environment. Of course it was going to do the one thing the previous shows couldn't pull off. That and smoother movements I guess, but again, that's just the advantage of using CGI over 2D animation.

The comparing the quality to a PS2 game's graphics is a stretch, pre-rendered cutscenes for PS2 games maybe but certainly nothing in-engine compares, the show clearly has models, textures and lighting effects that would be a strain on the PS2. It's insult to make that comparison, probably intentionally and I doubt anyone ever felt it looked that primitive.

That said, the models in the early episodes tend to look a bit waxy and the eyes a bit glossy, it may not be all that noticeable with the turtles or other mutant characters because how cartoonish they look but with human characters very obvious. Even major human characters, like April, tend to look a bit like cheap plastic dolls, the skin and eyes just don't look right. There also tends to be "selective attention to detail" for a lot of the models as well. The Turtles themselves have details like freckles, scuff marks and such but moment they open their mouths you'll notice their teeth rows are just two white blocks.

Another common criticism, that I checked out to see if it's true, is that new characters did indeed receive higher quality models but no character ever received an updated model, unless it was for the purpose of mutating them or giving them an alternate outfit. So the result is that a major character like April in season 4 is less detailed than the Sylvester Stallone parody who only appeared in two episodes, it's honestly kinda weird.

As for the animation itself it tends to look a bit floaty at times, skin bending/stretching looks like rubber and there seems to be a reliance on canned effects that don't really mesh all that well. For the first one, it doesn't always happen but I don't always believe these character exist in normal gravity, there are plenty of times when it looks like the characters jump up in the air with less effort than it should take (especially considering one of them carries a pair of steel weapons) and descend slower or in some cases make movements that just shouldn't be possible. While the characters do seem like they have skeletal joints (for the most part) it doesn't typically look like the muscles are doing much of a job, instead it looks like... Like if you put bones inside a stretchy rubber doll to prevent the wrong points to get bent, I think that's the best way I can describe it. And the effects.. Yeah, those look pretty bad. Liquids, be they ooze or tomato sauce, always have this weird goopy behaviour to them, even regular water which is just weird. Explosions and dust effects also seem like they're just something that came with the software, they often don't make any sense in context and tend to look the same regardless of what blew up, I can't even say they mesh with the environment.

Something I have pointed out in the past and I suspect will be more noticeable with a higher quality release, is the show's tendency to rely on this matte painting like effect when actual models weren't worth creating. Examples of this is the gross pizza Mike made and Tang Shen's entire house. While I understand their purpose of keeping the budget down, they don't really mesh with the actual models, the detail is often far greater than the models, light/shadow doesn't match and there is clearly a "flatness" that the 3D models just don't share. Even in still frames and DVD resolution the illusion doesn't work, so a higher resolution release will just make it stick out even more.

There are of course the parts that lower budget CGI can't really do regardless of how new it is or how much talent it has behind it, like hair always behaving like an unmoving solid piece rather than having individual strands (at most you get stuff like ponytails moving a little) and never actually animating the mutations. If you pay attention, the mutations themselves are never actually animated, it's usually stuff like they go into an ooze tank and emerge with their new model, at best they show a piece of the mutant model sprouting from the human/animal model or something but you never actually see something like Baxter's human hand morph into the fly claw.
But then again, those parts in particular are not fair to criticise, it's not even fair to say that has aged poorly because budget CGI still struggles to do stuff like that. It can be done but I don't see TV cartoons making it the norm for a long time.

[IMJ]

I'd need to sit through the show again to really evaluate this, but I have no intentions of doing it unless it finally came out on Blu-Ray. Going by memory though?

Some of the overt "personality Jokes" are probably always going to be funny. "Interaction Jokes" like Leatherhead nonsensically pulling on Donnie's face across random episodes is always going to be funny.

Although the animation got better and more well funded as the show went on, the routine emptiness of the city made the show feel "cheap" at times. There's probably more instances like that here and there but I'd have to watch the show again.

The in-show explanation for Leo's voice change was brilliant and isn't often done. The art direction for the show could have been better - I think the "chibi head" thing will date it a bit when animation in general returns to "symmetry" and "high art".

I think the combat in the show will age well - they didn't shy away from it and moments feel very anime (sword swipe lines, etc).

I just know that my interest in the show dropped precipitously when they left Earth. It was best when it was a "New York" show to be honest.

[sdp]

This show was overrated as hell when it came out because all the normies were now old enough to be nostalgic about the cartoon and now everyone and their mom loved the turtles again and everyone was now a mirage fan and acted as if 2k3 did not exist. Tumblr was well tumblr at its peak so the show got more attention than it ever deserved. I think it was only a moderate hit with the kids and this is only because Nickelodeon put all their marketing muscle to make it a success.

It should've been 2D animated, the designs work so much better in 2D than 3D.

First season looks so amateurish, NY is dead, they keep reusing 3D models, the few models look dated, the story is silly. S2 rehashes the S1 ending if I rememnber correctly. Most of their original mutants were all terrible outside of a few. The horror parodies overstayed their welcome by the end of the first season and we still had many more.

All the bad origins they decided to give to estabished characters were BS, tall Splinter sucks, bald Shredder is goofy looking with his 90s extreeme spikes and 'anger'. The whole Splinter Shredder story is dumb. Karai's story arc is stupid. Teen April was wasted, we never get any real Teen angst or storylines. All the stupid mutations.

Why were people having such a hard on for this show? I think its because they didn't know 2003 existed, and when they did they got a hard on for that show which is now why the TMNT reddit that couldn't shut up about 2012 now can't shut up about how great 2003 is. I mean it's an alright show, I don't hate it despite all of the above, but it was always overrated.

[CyberCubed]

Nick 2012 Splinter is one of my favorite versions of him. Shredder being bald doesn't bother me as he was burned in a fire during the fight over Tang Shen and scarred so it fits their rivalry. He did seem to narrow minded with his obsession with Splinter for most of the show though.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Nick 2012 Splinter is one of my favorite versions of him. Shredder being bald doesn't bother me as he was burned in a fire during the fight over Tang Shen and scarred so it fits their rivalry. He did seem to narrow minded with his obsession with Splinter for most of the show though.

Shredder's extreme lack of perspective when it comes to getting revenge on Splinter is another thing I find questionable about this show. Most of the stuff is fine, you know, kidnapping his daughter to raise her to hate him, moving his HQ to New York to find him better, pouring acid into the sewer, trying to mutate the Turtles so they'll eat him and that stuff is fine. Where it gets weird is how he interacts with the aliens.

He co-operated with one set of aliens he knew full well only wanted to make earth uninhabitable just to make it slightly easier to go after Splinter, and when a second set of aliens tried to destroy the planet completely he still prioritised killing Splinter despite knowing full well that would result in said immediate destruction. There is being narrow-minded or stubborn, and then there's acting completely illogically, I mean what's the point?

"The planet will blow up and I could always kill him right after we've stopped it, but I'll take the slightly easier opportunity to kill him even if it means I won't enjoy my revenge or do anything else because I'll be dead, at least I'll get a few seconds to gloat about before I die!"

[CyberCubed]

We were meant to understand Shredder was slowly going more and more insane. Even Karai calls him out in one episode, that his obsession with finding Splinter and the Turtles had gotten out of control. I get the feeling that if Shredder had "won" and killed Splinter/Turtles, he wouldn't really care what happened to the world otherwise as he was ready to die and reunite with Tang Shen.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

We were meant to understand Shredder was slowly going more and more insane. Even Karai calls him out in one episode, that his obsession with finding Splinter and the Turtles had gotten out of control. I get the feeling that if Shredder had "won" and killed Splinter/Turtles, he wouldn't really care what happened to the world otherwise as he was ready to die and reunite with Tang Shen.

Unfortunately he also runs a criminal empire intent to assimilate all others and the reason he had for joining the Turtles in trying to destroy the BHG was that he wouldn't be able to find Karai if the earth is gone. In fact, if all he wanted in that episode was to kill Splinter and had no interest in still living afterwards, he had a much better opportunity when Splinter approached him. Also, earlier in the season he believed he had already killed Splinter and was merely staying in the city to find Karai, even stated that he would make sure to destroy the Kraang when "the time was right" and control New York.

He's clearly not a character who values his revenge so much that literally nothing else matters, he still wants to have Karai in his life and seems to want to rule over a city at least. Having him be so much of prick that he killed Splinter at the worst possible opportunity wasn't actually consistent with his character, it wasn't even consistent with how he was earlier in the same episode.

It was a cheap way to get to a cliffhanger and a space arc, that's really about it.

[sdp]

The show also suffered a lot from villain decay, they set up this perosn to be the next big guy only for him to become useless as the next big guy comes, they did this over and over again.

[TheLabRat]

I like 2012 Splinter is a combat pragmatist, which make him more like a ninja than most version of Splinter.

Spoiler:

While I don't mind Splinter being killed, but the problem is they've killed him multiple times.

[Andrew NDB]

Ciro was clearly fighting an uphill battle against Nickelodeon in sticking to a cohesive vision, but he still managed fairly well. I remember him talking at least a couple times about how he'd write out 10 episodes at a time and like 7 he really loved, but 3 he made "safe," and Nick would always veto the ones he liked and go with the safe ones. Or strike important ones altogether.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Ciro was clearly fighting an uphill battle against Nickelodeon in sticking to a cohesive vision, but he still managed fairly well. I remember him talking at least a couple times about how he'd write out 10 episodes at a time and like 7 he really loved, but 3 he made "safe," and Nick would always veto the ones he liked and go with the safe ones. Or strike important ones altogether.

I'm curious which ones were safe, which ones got vetoed and which ones were stricken despite being important. More than that, I'm curious what factors made them always pick the "safe" ones and pass over "important" ones.

[sdp]

Sounds like Ciro was submitting 7 horror parody/tributes and 3 actual TMNT episodes. But even vetoing we'd still get like 5 horror movie parodies per season

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by neatoman

I'm curious which ones were safe, which ones got vetoed and which ones were stricken despite being important. More than that, I'm curious what factors made them always pick the "safe" ones and pass over "important" ones.

We could probably surmise, as a blanket statement, that episodes with any "consequence" were vetoed routinely in favor of more traditional "animated adventure of the week".

Part of the problem might have been putting them together to be side-by-side in the first place. He might have been better off turning in a singular script and arguing on it's behalf, as opposed to actually offering a lesser option right next to it, therefore inviting the conflict.

[ToTheNines]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Besides some overall pacing issues:

1. Northampton arc should of been 2-3 episodes shorter. Could have easily cut the mutant car episode, the giant chimera episode...and that awful Bigfoot ep which is what I consider to be the worst ep of the entire show.

2. Kirby getting constantly kidnapped/mutated got old, but at least they realized that and stopped doing it.

3. April's backstory really needed to be explained better, I feel like Ciro had a better idea in his mind then what he could portray in the show.

4. Tone down Don's more creepy crush on April especially the later gags

5. Some of the excessive mutant eps could feel too same-y, I also feel Snakeweed should of had a real conclusion being the first mutant we saw.


Lastly I'm worried how much the CG has aged. Which is why I'm waiting for a blu-ray boxset, I fear this show will not be pleasing to the eye as the years and decades go on. Even when it was airing you saw people complaining some eps look like a PS2 game.

1. Northampton length was fine. If anything, it should have been longer. I just wish it was more somber, introspective and actually built up the team getting ready to go back. Instead it was goofy horror pastiches. Even Vision Quest was too lighthearted and the reveal of Splinter being alive didn’t really carry any weight.

2. Yeah that was awful. But once they stopped doing it, they just stopped writing him in any episodes lol. We never get his take on the Mom-Thing episode or an explanations out of him. Why did he get named “Kirby” and then they didn’t ever do a Donatello #1 episode?

3. Agree big time. We need the Kraang Among Us movie.

4. Yeah, pretty bad.

5. Maybe. Like I said, seasons 2 and 3 could have been cut in half.

Originally Posted by sdp

The show also suffered a lot from villain decay, they set up this perosn to be the next big guy only for him to become useless as the next big guy comes, they did this over and over again.

Really? Other than the Triceratons rubbing The Kraang out and taking over, it was The Kraang and Shredder/Foot the entire time.

The problem with The Kraang was they were just so goofy and incompetent that it was hard to believe they were capable of being that deadly. Which is probably why they got quietly discarded.

[Zog The Magnificent]

This thread has summoned me. I'll be back with my essay, entitled
"Why the 2012 Show is Still Generally Pretty Good in Spite of Stupid Things like the Super-Retromutagen (Which even I will not defend), But Which Generally Does a Good Job with It's Characters and Story."

But the short version, for now, is that I think it aged as well as any cartoon, is generally pretty good, is unquestionably the best TMNT cartoon, and holds up well in general, in addition to "as a TMNT thing." As to the why, I'll get back to you on that. I'm off to play Dusk first.

[ToTheNines]

Originally Posted by Zog The Magnificent

This thread has summoned me. I'll be back with my essay, entitled
"Why the 2012 Show is Still Generally Pretty Good in Spite of Stupid Things like the Super-Retromutagen (Which even I will not defend), But Which Generally Does a Good Job with It's Characters and Story."

But the short version, for now, is that I think it aged as well as any cartoon, is generally pretty good, is unquestionably the best TMNT cartoon, and holds up well in general, in addition to "as a TMNT thing." As to the why, I'll get back to you on that. I'm off to play Dusk first.

Looking forward to it!

But yeah, that’s where I’m at. It’s an imperfect story that is solid enough. It has a clear beginning/middle/end with good payoff. The fight scenes, art direction, voice acting and humor send it above and beyond. All the fanwank was always pretty well done, too. Rarely felt too heavy handed.