Turtle fans the mean green ninja team have a new series coming out soon and Nickelodeon decided to drop the first four episodes of the show and that means animation fans such as myself can now talk about the show and my god do I have some thoughts about the show so here is my review of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
So then what is the plot of this show I hear you asking well that's a good question because technically there isn't one but the set up is The Turtles try to discover mysteries about New York and I have to say that it's strange watching a Turtles series that doesn't have any kind of plot to it and while not having a plot does work for this show it doesn't work for the turtles.
Playing the turtles in this series are Ben Schwartz as Leo , Omar Benson Miller as Raphael , Josh Brener as Donatello and Brandon Mychal Smith as Michelangelo. Playing the other characters are Kat Graham as April , Eric Bauza as Splinter and WWE star John Cena as new villain Baron Draxum. The actors playing the turtles are decent at best but there not really given much to work with so no matter how good the performance could have been it would have been let down by the script.
One of the things that this show does differently from the other shows is the fact it switches some of roles of the group Leo as not the leader of the group he's now the prankster and Raph no longer the angry one he's now the leader. I'm strangely ok with them making Raph the leader but there's just something wrong with Leo being the joker of the group to me that's not his character at all and it kinda makes Michelangelo pointless since that was his role in the group.
The animation for the show was done by Flying Bark Productions who really havn't done anything of note like at all I think it's fair to say that this is there first mainstream project and it shows because the animation was actually pretty good and I don't know if it's just me that thinks this but it seems like they took inspiration from OK KO that's not a bad thing but it does make me wonder if the people working on the animation are fans of that show.
When the designs for this show were released alot of people didn't like the designs for the turtles themselves I personally think that the designs do work for this show but at the same time I do see where people are coming from since the designs are so radically different and I think for Raph they took inspiration from the 2014 movie and that's not a good idea at all.
Here is something for you animation fans the voice director for this series is Turtles legend Rob Paulsen if you don't know who he is he played Raph in the 1980's series and Donny in the 2012 series and has been in many other animated shows and movies and I think it's great that he's working on this new version of the show.
One of the things that I wish they didn't do with this series was what they did to Splinter they turned someone who was basically a rat version of Yoda and they made him an overweight and lazy character who would rather sit in front of the TV then train his sons and give them life lessons to me that's not splinter at all he would always put his sons first and yet in this show it's the other way round.
In case your crazy enough to actually want to watch this show when it airs on Nickelodeon the series will premier on September 17th but tho unlike the previous show where it was pretty much an instant hit this show I really can't see lasting longer then twenty six episodes which is a shame because these characters are iconic and they deserve to be on TV screens for a long time but this show just isn't the right fit for them.
Overall this show is by no means a bad show if your a little kid however if you grew up with the turtles then chances are you might want to avoid watching this show or just watch it only when your board for me the show gets a 4.5 out of 10.