Why HERO Turtles The Next Mutation is Good and you can like it: Episode 1 at 8:56 PM

I hear you Brit's aren't fond of transparency either...

Cartoons of the eighties get a bad rap. Even the era's greatest successes are often dispatched as 30 minute toy commercials, cold product cranked out by factories, committees and boring bald guys.

While it is true that the intent behind these animated tv shows was highly mercenary, when we say that we are selling them a little short. There is an art to crafting something that continues to be remembered  well to the future. For every Transformers and GI Joe that is now a fixture in pop culture to this very day, there were hundreds of Dinosaucers and Insectaurs who just skidded in the start line and never even got going.

I REEEMEEEEMBEEEER

So while yes, Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles, the animated adaptation of a popular indie comic, was not exactly Miyazaki shit or anything, there HAS to have been something more to it that we're now on the 3rd  season of it's 3rd reboot, and on it's second movie of it's 3rd movie continuity. How many reboots has T Rex and  Mummies Alive had? Exactly.

While strong commercial appeal is an obvious element, I hypothesize that malleability of the core concept is the core reason. Mutant HERO Turtles is a pretty silly idea, but in a few decades it's taken a stroll across the gamut of tones a story can be told in and came out winning fans every time.

Or rather, almost every time.

For you see, there is a version of TMNT that nobody lvoes. It is often considered THE WORST version. When the guys who made the franchise and watched it be used to hawk everything from macaroni to bedsheets  consider this the point of shame, that's how you know you did wrong.

But is it really that bad?  Out of sheer curiosity, decided to give it watch on the old Youtube once over. Thanks to user Oser Baya for having uploaded the episode. It's thanks to guys like him that Nickelodeon executives go hungry every night. That's how copyright works, right?

But first, a little bit of history. By 1997 the original TMNT cartoon had been off the air 1 year after a highly successful 8 season run. The popularity and toy aisle  space the show  had had been usurped by The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers Franchise, a Japanese sentai show that merely replaced all the Japanese actors with American ones while keeping all the scenes where people wore helmets to pretend they were under them produced by Saban.

Saban's success allowed them to do various lesser known attempts to replicate the Ranger's  success, but getting lightening to strike twice proved futile. So they turned their attention to their vanquished foe, and aquired the license to TMNT.

With what they had learned of martial arts children entertainment surely they would find success, right? Well...no, not exactly.

The show was HERO Turtles: The Next Mutation. Or as it was known in the version I didn't watch,  N***a Turtles : The Next Mutation. They couldn't say  N***a because it's slang for vagina over in the United Kingdom [citation needed]. This is why I'm making this a Euro-safe version of this article, replacing every  N***a with Hero.

So I have decided to tackle the series' first 5 episode arc, East Meets West, hoping to see if the show's bad reputation is earned or unearned.

And you will experience it as I did, in all it's croppy, blurry glory.

The show starts with a stereotypical  Chinese Master who trying to hold back evil from a mirror, a long with his assistant, a female in a brown robe. Now, if you know anything about this show, this isn't exactly a great mystery, but it might take you for surprise if you..don't watch the intro immediately after...

Oh, yeah, the intro. You know, there is a lot of pressure to live up to TMNT's classic intro. And this one was basically the first one to try it, and ends up pretty bad in the list overall. It might be the worst. Here's your lyrics.

Four green turtles! Heard the news?
Changed to mutants by an ooze!
Found on the floor and raised by a rat!
Now they're HEROES. How 'bout that?
Check it out! Another one found!
Made her way to Chinatown!
With the rest, yeah, that makes five!
HERO Turtles, now they're live!
Na-na-na-na-HERO, HERO, HERO Turtles!
Na-na-na-na-HERO, HERO, HERO Turtles!
Yeah.

Basically, they outline the story to the characters in the worst way possible. Like, every other version tries to present the idea as an awesome one. This one it literally goes "how bout that" like it just found out it's pitbull is pregnant.




 Then comes the basic barebones characterization every fan knows and loves: Raph is angry for no given reason. They just walk you in on Leo and Raph having an argument about nothing and Raph leaves angry on his bike, on what very much feels like stock footage, even though it's the first time I seen it.

Then while he's out there he's attacked by  Foot HEROES. I think this is the most in-media-resey TMNT, which is both  brave and...not very well done. I guess the show assumed everybody already know all this stuff from the movies and cartoon and in a way, they are right, but by this point the boys who grew up with a 80's Turtles  are already grown past it, and the young up and comers might need for you to fill them in on why anything is going on.

No, no quiero pene, cabron!

Besides, this show doesn't fit into the continuity of either version. Here, Shredder is scared  Shredder from the movies, yet that guy died because he became HHH and knocked a building on myself. And also, here Splinter is Hamato Yoshi, not Hamato Yoshi's pet rat. This doesn't. Also, April was in those, and isn't in this, and her vanishing goes unexplained.

Anyway, Raph being attacked activates Splinter's 6th sense. Which...he has now. He's all about mind magic in this version . Which is weird but uh... Not unheard of. Splinter bill out Rafael along with the other Turtles.

What is unheard of, though, is Splinter's blind chess playing boyfriend.

so without any previous warning day dropping with the Foot Clan and it's goofy-looking Shredder. again not exactly movie trailer but not cartoon Shredder.

It's barely above Live Tour Shredder.

Shredder is  angry and wants to get rid of the Turtles because they get in the way of his plans. Which is...certainly one way to do Shredder, I guess. I would have thought it'd  be more of a personal edge to it, like uh..most versions.

Later the Turtles reconvene at their home, where Splinter goes into a mental trip thingy through the Dream Realm. There he meets Master Whatever, who warns him that he's in grave danger of dragons.


And then we learn the whole thing. Apparently a bunch of years ago the earth was ruled by dragons. But lucky for us, the got trapped in a magic mirror. However, Master idiot apparently tripped and let these Dragons in to the Dream realm.

I appreciate that there's a backstory to the main villain of this show, but honestly following where these fucking dragons moved to at any given time should not not require  a flowchart. Besides, if I understand it they moved from the mirror to the dreamrealm...so why the fuck does Dragondude keep peeking through the mirror?

The Mirror Dragon reproduction cycle.

Splinter would later stupidly return to the dream realm without telling anyone, and get trapped by the Dragon.


But before that, Mikey gets the turtles found out by the Footclan, who have a fight with the Turtles. This is usually a big deal, and forces the Turtles to uproot, but in this case it's more of a minor inconvenience. However, the Turtles are faced with the horrible realization that their master is now cathatonic.

Meanwhile, after Master Hu Cares is killed by Hothead's Daddy, we get a shocking reveal of our own: His assistant all along was...A FEMALE TURTLE! QUE QUEEEE?

Da Ra Ra Rah!

When I first was going to watch this I was about ready to feel the cringe, but I found myself somewhat drawn to find out what was going to happen. Who is the dragon guy? What's up with the female turtle? And my continuing to press on resulted in this series of articles.

So, so far, none of what I've seen hasn't been also been done worst in other versions of the turtles. But we'
ll see if Venus De Milo can't screw up everything. There is also another thing I would fix...

There, all happy.

Horrendous Theory: The real hero of Jurassic Park at 9:06 PM

Both. Both farted.

Folks, some heroes are born, others are made.

The Jurassic Park series is fraught with them, from   great white hunters who risk nature's prehistoric savagery to save lives, to a young girl who didn't make the gymnastics class because she needed that little push that kicking a  velociraptor to death can give.

If you think African American teenage girls and Velociraptors makes this better, that's because it  does.

But I'm here to tell you nonE of those guys are the hero of the series. There is only one hero in this franchise.

And it's this guy.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex.  And this is the part where you go, "Oooooh! The T Rex wasn't a hero! He was a lumbering beast who ate anyone who didn't run as far away from him as possible". Don't be naive. The T Rex is the deadliest, biggest dinosaur in the first two films. If it wanted to kill and eat  every single person in the film, he'd just have. Should he even bother with people? Clearly we're mere snacks to a creature that size.


 In the first film, in fact, he only ate that lawyer, who need I remind you, abandoned children to a T-REX.

Unlike CERTAIN people, T Rex are all about the youngsters.

And sure, in the second movie he killed that guy who was rescuing the dangling people and those others in the group and that guy in San Diego. But they took his friggin' kid! He didn't  kill people who weren't either stupid Ingen assholes or involved with his kid's disappearance. Or tourist. Fuck those guys.

It's all about the family with this guys.

In the third film, he actually fought the grittier, darker Spinosaurus, but took a dive, give the new guy a chance.  Spinosaurus then broke all the sacred rules of dinosauring, including busting through perfectly burstable enclosures.

GET OF MY TRAIN!

But the biggest evidence comes from the first film. You know this scene: A couple and some kids where escaping from velociraptors, the ninjas of the dinosaur world, by dangling dangerously from hanging dinosaur bones. One by one, each  of  the bones gives way and  falls to the ground. The people, uninjured, try to escape, but the raptors surround them. It's only a matter of time before one of them pounces, and one of them does. Except a Tyrannosaurus catches him in his mouth.

Kids today need to be reminded Dinosaurs used to do awesome stuff all the time before...this.

Now, Jurassic Fight Club taught me that dinosaurs probably wheren't great strategists. With  their small brains, they could only turn on the idea of eating, and turn it off to mate. So what is the point of a Rex stealthilly making his way into a building(which must have taken some work), sneaking up on a scene where predation is about to occur, and actually attack the predators? Eating the humans could have been just as well. You scare away the raptors with a display, then eat the humans.

Then the Rex goes to work on the other raptor, giving the group time to escape. He does not EAT the raptors, he simply shows them up throwing them like the fucking ragdolls they are.  And once alone, this happens.

Not the hero Jurassic Park deserves, but the hero Jurassic Park needs.

Clearly, this is not a mindless beast of carnage, but a misunderstood savior, a good samaritan who never intended harm on the kids or the archeologists. And though our languages are different, in another world we might call him hero.

Horrendous Theory: The real hero of Jurassic Park at 9:06 PM

Both. Both farted.

Folks, some heroes are born, others are made.

The Jurassic Park series is fraught with them, from   great white hunters who risk nature's prehistoric savagery to save lives, to a young girl who didn't make the gymnastics class because she needed that little push that kicking a  velociraptor to death can give.

If you think African American teenage girls and Velociraptors makes this better, that's because it  does.

But I'm here to tell you nonE of those guys are the hero of the series. There is only one hero in this franchise.

And it's this guy.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex.  And this is the part where you go, "Oooooh! The T Rex wasn't a hero! He was a lumbering beast who ate anyone who didn't run as far away from him as possible". Don't be naive. The T Rex is the deadliest, biggest dinosaur in the first two films. If it wanted to kill and eat  every single person in the film, he'd just have. Should he even bother with people? Clearly we're mere snacks to a creature that size.

5 female characters your girl could look up to(but you won't let her) at 2:49 PM

Grrr power!

Look, mom, we know what your thinking: Your girl can't grow up a self-respecting female in a world ruled by the patriarchy. And geek world...is one of those worlds.

More than half of all geek products are created by, approved by, and for the consumption of, men. And more than half of it is done without any heart at all, so it's no wonder there isn't exactly a thriving supply of such materials geared for, or even considering the possibility young girl could enjoy them.

There are such, but as you can read in my article, there is a force that tries to shoot down even those that get out. That force, is you, mom.

So while the next five characters could find their way to you girl's heart, you won't let her because they aren't JUST right. So tighten your flannel pants and put down the scissors, mom. It's 5 female characters that your girl would like, if you wern't so busy making her watch LMN movies and reminding her men suck.

5)Wordgirl
Never heard, huh? It's because Wordgirl is a children's show on PBS. It features a young girl from the planet Lexicon who in her spare time becomes Wordgirl, a pint sized Super heroine with a penchant for correct vocabulary, while maintaining a secret identity as Becky Botsford, a mild mannered bookworm adoptive child . This show is awesome, as written by some of the Saturday Night Live scribes. And no, the learning doesn't get in the way of the fun, Mr "I can't be caught dead watching a PBS cartoon".
Why your girl could look up to her:
Wordgirl is the female superheroine you always ask for, but who's comics you never read. Independent, smart, sarcastic, and strong but not in a "I'm always kicking men in the balls, I'm so empowered" way. Wordgirl defeast most villains without help from any other characters, except for her space monkey sidekick, Capt Huggy Face. I mean, he's a MALE monkey, but still.

Why You won't let her:

Because Wordgirl's weakness is cutesy, 'girly stuff', like cute cats, and a show ominously called "The Pretty Princess and Sparkling Pony Power Hour" . "What?" You'll ask." Can't she like more "scratched knees" activities(aside from punching robots)?"

He's probably saying a sexist joke about how many women it takes to stop a meteor.

Also, Wordgirl adopts a 'friendly' approach towards some of her male foes(Dr Two Brains, The Butcher) but not as much with her female rogues(the awesome Lady Redundant Woman and Granny May). There's a special place in hell for women who like some men better than some women.

This is not related. I just like this picture.

4)T. Bonne

T. Bonne is a pirate and rogue from the Megaman Legends series, who has also ha her own game and cameos elsewhere. She's part of a family of pirates. I didn't make that too far into Legends, but I know she builts robots and other machines to perform her devious tasks, which include thievery.

A face worthy of a most wanted list.

Why your girl could look up to her:

She is 15-16 year old genious, and mostly clasilly dressed too.
Bolted, metal panties over pants. That's some symbolism right there!

T Bonne is one of those few Megaman characters that get their own game, and that's badass.
Why You won't let her:

Because of her secret crush with phallic symbol-armed Megaman Volnutt.You know what they say about big feet? Well, that can't possibly apply here.

Not only is she in love with a man, but a man who is willing to shoot her laser blasts in the face? Gurl, that's wack!

3)Mitsuko(Bloody Roar)
If she's a smart fighter, she becomes a cerebral boar!

Bloody Roar is a fighting game where humans turn into muta-animals halfway into the match. Don't ask why. Mitsuko is one of the game's less prolific characters(because of the patriarchy!), a big old Japanese woman in overalls whose transformation is a boar.
Why your girl could look up to her:
She's huge and unseemly and dressed in overalls. She's not attractive to your average man. Turning into a boar just seals the deal: she's a lesbian. The only kind of woman that isn't weak, by femi-standards.
Why You won't let her:
Because it turns out, she's not a lesbian. She's just looking for her daughter. Oh, no, traditional family! It BUUURNS! Goddess help us!

Also, she turns into a fucking boar. That's just stupid, no matter your gender. Boars suck.

2)Amanda "The Wall" Waller Rule 34 exception.

Amanda is not actually the main heroine most of the time, which is amazing, what with being a black, overweight female comic book character. What she IS most of the time, is a handler for various teams in the D.C. universe. She would also be in the Supermax film and the Suicide Squad film, if those where ever going to be done.
Why your girl could look up to her:
Amanda Waller is the most bad ass motherfucking burocrat the world has ever seen. She will do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission. I've seen the bitch stare down Superman.

Seriously I LOOKED. NO HENTAI OF AMANDA WALLER EXISTS!

Seriously, she is mostly known for running the team "The Suicide Squad", which coerces villains into doing missions for the Governmate agency Checkmate, and occasionally jettisons them into another planet to die. While it doesn't usually have the most powerfull villains in it's unconstitutional employ, it still takes some balls to bark orders to insane, murderous villains that never tired of being punched by Flash.

From Left to Right: Guy who BROKE BATMAN, Amanda Waller, Guy who tried to shoot at Batman, Monster who could crush Amanda Waller whenever he wanted.

If Amanda Waller lived in the world of Pokemon, she could be a master in seconds, and already be commanding armies of Mews to kill take down all all the Team Rocket Cells. Not only does she have to convince Psychos that can shoot laser out their armpits to fight other psychos, but she has to coordinate those psychos so they don't fail the mission, even though they are expendable(well, it's called the Suicide Squad, and not because it was created by Albert Suicide).

Why You won't let her:
Well, exactly what makes her so good! Amanda Waller is not without emotions or conflicts, but most the time, if the order is to pull the trigger, she will. Well, she won't, but she'll order someone to do it. She's kind of amoral when it comes to work. And work is getting Deathstroke to work with Poison Ivy in some third World Country.

Don't test her pimp hand, bitches!

With female characters, that kinda amorality doesn't make you look like a conflicted antihero. It makes you a look like bitch. Just don't tell her that, cause she'll send the Weather Wizard after you!

If berating counted as a Superpower...

But can you blame her for being straightforward? She's probably had to read pages upon pages of documentation about how some guy punched reality out of whack or how Supergirl was really an earth-born angel instead of a liquid metal being from another dimension or Superman's Cousin. She's got a job, orders, and the willingness to execute them. Which I guess means she isn't empowered.

1)Lara CroftFlatchested was the big breasted of the PSX era

Well, maybe you've spent too much time watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC if you don't know, but Lara Croft is the lead and protagonist of a games series called Tomb Raider. She's a millionaire adventurer and treasure seeker. An expert marks(wo?)man and a mountain climber. She is...the most interesting woman in the world.
Why your girl could look up to her:

If your girl ever grows up to be a millionaire, she could do worse than trying to imitate Lara Croft. Say what you will about her, she's a strong, resilient character who doesn't constantly need a man to save her, or even a love interest. Always looking for fun, not by shopping, but by looking for the Holy Grail and punching alligators in the process.

She was also played by Angelina Jolie in the films.

Why You won't let her:
She's got breasts.Big ones too. And as we all know, things that are atractive to men are anatema to being strong, independent or even a feminist. Men suck, so of course, the more like a man a woman looks, the more independent and strong willed she is. Right?


Now that's a woman right there! I don't mean the empire making, millionaire, socially concious one, either! She's got breasts too!

5 female characters your girl could look up to(but you won't let her) at 2:49 PM

Grrr power!

Look, mom, we know what your thinking: Your girl can't grow up a self-respecting female in a world ruled by the patriarchy. And geek world...is one of those worlds.

More than half of all geek products are created by, approved by, and for the consumption of, men. And more than half of it is done without any heart at all, so it's no wonder there isn't exactly a thriving supply of such materials geared for, or even considering the possibility young girl could enjoy them.

There are such, but as you can read in my article, there is a force that tries to shoot down even those that get out. That force, is you, mom.

So while the next five characters could find their way to you girl's heart, you won't let her because they aren't JUST right. So tighten your flannel pants and put down the scissors, mom. It's 5 female characters that your girl would like, if you wern't so busy making her watch LMN movies and reminding her men suck.