Tatoruzu As if I didn't need to be further affirmed in my belief that the vast majority of the Rise fandom is populated by obsessive fujoshis. This all sounds about on brand for them. I think it's really telling about the Rise fandom that the writers of the show outright said they refused to include romance at all because of how rampant the sexualization of these underage characters has gotten among that particular subset of the fanbase, yet apparently none of them seemed to catch a hint.

It doesn't "suck" that there aren't romantic relationships.

It's like you said in another thread a while back. Many of these "fans" simply don't care AT ALL about what makes the TMNT unique and interesting as characters, let alone them being ninjas. They just want to live out their shipper fantasies through these characters, even if they are underage animals.

They desperately want a lesbian couple in TMNT.

The only thing half of these people even gleaned out of Rise was how "queer" it was in their eyes, and given how many fujoshis there seem to be I'm convinced it's the only reason they even like it. I saw a video that had 100k views on YouTube titled "Why 'we all' ship Leo x Usagi" (Forget being canonically untrue, such a pairing is pedophilia).

    8 days later

    Tatoruzu They desperately want a lesbian couple in TMNT.

    if rise fans would just read the comics theyd see we already have one. let them buy a fucking book god know IDW needs it

      24 days later

      Thought I'd drop in this great tweet by MNTC. He humiliated Rise writer Russ Carney. I didn't even get a chance to see how the Rise fans reacted to Russ' tweet because he deleted it so fast LMAO.

      i mean her last name is literally oniell like cmon dude. obviously with a new incarnation do whatever the hell you want but dont act like you did it for no reason. you wanted a black character for black kids and the cheapest quickest and easiest way to do that is to palate swap an existing character. it was a decision born of sloth at best. and yes this is the most charitable reason to do this i can think of.

        2 months later

        I hesitate to post this, please feel free to delete if it makes anyone uncomfortable. But a while back, a Rise fan sent this image along with their question completely unprompted to Rise writer Ron Corcillo when he was doing one of those Q and A sessions. I just can't believe this is real.

          Katara If it was just the fan art, that would be one thing. But the fact that Ron Corcillo seemed to be entertaining the idea makes it so much worse.

          Disturbing that people like him are responsible for making shows for children.

              I understand that there are fans of Rise and I respect that. And if it gets them to take a look at other iterations of the franchise such as the comics, so much the better. I myself got into TMNT as a kid through the 80’s cartoon and that took quite a few liberties, as well.

              The problem is that Rise doesn’t look or feel like TMNT, but rather Teen Titans Go! with a Ninja Turtles coat of paint. I may not be the Mirage purist like Tatoruzu is, but I do think that the source material should be used as an anchor of sorts when it comes to establishing the basic premise and characters.

              It wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that it was originally pitched as an original concept but someone at Nickelodeon decided to change it to take advantage of a popular established property, instead.

              And why make April O’Neil black? Just for its own sake? Why not introduce Angel Bridge or Lucindra to potential new fans instead?

              Katara Rise fans have a really strange obsession with shipping Leo and Usagi together, to the point it almost borders on obsession. I have a personal hatred for the people who push this shit specifically because it frustrates and grosses me out to no end, especially since Leo is my favorite turtle too. The reason why they love to talk about Leo and Yuichi supposedly being a "thing" despite never meeting each other is solely because he's a teenager, unlike Miyamoto: the Usagi that's actually crossed over with TMNT. He's the character they really mean to ship Leo with, but they (mostly) won't say so openly because he's an adult and Leo is underage. Instead they talk about shipping Leo with Yuichi because it's still the same gross ship they want, just without the pedophilia implications and also making even less sense than it already did.

              Long story short, the picture below, but with pedophilia sprinkled into it too

              Tatoruzu I said in a post earlier in this thread that these people don't care at all about the story or characters. They're fujoshis. They only care about their "ships" solely for personal wish fulfillment. The more people push this kind of crap, the more it dilutes the actual quality of the work, and it's disgusting to see these kinds of sexual fantasies be even entertained, especially since like you said, we're talking about a kids' show here

                    Leonardo1984 Yeah, I was in the same boat too. I remember being a kid and googling "Leo and Raph" and one of the top results was the two of them kissing, that shit scarred the fuck out of young me lol

                      10 days later

                      me personally i ship tmnt with father time so that they can actually grow up and not be 15 in every incarnation forever pls for the love of god

                      but actually romance in kids shows gay or otherwise is usually best done not at all or otherwise offscreen. its how most shonen shows handle it

                        Gort

                        i ship tmnt with father time so that they can actually grow up and not be 15 in every incarnation forever

                        I kinda liked the 18 year old turtles in Image

                          4 days later

                          Gort or use the 2003 Casey X April sample and respectfully stretch it out naturally?

                          They perfected that against all the overarching and filler stories

                            Gort you have black americans and jamacians who are O'Neil O'Neal McFadden oriley Grady Harris etc and have irish genealogy

                                Tyron_Leung

                                But do those Jamaicans look like this?

                                It's not just about the name — it's the name plus all of the other evidence that clearly points to April's original appearance being white.

                                It's like if there was an Asian character called Mio Watanabe and then the character was race-swapped to black. It's theoretically possible that a black person could have had one Asian person in their paternal lineage several generations ago causing the Watanabe last name despite the rest of their genealogy being 98% black.

                                But doesn't that feel like grasping at straws at that point?

                                  13 days later

                                  theshellprotect9 Although I believe that he brings up a valid argument that different iterations of a franchise have to be different otherwise they would just be regurgitating the same thing over and over again, what he fails to understand is that there is a point when you change it so much that you’re better off doing something original. As I’ve mentioned before, Rise was basically Teen Titans Go with a Ninja Turtles coat of paint.

                                  A lot of fans of the original Battlestar Galactica disliked Ronald D Moore’s reboot to the point that they called it GINO (Galactica In Name Only), but it still started off with the same basic premise. The difference is that New Galactica was very successful and had a good long run that allowed for organic shake-ups in the status quo, whereas the original flopped after one season only to be retooled as Galactica 1980 that also flopped after one season.

                                  That brings me to the next point: If you’re going to adapt something, you need to know what works and what doesn’t, what the audience wants, and make changes accordingly. RDM’s Battlestar Galactica worked (mostly). It resonated with a lot of people in the post-9-11 world. Rise and Mutant Mayhem didn’t work. It hardly resonated with anyone.

                                  Even the original Apollo, Richard Hatch, who was critical of the reboot at first realized this and would portray an important reoccurring character in the new series.

                                  This guy doesn’t seem to understand this. You shouldn’t be “embracing change” if the change sucks.

                                      Stu_Paddasso Most of the Rise fandom tends to be teenagers who latch onto fandoms as a part of their identity, so there's also an aspect of them taking any attack on their favorite thing personally. However, like you said, most Rise fans don't understand that people don't like it not because it changes things, it's because it changes things on a fundamental level. It's far more than a simple shift in tone or art direction, it actively fucks with the basic rules of the franchise; the way Leo was written in Rise is probably the most glaring example of this imo.

                                          helljumper I would of thought that most teenagers would of been too mature to enjoy something like that. At that point, I had moved on to darker and grittier things like Gargoyles and The Maxx.

                                          But I’ll admit, I laughed my ass off when all those Showtime Pizza/Chucky Cheese robots committed mass suicide while hearing the Turtles sing. Fuck, that was messed up.