Thread:Gilgameshkun/@comment-16581186-20151129161318/@comment-995426-20151130074641

Well, only to a point. Leonardo, after all, still cares about Karai romantically even after finding out she's his stepsister, but I don't think it's because he's a banjo-plucking in-breeder. And you don't necessarily have to expect the show to delve into religion to incorporate secularized cultural affects that derived from it. (But the show does, in subtle ways, scratch the surface of Buddhism and Shinto by referencing many of their traditions and principles without always referencing them as religious.) When it comes down to it, Slash's affect diverges from that of the four turtles, but in some ways is actually a little more similar to Splinter's.

Amazing Adventures in its own continuity has expanded more on both Splinter and Slash in ways deeper than the show ever does anymore.

Just as Hamato Yoshi and Oroku Saki were once like brothers (both as members of the Hamato Clan, though Hamato Yuuta also raised Saki), they were also like brothers to Tetsumi Onamota. (Notice the trend of completely different surnames? It established that not everyone in the Hamato Clan apart from Saki had the surname Hamato or necessarily comes from the same immediate family.)  When unrelated people grow up together in close-knit societies of more than one different family (also observed in im, for instance), they are often "like brothers" and "like sisters," but can often still marry within the group as long as they are not closely blood-related.

As for Slash, The Meeting of the Mutanimals has periodic flashback scenes of pre-mutant Spike observing Splinter talk with Raphael and learning lessons from them about bonding among a fraternal team. It's clear from the get-go that Slash views all his allies as brothers, and all his potential allies as potential brothers.

And on an additional note, I should be frank that I didn't grow up in the United States. I mean, I had American-born parents, and I live there now, but originally I grew up in an ethnically and cultural more diverse community overseas. It had lots of American expatriates, but also people from other countries and cultures, and there was also the local indigenous culture.

In the same vein, the turtles didn't really grow up in American society either. They had books and video, but until they were 15 they had no actual social contact outside their family, and lived effectively under the authority of Splinter as the last vestige of the Hamato Clan from Japan. And considering even the Hamato Clan wasn't part of mainstream Japanese society (but a largely secretive ninja clan subculture), it had some elements of mainstream Japanese culture, but many, many elements of its own reclusive culture.

And even then, the turtles lived under New York City, which doesn't necessarily represent mainstream American culture either. It's very ethnically diverse and culturally diverse, with its various ethnic enclaves that by and large retain many elements of their original culture for some generations. New York City is cosmopolitan, but is also in a way self-insulating, with its own particular hyper-urban culture and lifestyles that take the broad majority of suburban middle Americans quite a bit out of their comfort zones. And if you've paid attention to social trends in American society, urban, suburban and rural are very culturally polarized and live at least partially in their own bubbles. Popular entertainment still tries to target all of them, but even as a child I understood at least on a vague level that national American and local American are two very different creatures, just as American had differences from the multinational expatriate society I grew up in and I still regularly encounter these personal cultural differences even decades later.

Whether it's a reflection of my cosmopolitan urban background or just the understanding that culture varies across the United States (and especially in dense cities), I would consider it extremely arrogant and narrow-minded to assume that popular entertainment marketed nationally assumes only a relation to broad mainstream American culture. In fact, I consider it extremely bland and mind-numbing when a show doesn't even try to expand outside that bubble.

Consider also that I loved this show in part because it didn't always confine itself to a cultural bubble. The things I loved most about this show weren't vanilla action comedy&mdash;they were compelling nuanced drama too. I have tended not to like TMNT cartoons in general because they were too shallow in this department (I've much preferred reading Mirage TMNT, MNT Gaiden, IDW TMNT, etc.). At one point, I loved that 2K12 dared not to be so shallow, though it increasingly no longer dares that.