Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-29657114-20170222003316/@comment-995426-20170429183508

LadyCelestialStar:

The irritating thing is, Raph tripped gaydar extremely often during the first two seasons, such that for some (especially gay) viewers, it became really impossible to ignore. And Raph wasn't quite a stranger to love&mdash;he had Slash to pine over for most of season 2.

But Raph's personality very noticeably changed during season 3&mdash;less catty, fewer "big sister" moments, much less gaydar-tripping in general, not as many good lines, more wooden dialogue in general, and even a less realistic motivation to anger&mdash;he went from being one of the most richly-developed characters, to one of the blandest. And in retrospect I think he was actually being drastically retooled specifically to satisfy the longstanding 1987 series fan demand for more Raphael and Mona Lisa, even if they shoehorned it on different versions of the characters in a newer series.

It is because of these things that I consider Raph from the first two seasons to be a fundamentally different character from Raph in subsequent seasons. The later Raph was inexplicably new to love, not because his character development had evolved, but because he was actually a redesigned character.