Thread:Gilgameshkun/@comment-29720851-20170503182211/@comment-995426-20170507021319

I honestly don't think the whole Jason Biggs / Dominic Catrambone / Seth Green thing had any real impact on the writing. They're just voice actors, and the characters themselves could be voiced by just about anyone, and the story is decent if the writing, direction and delivery are decent. I don't fault Seth Green for any of this.

Interestingly enough, until season 4, "Turtles in Time" was the episode I hated most. I have a strong dislike of fast, easy, shallow romance plots, especially after everything that Mikey went through with Leatherhead. But the Amazing Adventures comics ended up handling Mikey and Renet better, which made me feel a little less queasy about the two of them. In season 4, I loathed the space arc. I mean, there have been good space arcs in different versions of TMNT over the decades (such as the one in Mirage TMNT), but the 2012 series' space arc was just plain awful, full of plot holes, cheap pandering and so forth. That's actually when I stopped watching the series altogether.

I have seen tons of speculative fanart of the Turtle Tots in their 2012 series incarnations. There's a collection of it here, which also includes non-2012-series versions. Mirage TMNT issue #9 (included in my list of links earlier) is also a backstory of them as preteens. Even MNT Gaiden has a brief flashback of them as preteens.

If you're wondering what makes Mirage TMNT so mature, then the answer to that is mainly Bodycount, because it forms a part of Mirage TMNT canon, and it is extreme over-the-top graphic violence. But overall, I'd estimate that Mirage TMNT is more often PG-13 with a few R-rated moments. But it's most important to stress that Mirage TMNT was always fundamentally unrated, in that the target audience have always been adults anyway, so whatever content was present was within the sensibilities of its creators. Still, when writing about Mirage TMNT on Turtlepedia, it would be improper to censor our text in a way the comics do not, so the articles have a mature content warning for the benefit of concerned parents.

Mikey's interest in Tytee Wytees was silly, for sure, but you also have to remember that these are turtles who have never worn underwear for the purpose of wearing underwear. They're effectively naked, except for Splinter who in season 3 is shown to wear underwear under his robe. Human underwear may be more of a novelty to Mikey&mdash;something fascinating to collect, just like comics or action figures or that giant cardboard cutout of Chris Bradford he still kept in his room even after they became sworn enemies. 2012 Mikey is an unusual individual, to say the least. I also thought his character development suffered tremendously in season 3, though.