Board Thread:New on TMNTPedia/@comment-25877223-20150202042533/@comment-995426-20160508003611

Well, a lot of real world people have no problem looking past the species barrier, as long as someone is sentient, and has a humanoid body frame, etc. They see characters like Splinter or Leonardo, and they see fictional people first before they see fictional "animals."

Compare the whole Beauty and the Beast story formula used through the ages. In some versions of the story, the "beast" never turns into a human, and sometimes they even have children together. That's what happened in this TV series I watched as a preteen.

There are also stories where ordinary humans along with walking talking animals live in the same communities, and they're all just considered "people." And not only do they marry each other, but they either try to have kids together or they raise each other's children. Examples of this kind of world include the Breath of Fire series, Xenogears, and Final Fantasy IX.

So it's true that a Mirage TMNT future of aliens living on Earth might make it easier to have sentient interspecies relationships and marriage, but never underestimate how many human beings are already open to that. And remember this exchange between Leo and the wife he had in his vision:

Though Leo thinks it's all just a vision, there's a twist ending to the story that suggests it was more than just a vision, though the story leaves the vision's true nature open to question. I like to believe that it was Leonardo's past life in feudal Japan as a yōkai who chose to live in the world of man. Because, even in that life, he was still seen as an anthropomorphic turtle, and yet he still not only had a wife, but Yumi was their daughter, even though Yumi was born appearing fully human.