Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25139993-20190226082336/@comment-995426-20190226112956

There's been a long history of action-ready versions of April. Both the Mirage and Archie comics versions were gradually trained as ninja.

The IDW comics version knows some basic self-defense, but is much better at using cunning to manipulate her opponents; in particular, most of her interactions with Baxter Stockman are like an ongoing game of chess.

And while I don't entirely like the way April was handled in the 2012 series, I actually rather liked her rivalry with Raph earlier in the series. Raph was a lot more queer-coded in the first two seasons and in early season 3 (at times noticeably feminine and ambiguously gay), and his personality was more like that of a tomboy big sister.

I think April and Raph actually understood and related to each other in this respect better than April did with any of the other turtles. I mean, Raph didn't have the level of education April or Donnie had, but he kept intuitively picking up on her feelings as a woman in a way Donnie repeatedly failed to do. So, when April and Raph would insult each other and compete fiercely with each other, it seemed less like cruelty and more like the little catfights in an ongoing friendly rivalry.