Raphael (2012 TV series)

"Raphael has the most attitude on the team!"

- 2012 TV series Theme song

Raphael or Raph is the "hot-headed muscle" of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He often lets his impulsiveness get in the way instead of using rational thinking. He has a soft-side, only revealing it to his pet turtle Spike. His weapon of choice is, like in every other variation, twin Sai. He is voiced by Sean Astin.

Personality
Always acting before he thinks things through, he is the muscle of the team. He is sarcastic, tough, and at times mean, but he is known to have a soft side when caring for his pet turtle Spike. It is also shown he cares for his brothers, mostly Michelangelo. As seen in, Leonardo and Raphael begin to argue, as usual. They decide that Raph will lead the team. During this, they battled Snakeweed, and Mikey ended up injured. Raph said he froze up seeing Mikey like that. He told Splinter he needs Leo. He also said, "I don't mind risking my own life, but risking my brothers'..." This shows us how much he cares about his brothers.

Abilities
Raphael is the strongest, fastest and toughest of his brothers, being able to take on much larger opponents quicker and more easily. His temper, if used correctly, can boost up his strength and make him even stronger. Like his brothers, Raph is stealthy, can hide in the shadows, sneak around without being detected, and use hand-to-hand combat, or Taijutsu. He is also seen to be quite intelligent when he thinks clearly and often takes the role of second-in-command of the turtles.

Weapons
During most of the series, Raphael wields a pair of Sais which, like his brothers with their chosen weapons, he is highly skilled with. In, master Splinter says that the boys are getting too reliable on their own weapons and makes them swap. After this process, Raph is left with Mikey's Nunchucks. During a fight, the turtles become uncooperative with their new weapons and swap back. When Splinter finds out, he confiscates all weapons, stating that anything can be useful. When he and his brothers are trying to save Timothy, Raph uses two planks of wood and holds and fights with them in a style similar to his Sais. In, he used a Yumi bow and like his other brothers wields Shurakins. In, Raph armed himself with Kama scythes, Shuriken, Kunai, Tonfa and Brass Knuckles.

Biography
While down in the sewers, Raph beat Donnie and then he fought Leo, (who beat Mikey in a fight before) and then won the training tournament by throwing Leo with his Sai. However, when Splinter congratulated them, Raph bragged about his win, which caused Splinter to hit a pressure point on his neck and forced him to compliment his brothers. The turtles are later seen eating a dish Mikey prepared called "Algae and Worms." After the meal, Splinter relays the story of how they were transformed (which is fairly different from the other origin stories told in the other series).

Fifteen years before the, the benevolent Hamato Yoshi purchased the four turtles. Yoshi came into contact with a rat and had to fight against a couple of Kraang. The aliens dropped their mutagen, causing the mutation of Yoshi and the turtles. Yoshi raised the turtles as his own children and continues to train them in ninjutsu. Splinter agrees after some begging to let the turtles go to the surface. It is here that Raphael scares a Pizza delivery guy, who speeds away on his motorcycle.

Raphael's character design was updated, giving him green eyes as well as a small, lightning shaped chip cut out of his plastron across his left shoulder. His shell shows distinct battle damage, and the tails of his mask are tattered and worn. On the new ninjaturtles.com, Raphael says that he usually uses his sai as a pair of pizza forks.

Family

 * Leonardo - Raph's older brother. He and Leo tend to fight about who would be a better leader of the turtles, but Leo always comes first, making Raph jealous. They seem to fight the most out of all their brothers, but they still care about each other. The two are shown to trust each other more in the family as they are often discussing things privately away from the others such as Leo's relationship with Karai.


 * Donatello - Raph's second-youngest brother. He fights with Donnie the least, in physical terms, but in verbal terms, he makes fun of Donnie's intelligence and his huge crush on April a whole lot and tends to bully Donnie. However, they have compassion and have each other's backs during each fight.


 * Michelangelo - Raph's youngest brother. He hates the fact that Mikey always makes fun of his hotheadedness, and so in return, Raph tries beating him up to let out his anger, but when other people start beating up Mikey, Raph gets defensive and stands up for his little brother. Raph seems to be the most protective of Mikey. It may be possible that Raph deeply cares about him.


 * Splinter - Raph's surrogate father. He tends to show a lot of stubbornness towards Splinter's advice, but he still listens to his sensei and trains well under him.

Allies

 * April O'Neil - Raph's first human friend. He and April don't interact that much, but he got a little defensive when the Purple Dragons tried to mug her, but also laughed at her when she was attacked by a giant pigeon, but was impressed that she escaped Karai. He and April are good friends.


 * Leatherhead - Raph never interacted with Leatherhead, but he did disagree with Mikey about befriending him.


 * Pulverizer - Raph finds him plain annoying, and didn't really care about his safety. But he did try to help save him in "The Pulverizer Returns".
 * Spike/Slash - Raphael's pet turtle Spike mutates into a large mutant turtle and names himself Slash in the episode . Slash has a personal vendetta against Raphael's brothers.

Enemies

 * Shredder - Due to Shredder being Splinter's archnemesis, Raph hates the Shredder as well.
 * The Kraang - Raphael dislikes the Kraang, and will do anything he can to stop their invasion plots. The Kraang also hate the turtles due to them being the only force powerful enough to stop them. This rivalry is far more personal to the turtles than their rivalry with the Foot Clan.
 * Spider Bytez - Raph and Spider Bytez really hated each other from the moment they first met. Raph despises him because he insulted him, while Spider Bytez, as Vic, took pleasure in tormenting and insulting Raphael. When he caught the turtles on tape, Raph wanted to really break his face. Vic hates them, because he and his brothers broke his phone and satellite dish. Vic also blames Raph and his brothers for turning him into a mutant spider, and attempted to kill Raph's brothers, but Raph managed to control his temper and defeat him. For some reason, Spider Bytez calls them "kung-fu frogs". Spider Bytez is one of the three villains that Raph hates the most; The others are Chong and Fishface.
 * Baxter Stockman - Raph dislikes him, and takes pleasure in throwing him in the trash.
 * Fishface - One of Raph's archenemies. He fights him every chance he gets, and the two seem evenly matched, as they were the most powerful fighters in their groups (besides their masters). However, unlike Spider Bytes and Chong, Raphael and Fishface share a mutual respect for each other, and share many similarities. In, they work together really well, and seem to be alike due to their aggression and willingness to fight until the end. Fishface even tells Raph about his past. Raph and Fishface also saved each other once during this episode and later Raph was able to detect an attack on Leo from Fishface before it caused any damage. Despite them being alike in many ways, Raph and Fishface are enemies down to their bones.
 * Rahzar - One of Raph's enemies. He dislikes him, but their rivalry is far less aggressive than that of Raph and Fishface.
 * Spy-roach - Due to his fear of Cockroaches, Raph both hates and fears Chong. Chong also hates Raph, because Raph tried to kill him when he was a normal cockroach. During the whole episode, Chong stopped at nothing to kill Raph using Raph's fear of him to his advantage, along with his mutation. Raph spent the whole episode trying to get away from him, but was forced to get over his fear when Chong kidnapped Mikey. Raph managed to save Mikey with the Stealth Bike and faced his fear, fighting the mutant roach, and flattened his face with the Stealth Bike wheel. Chong came back for round two, but Raph beat him in hand to hand combat and destroyed him with the Kraang's drill, though he doesn't know about the eggs Chong had laid with the mutant cockroaches, shortly after Chong was defeated.
 * Snakeweed - He made his debut in the first episode of the series, before he mutates into a mutated weed, he was a henchman for the Kraang. His name was previously Snake, so Michelangelo renamed him Snakeweed after his mutation.
 * Rat King - Raph really hates the Rat King, but his rivalry with him isn't as big compared to most of his other enemies.
 * Newtralizer - Another of Raph's enemies.

Quotes
See: Raphael (2012 TV series) / Quotes 

Gallery
''See: Raphael (2012 TV series)/Gallery

Trivia

 * Raphael's name is Hebrew, meaning "God has Healed". Given the fact that he was adopted by Hamato Yoshi/Splinter, Raphael's full name would be "Hamato Raphael".
 * In Katakana, Raphael's name is spelt: ラファエル (Rafaeru).
 * He is the only turtle to not have an o sound at the end of his name.
 * Raphael is the second oldest of his brothers; Leonardo, Donatello & Michelangelo.
 * Raph is the only turtle in this series to have green eyes.
 * Raph has a bolt-shaped gap at the upper, left side of his plastron.
 * Raphael is often called "meat-head" by Donatello.
 * In, Raph is, (irrationally), revealed to have katsaridaphobia, (fear of cockroaches), and is terrified of Donatello's pet SpyRoach. The origins of his katsaridaphobia has yet to be explored, but apparently Raph was able to keep it quiet, as his brothers never knew of his phobia until that episode.
 * It is revealed in  that Raph gets nausea after seeing body parts from bugs.
 * Raphael has a pet turtle named Spike.
 * A running gag is that he often likes to attack or hit his brothers whenever he is annoyed or angry with them (especially Michelangelo) or simply to dull boredom.
 * Another gag is whenever Raph seems to have been decapitated, at least one of his brothers screams in terror, only to have Raph's head pop out of his shell.
 * He is shown to care a lot about his youngest brother Michelangelo as he didn't know what to do anymore when he got hurt. But he also cares about his other brothers as he said: "I don't care risking my own life, but my brothers..."
 * It is seen in, when Raph gets under so much pressure being the leader for a short time, that he froze up with anxiety.
 * He's the third turtle to use Mikey's catchphrase "Booyakasha!" As seen in, which is proof not only that he cares about Mikey, but that Mikey has had an influence on him after all.
 * Raph's the third tallest/second shortest of the turtles.
 * He has extra wraps under his knee pads.


 * In the first season of the show he has three big rivals - Fishface, Spider Bytez and Spy - Roach.
 * This version of Raph is afraid of bugs, just like the 2003 version.
 * He is the secons CGI Raph, the first version being from the 2007 movie.