I want to yap! Favorite and least favorite episodes/arcs from 2012? Or other versions?
Omg yes! You've just unleashed the beast, I love yapping :)
Favorite episodes/arcs from TMNT 2012
Okay so this is really hard to answer? The show has so many episodes and so many arcs that are so good I don't even know where to start, but in order to make it simple I'll do a favorite overall arc and then a favorite episode by main character. And by main characters, I mean The guys + April.
Favorite Episode: Leonardo
I love this episode for Leonardo. It is pretty good, I'll try to keep these short for the favorite episodes because I yapped a lot for the least favorite episodes, and I plan on maybe one day making an analysis for each of the boys, but in general I really like how this episodes tackles each of the characters fears, I love episodes where the antagonist messes with the character's mind, and it's really smart that Leonardo is the one to defeat the fungus because he is the only one who faces his fears every day.
Favorite Episode: Raphael
I love how this episode goes into Raph's anger issues again. I think Raph's anger issues weren't always well utilized in the show, but in here it really shows how Raph has been so angry for so long that it started to seep into how Spike/Slash saw his brothers.
It reminds me of when you have a friend, and they have a boyfriend/girlfriend who they are very much in love with, but they only talk about their partner when they're complaining about them, to the point that you get a horrible idea of their partner, because the only time you hear about them is when your friend is complaining about the terrible things they've done. So it comes a time where you will start telling your friend that maybe they should break up with their partner, or even treating their partner badly, because in your mind they're a terrible person and you can't understand why your friend is still with that person.
Slash is basically in that position, because Raph's anger issues meant that he was very... creative when ranting, and the mutagen probably warped Slash's mind. So instead of telling Raph to "break-up" with his family he just decided he would kill them instead.
In general, I like how Slash is basically Raph's anger issues incarnated and he has to fight Slash in order to prove that he loves his family, and how he wins the fight against Slash by using what Master Splinter (his family) taught him.
Favorite Episode: Donatello
This is a hard one to choose because I like every episode that is Donatello centric for the most part, but the reason why I like Mutagen Man Unleashed is because of the potential it had.
It establishes April + Casey as a possible couple. It establishes how Donatello's obsession with April is unhealthy, and how it hurts April in the form of Mutagen Man, whose idea of April becomes warped because of Donatello's constant rants (are you seeing a parallel with Slash and Destroy?). It also establishes how Donnie wanted to find the retromutagen so bad and exposes a lot of his insecurities, and it is so tragic that by the end of the episode he basically has no choice but to "kill" Timoth.
I think this was also the perfect episode where Donatello could have gotten over his crush on April, thematically speaking, it's what makes the most sense, but uhhh nothing's perfect right.
Favorite Episode: Michelangelo
I like this episode because it has the Best Team (Donnie and Mickey) and Michelangelo is the one that saves the day at the end of the episode. One of my gripes with the show is how it had a tendency to infantilize Michelangelo and make him out to be stupid, which is not the truth.
Michelangelo is incredibly talented and smart, but he has a tendency to not take things seriously and tune out, I think Michelangelo episodes are at their best when they show Mickey's potential.
Also mind control, one of my favorite tropes
So this one is hard but for different reasons, if you search for my blog, you will realize I have several thoughts about April, and most of them are negative because I have a hateeee for cannon April lol, she was done so dirty but she lowkey sucks so bad???
But anyway, I really like the episode Buried Secrets, I think because it's the first episode that actually delves a little bit deeper on what happened to April's mother and it poses a challenging question to April, does she want to go with her mom, or does she want to be with her friends?
Does she value the life she can lead with her mother, or does she value saving New York alongside her friends more?
I also really like how the episode also has mind control bs and body horror, the Donnie-Kraang thing that they did??? I wanted more of it
I would say my overall favorite arc was the mutagen spill arc during season 2, it was so fun seeing the different monsters of the week and waking up early on saturdays to watch the newest episode, I still remember when I was 10 and the new episodes were coming out on Nickelodeon, I'd make a bowl of cereal and sit in my pijamas, it's one of my nicest memories. My only gripe with this arc is that I believed that since the turtles finally find the retromutagen during this arc, that naturally meant they would turn all of the mutants back into people, right??? Well...apparently I was wrong, but I still think Season 2 is the best season of the show.
Least favorite episodes/arcs from TMNT 2012
I'm a simple man, I see April and Donatello centric episodes, and I hate it.
I also hate a lot of episodes after the midpoint of season 3. For me, I don't really have a least favorite episode per character list as much as I have a list of overall episodes that I believe didn't add anything to the show/were overall detrimental to the show or the characterization of several characters. So I'll just say my least favorite episodes are:
This episode is so bad that the Noxious Avenger guy, whose name I don't even know and can't be bothered to search up (I think it's muckman? I'll call him muckman) doesn't even appear in the show again other than, I think 2 minor appearances where he doesn't even have voiced lines.
I remember seeing somewhere that this episode was so weird because it was around the turning point when Nickelodeon was pressing the TMNT Writers/Creators to appeal more towards a younger public in order to drive up toy sales, now I don't know how true that is, but it does seem very likely.
This episode honestly makes every single character on screen look bad, the turtles look stupid because they end up getting recorded and put on TV (some ninjas am I right) and then at the end there's a whole thing about Muckman becoming a hero after like one act of heroism...? I hate this, it's not funny at all, it's migraine inducing. You also cannot pay me enough to convince me the turtles would like this guy, I think that one thing people forget about the 2012 boys is that they are lowkey kinda mean, one of the first things they do in the show is beat up Snake and then threaten to mutate him in the middle of the street, they constantly make fun of Baxter Stockman, and many other things, they are precious but they are not precious beans if you know what I mean lol.
Point is, this episode does not add anything to the show. It's not funny. It makes all of the characters look stupid. I don't like Muckman. And I always skip it on rewatches.
I absolutely despite foot too big, every time I rewatch TMNT 2012 I skip it.
It's a terrible episode for April and Donatello's characterization. The time that Donatello is finally ready to get over his stupid idiotic crush on April and is like, yeah, I understand how you feel now... is the time that she decides to kiss him?
I'm not going to lie, and I'm completely serious when I saw that episode is an incel's mysoginistic wetdream, where the guy is depressed and sad because he is so terrible because of *insert insecurities here*, and then he's wallowing in his self pity of oh, nobody will ever like me because of *insert insecurities here* but it's okay that nobody will ever love me because of *insert insecurities here* and then the girl character is like noooo I like you because of *insert your insecurities here.* And then kisses him.
I'm not saying the trope above is inherently bad, because like all tropes they can be done well or they can be done badly, but I am saying that if a girl constantly rejects a guy, dodges letting him confess, and is very clearly not into him in a show, and then she does THAT, it doesn't read as a sweet moment where she realizes she actually really likes him and the traits that he thinks make him less are actually what attracts her to him uwu, it at best, makes April look stupid, and a poor writing device in order to further a stupid love triangle, and at worst, it makes April look HIGHLY MANIPULATIVE!
I used to give April more goodwill, but after rewatching the show 5+ times I realized I was being too nice to her.
Why? Well, because as a weird teen the majority of friends I had were girls, so I am 1000% confident when I say I have met girls that acted like cannon April, they would reject a guy who liked them over and over, and when the guy was ready to get over that rejection they would pull them right back with some affection in order to continue to receive their attention. I have had women straight up tell it to my face that they didn't like a guy, but kept talking to them because they gave them gifts/attention and would push the guy aside when they actually wanted to commit to something. I have a great friend who during our late teens to early twenties was even trying to encourage me to date older guys because they were usually the ones who gave them more gifts and such while not wanting anything with them, which, fuck older guys preying on young people, but stringing some teen guy along just to get attention? I'm sorry but that's pathetic.
April doesn’t come across as a sweet girl who just realized she looovvveees Donatello because he is her mutant, she comes across as a manipulative twat 🙄🙄🙄
This episode is also the second reason I don't like cannon April. Do I think she was done dirty by the writers of the show? Yes. Do I like her as a person based on her actions in cannon? Hell no. If we take a Watsonian perspective of April, rather than a Doylist one, this is the turning point in-universe where she goes from maybe an awkward girl whose friend has a crush on her and she doesn't know how to deal with that, and starts to comes across as a terrible person. And being 16 doesn't excuse that kind of behavior. This fandom sometimes seems to have a really big problem where people want to hold Donatello accountable for his bad behavior without recognizing that April also had her fair share of bad behavior in the show, especially towards Donatello. (I have my theories for why this is but I'll keep it saved for another post) Teenagers are stupid but they aren't children and their bad behaviour should be called out— that's how one grows into a better person.
There's also the fact that this episode basically depicts a grooming situation with Donatello, which I'm not going to say doesn't work for the episode, but it was definitely not handled with the level of seriousness it should have been.
In general, this is an episode that takes everything it adds to the show and Donatello and April's characterization and then dumps it into a river, I think the whole Donnie and April situation would have been more bearable were it not for this episode, which shows us what could have been (aka Donnie finally having some character growth) and then dumping it to make us suffer through 2 more seasons of this stupid love triangle ahahshaiabnabsjsjsb
Look I hate the power inside of her for similar reasons, in that it has to turn April into a complete moron for it to work.
Remember when during the filler and silly episode Pizza Face, April has a bad feeling about the Pizza she got and immediately threw it in the trash? Remember when April was supposed to get "these feelings" that made her be able to track down danger and other telephatic stuff?
Well, the writers clearly didn't!
This episode only works if everybody, both on Fugitoid's ship, plus on earth, is too much of a scaredy cat to tell April off on her bad behavior and notice how the crystal is affecting her earlier.
April also legit kills Donatello, there's like a good 5 minutes where Donatello is DEAD. I don't buy the "moleculary scattered" excuse that the show uses to keep it's rating for children. The implications of being molecularly scattered is death. You're dead. Your body does not exist anymore. We know spirits exist in the TMNT universe, so Donatello's spirit might have been around somewhere. But his body? Dead. Donezo. Technically inexistent.
And once he's brought back, everybody immediately forgives April because it's not her fault.
It absolutely is her fault! Once someone finally has the guts to start calling her out on how the crystal is affecting her, April lashes out at everyone, including Master Splinter. She had several chances to let go of the stupid thing, by the show's logic she should have gotten a "strange telephatic feeling" the moment she received the crystal and NOT!! PUT IT!! ONNN!!!!
I'm sorry, but these episodes are the telltale signs of the favoritism the writers gave April and how she isn't a character, she is a plot device. She can never act consistent, she can never be held accountable for her mistakes, she can string along Donatello even though she gives all of the signs that she doesn't like him, she can even literally kill one of the 4 main characters (even if temporarily) and not even get off with a slap on the wrist. Other characters were treated with far more scrutiny for not doing even half of the things April did in this episode! And it doesn't matter that she's their friend, for a good 5 minutes the turtles thought Donatello had DIED and it was because April was too obsessed with the crystal to listen to anyone!
I know some people try to excuse this because she was mind controlled, but the truth is April wasn't forcibly mind controlled like other characters, she was slowly influenced by the aeon crystal, at any point she could have fought harder against it and she didn't, I would have given her more grace but cannon April is just like that. She is so stubborn that she is always putting herself into danger and this is not the first time, and this time it didn't just put herself in danger, it legit killed (even if temporarily) one of her friends!! And nobody is pissed off at her!!!
This episode could have been fixed if April was just held accountable, but everything is brushed off wayyy too quickly.
I'll stop here because otherwise I'll go on an Anti-Apriltello and another cannon April rant but I think I already made my point, lmao
Not so honorable mentions are Eye of the Chimera, Battle for New York I and II and Journey to the Center of Mikey's Mind.
Least favorite arc was the one with Kavaxas because....what was that? Lmao. Also Kavaxas was very clearly modeled wayyy later than the original models/other characters, so he very clearly looked....overmodeled? Compared to the other characters, he looked like he came from a different show. As an artist I assume they might have used a different(superior) engine/3D modeling app, which is why there's this visible difference. I also didn't like the whole plot of reviving the Shredder....again. And it made no sense that Tigerclaw was the one who tried to bring the Shredder back, since he was a gun for hire, he wasn't loyal to the Shredder, it should have been Chris Bradford, if they really needed/had to bring the Shredder back AGAIN.
Anyway, enough yapping, thanks for asking!!