I wish the 2012 writers went into the magic system of the world a bit more ESPECIALLY with the magic hands/shinigami. Speaking about shinigami we actually don’t know her real name (to my understanding at least), since shinigami refers to beings that push people towards death. It feels more like a title she has rather than a name to me if that makes sense?
It would have been interesting to see her working alongside ghosts and to see more of witches in universe since the show implies that there’s families of them.
I totally agree with this !!
It really sucks that Shinigami came so late into the series, because I feel like her and Y'gthba ("Mona Lisa") were done a disservice in regards to their character exploration for this exact reason. Neither of them had enough time to properly establish and explore their characters outside of Y'gthba being Raph's love interest / girlfriend and Shinigami being Karai second in command / and also girlfriend because that's real to me (Plus, I'm sure I've mentioned it before at some point, but someone who worked on her character concept art even referred to Shinigami as, "Kara's girlfriend" in a tweet that they made- I wish I could find that image but I don't know where it is anymore- 😭 || I guess whether or not this proves anything is up to the person, but it's enough for me- LMAO).
And you're right, the name Shinigami feels more like a title than her actual name, and I wish we could have known more about her backstory and how she even met Karai in the first place (Considering they've been friends for a long time, and in my opinion more implies the two of them being childhood friends-) ! I wouldn't be surprised if maybe Shini and her family / extended family were like clairvoyants or something in a similar realm for the Foot Clan- You know what I mean? I personally think it would have been really cool for Shinigami to be really knowledgeable about the spiritual plane and be into tarot cards and candle readings and such ! 👀✨
I also agree with the point about magic within the 2012 universe ! I think one of the earliest and unexplained examples of magic within the series was the episode, "Mazes and Mutants"- Malachi's ability to mentally transport the Brothers into this D&D esque situation that also included personal allies (Leatherhead as a "Dragon" and April as "The Princess"-) never gets elaborated on whatsoever-?? Like, this dude got mutated into a sparrow (I think?), why does he have hallucinogenic powers? 🤨 Lmao || Also it's so odd to me Malachi never came back after this episode in Season 2- Having an ally that can make their enemies see + experience things that aren't real would've been a powerful asset- 😭
There's also the episode, "Pizza Face" which has a similarly unexplainable premise by the end of it, as well as a majority of Mikey's personal experiences that get called into the question in the episode, "Buried Secrets" (i.e. Leo bringing up the time Mikey claimed his nunchucks got stolen by tiny elves and replaced with mozzarella sticks- Something that understandably has a childlike whimsy to it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually real considering the episode, "Pizza Face"-). Not to mention the episode, "A Chinatown Ghost Story" and the existence of Ho Chan and his usage of spiritual magic (i.e. Granting both the Purple Dragons and Leo / Raph / and Mikey elemental abilities while under his control-), as well as the Kavaxas plotline of early Season 5 (Where Casey even goes out of his way to comment on the fact that he hates magic when discussing the scroll that Kavaxas originates from-).
So I think we can reasonably assume that magic does in fact exist in the 2012 universe, but like you already said, it isn't expanded upon as much as it could have been and is usually kind of sideline throughout the show,, I think it would have been really interesting if there was a more magical aspect to the show at times, especially considering it would be a good reference to the '03 series with the Brothers taking on mystical Dragon forms at some point- 😭👍 (I I have to say though, I have very limited knowledge on the context surrounding that in '03-!)
