Rise is actually kinda funny because it's like Tf:Animated for TMNT fandom and I'm like 80 percent sure that just couple of years later people will wholeheartedly say that it was the coolest experiment that TMNT had, just the way transformers fandom name dropped TFA. Like hear me tf out-
Animated received so many bad reviews and got cancelled over TFP. History repeats itself with Rise and MM. While Animated got later praised for having cool ass concepts like younger Optimus, badass Airchanid, cool lore with bits of "government corruption" that later was the environment for TFP and tfone(but mostly from the comicses, but I'd still argue it was Animated) Sentinel as a whole concept, Bulkhead in TFP, my beloved. It was more comedic at first (but not like too much, yk 2000's cartoons liked being serious and stuff) Why didn't it got praised when it was running? It was different and the art style looked weird.
You see my vision???
Rise was criticized over art style, then got criticized over tone and character shifts. It was waaay different than 2012, especially the later season's darker tone. But just fucking look - the Last Ronin new gen turtles are all different species and have superpowers (I hate that part, I hate it sooo much, but the point is - they put it there cause of Rise boys). And I fucking wonder from where they got that concept??? The black MM April is a separate talk cause she's the only "white character turned black" that got second and more genarations(the Naruto crossover) from what I remember, but she got the sarcasm from the 2018 April, who was the second teen April.
Now I see people praising Rise and saying stuff like "we were so baffled from the tone and character shifts that we missed one of the coolest shit TMNT put out". And it's not like from TMNT stand point. Rise is objectively, the best 2d show and movie for a whole decade. I can talk about Rise's animation for a long time but let's get back to the topic-
Animated still has some skeptic and legit haters, and I kinda see their points. Rise now is actively collecting audience who now understand what they missed out. Animated was like that in the 2015 and later on. When I got into the transformers fandom it already got the name of "one of the best transformers shows" and I legitimately think that's happening to new MM fans out there-
It's just a funny observation tho, ik some points that I make are too much, just wanted to hear y'alls thoughts on this.