#12 turtles

Leonardo

Leonardo leads - This one's to the point. He does lead. Doesn't really say anything else about him, but it tells us his role in the team.

Leonardo's always in control - This still tells us that Leonardo's in charge but also implies self-control and a personality that wants to keep things under control, rather than just telling us his role on the team.

Leonardo's the leader in blue, does anything it takes to get his ninjas through - 12 gives us team role again, but the second bit does give us more of his personality. It implies a certain level of ruthlessness and I do find 12 Leo to be the most ruthless Leo.

Leo's making a scene - Sorry, buddy, you're not the leader and your personality is just loud. This fits for a Leo whose storyline is a great deal about finding his role and what he's good at.

Donatello

Donatello does machines - As a friend on discord pointed out this doesn't (especially combined with the visual) tell us he does machines well. Donatello's machines are sometimes more trouble than they're worth, but with the amount of mad scientists these turtles go up against they very much need someone doing machines on their team, and he does brilliantly even more often than he caused the problem in the first place. Like Leonardo this mostly tells us his team role.

Donatello's the brains of the bunch - 03 is the only one that doesn't mention machines, the 03 theme song moves towards personality for all of them rather than team role for some and personality for others. So Donatello gets mentioned as the smart guy rather than the one who makes machines. It's also true of him in more ways than of some other Donatellos - this one's smart about things other than science, too.

Donatello's the fellow has a way with machines - He's the machine guy again, but this one's more complimentary about it.

Donnie rocks machines - I love how these get steadily more complimentary about how good Donatello is with machines even while mostly sticking to machines as his thing.

Raphael

Raphael is cool but rude - 87 gives two their team roles and two their personalities in the theme song, but then Raphael and Michelangelo have much less fixed team roles. I feel like just announcing a character is cool up front wouldn't be done in modern cartoons, too. Is he cool? Isn't that up to the viewers? But it definitely tells us how Raphael sees himself.

Count on Raphael to throw the first punch - 03 once again neatly combining team role (fighter) with personality (a bit aggressive and impulsive).

Raphael's got the most attitude on the team - We're back to what 87 says in new phrasing, with less just announcing he's cool. 12 Raphael is also the one who throws the first punch, mind you, but that's not what his theme song highlights.

Raph's ready for a fight - Rise is following 03's lead on this one. Rise probably has the least attitude of any Raphael, not least because he is the authority to his brothers so who would he be rebelling against?

Michelangelo

Michelangelo is a party dude - He is! He's a lot of other things too, and I think this one is actually a little sad when you think about how many parties a mutant turtle is likely to be invited to, but it conveys his carefree attitude and desire to have fun in the moment. And he also does love parties and throws birthday parties for everyone including Irma.

The wise guy is Michelangelo - I think this Michelangelo is the only wise guy Mikey. The role goes to Raphael in 87, Leo in Rise, and no one really in 12. It also singles him out a bit, the others in 03 have all been given a sentence that's mostly about their personality but also alludes to their role on the team, he's the only one who has no definite role to allude to.

Michelangelo, he's one of a kind, and you know just where to find him when it's party time - Like 87 he likes parties and we're also highlighting that he's weird, I guess.

03 and 87 both do a rigid carapace, flexible plastron, vestigial/non-existent bridge thing. This manages to look okay! I think because, talking as someone who grew up with tortoises, you at least don't see their plastrons so much. So plastrons flexing doesn't get the visceral "oh that is so wrong" that carapaces do. It makes them going into their shells look weird, though. 03 turtles just don't do that, 87 go with looking weird (the artists clearly did not have a reference sheet for this).

tmnt vs batman does this surprisingly well, actually. They also do the rigid carapace, flexible plastron, non-existent bridge. And if you look closely the bridge sort of closes up when they go into their shells, their carapace and plastron meeting and making them a bit flatter. If you don't look closely you wouldn't notice they've cheated and the turtles look good in their shells.

Rise does the fully enclosing accurate turtle shells (well, accurate for everyone except Donnie, who ought to have a vestigial bridge and a vestigial plastron as a softshell). And they do flex. And aside from one highly disturbing time when they definitely did that on purpose as a joke (Leo stretches his shell complete with spine crunching noise) they get away with it. It helps a lot that they live in a flexible world. Laptops flex. Phones flex. Walls flex if you hit them right. Sure, shells flex, it's probably not real flexing just flexible vibes.

12 runs into a few problems which mostly boil down to being 3D. The fully enclosing shells look really nice in 2D or even in still 3D images. But as is the nature of 3D it's not a case of someone drawing this out and deciding when to flex the shell to make something work, the shell has been modelled as flexible. Once you notice it you notice the shell flexing in scenes where it wouldn't have made a difference if the shell had been rigid. The carapace twists slightly over the hips as they run, bends at the waist when a turtle looks back over his shoulder, dents slightly when they go into their turtley crouch on all fours on anything but a level surface.

there is only one dimension X which lies between all the various turtle dimensions

the triceratons as well as the krang and the utroms (who are splinter krang) are from dimension X

there are still alternate versions of characters, for instance General Traag, the rock warrior, or Mozar, a triceraton, who in 2012 would be native to dimension X

they ignore 87's lore to make Krang a krang instead of someone who used to have a body (which I don't mind too much because 87 never let previous lore get in the way of an episode idea tbh) but it's when you try to extend this to 2003, with its triceratons and utroms, that things get really weird

implicitly all its triceratons and utroms would have to come from dimension X also, presumably having come through a while ago and made their home in the 03 dimension, with the utroms being offshoot krang after all

Whereas the turtles that are angrier and less tolerant of one another's quirks, having previously been extremely close, are Rise in the movie and 87 in the red sky seasons. In Rise Leo's acting out, Raph tries to hit him with ninpo, and Donnie and Mikey are worried enough to physically intervene. In 87 Michelangelo gets ostracised for an episode to force him to shape him, Raphael and Donatello actively leave the group at one point and there's a lot more fighting about what their group should even be doing.

Shapeshifting powers and being manipulated by Shredder were replaced by trying to kidnap April due to Donnie's lovelorn rambling. The build up of Donnie feeling responsible for him and sort of attached to him went nowhere because he didn't do anything very much or ever regain his intelligence.

For instance, Rise are very specific turtles. They're quite different from the turtles in previous incarnations. And I like them! My favourite is Leo, who is especially different from other Leos.

87 are specific, in their case the pretty much had to be. They weren't aiming for the same demographic as Mirage (they were aiming at a different demographic in the hopes both demographics would buy the same toys) so no one had any pre-conceived notions of who these turtles would be. They didn't ignore who these turtles were in Mirage - although they adapted a bit, Raphael especially gets less violent - but they're not identical either. They're turtles that work in the story they're in.

The 90s movie turtles are shifted back towards the comic, but they're also pretty specific. Donatello's less of a genius, more of a double act with Mikey. Why? Probably because he's in a live action show and that makes hi-tech inventions higher budget than in a cartoon. Plus, it's all a bit more grounded, so he's not likely to invent some of the wild stuff 87 Donatello invents. They're turtles for this story.

The 03 turtles are a hard shift back as close to the comic as possible on children's television, but this doesn't make them less specific to their story. The story is also shifted closer to the comic.

The 07 movie is not specific. It assumes you know these guys, you know, they're the turtles! It doesn't bother to introduce any of them. It doesn't make it clear whether it's a sequel to the 90s movies or not. It's the first example (that I'm aware of) of what becomes a sort of "movie turtle soup", turtles that are a mix of all the most expected traits of previous iterations. They're meant to be immediately recognisable to the audience at the cost of leaving everything about them vague.

12 is a series but it's also pretty soupy. It's trying really, really hard to contain everything everyone liked about previous iterations. Everything memorable. So its turtles are pretty endearing and they grew on me, but they're deliberately built to be what you expect. Raphael is both "cool but rude" and the angry, fighty one, even though those were originally traits of two different Raphaels. Similarly, Donnie has bits of both 03 Donatello's level-headed compassion and 87 Donatello's mad scientist tendency towards explosions. It makes him come off as sweet, but highly-strung, which is, I guess, a new take after all.

Batman vs TMNT is fun but but it's movie turtle soup. The point is for them to be recognisable fast. As a result I enjoyed the movie but came away with little connection to the turtles.

I haven't seen Bayverse.

Rise, as I said, are specific. And I think that makes their movie more interesting too. They exaggerate traits more than in the series: Donnie being more averse to touch in general than sometimes not liking to use his hands and preferring his shell covered, for instance. But they don't expect viewers to come in already knowing who their turtles are, they're not assuming we've watched the series (I actually hadn't), and they get across who they are and what's going on between them in a fast and fun way.