#tottmnts2

THE NEXT DAY.

A lot of TOTTMNT style and symbolism is blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. It’s highly expressive animation that values leaving impressions - communication - over clean rendering.

Hidden away in a battle scene for a single frame at a would-be moment-of-death, the Hamato clan symbol didn’t just appear on screen but violently manifested. They wanted us to know that something bigger than what we could see was happening.

This is burned into my retina btw.

It’s just a theory - and maybe a wild one. But I think this insane visual communication drop is about self-actualisation. Tales Leonardo loves to think of himself, and his brothers, as heroes. They’ve done good things, they’ve beaten a bad guy, and that’s the bar for what you assume makes a hero when you’re a child. These kids are growing up playing dangerous games and despite their Superfly showdown and all of season 1, the guys still don’t seem to have fully accommodated that death is a very real consequence of squaring up the bad-guys. And so enters an opportunity for the writers to do what all writers do with their Leonardo, because it’s fun; write an emotionally tumultuous epic that leaves him forever changed. (Hey, why wouldn’t they let Leonardo on the plane? …too much baggage.)

On this journey, Leonardo faces the consequence of his own arrogance and he learns just how heavy the weight of his responsibility is. We see him finally get a glimpse of the power he really has when it comes to his brothers, their actions, and their lives. He wants to play “hero” like a child would imagine it, and it ends in his having to face whether he actually is one out of necessity and the reality of it is bittersweet.

Mike fumbles and Leo assists. Immediately, quickly, without hesitation, securing himself between the threat of death and his brother. Leonardo had absolutely no idea if either of them would live in this moment. He was going to save Michelangelo or die trying.

Of course a hero emerged. But no Leonardo gets out of having trauma origins. This is the ‘bitter’. His leadership got them out, his speed and skill saved Mike. But his brothers - his home and purpose - were all in danger because of his decisions. It never should have happened. He fucked up and this moment will haunt him forever. On the sweet, Leo experiences a connection of inner and outer selves; he was tested by a situation and his actions aligned with who he hoped he really was. Tales Leo had a sincere moment of actualisation, and I suspect that’s why we see this beautiful piece of symbolism.

The brothers are each on their own highly individualised coming-of-age journeys; something that we’ve never seen this succinctly from the television franchise before, and yes the three-parter “tales” format gives the writers the freedom to at any time say, ‘oh this was pure fantasy, or total truth, or a bit of both because these are kids and unreliable narrators.’ but what I think we can safely assume will inform future storytelling is how they’ve developed in skill level and who they have grown to be as people over the course of these stories, whether they were real or not.

The screen-captures above are from this artistically and conceptually wonderful fight scene in tottmnt season 2.

And I also had to come say