#just look at 87 Leo and compare him to 2003 Leo | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rin-the-shadow · 4 years

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So I know it’s not Mikey Monday, but....

For context, the tape we were watching was a sample career counseling interview. This is a course I was required to take, not for my program, but because my academic supervisor thinks it would be beneficial for me to pursue an LPC license. Which, granted, I’m not sure if I want, but if I hadn’t taken that course I wouldn’t have seen this video.

In the interview, there’s a point where the counselor asks the guy role-playing his client about having any favorite characters or characters he identified with. The guy mentions Michelangelo because he’s funny and laid-back. My notes are as follows:

Interesting thing about the guy saying Michelangelo was his favorite turtle—Mikey is the one who is often characterized as “brilliant, but lazy.”

o He’s kind of a silly character, which often distracts people from his perceptiveness and empathy. Sometimes he goes too far with his jokes or can be insensitive—particularly in the 2003 cartoon where he frequently shook his brother Raphael up by pressing his buttons, and once even seriously flipped him out by pretending to be severely hurt despite that not being the case. (The Shredder Strikes)

o He’s also fairly heavily coded as having ADHD—to the point that the most recent adaptation made that canon.

o His weapon is the nunchaku, which takes a huge amount of skill to wield even one, yet he uses two fairly well, proficiently at fifteen.

o Has an unconventional way of looking at the world, which often lets him come up with solutions his brothers, who are comparatively less out-of-the-box, sometimes don’t think of. (Notes from the Underground, Touch and Go) This is also what lets him figure out what is going on with Leonardo in the fourth season of the 2003 series, where his brothers don’t put it together.

Given the age of the guy in the video, he likely saw either the 1980′s series, or the 2003 series. At the time, I assumed he saw the ‘87 because freaks like me were the only ones who saw 2003 and liked it, sarcasm voice on freaks like me.

The boldface citations were added after the fact, but these were the specific episodes I was thinking about when I wrote this. Because for whatever reason, it seems like it’s easy to dismiss 2003 Mikey’s complexity in favor of saying he was only ever “just” the funny one. If the series were made today, I’d say it’s because audiences seem to like having all the subtext and characterization spoonfed to them a la Beauty and the Beast (2017) because it’s like...a plothole or something otherwise. But for the early 2000′s and I myself having been a child at the time who was barely even aware that Leo was getting “official” arcs, I got nothing. Shell, maybe it’s just because he was popular with younger viewers.

From my perspective, I think it’s fairly obvious he had to have been more than that, because I don’t know that so many kids could have connected with him if he’d “only” been the funny one. I don’t know that my youngest sister could have connected with him if he’d “only” been the funny one, and I wonder if maybe the guy in the video connected with him for something other than “just” being the funny one.

Again, I don’t know for a fact which version the guy saw. My observations are just restricted to the 2003 because, TV Tropes aside, 2003 is the main one I have familiarity with, and barring a few issues from the City at War arc of the Mirage comics, the only one I was familiar with at the time I wrote these notes.

But I do think it’s very interesting that he picks the guy who, at least in the version I watched, is brilliant in that he possesses a lot of natural talent in one area, but what he really wants to do is draw comics, possibly become a superhero. Mikey is constantly reading comics, watching old movies, quotes these movies in some episodes, is able to draw connections between an old Silver Sentry comic and use it to figure out how to beat Amanda, the daughter of Battling Bernice and Doctor Dome, is mentioned in supplementary material to draw his own comics, and even has some featured in bonus material like the “Turtle Power” book. (Really, if I were to write a 2003 Mikey plot, it would probably be about him going through the process of writing and maybe even trying to publish his own comic book and how being a mutant turtle affects how he has to go about that.)

So I have to wonder if part of Mikey’s appeal with non-child crowds is because in some ways, he’s a kind of wish-fulfillment for people who aren’t necessarily doing what they want to do. He isn’t necessarily doing what he wants to do, at least not in the order he wants. He’s more of an artist first, ninja second, which is probably some of where his seeming “brilliant but lazy” presentation around ninjitsu comes from. His interest is in creating his comics, so more of his stuff is configured around that, with the ninjitsu being something he enjoys, but not on the same level as his comic stuff.

But I do wonder if the guy role-playing the therapist had been more familiar with TMNT, if maybe they could have explored that a bit more. Granted, the point was to funnel him into an appropriate career choice, and I am not a career counselor, but who knows. At the same time, my cohort seemed to think I was weird for an analysis I gave of Leo in response to a question about what cartoon character you relate to at that moment and why, so maybe that’s just one of those questions you aren’t really supposed to answer except why would you ask it if that were the case?? So maybe not.o

#apologies for the dig on beauty and the beast 2017 #it was just the most obvious example i could think of #classroom notes #rin overanalyzes stuff #michelangelo #tmnt 2003 #teenage mutant ninja turtles #career counseling #i did not like that class #but it did lead to this analysis being made so.....#2003 mikey is my little sister's favorite #mikey is the audience surrogate for frustrated teens/adults being funneled into careers they don't want #except he's less frustrated and more just less interested #outwardly at least #but yeah. this post is a thing #character analysis #since one of my most long-standing interests is character analysis.....#yup #long post #rin rambles

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