Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (animated series)

This article describes the 2nd animated series about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the early 2000s. For the 1st animated series about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the 1980s and 90s see Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (animated series) .

Television series
German title	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Original title	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Country of production	United States of America , South Korea
original language	English
Year (s)	2003-2009
length	25 minutes
Episodes	156 in 7 seasons
genre	Action
idea	Kevin Eastman Peter Laird
production	Lloyd Goldfine
First broadcast	February 8, 2003 to February 28, 2009 on 4Kids TV ( Seasons 1 to 6) The CW4Kids ( Seasons 7)
German-language first broadcast	October 12, 2005 on RTL II
synchronization

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is an American animated series based on the comics of the same name by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird .

Emergence

From 2003 to 2009 a new animated series was produced for US television. This new series is more based on the original comic than any previous comic adaption, with appearances of additional characters that were little or no known outside of the comic in the TMNT franchise.

Although this series is mainly tailored to children, it is darker and more sophisticated than its predecessors. The storylines between the individual episodes are closely linked: an event in one episode can have its own special consequences in a later one. In this respect, the series contains a really coherent story from beginning to end.

content

The series is about four humanoid mutated turtles Donatello , Leonardo , Michelangelo and Raphael , who live in the sewers of New York City. The four Turtles are taught the Far Eastern martial art of ninjutsu by the mutated rat and her foster father Splinter .

When one day the “construction” of the Turtles is brought down by strange robots, the four Turtles are separated from their master and follow the machines to the surface; there they discover a whole new world. But there is also war there, because the industrial tycoon Oroku Saki is terrorizing New York City with his Foot clan , the brilliant scientist Baxter Stockmann and Hun , the leader of the “Purple Dragon” street gang .

Now it's up to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to bring peace to New York ...

Season 1 to 2

Shredder is suppressing New York City from the shadows and it is up to the Turtles to stop him. During the many fights with their enemies, the Turtles learn a lot about the shredder. In truth, this is not a human, but an Utrom, an extraterrestrial blob-like being who wants to take revenge on humanity and its own race. The secrets of Splinter's and Yoshi's past are also gradually being revealed.

season 3

The following stories play an important role in this season:

• an invasion of the Triceratons, still searching for Professor Honeycutt, on Earth, which the Turtles must fend off, and the ensuing termination of the war between the Triceratons and the Federation;
• Another attack by the Ultimate Ninja and his ally Drako, who are fused into one being, hurls the Turtles through time and space, whereupon each of them finds themselves in a different place - Michelangelo arrives in a parallel world where the Turtles have acquired superpowers and have to fight their old master; Raphael takes part in an intergalactic motorcycle race; Donatello finds himself in a dark future where Shredder has taken over the world; and Leonardo fights in the homeworld of his friend Usagi against hostile ninjas and their master, Prince Hebi - before Leonardo succeeds in calling his brothers to him and turning everything around again;
• the appearance of the mysterious Agent Bishop;
• and trying to stop Shredder from extending his murderous rule to the rest of the universe.

Season 4 and 5

Ch'rell has been banished to a distant planet by his own people, but his adopted daughter Karai seeks revenge on the Turtles. So she conjures up the ancient spirits of the elements, which the Turtles are supposed to wipe out. But they have other plans: They wanted to revive the real shredder of feudal Japan and conquer the whole world.

At the same time, Leonardo is confronted with his growing obsession with protecting his family in all circumstances and has to undergo new training. He is taught by the "Ancient One", an immortal being that Hamato Yoshi has already trained. Then the Turtles are recruited by a tribunal of immortal mystics and trained to counter the threat posed by the original shredder, a demon. But the tribunal has its own dark secrets that sometimes make the Turtles doubt whether they are helping in the fight against their archenemy friend or foe.

A season four episode, "Insane in the Membrane," never aired on public television in the United States. The plot includes Stockman's attempt to clone a new human body and really be able to live with it again. In his impatience, however, he overlooks important details that have the result that Stockman crumbles alive. In his desperation, Stockman goes mad, blames April for his misery and tries to kill her. In the end, however, enticed by a hallucination from his late mother, he ultimately saves April's life before falling into the East River; however, he is eventually recovered by Agent Bishop's men and continues to appear on the series.

Season 6: "Fast Forward"

Due to an accident, the Turtles and their master are teleported to the year 2105. There they protect the boy Cody Jones , a descendant of April O'Neil and Casey Jones , from the assassination attempts of his uncle Darius Dunn . But that's easier said than done, because Darius uses various futuristic monsters to wipe out the Turtles as well. Among them are Viral , a living computer virus, Sh'Okanabo , a mythical alien life form and intergalactic conqueror, Kanabo clones of the four Turtles without any sense of honor, and many more ...

Season 7: "Back to the Sewer"

The Turtles finally manage to travel back in time, but a lot has changed there. After Shredder was destroyed and Karai withdrew, the Footclan was dissolved and Hun terrorized New York City again with his "Purple Dragon". To make matters worse, Viral followed the Turtles through the time portal and merged with a “memory file” from Ch'rell, the Utrom Shredder, and created a completely new enemy: The Cyber ​​Shredder . Before the conversion, however, Viral Splinter converts into data bits and bytes with the help of a compiler modified by Donatellos and spreads it over the entire cyberspace . The goal of the Turtles is now to find the individual building blocks of Splinter in the digital world in order to be able to restore it.

In the last episode, the series also ends the relationship between April and Casey with their marriage, in which not only old friends, but also the Cyber ​​Shredder and the Foot Clan drop by as wedding guests.

TV special

For the series finale, a 70-minute television special was produced that premiered at San Diego Comic Con under the title “ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles Forever ”.

The special is a crossover of several Turtles series, including the original comic Turtles from 1984, the Turtles from the first cartoon series and those from the new cartoon series.

Characters

In addition to the obligatory main characters, the Turtles - Leonardo , Raphael , Donatello and Michelangelo - and their master and foster father Splinter , other characters also appear in the series, many of them based on their Mirage Comics originals (correspondingly with a "*" marked), other than brand new figures:

• April O'Neil * and Casey Jones * , the Turtles' first human friends. Based on the Mirage comic series, April is initially Baxter Stockman's research assistant before she meets the Turtles and is drawn into their adventures. Casey met the Turtles as a child and learned from them after his father's death how to stand up in combat
• From Shredder * are available in the series, three different incarnations:
  • Oroku Saki / Tengu Shredder : A legendary warrior from ancient Japan who made a pact with a dying demon and thus became a being of unimaginable evil power. The Tengu Shredder becomes the main enemy of the Turtles in the fifth season.
  • Ch'rell / Utrom Shredder : A homocidal Utrom renegade who used the legend of the original shredder to sow fear and terror. He is the real main enemy of the Turtles in the first to third seasons and in the cartoon special Turtles Forever .
  • Cyber ​​Shredder : A cybernetic computer program of the Utrom Shredder, which the Utrom Shredder had left behind in the event of its destruction in cyberspace. Through the interference of Viral, a living computer virus, the Cyber ​​Shredder was unleashed and, just like its original, seeks to destroy the Turtles.
• Baxter Stockman * , a scientist of great genius but an even bigger ego, and the original head of the science department of the Foot Clan under the Utrom Shredder. In the course of the setbacks he suffers from the Turtles, his body is gradually torn apart until only his brain and right eye remain. After the fall of the Shredder, he becomes a scientific advisor to Agent Bishop.
• Karai * : The leader of the Japanese branch of Foot in the comics, and Shredder's adopted daughter in that series. She feels obliged to her 'father' because he took her in as a child, but she also follows the warrior's path , whereby Shredder's bloodthirsty worldview often comes into conflict with her conscience. She appears as both an ally and an enemy of the Turtles throughout the series and also appears in the 2007 computer-animated feature film and in the cartoon special Turtles Forever .
• Hun : The leader of the Purple Dragons , a street gang that often does jobs for which the Foot Clan is too conspicuous or unnecessary. Hun is loyal to the Utrom Shredder but despises Karai and Stockman. For his part, he is also a special enemy of Casey Jones as it was the Purple Dragons who were responsible for the destruction of his father's shop and his subsequent death and who drove him to vigilantism himself .
• Dr. Chaplin : A brilliant young scientist in the service of the Utrom Shredder who has a deep admiration for Stockman (as his role model) and Karai (for personal reasons).
• Agent Bishop : An American Civil War veteran who was abducted by aliens and developed such paranoia against them that he created an organization called the Earth Protection Force to deal with any alien threat. In order to achieve his goal, he does not shy away from inhuman experiments on trapped aliens and mutants - such as the Turtles, Splinter and Leatherhead - and, in order to combat decay of old age, has had his own body modified with alien DNA. In the future (the sixth season), however, he is the president of a pan-galactic alliance after experiencing an extreme change of heart due to a dramatic event and since then sought a more peaceful association with extraterrestrial races.
• Utrom * : A race of lumpy, but peace-loving aliens, a group of which had to make an emergency landing on Earth centuries ago and, in order to camouflage themselves, developed human-looking exoskeletons until Earth was technically up to date to enable them to return home . To protect them shredder (Ch'rells) snares the Utrom formed a medal from human confidant who Guardian (The Guardian) , including Splinters deceased master Hamato Yoshi counted, and the waste product from one of their experiments also caused the mutation of the Turtles and Splinter. Krang , a character from the 1987 series , made a cameo as one of the Utroms in one episode.
• Miyamoto Usagi * and his friend Gen * from the comic series Usagi Yojimbo also have various plot-bearing appearances in the series.
• The Justice Force * : A superhero group headed by the Silver Sentry , whose members include Michelangelo (under the alias "Turtle Titan").
• Renet * : A young time guardian in training, who through her habit of looking for adventure and excitement with the help of her mentor Lord Simultaneous * ' s time conceiver , and with her own jerkiness, unintentionally causes the turtles many problems across time and space.
• The Triceratonic Republic * and The Federation * : Two extraterrestrial system governments that have been fighting a bitter war for a long time. The conflict escalates with the hunt for Professor Honeycutt and is only stopped by the intervention of the Turtles, who are helping Triceratonic resistance fighters overthrow their corrupt government.
• Professor Honeycutt / The Fugitoid * : A Federation scientist whose consciousness was transferred to a robot body through an accident. His greatest invention, a teleporter, unintentionally sparked a final war between the Federation and the Triceratons as each party intended to use it as the ultimate weapon. Eventually, however, the Turtles manage to resolve the conflict and Professor Honeycutt finds asylum on Earth.
• The Ultimate Daimyo is the ruler and guardian of the battle nexus ("Battle Nexus"), a dimension that has been specially developed into an arena for competitions between the greatest warriors of all worlds and dimensions . His son, the Ultimate Ninja , first tries to usurp power in the Nexus, but his love for his father ultimately enables his rebirth as a child through Lord Simultaneous.
• Leatherhead * : An alligator that has been mutated into a humanoid creature by the same mutagen as the Turtles and Splinter. Highly intelligent and scientifically gifted, however, Leatherhead suffers from time to time from berserk-like seizures that make him a danger even to his friends.
• The Garbageman : A crazy criminal who wants to create an empire out of garbage. In a planned episode ("Nightmares Recycled") it should be announced that the Garbageman and Hun were actually grown together, born twin brothers who were separated and one of whom had been thrown away "like garbage"; but this episode was considered too radical for a children's series and was therefore not completed.

Broadcast in Germany

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first aired from October 12, 2005 to December 23, 2005, with the first 52 episodes (the first two seasons) being shown Monday through Friday. In the following years, these two seasons were repeated 4 times on RTL2, with the last broadcast being cut in places. On September 1, 2006, Jetix began broadcasting and broadcast the first two seasons in non-stop repeats Monday through Friday until July 10, 2009. Seasons three to seven were never shown on German television.

Episode list

synchronization

The German dubbed version was created by Media Factory Berlin - Sound 'N' Picture .

role	Original voice	German voice actors
Leonardo	Mike Sinterniklaas	Tommy Morgenstern
Michelangelo	Wayne Grayson	Julien Haggége
Donatello	Sam Riegel	Robin Kahnmeyer
Raphael	Frank Frankson	Jan-David Rönfeldt
Splinter	Darren Dunstan	Jan Spitzer
fishing rod	Tara Jayne	Tanya Kahana
April O'Neil	Veronica Taylor	Susanne Geier
Casey Jones	Marc Thompson	Christoph Banks
Fugitoid / Professor Honeycutt	Oliver Wyman	Santiago Ziesmer
Leatherhead	Gary K. Lewis	Hans-Werner Bussinger
Miyamoto Usagi	Jason Griffith	Jan Andres
Mr. Mortu	Dan Green	Klaus-Dieter Klebsch
Silver Sentry	Terrence Archie	Oliver Siebeck
Ultimate Daiymio	Marc Thompson	Jürgen Kluckert
Ultimate ninja	Ted Lewis	Viktor Neumann
Baxter Stockman	Scott Williams	Stefan Fredrich
Commander Mozar	Dan Green	Axel Lutter
Garbageman	Mike Pollock	Olaf Reichmann
General Blanque	Mike Pollock	Frank Muth
Hun	Greg Carey	Tilo Schmitz
Karai	Karen Neil	Christin Marquitan
Shredder	Scottie Ray	Thomas Wolff
Zanramon	David Brimmer	Uli Krohm

Web links

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the Internet Movie Database (English)