Usagi and the Turtles

[Todd Shogun]

As always you are ever vigilant, Glenn-san... The Shogunate is standing by waiting for the Sensei's order to march forward with swords drawn!

[malbadon]

I am eagerly looking forward to a story about a small band of turtle-eating Tokage.

As for Eastman, last I had heard he ended up marrying a pornstar. I think that ended his interest in drawing

[Todd Shogun]

That makes sense. Seems to me that Laird has pretty much taken control of the Turtles and is trying to "correct" some marketing decisions of the past. As I understand it, there was some serious disagreement between Eastman and Laird as to which direction the Turtles should be taken when they "sold out" to merchandising... Laird seemed to want to be as true to the original storylines as possible while Eastman gave in to the demands of the merchandisers, who basically ended up reinventing the Turtles. Eastman won out in the end, because that is what makes the most money in the kid's market. Laird on the other hand won in that he was able to make sure there was a clear distinction between the "cartoon" Turtles and the Originals via the original comic series. I don't think this helped save very many original fans from walking away (including yours truly), but at least he was able to maintain some creative control over his work. And now he has full control. Too late? Maybe, but he's doing some cool stuff with Mirage that deserves a look. I just got the cold-cast Leonardo statue... it is awesome! And to top it all off, Laird signed the bottom of the base and did a head sketch. Quite a classy guy.

[Leonardo]

Laird bought Eastman's share of the TMNT. Last I heard Eastman was selling TMNT original sketches for $1,000,000 (not kidding). The new show is AWESOME!!! Everyone in IRC is like I CAN'T WAIT FOR USAGI. Seriously tho, if you were having problems with popularity, you just fixed it, sooooo many people watch the new show!
If there isn't a new Usagi Figure, I will personally drive down to playmates, and beat everyone up. Or i'll just email them and ask them to make a Usagi figure

[kitemaker]

Stan maybe you could do a spin off and make a usagi show.But the promblem is you would have to have complete control.What do you think?

[Leonardo]

It would be totally sweet if 4kids picked up Usagi, and they had the same sort of tmnt animation. 4Kids seems to be giving Peter Laird a lot more control than the last cartoon had. I believe someone posted that that was due to Kevin Eastman giving in to all the demands, probably true, thank God he's gone.

Anyways, this new turtle show is great (although I love the old one too ) and would love to see a Usagi toon by teh same peeps, or even different people, but righit now I'm pretty satisfied with the comics for story telling, I still want action figures though, and the only way to get those would be to have a cartoon

[ziritrion]

The idea of having an Usagi Yojimbo cartoon sounds nice, but I'm afraid that it would somehow "spoil" the orginal comic books (I mean stuff like the characters' voice, the original look, etc...). However, what I'd really like to see is the Space Usagi cartoon. If done right, it could be really awesome (a mix of Star Trek, Star Wars, Japanese Middle age and anthropomorphics is really original). The problem is: if an American studio makes it for an American TV station, then the censorship from within the studio would somehow affect the cartoon. Stuff like using blades only to chop down robots or some of the ethics and moral system that the samurai had and nowadays are gone (giri, bushido) which require some explanation in order to fully understand would not make the cartoon as good as the comic-book, in my not-so-humble opinion. I think that if a good Japanese animation studio (Gainax, Mad House...) made it, without all those prejudices about a cartoon being only for kids and avoiding certain moral issues or situations, then the final product would be fantastic. I'm not saying that the cartoon should be for adults, I'm just trying to point out that a kids show (actually an all-ages show) can be more mature than most of the cartoons out there without making it unappropiate for kids. You only have to take a look at Osamu Tezuka's "Astroboy" to see what I'm talking about.

[takematsu]

On the subject of cartoon violence being directed on at "appropriate" inanimate objects like robots-- what might work well for a project like UY or Space Usagi is to make it straight, with all the terrifying violence of the original books in place, but do it in such a way that it can be edited around for TV, whetting the poplar appetite for an uncut DVD version. Imagine, a half hour of actual program, vs. the 22 minute ad-riddled TV half-hour would leave a lot of latitude for cuts-- Gen and Usagi rush forward against a pile of enemies, fade to Sugar-Frosted Pancreas Blaster Corn Wads promo, returning to find our heros tattered and out of breath, with a suggestive but ill-lit mound of limbs and weapons behind them. Buy the DVD, see the fight in all it's elegant, plot-promoting grace.

This is prompted by having just watched the first episode on the recently released Battle of the Planets disc, which has the North American "safe" version as well as the original Japanese Gatchaman . Watching the former, I had to remember how crappy the local kid's programming context was at the time to get through the episode. Then, startling and amazing Gatchaman: bad guys plummeting to their deaths! Bad guys getting pointy thrown weapons STUCK in their backs! Scenes making a modicum of sense! No lame narration robot! As much as I despise consumers being taken advantage of with the tool of "never before available scenes only on DVD!", it does have utility.

[Lance]

Wow thats cool. Umm..When is he appearing in the new series?..

Why would they put in anything other character and not Jotaro, they have to have Jotaro.

[Stan Sakai]

Why would they put in anything other character and not Jotaro, they have to have Jotaro.

No Jotaro, but a young Usagi will make an appearance in a flashback sequence.

[Guest]

Aaaah, cool.

Umm.. Any ideas when the new series comes out in Australia? (asuming by new series you dont mean the ones that were on Cheeze TV a bit ago)

[Bad Mr. Sushi]

Hiyeeee! Recently in America there have been a lot of very violent cartoons, and I'm very happy to say that they're not all imports either! Adult Swim on cartoon network is my kind of place! I mean you have Sealab exploding with fish and body parts every night, The Family Guy is one blood sport after another and Futurama!!! I mean come on! It's my hope that pretty soon Adult Swim will come out with it's own channel, then we can view some cartoons and animated stuff they way they were intended.

Now, I'm not an advocate of violence in the media.... OH okay-I am, but the point is that if someone intended the audience to see a brain splatter across the screen, then BY GUM, LET IT SPLATTER, or a thief get his just desserts with a Katana Kabob then so be it nya? I'm not big with the censorship in comics and tv, I guess I'm the smaller person when it comes to that. An Usagi Cartoon would be awesome, but you'd probably want to wait until the right time (right channel) comes around. Sword play in cartoons, now, you older people remember what they did to the Highlander cartoon, right? Don't let it happen to Usagi too!

[Lance]

I really wanna get the comics of the Ninja Turtles, according to my older brother they dont use specific weapons, and are more violent. Like shooting the heads of people off with uzi's.

Thats a thing ive noticed, comics baised on anime, or even with anime based on them, are more violent. Even Transformers is a bit bloody.

[takematsu]

they dont use specific weapons, and are more violent. Like shooting the heads of people off with uzi's.

Well, they had preferred weapons, but not so married to them as on TV-- I think it was Michelangelo who prepared a salad with a pair of butterfly knives. They were indeed more violent that their video incarnations, but not SUPER-violent. More like realiztic about what happens in a sword fight. They were also in living black&white, so the grue was muted. In movie terms, think Yojimbo rather than Kill Bill.

[Leonardo-san]

Firstly, I will not badmouth either Kevin nor Peter.
The truth behind what happened has been politely by both Kevin and Peter been kept pretty low key compared to the way most of these things happen in business or comics. Very professional of them.
I have met them both, and while they are different, they are both great men to talk to.
Kevin bought Heavy Metal some years back, and he's not involved in TMNT anymore, but Kevin NEVER fails to be friendly to all Turtle fans who approach him at the Cons. He'll sign stuff and do sketches if he has time. He'll happily answer questions, joke, pose for pictures. With our TMNT online group formed in 1996, each year as we get together at San D Con, he has never failed to be welcoming to us. We're known by his Heavy Metal booth group as "Kevin's Posse".
He published an awesome book collecting his TMNT stuff a couple years ago. It might still be available.
His wife, while choosing a career that's certainly not to my tastes (though it may be to others), is nonetheless great to us TMNT fans. Julie's been a lot of fun to meet, regardless of her career choices. I've decided it's a karmic lesson about judging people by actually meeting them. Maybe she's not 100% nice to everyone, but she has been to us anyway.

Peter, I haven't met recently, but with my fellow TMNT online group who've met him more recently, he's been great, too.
I am glad Peter has been working hard with those at Mirage, like Gary the CEO to keep things going. And they've had, after years of trying, finally gotten success in the media market with the new cartoon.

As for the old comics, the TMNT usually do use their 'classic' weapons, with exceptions in a few issues, or part of an issue. Mikey trimmed a Christmas tree with butterfly swords. ;p
As mentioned, they were a bit more violent, unless you want to look at the BodyCount series, which was over the top.
The 'problem' with classic TMNT comics is there are a number of stories outside "the continuity" when Peter and Kevin started letting others do issues. Peter has been working to bring that continuity back in line with the newer issues.
On the other hand, the crossover with a certain special samurai rabbit got me interested in reading Usagi, so some of those off the beaten path TMNT stories were a very good thing!