"Four green turtles, heard the news? Changed to mutants by an ooze. Found on the floor and raised by a rat. Now they’re ninjas, how about that? Check it out, another one found made her way to Chinatown. With the rest, now that makes five."
Nanana-Ninja, Nana-Ninja Turtles!!
On the small screen! Live! For the first (and only) time!
Find more TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA REVIEWDS on this very same blog!
Name: Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation
Created by Saban Entertainment/Mirage Studios
Original run 1997-1998
Genre Comedy/scifi/martial arts
In the mid-90s, the popularity of the Ninja Turtles started to decline.
After a fantastic break into various parts of the entertainment industry, from comics to toys, passing through movies and cartoons, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's successful TMNT franchise was losing some of its appeal to the audiences. Perhaps it was the times changing or simply most part of the fanbase having outgrown the Turtles.
I blame it on that awful third movie.
Never the less, you can't deny it was the most impressive new propriety from the late 80s/early 90s.
And so after the animated series ended in 1996, after ten seasons of over 190+ episodes, Mirage Studios went for a different direction.
And you know what was really popular with kids in the 1990s? The Power Rangers!
Enters Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation!
This Live Action series wants itself a continuation of the previous Live Action films. Well, I say films, but it mostly seems to follow the first two at least, nothing really connects it to the 3rd one, there's not even any allusions to it.
It was made from scrapped ideas and material for a fourth movie that never got made. The idea of a new turtle was recycled from there. Even the title was actually meant for TMNT4!
Produced by Saban Entertainment already behind the Power Rangers-ification of the original long running Japanese series Super Sentai. Going this sentai direction allowed the production to keep the Turtles live at an affordable cost. Most of the show being outsourced in Canada.
So, what did it revolve around?
The Turtles are still living in the same subway they move to in TMNT2.
Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo are back! Splinter has still a missing bit from the ear The Shredder cut off in the original film as well.
The Turtles' personality carried from the movies.
But now a terrible new threat is coming to New York City.
Dragon Lord, Leader of The Rank and the King of all Dragons is coming to town. The Rank are the new ninja foes. Think The Foot, but as dragons.
Someone who had been fighting Dragon Lord and knows a thing or two about these new threats was trying to warn people and prevent this new menace. But this Chung I fails against the might of these dragons.
At least his adoptive daughter will be able to join forces with the Turtles. Did I mention her?
They were four, now they are five! The guys are joined in this series by a fifth additional turtle, a female turtle! Mei Pieh Chi - but, hey, you gotta have a Renaissance-inspired name to join the gang, so she'll be called Venus De Milo from now on!
New mutants, be it turtles are nothing new for the series. There's been evil "pseudo" 5th turtles in the past - Slash, evil mutant turtles in previous live action iteration - Tokka, and even robot turtles - Metalhead! But perhaps this was a bit too much or too progressive for fanboys at the time. The Turtles' first live action series, with a 5th female member?!
In my eyes, Venus is a great idea. If you are to add a new member to mix things up after all the past TMNT material, why not make it a female turtle actually?
Here role as a more mystical shinobi-type "stranger in a strange land" was a nice addition character-wise.
But Next Mutation is not without its own fair share of little problems.
Saban produced the series for Fox Kids. Meaning it was bound for a younger audience than older fans than had grew up with the originals.
This means the series carried over the goofy sound effects already found in TMNT2 and 3 on light dosage. Pumped out to the max to match the Power Rangers' tone.
The series isn't that bad actually. It gets back to the comic book roots to embrace certain silly over-the-top villains tropes. Dragon Lord and is gang are actually pretty decent. But to shake things up the roster of villains rotate around several other faces that range from campy villains to really goofy ones. There was the old Chinese vampiress Vam-Mi, the yeti crime boss Silver or also an hunter Simon Bonesteel (think Rat King mixed with Crocodile Dundee).
It was a very much watchable take on the Turtles. There were actually some great multiple part episodes and the show did get progressively better as it went on. They were able to make some actually interesting stories (albeit too late), or an actual episode around the conflict between Raph and Leo.
Sadly the series ended on a clip show episodes, which sort of cheats you of an actual finale story. (it was probably originally meant for the unproduced Season 2 I think...)
The series is actually quite decent if you give it a look.
If you don't mind it not being a carbon copy of the cartoon as you "remember" it. It does have that same campy overtone of a live cartoon. The episodes often end up on a big slapstick beatdown of the week's villains.
The low budget didn't get in the way too much, the writers and production was able to play around that fact. Most episodes did contain their share of action, new costumes and special effects. The simple puppetry and costumes were decent, and they were light on FX to keep the budget to a minimum.
Next Mutation has a certain "super sentai" charm to it.
Master Splinter looked so much better than his only visible half in TMNT3. Even if he was a plain full body costume this time. He did get some stuff to do, including fighting once or twice.
Venus was pretty okay in my book. Even though Peter Laird seems to despise her completely and can't get a sight of her anywhere else after this show, being quite vocal about it. Kevin Eastman, the better half of the TMNT duoe, created here for the series and did enjoy enough the idea of the character to run a series of online journals of the character on the official TMNT series for years. (before Laird bought off his half of the propriety and got rid of it... that guy has a problem I say..)
Sure, the lack of closure regarding Shredder (since the show didn't get a chance to continue) is annoying. Some of the new foes ridiculous.
Casey and April are also nowhere to be seen, although they were expected to appear later on.
Some ideas where a nice change from the usual formula. The Turtles went through a weapon change, Leo had now a ninjatô, Raphael's sais could combine into a staff and Mikey used tonfas.
In a way, Next Mutation reminds me of the Adam West's Batman series from the 1960s. In the way it still is quite true to the original at its core. But it focuses on light aspect of the series and embraced the silly/campy aspect of a live cartoon. And it did feature one too many one-liners just as well.
Overall, it's much better than what the series is given credit to actually.
It's a bit silly. Sure. And cheap too. Sure.
But it's honestly much more enjoyable than that abysmal 3rd movie...
It's not as bad as people make it sound. Of course the production values would be cheaper than the budget given to a full motion picture. But they at least tried to maintain a sort of quality, be creative and run with it. Something which can't be said from TMNT3.
This show didn't had a chance from the start. It launched at the end of the 80s cartoon and was quite short lived compared to it. This would mark the end of the TMNT franchise for a long time until the Turtles were brought back to the front scene through a second successful cartoon series in 2003.
After a long disappearance and unheard from this past decade, Next Mutation was forgotten and ignored for years. Peter Laird didn't want any mention of it anywhere anymore.
That is until Shout Factory finally released this obscure show from the mid-90s. They did so by releasing the entire 26-episodes series on two volumes of 13 episodes each. These discs also collect the very random Power Rangers in Space crossover. Because of course Saban would cross it over their other sentai series. They should have done it much earlier to promote it originally.. And there's also a bonus music video.
For some random reason the original rockin' catchy theme song is not present on the actual episodes.. but heard from on the DVD's menus for some reason? Was that a copyright issue? It's strange since they did include the original theme song's music video in the bonus segments....
Anyways,
I give it:
2 / 3 Films!
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