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yzafre · 1 year ago

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Trying to wrap my head around my thoughts re: 2012 and Rise, and how they hit my brain, and it’s like...

The things I think these two series are missing/needed to improve on are what the other series did really well? Like, each show would be enhanced by borrowing from the other (an impossibility in one direction due to the linear nature of time, but you get me).

And now I'm going to post about it to hopefully trick my brain into thinking I talked to someone about it so that maybe it'll let me think about anything else.

Uhhh putting a read more because this is mostly just a brain-dump ramble to free my mind from the topic-loop and it got. Long.

Okay, exposing my biases ahead of time: while I very much enjoyed both series, I will admit that Rise appeals more to my personal taste. I do also like 2012! I liked it a lot, it’s just that, you know, I’m easily drawn in by cool 2d animation and anime bullshit, and also Rise’s humor matches mine better, which means it's the one I’m more likely to re-watch. However, that doesn't mean I think Rise is perfect.

Also, for the sake of this rant, we’re going to be ignoring the circumstances surrounding production. Yes, yes, we all know the executives specifically asked for Rise to have a much lighter tone, and that it got cut really short, and that affected how things panned out – but I don’t know enough about 12’s production to compare them fairly on that front. So.

MOVING ON FROM THAT.

Let’s start with ROTTMNT. I love Rise, love a good shenanigan, but... can you really deny that it would have been nice to have a more even split between pure shenanigans and more serious episodes? Even just getting closer to 50/50?

Don’t get me wrong, the shenanigans absolutely have their place and actually contribute to what I like about Rise’s writing (which I will talk about in the 12 section), but the overwhelming amount of them really messes with the pace of the show overall, and with the escalation of tension.

Obviously, you can’t have every episode have the spectacle of an episode like, say Many Unhappy Returns, I'm pretty sure animating that shit's expensive, and early on it’s not like they really know what they’re slowly being dragged into, but... post Shadow of Evil, you’d kind of like them to acknowledge the stakes more, right? And even before the turtles themselves know, you’d like the slow build that only the audience is getting to be a bit more consistent, right?

You’d like the weaving together of the plot and character arcs episode-to-episode to just be a bit more well-thought out... wouldn’t you?

And that is what TMNT 12 is good at.

I personally think 12 peaked in season 2 (I was so engaged with that season, the buildup was phenomenal), but throughout the entire series it is obvious just how much effort they are putting into developing these interweaving plots, and it pays off. Every episode is a self-contained story, true, but even from season 1 you can see how even the most one-off episode is putting at least one thing into the Rube Goldberg machine that’s going to go off at the end of the season. It honestly impressed me how they balanced “you can watch any episode on its own because tv has re-runs" and “every episode leads into the next until everything blows up”.

The end of season 2, when the tension they've been ratcheting up inch by inch nearly every episode finally releases, and all the dominoes start falling and danger is coming from every direction? Mwah. Stellar. Like, devastating cliff-hanger of an ending, but also the satisfaction of seeing it all fall apart? It's gripping.

Also, they acknowledge the stakes. 12 is obviously going for a much more serious tone, and covers some heavier topics like revenge, obsession, healing, ect (in a kind of surface level way for young kids, yes, but this is a nickelodeon toy-selling series. Genre and intended audience matters). I may not always agree with the answers they come to, but they are trying! As opposed to Rise where the enemies feel... kind of out-of-sight, out-of-mind, in 12 the Shredder, and occasionally the Kraang, are a constant threat that they are always aware of.

While the setup is different (12!Shredder wants them dead specifically, whereas the Rise boys don’t really know what the Shredder will want other than mass destruction when the armor is complete), you kind of feel like the danger could have maybe been a little more acknowledged in Rise.

And like... the move into season 2 had them getting the Shredder armor "contained", which they used to go so far backwards on stakes which is... I mean, there were other choices they could have made.

You can argue that many shows reset the stakes when you beat the season boss at the end, but... Rise specifically went straight back to "straight shenanigans with little awareness of the outside world", repeating the "occasionally things are happening to build up to the end outside the turtle's awareness" and it's. It's a pacing and escalation, issue, again. And yes, we got some of my favorite episodes out of season 2! Season 2 had some good episodes! But also... I would have liked the stakes to progress just a bit?

When you finally had such a huge shift in the plot, and then suddenly you go ALL the way back down the where you started in stakes and tone it can be a bit... jarring. It's a pacing and escalation issue, again.

Also, if we’re going a bit more abstract, Rise could have had more serious episodes relating to their main theme/focus.

2012 was obviously focusing on their plot, and specifically the history between Splinter and Shredder, and the concepts of revenge and obsession. And it came up a lot! It was threaded through the majority of the episodes. I might not always personally agree with the conclusions they came to, but I can’t deny they treated it with gravitas.

Rise seemed to be focusing on family bonds and family baggage. And it's woven into a lot of the silliness. And there are also some episodes that address it seriously! And they’re GOOD! But, uh – there could definitely have been more. Especially for the Splinter-children relationships.

They went with a very risky play for Splinter and his arc, and while I personally liked the shape of it, I can understand the people who take a very negative interpretation of this Splinter because there were not enough episodes dealing with reconciling his relationship with his kids. They made a point to show that things were strained, made the theme family bonding, and then... didn’t put in enough episodes to finish off their main theme.

Don’t get me wrong, what Rise does have for their characters is very, very good. Again, I’ll be talking about it in the 2012 section. It’s just... the pacing of it all.

So, what I think Rise needed is what 2012 excelled at – pacing and interweaving of the plot, proper escalation of stakes, and time spent highlighting their main theme in more serious episodes.

Now, the other half of the equation: 2012.

I mentioned earlier that 2012 was going for a more serious tone, and that it was focused on the plot. And they did it well! It paid off! I just maybe, personally, think that came at the cost of the character writing.

It’s not that it’s bad. They’ve got a strong sense of character voice for their main cast. It’s just that when you go anywhere beyond that it’s really... average for a kid's cartoon, and when compared to the obvious effort they went to when weaving together the plot it sticks out. Of course, authors are allowed to lean into plot-based narrative over character-based, and this might just be personal taste again, but...

I’m going to put in a reminder that everything in this rant is based on how the writing hit my brain specifically. Different people will experience the same story differently, yes? Yes.

That being said, the character writing for 2012 hit me weird. There were “character episodes” in between the plot ones, yes, but they didn’t feel... connected? If the pacing of the plot in Rise felt weird and disjointed, the character arcs, if I could find them in 12, felt the same way. It’s like they would drop in a really interesting nugget for a character into a single episode, and I’d be excited to see where it went – and then it would either be shoved way in the background from there on out, or dropped completely. It often left me feeling like I’d missed a step going down the stairs, when I expected them to start working on a character arc and they just went back to the status quo. That’s not uncommon for a kids show, but... they put so much more effort into the intricacies of the plot!

What ended up feeling missing was a development of the characters from an internal perspective. That is, hm.

I mentioned earlier that there were narrative benefits to the shenanigan structure of Rise. The first half of this is because it lives and dies by its characters. They can’t depend on an engaging plot to capture your interest long-term, because the plot is only in select episodes, so by god you better be attached to these characters. While part of the humor is, yes, the situations they get into, the other part is the character dynamics – both the friction between them, but also the positive synergy between them. That’s not to say 2012 doesn’t have character interactions – they've got their banter – it's just that it doesn’t have to carry the episode the way it does in Rise.

The other half of the narrative benefits is that more episodes can be motivated by the character’s internal desires, rather than external forces. Stepping outside of TMNT to reference everyone’s favorite cartoon, Avatar, for every, say, Avatar Roku, you’ve gotta have a The Waterbending Scroll.

2012 is largely driven by its plot – which is a good plot! But what felt like, eh, 90% of the time? Everything that’s happening is motivated by what the antagonists are doing – the Kraang/Purple Dragons/Foot are doing this bad thing, or coming after us, and we have to stop them, because we’re the good guys/they’ll kill us if we don’t. Not bad, objectively, it certainly raises stakes! But also, it doesn’t really let us in on, like, the character’s internal world or what they want.

With Rise’s shenanigans...

Origami Tsunami happens because the boys got a taste of fighting and want to chase that high. Shell in a Cell happens because Raph loves wrestling, his brothers seem to like it well enough or otherwise want to hang out/humor him, and Leo is feeding his ego/fighting his insecurities. Repo Mantis is because Donnie and Mikey were hanging out while Donnie collected resources(?), saw something they wanted, and went balls to the walls to acquire it. The Purple Jacket happens because Donnie wanted to experience toxic academia and fashion. I could go on.

My point is Rise leaves more space for the episodes to be internally motivated, and that ends up telling us a lot about their characters! What did they want? How did they specifically go about trying to get it? Did they involve others? Who did they involve? It adds depth to them, even in the silly goofy show!

There is also one specific writing trick Rise uses which I wish could go back in time and be implemented into 2012, and that is: “line played for laughs in one episode” > “oh wait they were serious”.

I’m talking the “my first positive reinforcement from a parent-aged adult. EVER.” to Turtle-dega Nights pipeline. Minotaur Maze to Many Unhappy Returns for Leo. Arguably Pizza Puffs to the series finale for Raph, if you follow me. Reparin’ the Baron to Hidden City’s Most Wanted.

Even in the jokes, the throw-away lines, Rise is exposing what makes the characters tick. And then when it hits, it hits. This is why, while the Rise arcs are kind of incomplete, the writing still feels more consistent to me and I find it easier to see the intended arc they were going for.

And I so so so wish 2012 had that kind of thing, or ANY more focus put on character development, because, not to harp on this again, but they’ll drop in this one really interesting line or action from a character in a single episode focusing on them, then never mention it again or develop on the concept, and it kind of makes me feral because, like -

I want to gather up all these weird little scraps they give about these characters and pin them up conspiracy-board style and go: why didn’t we get a plot line about this? Or this? Did you notice how a lot of the time Raph is pushing for more action against their enemies, he brings up that they’re out there hurting more people? And that could indicate a unique empathy for the victims, which would have been an interesting expansion on the vengeance theme of the showing, looking at justice v vengeance when ti comes to people without the ability to fight back? Leo has a lot of tension between wanting to be a good leader and wanting the freedom to make impulsive choices and chase what he wants, which is interesting when you also look at moments we see with his two role models the sci-fi hero (who is kind of an asshole) and Splinter (who, while wise, has baggage that sometimes affects his decisions), and it feels like somewhere between all that there could have been an expanded storyline that actually resolved that tension between responsibility and personal desire that would have lead to his own version of leadership? What about getting a focus on the few lines Donnie gives about his insecurities/stress re: his scientific abilities/role, rather than dragging him into his extremely bland romantic b-plot? Can we address the weird way Mikey did chemistry magic two or three times but it’s never brought up outside that, or that one line by the anger-persona in his mind explicitly saying he tries to repress his anger because he doesn’t like the way it feels, or, or -

Why do they keep dropping these really interesting inciting incidents for character arcs and then not going anywhere with them I am losing my mind I am shaking the writers why do you keep teasing me like this -

Ahem.

Additionally... well, I mentioned above that Rise has a main theme of family bonds, where... 2012 kind of struggled to convince me of any relationship. Or, no, that sounds harsher than what I really mean.

I also want to clarify that I am not saying I think they dislike or don't care about each other, or any of the extremely negative takes I’ve seen thrown at the 12 characters dynamics. That’s not it at all. It’s just that they all felt... very surface level? Sometimes it felt like the show wanted you to just accept that the characters were close without putting in the work to really show it. And definitely not to explore it in depth. (And I know, I know, I know! It’s a Nick kids show! But! They put so much effort into the plot!)

Again, I think this is affected by the lower usage of internal motivation for episodes. Characters doing things because they want them, then seeing how those different desires interact, gives you a better view of their relationships than just seeing a team work together because they have a common enemy.

Again, it’s not that 2012 never does this. We see glimpses of them playing around – competing to do flips when running the city, watching their tv shows, playing pinball (was it pinball? Or an arcade game?). It’s just that the emphasis on the plot (not an objectively bad thing!) leaves less room for episodes based on them just... doing things together, because they want to. And less room for engaging in personalized interests together, rather than separately, and seeing how that plays out.

I think I’m devolving into senseless rambling at this point, so to sum up:

2012’s emphasis on plot – which it generally excels at! – leaves less room for exploring stories based on internal motivations, which I find necessary for consistent character arcs or relationship development and are the elements Rise kind of lives on when its plot is running thin.

Hopefully none of this is taken as an attack on/dislike for either iteration. I like them both! It’s just they both drive me a little bit crazy with what could have been!

Of course, this is all down to personal taste and interpretation. I am fairly aware of my biases, I think. I am very much attracted to character-driven narratives, and even in plot-based ones I have a tendency to care more about the character implications than the plot itself. There’s a reason Days (the oops all character writing game) is my favorite Kingdom Hearts story!

(I do, also, really, really like anime bullshit, so do with that what you will.)

I am also aware that I binge-watched this series as an adult years after it ended, and that combination of factors may affect my reception. (Admittedly I did that for both series, but). Your experience might be very, very different, but I’m trying to understand the way these two shows are hitting my brain.

Thinking it over also gives me a hypothesis (which other people have probably already figured out) of why certain people are drawn to one series of the other: 2012 probably appeals more to people who are engaged by continuous, interconnected plots and careful pacing in a story, while Rise probably appeals to people who are more engaged by pure character pieces (and anime bullshit).

#maybe if I get this out of my head #my brain will clear and I can finally get back to work on my kh fic #I've got less than 10 chapters left to draft but turtles Will Not Leave Me Alone!#rottmnt #tmnt 2012 #yza talks about a thing #not posting this mean my brain continues to spin in circles as the thoughts are trapped...#but contemplating posting all these opinions is making me queasy...#fuck it post it and immediately walk away #like you do with scary work emails #go straight to bed do not pass go do not collect your anxiety #tmnt

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