So one of the dumbest ideas for a TV Show ever is in fact Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Oh no don't get me wrong, its among my favorite cartoons of all time, but just breakdown that title. Teenage, Mutant, Ninja, Turtles... If anything came out like that in these days we'd just label it as trying way too hard to be random. Yet its is so perfectly stupid that it has launched one of the best TV Show franchises of all time. It worked so well that it made a full cartoon, a series of live action movies, tons of toys, actually good video games, ANOTHER cartoon, a 3D animated movie, and yet a THIRD SERIES! The Turtles have seriously burned themselves into our memories and they are not leaving any time soon.

The third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series is made by Nickelodeon which has been home to some of the greatest cartoons ever as well as some great children sitcoms and movies. Hell, they even had an extremely good 3D Animated cartoon (see Jimmy Neutron) which is something I can't seem to find anywhere else. That being said, if a 3D animated cartoon of TMNT were to be anywhere I'm glad its with Nickelodeon. Lately they've been kinda dropping the ball as far as cartoons go, but perhaps TMNT is their road to redemption... well...

I'm not going to say that the new TMNT series is bad, generally speaking, but so far it has proven to be my least favorite cartoon adaptation. The premier has shown it to be a half decent cartoon, but if you are looking for the great return of the Turtles, you may find yourself a bit dissapointed.

The visual style of the new TMNT cartoon looks very... geometric? The 3D models look a bit "shapey" with unnatural looking corners and sides. Kinda like if they were living in some kind of oragami world of sorts. Its very stylized and its something you just either appreciate or you don't. Personally I kinda like it, except when it comes to the environment. Some areas of land just look really empty and just have a few model trees set around to try to fill in the gaps, but it looks really plain when they try for a wide open area. The character animation is good though. Nothing too special are spectacular on character movement, but when it comes to character expression they seem to have adopted an "anime" inspired style to convey emotions on the characters. Once again something very stylized that you'll either love or hate. I rather like it actually, but if you don't like anime then it might be a bit annoying.

The audio work of the premiere was where I felt a bit dissapointed. There was nothing really wrong with the sound effects or background music, but there were a few issues that annoyed me. To start with, the theme song is your usual TMNT sound, but with a bit of a twist. They turned it into a full on rap that kinda takes on the cheesey cartoon rap appeal. Its not too insulting, but it feels just kinda bad. But my main audio issue was the voice acting. They kinda threw out the "surfer" style voices of the turtles and focused more on giving them inner city voices. Donatelo's voice is probably the most heavily city accented voice out of all of them. Its alright, but it just feels off. Though I will admit that Mikey's voice work is pretty bad. He was definitely getting on my nerves by the end which is a shame since he's my favorite Turtle. One thing that made me laugh too hard was when Shredder got some lines at the end and revealed his deep dark James Earl Jones-like voice. Deep and dark is funny and all, but it just can't compare to the original Fresh Prince "Uncle Phil" Shredder.

The writing is also something that has somewhat both surprised me and upsetted me. One issue was that they changed the villain Kraang from just one villain, to an entire alien species. I find this change to be really disappointing. I am glad that they decided to include Kraang into the new adaptation, but it feels slightly insulting to see his character removed and he's just a bunch of alien thugs inside of body suits. They do have a funny erratic pattern of talking while in the suit though which is kinda funny. The Turtles stay pretty faithful to their character personalities... well they seem to have a heavy focus on changing Donatelo though to being a tad bit too obsessed with April. Speaking of which, April is a little girl instead of a 20-something reporter. Its an odd rewrite that I'm sure will getting on people's nerves, but this oddly puts her at proper age for the Turtles... wait... I see where this is going....

So its yet another rendition of the Turtles cartoon. I'm sure that the kids will love it. It seems more gear towards kids who are discovering it now rather than old fans of the original. I guess that isn't bad since it kinda stands on its own then, but also a bit disappointing to older fans such as myself.

I reccommend watching it so you can make your own judgements. I'll probably be checking out the rest of at least the first season to see where things go with this and see if I like it or not. The premiere at least seems promising that it isn't going to be totally horrible, so I guess that's all I can really ask of it.