There’s a Yellow Ninja Turtle?

Who doesn’t love the Ninja Turtles? I grew up on them, like a billion other kids. My obsession with pizza probably stems from them. My childhood dream of being a ninja definitely did. Sure there’s people who took it even further than that, like that one chick who basically dedicated her life to the Ninja Turtles. Anyways. These guys were the best. But who remembers Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation?

A lot of people probably try to forget about it, for various reasons. It was…different. I was a fan of it as a kid, but my standards were extremely low at that age, and they still are. It was not even close to the the movies or the tv shows, but the idea of a live-action tv show was a cool idea, despite the results. There were a lot of weird differences, like their appearances and their weapons. Michelangelo looks like he’s about to be the next MVP of the Ninja Dodgeball League. They also took away his nunchucks and replaced them with tonfas. There’s nothing wrong with tonfas, but it doesn’t fit his style at all.

But that’s neither here nor there, or NYC. Anyways, the biggest thing about it was that there a female turtle named Venus, who was not just a ninja but a mystical ninja. But it didn’t really go the way they thought it would. Why was her bandana light blue? It’s too close to Leonardo. She also seemed too much like a damsel in distress. She lacked a certain bodaciousness if you will.

It didn’t help that they purposefully made the turtles non-biological brothers and sister so they could explore love interests for Venus. It just felt weird. The show itself only ran for just under 30 episodes before it was cancelled, and nobody really complained. No more dealing with the Dragonlord and his nonsense, and back to more reasonable turtle tales. Looking back at the show now, it feels like a really far out there fever dream that you buried deep into your subconscious. But the point of all this is they tried a female turtle and it did not work out well, for a multitude of reasons. As silly as it sounds, I think a large part of it was her being light blue, and not some other color; like maybe yellow for instance.

So you could imagine my surprise when I found out not only is there a yellow turtle, but she’s also a female turtle. I had a thought a few nights ago about how they always needed a yellow turtle and how cool it would be. So I started to think of names. I figured he’d be named something like Sandro after Sandro Botticelli and they’d call him Sandy or Filippo after Filippo Brunelleschi and call him Flippin Filip or something. But foul on me. She’s actually a female turtle and her name is Jennika.

Jennika wasn’t born a turtle like Venus was though. She was in fact a human trained by the Foot Clan as a highly skilled ninja assassin. After a battle, she had lost a significant amount of blood and needed an emergency transfusion. Leonardo donated some of his mutagenic blood to her and the rest is history. She wears a yellow bandana, because she had blonde hair which is cool. The fact that she has yellow to begin with is awesome, before the backstory. I personally always thought there should have been a yellow turtle to begin with (male or female). Jennika also primarily uses metal claws as her weapon of choice which is cool enough in itself; easily the sweetest weapon choice of the four. She’s a genetically mutated humanoid super-turtle that also wields claws like Wolverine. How much more radical does she need to get? Night and day difference from the female adaptation they went with in The Next Mutation and it shows big time. Now the only thing is for them to make a film/tv adaptation with her in it. Sadly, she’s only in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle IDW comic book series for now.

I just can’t get over the fact that I kept thinking about how they needed a yellow turtle just find out it was such a good idea that they already did it. Kudos to us both I suppose.

Don’t think I forgot about that chick who dedicated her life the heroes in a half-shell. You find out about her here. You will not be disappointed. I promise you that.