Welcome back for the epic conclusion of Mutant Turtles, a masterpiece in two parts… er, something. You can find my review of part one here.
Episode 2 has two titles:
The Coming of the Guardian Beasts
Or
the Metal Turtles Appear.
Or
The Whale
By Herman Melville-san
There’s no rest for the TMNT, though they’ve just saved the world from the Dark Devil Shredder and Dark Mu, Krang has another evil plot to hatch. Krang has discovered more mutastones and luckily for him, he has a marginally effective portal to warp himself to them.
The Turtles arrive back on earth from the space shuttle Endeavor and land in Japan.
Meanwhile Krang, Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady are in the technodrome and Krang explains that he’s located more mutastones. Shredder initially wants nothing to do with them but Krang convinces him. They use a portal to teleport to the stones location but somehow mess it up and land on the top of a train… that the Turtles happen to be riding.
The Turtles move to the top of the train to meet their nemeses. Strangely it seems like no one is actually a ninja as they clumsily attempt to attack one another. Luckily they are saved but what appear to be a group of actual ninja that take the TMNT to a hidden temple that holds a magical mirror.
Wouldn’t you know it, the mirror contains several mutastones!!
Sidenote: The subtitles in this episode are even more questionable than the first. I’m not at all convinced they can be trusted but they do enhance the experience in wonderful and terrible ways. Case in point…
Shortly after the Turtles arrive at the hidden temple, Shredder and his goons arrive but are unnoticed by the Turtles or the ninjas. This obviously frustrates him because damn it, Shredder just wants to be noticed. After a moment he exclaims “How impolite of you bastards!”. Throughout the episode he also shoots off quips like “Shut the hell up” and “You dumbshit”. If I’m being honest, Shredder is kind of bitchy and it’s kind of hilarious.
This series, if two episodes can be called that, is ridiculous even when compared to the antics of the 87 series.
SUDDENLY A GIGGLING GHOST APPEARS!
And the temple begins to rise out of the ground revealing a massive structure from underneath. Shredder and the Turtles begin a mad dash to the top to retrieve the mirror and the mutastones.
They begin this dash with absolutely no regard for physics, literally crawling up the wall with bare hands and feet Spiderman style. Eventually the top is reached, a struggle for the mirror ensues and Krang shows up direct to the temple via his portal. Which begs the question, why he dropped Shredder miles away on the top of a moving train. Though Krang has always been kind of a dick.
Shredder wrestles the mirror away and grabs three mutastones for himself, Bebop, and Rocksteady. Invoking the power of the stones, they mutate. Shredder into a Tiger, Rocksteady into a Hydra, and Bebop into a…. sort of evil looking Koi??
Consequently the Turtles get whooped, after all they haven’t yet mutated and as I previously mentioned, they don’t have any real martial arts skills to speak of. This version of the Turtles is undeniably more hilarious, and more lame.
After a few moments, the Turtles retrieve the mirror and take four stones for themselves, transforming Leonardo into a dragon, Raphael into a Sphinx, Donatello into a winged bear, and Michelangelo into a sort of angry crab spider… thing.
It is revealed that the mutations last for six minutes this time. Shredder seems surprised and upset by this knowledge despite have previous experience with the stones and only having three minutes before. Though he did take a hit to the head from a building last time, so perhaps he forgot.
An epic battle ensues!
Shredder, Bebop, and Rocksteady use specialized attacks provided by their mutations which are met with equal force by the specialized attacks of the Turtles. Shredder and Leo face off, throwing energy attacks at the same time. It’s reminiscent of when Harry and Voldemort fight in The Goblet of Fire. Clearly the makers of that flick saw this amazing example of story telling and borrowed heavily.
Time runs out for Shredder and gang, returning them to their normal state, giving the Turtles the advantage and they retrieve the magic mirror from Shredder and gang, but they escape with three of the stones through the portal.
The Turtles and the temple ninjas move to ground level, and just in the nick of time too! The temple quickly shakes and crumbles while jokes are made about it’s questionable construction.
Unfortunately turtle friends, this is where our story ends. We’ll never know what happened to the stones, or what nefarious plans Krang had for tomorrow… TV Tokyo only provided us these two brief glimpses into their world.
You’ll have to rely on your own imaginations.
Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened…. Dr. Seuss said that.
Check out the full episode via the videos below.
Cheers.