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The autistic turtle has taken over my life: Review of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

To get inspired to write articles for this class, I searched ‘autism in media’ on YouTube. I’ve watched a handful of videos describing the variety of portrayals of an autistic character in different types of media. After watching one or two, the next day or so I get a video by a Youtuber called skulltrot in my recommended. The thumbnail reads ‘Writing low empathy’ and is titled “Donnie (Rise of the TMNT) | Autism Representation in Media”. 

And ever since watching that video, my life has not known peace.  

I have digested the entirety of both seasons of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2018) and the 2022 movie—twice. And by God, do I want a third season. Word going around is that if the viewership of the movie and show on Netflix goes up, that might happen.  

So—go watch ROTTMNT! Season 1 and the movie are on Netflix, and season 2 is pretty easy to find. Both seasons are also on Paramount Plus, but I can’t be arsed to pay for that. Netflix funded the movie anyway, so who cares.  

I want to apologize in advance for the length of this article /hj. The length for articles for class is 300-1000 words, and my last two articles have been about 1800 words. This article is a little over 3300 words. Oops. I'm planning on making a video essay after this article goes out. I’m not above reading something this long, but apparently other people have different reading speeds than me (outrageous) and I should be cognizant of their time. I don’t want to edit this down. If you don’t want to read it all, go and leave. I don’t care. But I’m not shortening it.

Overview of TMNT and ROTTMNT

I’d assume that the majority of people are aware of the TMNT. Popularized by the 1987 cartoon which ran partway through the 90’s, spawning loads of toys. There’s lot of incarnations of the beloved characters, and I was vaguely aware of parts of the franchise until I was thrown into ROTTMNT.  

I remember seeing bits and pieces of the 2012 cartoon on Nickelodeon, but never really watched it. (I frequently switched between Cartoon Network and Nick, but almost never went on to Disney XD or The Disney Channel). I also accumulated a surface level knowledge of the franchise just through internet osmosis. And I still don’t know everything there is to know (not at that stage of my obsession atm). 

I’d never heard of the 2018 reboot before the aforementioned video essay, so I’m assuming that you reading this also haven’t heard of it. I don’t know why we as a society have been sleeping on this cartoon.  

Okay: quick summary time. Assuming you come from a basic understanding of the TMNT franchise, that is. In this universe, there is mystic energy (kind of like magic). There are Yokai (assuming you know what those are) and they mostly live in the Hidden City, which is far below New York. There are also mosquitos full of ooze (ooze-squitos) that turn people into mutants. Some mutants have stronger powers than others, same with Yokai.  

For the majority of the show, the boys don’t wield their signature weapons. Raph has twin tonfas that can create a mystic construct of himself, Leon has an ōdachi which can create portals, Mikey has a kusari-fundo that can ignite in flames. Donnie doesn’t have a mystic weapon, he just has his tech-bō, a bō with tech all inside it. He has goggles than can detect mystic energy though.

The series starts with the boys already being friends with April. And April is black. A lot of people were butt-hurt about this when her design was revealed. Apparently, the original April in the comics was designed with characteristics of a creator’s girlfriend’s characteristics, and the girlfriend was black.  

And Splinter is skilled in ninjutsu, but usually just watches TV and eats a bunch of food. The boys call him variations of Dad, Pops or Papà, and infrequently, Master Splinter.  

Things I like: How it looks

Okay. I love the style. The animation and art direction is just so sex. I don’t have any other words to describe how much I love the way the show looks. A real pet peeve of mine is the popularity of the ugliest flash-looking puppets. (What I mean by puppets—not like physical puppets, but animation rigs that can be moved like a puppet, instead of drawing everything each time) South Park is forgiven, because that style is their thing. Bojack Horseman comes immediately to mind. I recently saw a clip from an Adam Ruins Everything episode parodying Magic School Bus talking about Columbus that used puppets. I just hate how the puppets look! Everything is just so stiff- has NO character! 

That’s so not the case in Rise. Everything is just so alive. And cartoon-y. I can’t really compare Rise to other incarnations of the TMNT in terms of cartoon-y-ness, but I just love it! A lot of times, the boys have really goofy faces or poses, and a lot of the time, the poses are pushed really hard and dynamically, and it just makes the show more interesting to look at.  

The fight scenes are just deliciously choreographed. The best way I can describe it is that it looks cool as hell. The Turtles just kick so much ass. The dynamic poses and pushed poses also add to the amazingness of the fight scenes, and camera angles are also dynamic and just so cool! I’m becoming a bit of a broken record, but there aren’t better words.  

The most glaring difference between Rise and other incarnations is the character design. Each of the boys looks different. Love this. I’m not the biggest fan of just palette swapped versions of characters—sometimes they can work fine, but like, the main four characters? Rise makes each turtle a difference species, different ages and different sizes. 

The art style of the show in general is appealing to me. Some parts of the style and animation, notably the faces, remind me of Paul Ter Voorde’s work on Eddsworld. And I just like the way that looks. One reason is that it’s not one of those God-awful puppets I don’t like, but that there’s a good balance of pointy bits and curvy bits on the design. I don’t hate the CalArts smile as much as other people, but the character design in Rise is a breath of fresh air. 

The color choices are also divine. The lighting in some scenes just works with the background and characters and everything that needs to pop pops, and everything else just looks natural.  

Again, I feel like I sound like a broken record. But I just love how this looks! I don’t really watch any other cartoons so I don’t have a good comparison. I’ve seen clips of the 2012 show, and that show suffers from having dull and boring backgrounds, and also barren because it’s a 3D animated show and they didn’t have the budget to fill backgrounds of scenes with stuff. 

Well, okay, some scenes in Rise, the filler characters aren’t the best looking, and sometimes look very busted. And barley animated in comparison to the main action. But I’d rather have busted looking background characters than none at all! And most things are brightly colored, so nothing is disgustingly drab.  

Things I like: The writing

Onto the writing. Again, I can’t really compare Rise to other incarnations of TMNT. I find a lot of the writing really funny, and this paired with the goofy faces people make get me to die laughing. There’s a bunch of clip compilations on YouTube, but ones with some of my favorite clips are two videos: “rottmnt moments that make me lose it” and “rottmnt moments that make me audibly giggle”.  

I also couldn’t believe that they put a whole parody of Modern Major General in 113 “The Evil League of Mutants”. Also I was in disbelief that John Cena voices the big bad of the first season, and sings in that parody.  

But I also love that each brother has a rounded personality and isn’t too one-dimensional. I mean that, like Raph isn’t angry all the time for no reason, he’s frustrated because he feels pressure to protect his family as the leader and Big Brother. There are far better examples of things that Rise did well with their characterization, but I can’t speak to them myself.  

Not every writing decision is free of sin, there are a couple choices that I wouldn’t have made. One that comes to mind is in 102b “Donnie’s Gifts” where after Donnie learns the lesson that his brothers are fine the way they are, they forgive him immediately as if he didn’t make a helmet that verbally bullied Raph, a inflatable suit that limited Mikey’s movement and a shock collar for Leon. But episodes are only 11 minutes. I’ll have to deal with it. Makes a good starting point for angst fics anyway. 

The autistic turtle

I might have digested the entirety of ROTTMNT if I saw a video about it, but I can’t say for sure. But because my first exposure to it was from a video about how Donnie is great rep and CANNONICALLY autistic. So that meant that I had to watch it. That’s how I got into Community (2009), I saw a video explaining how great Abed is. And for other shows, I just keep coming back because there’s a character who’s autistic or autistic coded.  

It isn’t stated explicitly in the show or movie that Donnie’s autistic, but it was confirmed by one of the writers that Donnie feels like he’s on the spectrum. That’s good enough for me!  

Also, a very quick sidebar. In the movie, the first four minutes are in an apocalyptic 2044. And Future!Leo says ‘badass’. That shocked me to my core. The movie is rated Y-7. What? I’m still so confused. I’m not offended that one of the Turtles said a bad word. Parents of children swear around their kids all the time. My parents did. But they teach their kids that only adults can say the naughty words. So, I’m not against it. But don’t Y-7 rated things not allow swears? I was so shook.  

I don’t want to just regurgitate skulltrot’s video, because everything that they said is just *chef’s kiss*. But I’ll touch on the things I like. One is his voice. Josh Brener does a fantabulous job voicing him. I think the direction that was given was to just sound nerdy, but Brener just voices the character really superbly in my opinion. 

Donnie is shown to have sensory issues, stims in various ways and infodumps. There are multiple occasions where he refers to himself being ‘emotionally unavailable’, ‘being afraid of togetherness’, ‘not normally feeling things’, and one time where Leo refers to his ‘emotionless passion’. But Donnie isn’t emotionless, he definitely has them, he’s just unfamiliar in expressing and understanding them. Again, skulltrot does a great job explaining this, I urge you to watch their video.  

I don’t know where else to put this in the article, but I read a comment on a clip compilation video where they said that Donnie is what happens when a nerd and a theatre kid have a baby. So keep that in mind. 

I love that the fam is understanding and accepting of Donnie just the way he is. They don’t expect him to bend over backwards in order to communicate with them, his family makes an effort to understand how he communicates, and Donnie makes an effort to communicate with them.  

One of the things skulltrot touches on is that Donnie kind of fits into a stereotype: he’s a genius and a tech whizz. But his character isn’t just that one dimensional. He contributes other things to the team and is a loved member of the family. The climax of one of my favorite episodes, 208b “Donnie vs. Witch Town” touches on this.  

skulltrot words this as Donnie being insecure about his place on the team. There’s other episodes where Donnie isn’t just limited to his material contributions:

In 123b “Snow Day”, we get to see the boys being goofy, and we get to see Donnie’s personality. Which isn’t solely dependent on his tech. In 120a “Mystic Library” we get to see Donnie being a goofy boy and memorizing the directions to a book in song form. In 204a “Breaking Purple” we get to see Donnie learning to be a better father figure to an AI drone he made. In 205a “Pizza Puffs” we get to see Donnie being just as stupid as his brothers and continuously eating mystic poisoned food, even though he knows it’s poisoned. In 125 “Insane in the Mama Train”, we get to see Donnie kicking ass with just a regular bō, no tech or battle shell. And in 213b “Finale Part 4: Rise” we see that Donnie can use mystic powers, but doesn’t give up his love of tech—he just uses mystified tech. And it’s cool as hell. 

Another thing that skulltrot mentions is Donnie’s alexithymia ( = the inability to recognize or describe one's own emotions). When they discussed an example in the show and shared their own experience with low empathy, I was like the picture of DiCaprio pointing at the TV. 

Because I’m like that! Look! It’s me! skulltrot mentions that low empathy is very stigmatized, but it doesn’t have to mean that the autistic person with low empathy is an asshole. (Like other autistic coded characters in media 😡) 

An example in the show is in episode 111b “Pizza Pit”, where we see Mikey’s favorite pizza place getting destroyed, and Mikey is obviously upset. Don tries to comfort him, putting his hand on his shoulder. Then forcing the group to move on, gleefully saying: “Okay, now that we've all moved on, let's get us some of my favorite Tony Lou's Pizza.” Once the boys get to Donnie’s favorite pizza place, it gets destroyed immediately. Obviously this upsets Don, he cries out: “I only pretended to care when it happened to Mikey's place favorite place… but now that it's happened to me. I hurt.” 

The example that skulltrot shares is when their friend’s pet died. 

“The best way I can describe what it’s like is there was a time when my friend was talking to me about one of her pets that died, and even though I have literally gone through a pet I grew up with dying, I didn’t really feel anything when she said that, and I certainly didn’t feel for her. Instead, I understood the logistics of sympathy. Her pet died, that’s sad. I also had the awareness to be compassionate enough to not be a complete dick about it. I’m sure whatever I ended up saying to her was something along the lines of Zuko’s classic: ‘That’s rough buddy’. Which to someone who doesn’t know me well will probably take as rude, but she knew me well enough to know that was me being genuine. My point being, me having low-empathy and a general lack of awareness of not only others’ feelings but having difficulty distinguishing my own doesn’t make me a bad person.  I’m still capable of caring about people. I do care about people. That is what many writers get wrong. Low empathy does not mean you are unable to be compassionate. Nor does it mean you’re incapable of sympathy. Nor does it mean you cannot care for or love another person. Autism itself doesn’t make you hard to get along with, rude, hard to tolerate, difficult to communicate with, or emotionless.” 

Love how I said that I didn’t want to blatantly copy their video, and I just quoted a huge paragraph. Whatever. I can relate to this sentiment. There’ll be some happening that my mom and I are talking about, and I just don’t care. I understand that other people would feel something, but I just don’t. And I can’t force myself to care, or force myself to lie about caring.  

My insights

Before this video, and by extension the episode, I wasn’t very aware about others’ experiences with alexithymia. I’d heard of the word, but it never occurred to me that my experiences would align with other people’s experiences in the way of low empathy. I just knew that I was different. But now I feel so seen! That other people and characters in media are just like me! 

Another note about how I’m practically a Donatello kinnie; I also mispronounce words for fun, or am overly theatrical about something for no good reason other than to be goofy. I love being goofy. I love that people who watch Rise are seeing a representation of an autistic character that is an accurate depiction of an autistic experience, as a person who has strengths and weaknesses, and deserves to be treated as a member of the team and family. Love how a mutated turtle is more humanized than actual humans in the realm of autistic characters. 

I’m going to have to write about autistic characters I don’t like in the future, because they perpetuate harmful stereotypes. But I adore Donnie as autistic representation.  

Don is smart, but I wouldn’t call him an autistic savant (like Rain Man. I hate that movie. I’ll have to share my opinions in future). 

Don may be emotionally closed off, but he’s not emotionless or called emotionless in universe (well, he is, but in a joking matter) (The autistic robot trope: Data from Star Trek is said to not be able to experience emotion, but he so does. Just not in the way most people do. Autism). 

Don has other interests other than doing science stuff (like taking a break from working on things in 115a “Mind Meld”, and skateboarding in 108a “The Longest Flight”) (skulltrot mentions Entrapta from She-Ra, who is only there because of her techspertise and material contribution to the team. I haven’t seen any, but I believe it) 

I realize I should probably say some mean things too. (I’m reminded of a line in Tantacrul’s MuseScore video). The Rise team must have been running out of money, and some episodes for season 2 got cut because of this. The team managed to get four episodes of a finale in, and the finale is great! But, it’s a bit rushed almost. I feel like if the team had more episodes to play with, they could have sprinkled in little pieces of information that will lead into the season 2 finale, instead of dumping all of this information within 48 minutes. 

So, to recap: Go watch ROTTMNT. Because it looks gorgeous. The art style is parfait. The fight scenes have orgasmic choreography. There is actually good autistic rep. An Autist Approved character, if you will. I’m pretty selfish, and I want to see more Rise!Donatello. So go watch the movie on Netflix, and watch the show on a streaming service. Get those numbers up. #saveROTTMNT