At age 7, it caught me: Ninja Turtle mania. Mere words cannot express my love at that age for these comic book creations. For countless years at Halloween (and other days I deemed neccesary), I'd don the home-made-by-mom costume of Donatello and kick some major ass.....well, thin air actually. But that's beside the point. Now their on DVD in animated form and my life couldn't be better (or sadder if you stop to think how overjoyed I am about a nearly 15 year old cartoon being on DVD....and still remembering the lines).
This set contains all 5 episodes of season 1. Yeah, only 5 episodes. But, Artisan has been kind enough to toss on 4 extra episodes that never made it to the airwaves when the show finally met its demise in the mid 90's. So, that brings us to a total of 9 episodes (roughly 3 hours of glorious entertainment) forever preserved digitally. The first 5 episodes deal with the origins of the turtles, the beginnings of Shredder and Krang's "relationship," and the beginnings of other various characters who would become the centerpiece of the series. The extra 4 episodes are better off forgotten, one including the mutated amoeba known as the "Globfather" (yeah, Globfather).
The single DVD package is housed inside a cardboard slipcase featuring embossed artwork. Each episode is presented in full frame and is surprisngly clear. Compression problems will be evident on high end set-ups, but everyone else should have little trouble. The only scratches occur on the animation cells themselves and are really bad in a few episodes. It's hilarious to see a fingerprint suddenly appear and then dissapear. The newer (unaired) episodes look a bit better than the older ones, but only in the area of the colors which are a bit brighter. This is most likely due to the tone of the episodes than the DVD itself. The sound is basic Dolby 2 channel stereo and is hardly better than any VHS version.
Come on, you KNOW you loved TMNT II. Vanilla Ice prancing around a stage proclaiming "Ninja Rap!" is too much for anyone not to enjoy. Though the cartoon never quite reached those cinematic highs, anyone who grew up with this classic series should immediately pick up this disc. Here's hoping season 2 is not far behind.
Originally posted at Breaking Windows.
Article comments
1 - visualsimplicity
Have you seen the new TMNT animated series? I remember I used to enjoy the original animated series as a kid. Either the new series sucks, or my taste has changed, cause all the dialogue in the new series are pretty lame and I just can't get into it.
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
vis sim, i actually quite enjoyed the, admittedly only one episode, of the new series. The writing may have been daft, but the animation was really quite wonderful, and it still had that old-school feel to it. It'd be nice to see an animated turtles based on the original graphic novels (shit, i had one of those when i was a kid and was suprised as all hell with how dark it was). That'd be interesting.
3 - Matt Paprocki
I actually like the new series. It's staying very dark and the action is animated extremely well. It's much more stylish and less cheesy than the old one. Certainly the old series has its own charm (hence why I bought the set), but I feel the new series is more true to the source.
4 - Justin Briggs
I love that They have put the classic episodes on dvd and hope they will finish out the rest of all the classic seasons. if thet do i am sure to buy ay any price!
5 - Justin Briggs
I love that They have put the classic episodes on dvd and hope they will finish out the rest of all the classic seasons. if thet do i am sure to buy any any price!
6 - TMNT Fan
I'm wondering if you already own the episodes on VHS if it is worth buying the DVD (that is if you have the ability to convert to DVD yourself). It sounds like the quality isn't so great. However, if they do seasons 2 and 3 I might have to buy them since I don't have many of those episodes. It's taken them long enough... I get so mad because there are so many tv shows on dvd these days and very few are ones I would want to buy. But then shows like TMNT, M.A.S.K., Voltron, Mysterious Cities of Gold, etc. aren't offered. I guess we're too selective of an audience... but I doubt I'm the only one.
7 - Matt Paprocki
I would think so. I'm sure any VHS copies are probably heavily degrading by now and their quality is abysmal. Mine were about a year ago when I finally gave them away. I could barely understand the dialouge at times. Besides, it's a dirt cheap set, it has 4 unseen episodes, and no degrading problems for about a 100 years. What's to think about?