Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Season Six (Lionsgate/Animated)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: B
When the
evil Shredder attacks, these turtle boys don’t cut him no slack; and this
reviewer has no intention of cutting this new release any slack either. Whereas there is no reason to shred apart
this newest installment of the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles series, the series still needs some touching up in the
technical department (but we will get to that later). Fans of the long running Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series now get another dose of tubular
awesomeness with the release of Season
Six that features all 16 gnarly episodes from that season. From Season
Six on the season runs get shorter and shorter (Season 7 is only 14 episodes and last three seasons will only be 8
episodes each), so get your green dudes with attitude while you can. By this point many have heard this reviewer
profess his love and devotion to the TMNT
series, but if nothing else (as with Seasons 4 and 5) this set is an
improvement over the old volumized releases Lionsgate
was doing.
Casual TMNT fans probably by Season Six would have had their full
dose of ninja swinging nostalgia, which leaves the hardcore TMNT fans to bask in the final five
seasons. The series does assuredly get a
bit sillier with more comedy as the seasons progress, but overall Season Six remains solid. The episodes either center on the gang of
turtles along with April O’Neill thwarting one of Shredder’s evil plots or
bringing down some other mutant/cosmic baddy that is causing some odd havoc;
there is not much depth to the series (with the exception of earlier episodes)
but comparatively to other recent turtle incarnations the series is awesomely
fun, detailed, and memorable. All in all
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can be
enjoyed by both hardcore fans who are remembering the good old days of Saturday
morning cartoons and brand new fans alike.
As the turtles sewer surf into the next generation of fans, they are
just as good as they were 20 years ago.
The
technical features of the newest Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles set have not been vastly improved upon over previous
releases; though they are much better than the old volumized sets that crammed
way too many episodes on one disc and in turned sacrificed picture, sound, and
extras to save room. The picture is once
again presented in its original 1.33 X 1 full screen that looks somewhat like
an analog VHS, but no where near as bad as the previous sets were. The colors are brighter and in better
contrast than previous releases, as well as the extreme compressed feeling of
the episodes being taken care of. The
sound is once again just adequate in its Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo presentation,
not presenting anything amazing or boisterous for fans but gets the job
done. The extras are completely and
sadly absent on this particular release, let’s just hope Lionsgate finds some extras for the next season release.
From the
pages of the comic book, to your TV, and now to your DVD player the turtles have
been with you the whole way. Don’t
disappoint our masked ninja friends; so pickup this nostalgic 2-Disc set and
save the day.
- Michael P Dougherty II
