This year a new version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been released, and inevitably a new cast of voice actors have been chosen: Sean Astin, who is best known for his role in the Lord of the Rings, voices Raphael. Rob Paulson, who does a variety of voices including pinky from Pinky and the Brain and Carl from Jimmy Neutron, voices Donatello.  Jason Biggs, who is best known for his role in American Pie, voices Leonardo. Greg Cipes, who voices Kevin Levin in Ben Ten, plays Michelangelo.

Over the past few years there has been a trend in making 2D shows into 3D animation; we have seen this done with the Care Bears and Winnie the Pooh, and now they have adopted this style into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Personally, I felt this was a turn off- I don’t like seeing old 2D shows animated in 3D- but after watching the show itself I was willing to forgive it. They also added in some 2D affects. For example if one of the turtles gets hit, the animation on their eyes would be 2D. It gives it a nice comic book feel, despite the fact that it looks nothing like that.

They really went back to the 90’s and took the best things out of the old show and put them in this series. For a while, the newer turtles seemed a lot more mature than they were in the original series, but this new series really brings back the “teenage” part of the turtles. Even though they are heroes, they are still learning heroes, which was a part of their charm.

It’s nice to see that this new series is going back to the original in terms of its humour and characters. Even the theme song is similar to the original! As the show progresses, we will see if the creators succeeded or failed in this new series.