Magic: The Gathering’s new set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cards is full of surprisingly deep cuts, from a two-headed pizza mutant that honors an abandoned toy concept to a card for an obscure weather-changing device featured in exactly one episode of the original cartoon. Yet the most surprising inclusion appears on a special variant of the Leonardo, Cutting Edge card, which features the leader of the Turtles with a design only seen in the 1996 direct-to-VHS lost gem anime Mutant Turtles: Superman Legend.
The katana-wielding team leader stands tall, clutching a weapon in one hand and a large purple crystal in the other. His chest is emblazoned with a large capital T and his face mask points upward like the X-Men hero Wolverine. This odd character design may come as a surprise to even TMNT fans, and to truly understand it, we have to go back three decades in time, to a point when the Turtles faced their greatest challenge yet.
By 1996, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had grown more stale than a week-old pizza. After lackluster returns for the third film in 1993, plans for a sequel were abandoned. After years of their relationship being strained by running a merchandising empire, co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were barely speaking. And the 1987 cartoon series would soon end with a whimper after 10 seasons on the air.
Toy sales were also struggling, which prompted Playmates Toys to get back into TV, much like when the company had bankrolled the first season of the original cartoon. This time, Playmates turned to the Japanese market and partnered with Bee Media and Tsuburaya Productions for two half-hour episodes featuring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, each pushing a different line of toys from 1995.
The first to get this treatment was the “Supermutants” line, which is where this very different-looking Leonardo featured on this Magic card comes from. For these toys, the characters were transformed into taller, anime-like superheroes. In place of bandanas, the Turtles wore Wolverine-like pointed masks and had a “T” emblem on their chests. Their sensei, Splinter, was given a much more muscular physique, while their enemies (Shredder, Bebop, and Rocksteady) all became far more menacing.
This take on the characters was then featured in the first of the two anime episodes (aside from Splinter, who kept his classic look). As the opening credits explain, when the Turtles use their “Mutastones,” they can change from their classic forms into “Super Turtles” for three minutes at a time (this may be a mistranslation in the subtitles since the Turtles change into these forms for way longer than three minutes in the episode).
Our heroes face off against the revamped Shredder, who becomes the wildly colorful, dragon-like “Devil Shredder,” while Bebop and Rocksteady begin with their classic designs, but use their stones to transform into supermutant forms. Krang keeps his 1987 cartoon look, but plays a vital part in the story when he awakens an evil little fairy named “Dark Mu.” Once Dark Mu emerges from the prison of her own Mutastone, she transforms Shredder into a Godzilla-sized “Dark Devil Shredder” who Donatello quickly defeats by tricking Shredder into dropping a building onto himself.
The real big bad is Dark Mu, who heads into space to try and blow up the Earth with her evil energy powers. Using their Mutastone powers, the Turtles merge into a single winged being with white skin named “Saint Mutation,” a form they can maintain for just 100 seconds (a time limit that the cartoon does adhere to). They don’t defeat Dark Mu on their own, though, as their own little fairy friend Crys Mu sacrifices herself to kill the villain. (These fairy characters only ever appear here and in the tie-in manga).
The second of the two half-hour episodes features the Turtles and their enemies venturing to Japan, where they find different Mutastones that cause them to gain pretty badass-looking metal armor, each based on a different animal. Leonardo gets dragon armor, Raphael gets phoenix, Donatello gets bear, and Michelangelo appears to draw the short straw of the Mutastones when he gets beetle armor.
The most surprising thing about the TMNT anime episodes is that, despite all the complicated lore laid out above, they’re pretty good and actually fun to watch. There are a lot of things in the TMNT fandom that I love ironically because they’re bad, like the terrible Christmas special We Wish You a Turtle Christmas. So when I watched these episodes, I fully expected to laugh at how bad they were. Yet I was surprised at how much I genuinely enjoyed them.
The character designs are all pretty bold in the way they lean into the anime aesthetics to create something different from all other TMNT media. Even the animation, while limited at times, has fun with the characters and stretches them in a more cartoony way than the 1987 series did.
The second episode venturing to Japan also feels noteworthy, and it features Splinter reconnecting with the ninja clan he once led. (It’s unclear if this is the Foot Clan or not, but it’s still pretty cool.) Also, if you watch the subtitled version on YouTube, there’s some surprisingly adult language in the cartoon. Shredder calls Donatello a “bastard,” while the Turtles say words like “shit” and “damn.” I’m not sure if that’s an accurate translation of the original, but it still adds to the experience in a lowbrow sort of way.
Even with the foul language, the variety of Mutastones, and a couple of very out-of-place fairies, Mutant Turtles: Superman Legend still isn’t the weirdest thing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ever appeared in. Just watch a few minutes of We Wish You a Turtle Christmas, which features Leonardo singing in a rastafarian accent, and you’ll see what I mean.
Let’s see Magic: The Gathering make a card out of that.