IDW Publishing’s take on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has added a fifth turtle to the dynamic quartet of painter-eponymous ninja turtles. The fifth combatant is a claw-wielding turtle named Jennika, and she looks like a dude.
The new character was revealed in a tweet by the official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Twitter account on July 12th, 2019. You can view it below.
5th Turtle?! Have you read @IDWPublishing ’s latest shell-shocking issue? Sneak peek of issue #97 art by @mooncalfe1 pic.twitter.com/UedMstWHJC
— TMNT (@TMNT) July 12, 2019
Obviously you can’t make out the character too well in that dynamic shot, but IGN published an article going more in depth about Jennika, revealing that she was Casey Jones’ love interest and a former human Foot Clan member who was betrayed by one of her compatriots after getting stabbed and left for dead.
In an attempt to save Jennika’s life, the Turtles attempted to use the Ooze on her, but it was destroyed, and so they opted to have Leonardo give her a blood transfusion, which had the results of turning her into a turtle… like the others.
The problem, however, is that there’s literally no remnants of her femininity left as a turtle.
She’s given the same shape and form as the other four, and her anatomical physiology is no different than the other male turtles, thus making her look like a dude… turtle.
Typically in fictional media anthropomorphic characters are distinguished between their genders with certain specific somatic differences. Typically the males are made more rectangular or cylindrical, whereas females are made more oblong or hourglass in their shape. Also they’re given protuberant presentations of mammaries as a way to distinguish males from females. This was usually how it was done in old kids shows where the characters were animals.
But here, Jennika has zero feminine representation as a female turtle. She’s as boxy and as bloated as her male turtle counterparts.
Her facial features are also masculine. There’s nothing about her eye shape or jaw that indicates that from the neck up you’re looking at a female turtle.
In fact, this was something that various people pointed out in the IGN comment section and on Twitter, asking why Jennika doesn’t look like Venus and more specifically, what happened to Venus from the old live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show that used to come on way back in the day.
Uhm…but i find that #VenusDeMilo was more sexy °°
Someone forgot about #TMNT #TheNextMutation ?w?
I think Mei Pieh Chi is more better and sexy in #TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles than #Jennika ^^;— NoriyukiWorks (@NoriyukiWorks83) July 17, 2019
I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I like the way this was handled rather than shoehorning a female character nobody knew into the team. On the other, I don’t like the idea of messing that much with the formula.
— EA Solinas (@easolinas) July 12, 2019
I ain’t buying a comic made by a deviant art user who shoved his oc in a series that doesn’t need it. Fan Fiction should stay away from the official content, no one cares about Fan Fiction.
— Autistic Shaman (@Jozef_Autyzm) July 16, 2019
Of course, there were some people in the thread complaining about Venus having “turtleboobs” and they didn’t like that the older female turtle was made to look feminine so that people knew that “she” was a “she” and not a “she” that could pass for a “he”.
Well, at least she already looks off to a better start than Venus. No creepy turtleboobs or “the Turtles are no longer related so everyone’s free to mack on the girl” shenanigans.
— Shane Champagne (@SeaSaltArt) July 12, 2019
But what happened to Venus exactly? Well, in the Twitter thread it was pointed out that she was created under the Saban license when they were producing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and therefore IDW doesn’t have the rights to her since the brand is now under Hasbro.
Rights issues, they can’t call a female Turtle Venus because Saban owned the rights to that show, and now it’s possible Hasbro now owns them.
— Earnest Raymond Fraz (@Ray10F04) July 12, 2019
The real travesty here is that instead of bringing in a female turtle into the fold that was memorable, they essentially made a female into a male to further the whole agenda to keep pushing this whole non-binary nonsense that has become a sick fascination with those on the Left. Gone is the more obvious distinctions between males and females, like what was presented in the old show.
This doesn’t mean that they have to make her some furry-bait to attract the degenerates on Twitter who are refugees from Tumblr’s porn purge, but the least they could have done was create some kind of gender distinction, or even just an inkling of it.
I mean, really… why is it so bad to be feminine nowadays?
Now the hard-boiled Centrists™ who are actually just Social Justice pansies in disguise will argue that there’s nothing wrong with Jennika and that IDW is well within their rights to make a fifth, female turtle who looks like an androgynous teenage boy who stole his zoophilia-suffering father’s turtle cosplay costume and decided to LARP out a fantasy as an angst-ridden ninja. However, what they won’t be able to argue is: 1) Why does she have to look like a dude? And 2) why not at least make her look partially feminine?
But they’ll never answer you those questions. They will deflect, dodge, and scattershot the discussion into straw man territory where it will eventually devolve into ad hominems and attempts to get you deplatformed, because that’s what Centrists™ do.
All the meanwhile, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles becomes a victim of identity politics just like when Aubrey Sitterson was working at IDW and completely buried G.I. Joe in Left-wing identitarianism. Oh, and don’t get me started on the trans-Transformers. It’s best we just don’t bring up that farce.
(Thanks for the news tip Noriyuki Works)
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