Nerding Day: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Coming Out of Their Shells

Perhaps, you, like I, have made the mistake of thinking there isn't a huge adult Ninja Turtles fandom. Ninja Turtles are fun when your brain is still mostly goo, but once you grow up and become a solid-brained adult, you realize living in the sewers is gross, and the turtles probably stink to high hell like shit. People feel bad that April O'Neil won't date the Ninja Turtles because they're Turtles, but I feel like the romantic prospects of a man who lives and eats pizza in a sewer aren't great with anyone.

They can leave the sewer, you know? I get that they were born in the sewer, but people are born in lots of terrible places. People are born in Ohio, and they have the good sense to get out of there as soon as they become an adult. Apparently, none of that bothers the devout Ninja Turtles fandom who have very strong opinions about the 1990 VHS of the Ninja Turtles live show Coming Out Of Their Shells.

These are some intense Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-related feelings. When I first heard of this VHS, my primary emotion was concern because I don't think turtles should come out of their shells. That's part of their body? If Selena Gomez had a "peeling off all of my skin tour," we would be worried.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are coming out of their shells by making music. They've somehow learned to play guitar and piano with only three gigantic fingers, and they're celebrating that by ripping off Van Halen. They plan to sing about the three main staples of their personality-- pizza, cowabunga, and karate, except wait! They can't sing about violence, which they explain to us using 1990's latest communication technology, "rap."

"He's a turtle standing tall and proud, but he loves to rock the crowd. So he put down his weapon, and he picked up an instrument. Different kind of message is what he implements!" Michelangelo raps about Leonardo, much the same way a cartoon tiger might sell you a bowl of cereal or how a dog might warn of the danger of drugs.

And rap isn't the only type of artistic expression outside the range of these characters' ninja training. "Music can let you accomplish more than all of the weapons in the world," Splinter explains to the Turtles in a cutscene before he sings a Bruce Springteenesque power ballad. "Slow songs about non-violence that sound like Dad's favorite band! Slow songs about non-violence that sound like Dad's favorite band!" the children chant.

Non-violence is clearly supposed to be the show's theme, which would be great if they were the Teenage Mutant Philharmonic Turtles, but ninja is right in their name. It's tough to be a Ninja without fighting anyone; so tough that they decided to keep both the karate and the non-violence by having The Turtles kick at the ninjas without making any contact. Then the opposing ninjas kind of roll away for no reason.

It's like they could afford people that could dance, and they could afford people who could do ninja stuff, but in absolutely no way could they afford both, so the Turtles have to solve all of their problems by aggressively doing the running man at them. You can almost hear the Ninja Turtles going, "And stick 2,3,4, kick 2,3,4, is this a karate? This feels like karate and step-ball-change-shit."

It could be the karate-from-extremely-far-away fighting style wasn't chosen for its non-violence but because the turtle costumes were so expensive. I mean, the detail on the thighs alone is…so memorable. These thicc turtle thighs will be spin-kicking into my dreams for years.

Coming Out Of Their Shells shouldn't have had any money problems, though, since it was heavily sponsored by Pizza Hut. Like, so sponsored that there's a dancing pizza hut delivery driver interlude and a song called Pizza Power that implies the Ninja Turtles get their powers from pizza in the same way Birdman gets his power from the sun. It also describes pizza as "a flying saucer of delight," which is kind of beautiful. Emily Dickinson has nothing on pizza power.

Yet somehow, that pizza money must not have gone very far because one guy wrote the screenplay, all of the music, directed and produced the show, and provided Michelangelo's singing voice. Coming Out Of Their Shells is what happens when one auteur is allowed to fully own his vision of turtles with big, beefy thighs doing high kicks. I wonder if he had to voice Michelangelo because no one else on earth was willing to rap the phrase, "Different kind of message is what he implements!"

By now, you must be wondering what the plot of this live show was, and I will reluctantly tell you what I understood it to be. Shredder has hired a mad scientist to create a harmonic convergence machine that will suck all of the music out of the world, making him in charge somehow? Shredder seems to think the only thing keeping him from running America is music, and as we all know, this is completely false. If Shredder wanted to be President, all he'd have to do is run as a Republican, and he'd be in. However, Shredder is pro-choice, so he decided to go with the "take away all music from the world" plan.

April O'Neil shows up to warn The Turtles about Shredder, and they ignore her in favor of rapping more. Then Shredder appears, fights the Ninja Turtles, and weakens them with the harmonic convergence machine somehow. We know this because they yell, "Suddenly, I don't feel so good!" When the machine shows up.

Shredder's character in this show makes me wonder what Shredder's life is like outside of the Foot Clan. He uses a bunch of super boujee insults on the Ninja Turtles calling them, "pretentious piles of pâté" and "worthless button covers." I have to imagine that this version of Shredder is a country club man whose Daddy got him his job as CEO of the foot clan gang.

Boujee Shredder kidnaps April and lets her sing a power ballad. The Ninja Turtles run away to regroup, fully leaving April behind, and Shredder gets to have a ball yelling at children from the stage. "Who is that? Who did you come here with? Is that your Mom? Your cousin? What you couldn't get a DATE!" Shredder screams at a ten-year-old.

The Turtles are gone for so long it feels like a community theater production where one of the Turtles had to run to his truck for diarrhea medicine and Shredder had to vamp. The kids get so belligerent Shredder starts yelling at them to sit down because some of them are beginning to take a shot at storming the stage and killing him themselves.

There's got to be some kind of technical reason for this long turtle-free portion of the show, but I can't figure out what? There's no big costume change for the turtles, nothing hugely different on the set; all I can think is that the show was fifteen minutes short, so they stuck Shredder on stage to do some audience interaction with a bunch of children who hate him.

Eventually, the Turtles return. Donatello has created a device to block the harmonic convergence machine using (according to him) an American Express Card. Again, if he has an American Express Card, why does he live in the sewer? He has a credit history. Get an apartment, my man!

Then the Ninja Turtles defeat Shredder by non-violently kneeing him in the head until he leaves. There's some component of the audience needing to sing about freedom as The Turtles beat the shit out of Shredder, which I don't understand, and neither do they because only twenty-five percent of the kids sing for most of it.

Non-violence wins! Remember everyone, it doesn't count as violence if you do it while singing? I think that’s the moral. Now go out there and kick the shit out of your siblings but hum Pizza Power while you do it!

Lydia will probably continue the fuckboi Shredder bit on her Twitter.