Last week, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge was unleashed upon the world, quickly garnering a reputation that has been nothing short of glowing.
Praised by critics and commoners fans alike, the game is presently brandishing average Metacritic scores of 87% and 8.8, respectively. It was even significant enough for me to awkwardly shoehorn both an article and a YouTube video into my content rotation.
Clearly, almost everyone is enamoured with this lovingly crafted throwback to the golden years of Konami beat-em-‘ups. I say almost, of course, because it would seem that the approbation is not quite unanimous.
There is a subset of Ninja Turtles pundits — chiefly, those with a boner for pixellated knockers — who have cried foul over a particular design choice for one April O’Neil.
This banana raincoat-wearing bitch (that’s an AVGN reference, don’t get on my case) is the Turtles’ closest ally and notably provided ample eye candy for many leering prepubescent eyes back in the early ’90s.
She never did anything for me, but the cards were stacked against her, as any character who wasn’t a mutant was just wasted airtime in my eager eyes. Speaking of ample and/or stacked, it is evidently of paramount importance that she be appropriately generous in the mammary sense; her updated look in Shredder’s Revenge has drawn the ire of vociferous perverts around the web.
At a glance, it is plain to see that the April of thirty years ago was a darn side more risqué with her workplace attire, brandishing a pair of jubblies that surely boosted Channel 6’s ratings to new heights.
The modern Ms. O’Neil has opted to button up instead, perhaps wanting to be taken seriously as a journalist, with a resultant look that some have decried as a devastating decrease of dairy delight. She shan’t exactly be joining any committees of the itty bitty variety, but the online community were quick to point out the alteration all the same.
“Big boob girls matter. They exist too!” declares one commenter. “Even the action figure from the 80’s had cleavage!” observes another. One particularly belligerent champion of chesticles has even evoked the dreaded C word (no, not that one), claiming that this is a clear example of censorship.
“I have been posting about this for weeks now,” he writes, no doubt feverishly. “No youtuber [sic] wants to talk about the censorship. They didnt [sic] just removed [sic] her neckline, but also flattened her chest. There are scenes where she is literally completely flat. Also she is flat for their advertisement.”
This is merely one in a series of tweets, and if you think he’s overreacting, just watch yourself: he comes correct with receipts.
In fairness, not every judgement levied upon April’s bust is to be taken seriously. After more than 1,700 retweets, 1,000 quote tweets and 17 thousand likes, the originator of the “never forget” tweet has halfheartedly walked it back, describing that they were “mostly just joking”. Meanwhile, “not booby”, has doubled down and is settling on this hill for the long winter ahead.
Regardless of their intent, it has sparked a vitriolic discussion on the subject; one that, tragically, has been trotted out before in response to April’s appearance in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. A brief note for the uninformed: this is a fighting game based on characters from a children’s cartoon network.
We good here? I don’t feel good. I feel weird.
As is often the case, the subsequent censorship vs artistic vision dialogue has veered off in all kinds of directions, serving as a reminder that the gaming community never deserves to have anything nice, ever.
Even gaming characters from semi-adjacent series have started catching strays, with DotEmu’s other brawler revival, Streets of Rage, being the nearest point of comparison.
With all this said, the most important question at the end of the day is whether or not April O’Neil’s ta-tas have suffered the same fate as George Costanza’s junk after a dip in the pool. Has there, indeed, been significant shrinkage?
My initial conclusion is that breast tissue is malleable, and our girl could simply be wearing a suitable sports bra for the intensive endeavour she is about to undertake in Shredder’s Revenge.
My later conclusion is that I really don’t care, and I hate you all for making me aware of this in the first place.
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