The Importance of April O’Neil in Rise of the TMNT
It is no secret that I’m a big fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Absolutely no secret whatsoever. I’ve watched most of the TV iterations(except for ’87 and Next Mutation, everyone hates that one), I’ve read the IDW comics, seen most of the movies. So I like to think that I’m a buff of some sort when it comes to TMNT. I’m not going to rank which iterations are my favorite, that always starts some war of sorts, but I do definitely love Rise.
Okay, What the heck is Rise of the TMNT?
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the most recent iteration within the TMNT franchise that aired in 2018. It only came on a year after its previous TMNT iteration, the 2012 series came to an close, and it’s timing is one of a long line of actions of corporate sabotage that lent to Rise being canned earlier than expected. In spite of all that, Rise is an iteration that is the first of many. First to have the turtles be different species and different ages and the first to have over half the main cast be voiced by black voice actors. One of which is April O’Neil, who is the first April to ever be explicitly and canonically be depicted as African-American.
What Makes This April So Important?
Let’s talk about the function of April’s character as a whole throughout the entirety of the TMNT franchise: April’s supposed to be the straight man/everyman that we as an audience can relate to as we journey with the turtles on their various adventures. This factor of relatability can vary from different interpretations of April and depending on the person but overall, Rise April is the most relatable to the audience as a whole. For one, Rise April is seen as an equal and on par amongst the boys compared to 2003, 2012, and others.
2003 April is seen by the boys as a mother figure. She says this in around season one, it’s seen as a joke but it does have some kernel of truth to it from her actions throughout the series, which doesn’t have an equal dynamic in the relationship presented onscreen. 2012 April has… issues. On one hand, we see her having some teenage problems and having some moments of relatability, but not with the boys. 2012 April is distanced from the boys and we don’t really see her hanging out with them a lot, part of it is due to Donnie’s crush on her
Other iterations of April( ’87, 07, IDW, etc.) are all older and don’t really allow us, the viewer, to see her and the boys interact with each other as “equals” or the boys “level” the way Rise April does. Rise April is seen doing Teenager Things with the boys, goofing around, being silly, etc with the turtles. We get to see April have plenty of relatable troubles throughout the series: losing jobs, not fitting in with the crowd, experiencing moments of vulnerability, working through her insecurities about herself as a person, failure, wanting to be seen as normal, and her position in the Hamato family. These are both things that teenagers and many adults go through that we don’t really see other iterations go through.
Also, April being black in this iteration is glorious and genius for several reasons.
One: we get to see April who is considered an “other” by her society for her skin color get to be her authentic self with the turtles, who are considered an “other” by human society as a whole.
Two: we don’t need to go through the classic introduction of April to the turtles because they’ve been friends for five years and have considered each other as equals for years. Compare this to other Aprils who were never seen as “other” by their society because they were always a part of the majority society and never had to suffer from the “othering” that the turtles had to go through.
Read: because these other Aprils were white, while Rise April is not. 2012 April and other Aprils being white gave the turtles a chance to ascribe to the ideas and protections that being white/whiteness often has without the turtles being white. You can find this white girl in any strange place that a “pure white woman” wouldn’t be or out of place, and the instant first thought is to keep her safe as to protect the white women’s fragility and “innocence.” Having April being white could offer the boys a chance to access privileges they would never have had and have an “easier time” with her because of a white supremacist institution that protects and values whiteness and anything that is closely associated with it.
Making Rise April black makes her more relatable to the turtles and more so to the audience and fans, many of whom have been considered as an “other” by the majority of society.
But Wait, There’s Mirage April, Ya Know?
Yeah, I know. But I know that Mirage April isn’t black.
But she was portrayed as a light-skinned black woman! She was also had dark skin in one of the Mirage Comics! She was white-washed!”
There’s a lot of things that can easily debunk this. For one, TMNT Entity, made a post four years ago wondering this same thing and providing an ample amount of evidence to the conclusion that April O’Neil was conceived by Peter Laird as an Asian woman in the early concept stages, but developed as a white woman in her first appearance. She had some depictions as a black woman, but these are not canonical.
TMNT Entity does an amazing job of proving this, but to be even quicker and prove that Mirage April was not black, we can simply look at some comic panels.
It’s not obvious to many. But each of these three panels does something interesting with April’s hair. In the first panel, the first comic she was ever introduced in, her hair is straight, with no waves or curls. Then, in panel 2, April announces that she’s got a new hairdo, her hair is now curlier, curls tightly coiled.
So how does she does this? Simple, she gets a perm. Perms are a chemical treatment used to alter a person’s hair texture, taking straight hair and adding a curl or wave. “Perm” is short for “permanent hairstyle” because they are. If April was black, this wouldn’t be the case. She would have had to use a relaxer, a chemical treatment that also alters hair texture, however, unlike perms, relaxers are used by people with tight curls or very curly hair aka natural hair, to chemically straighten the hair. Seeing that Mirage April’s hair goes from straight to curly, this is one of the nails in the coffin.
April has this perm for twenty-four issues and in the third panel, issue 28, April decides to forgo the perm and grows her hair out again. Why is this important? If April was truly a black woman within the eighties, there were few opens for black women to ‘go natural’ once they were done with relaxed hair: doing the big chop or growing out the relaxer, and the curls of textured hair returning once again, both of these options taking time. Now, April’s hair goes back to its normal self fairly quickly, and would you really expect two white men to know the complexities and nuances that come with the transition from relaxed to natural hair for black women, within the eighties?
Absolutely not.
Or to be even simpler, here’s this tidbit that comes from Peter’s Lair’s blog in a 2009 Ask Peter section:
All in all. Mirage April was white from her very first appearance.
Circling Back to Rise April O’Neil
We’ve talked about the narrative functions of April O’Neil in Rise of the TMNT and disproven that April was black in the Mirage Comics, we’re back at our original question: What makes this April so Important?
We’ve answered this question, halfway, with our first section. Time to keep going. It is difficult to find someone that looks like you when you aren’t white, and when you do, it’s either great representation, or it’s… not. When you are black, you have to deal with the rate that the black experience depicted on TV is related to Black Trauma and that Black Trauma is more prominent, especially within these past few years.
April O’Neil is a reprieve from that Black Trauma, she is a depiction of Black Joy. She is the relief that I and black children can turn to see EXPLICITLY and CANONICALLY black characters and black coded characters have strange, fantastical adventures, to be surrounded by people who love them indefinitely and for who they are, even when they are in a society that might not love them for their “weird” or strange tendencies, or for simply existing in their blackness.
Rise April was the perfect April that represented us. She showed black adults like myself and little black girls that we can be heroes, that we can have our own strange, weird epic tales, that we can be our authentic selves, be unapologetically black, and that there WILL be someone who accepts us for who WE are. That we will have our own Hamato family ready to welcome us into their arms, and they will love us for us, no stipulations, no conditional love.
It is a shame that within an era that we have that dire need for black protagonists to be themselves and experience Black Joy and unconditional love, Nickelodeon and Viacom CBS have snuffed out the lights that were just beginning to shine. It is a shame that April O’Neil(voiced by Kat Graham), Raphael(voiced by Omar Benson Miller), and Michelangelo(voiced by Brandon Mychal Smith) were robbed of a chance to fully shine and be a continuous, ongoing beacon of hope, faith, and joy, that black children dearly need.
Though I am cynical and tired, I hope the next iteration of TMNT will be just as diverse as Rise and continue what Rise has started. I hope that children of color, black children, will find more joy in characters who look like them.
I hope that corporate entities will not snuff out the lights again like they have in the past and like Nickelodeon has done with Rise, not when there are children who need these lights to grow into confident adults.
