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The Last Ronin
I’m somewhere between This is not for me/I’m too old for this and “AITA?”
I hadn’t thought about picking up The Last Ronin until I accidentally found out my favorite turtle would end up last. This read was superficial and only delved into the concepts of the other characters instead of the last turtle, whom I thought the story was about.
This gave me Halo: Infinite vibes in which the creators said: “We heard you. You don’t want other Spartans. You want Master Chief S117. We’re going to give you Master Chief.” 343 then proceeds to tell a story of every other character in Infinite and only using S117 as a conduit to get the story from point A to point B.
That’s what happened here. That’s the Last Ronin. A story about everyone else except the last surviving turtle. A story that sets up potentially great plot points and then forgets about them. A story that shows individuals basically teleporting to spots in mere moments, but then struggling or taking too long to get to get elsewhere, especially if it’s back to where they were.
There were moments of: “Well… You said or did this here… Why didn’t that happen there?” or “That’s a nice development! I’m curious as to where… Oh that’s it. We’re dropping that altogether…” The final turtle seems to use his brothers’ weapons, or a new set of tonfas, and never his own. That would have been a great moment to see this turtle go back to his own at some point, but that never happens. The big baddie is never fully fleshed out. I care not for them. And the deaths of many seem kind of glossed over. No real build up. I would read a flashback and then realize… Oh… The story is just going to move on now… This isn’t going to linger. There’s no time to mourn or reflect on how powerful this moment should be. Like the big song in Frozen. There’s no build up. It just sort of happens out of nowhere. Bad editing. Also: “REALLY!? THAT’S how you took out THAT turtle? Seems like something they could have easily… Oh no… I’m making sense… You’re right. They TOTALLY wouldn’t have.”
I feel bitter after reading this. The art was fun. But I never felt like part of the story. If anything, this story made me feel like I had ADHD and missed whole pages of content. But no. It just skipped around frantically trying to touch on some important subjects while getting in to the nitty gritty of irrelevant junk. Some of the statues made for The Last Ronin are amazing. But they seem to idolize what the true contents of the comic should have been and not what it actually was.
Going to go to Barnes and Noble later to see if they have any Graphic Novels left in their Manga section…
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3 Replies
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Dag Gummit…
I post this and ALMOST IMMEDIATELY see a story that IDW will release a new crossover comic where TMNT will pair up with Stranger Things… >_<
It’s not for me. I’m out.
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The Last Ronin was okay. The issues released so far apart it was almost hard to remember what happened in the previous issue.
I thought the idea of showing the brothers talking to Mikey, and sort of guiding him through memories, and even his imagination was cool, but as you allude to, it didn’t quite stick the landing each time. It felt like it was to contrast his normally upbeat and humorous attitude with ‘my brothers are dead, and I must now avenge them’ in a serious tone, but it gets lost in the sauce of that.
I think overall it was decent, but didn’t stick the landing very well.
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I can’t imagine having to wait that long between issues. That definitely would have made it more difficult to follow. I remember trying to keep up with Civil War 2 and Marvel taking so long between issues that you found out Tony Stark was dead before they killed him. At least one, if not two issues had alluded to him only being a hologram before Civil War explained why he was no longer physically present. Because even though Civil War 2 was not a good story, Marvel needed extra time in making and releasing it and it fell behind the schedule of other attached or parallel stories. If that’s the case, stories like Last Ronin and Civil War 2 need to be made as a whole and released as a complete book. You can’t commit to a story and drag it so long people lose interest or start getting confused in other series.
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