BRIEF STORYLINE: In his homeland of Japan, Shredder is in Tokyo and breaks into the Ninja Hall of Fame and steals the diary of the well-renowned Kojima Brothers and vanishes back through the Dimensional portal just before the police arrive.
A member of the police, Lieutenant Saki, is surprisingly the baby brother of Shredder, whose real name is Oroku Saki. He is at the break-in incident and discover’s Shredder’s fingerprints on the glass case, where the Kojima Brothers diary was placed inside.
Lt. Saki, ashamed of his brother’s walk on the bad side of the law, vows to find Oroku and arrest him. This leads him to America, and no sooner does he fortunately meet the turtles at the local Nuclear Fusion Reactor. The turtles explain they are on guard, as the Super Magnet is a prime target of Shredder’s.
The turtles, although conscious of being allied to the police, not their best of friends, decide to join up with the Tokyo cops to track Shredder down. They spot Shredder breaking into Acme Electronics. Lt Saki is no rule breaker and sticks to the law, the turtles are annoyed when they are stopped trying to put a halt to Shredder.
Shredder’s plan was to bring the Kojima Brothers back to life. They are known for being the three greatest ninja masters of all time. Shredder programmes them as holograms, which unleashes their secrets of their fighting. Meanwhile, Lt Saki has been handcuffed to a drainpipe by Shredder. Can the turtles stop Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady stealing the Super Magnet, which has the ability to pull the Technodrome through the Dimensional portal and into the middle of the city? How will they defeat the Kojima Brothers? And will Shredder ever reunite with his brother Lt Saki for good, not evil?
TMNT REVIEW HQ COMMENTS: An episode with some importance and historical value, where the location of the Technodrome changes – which doesn’t happen much – from Dimension X to the North Pole on Earth. An appealing story where we find out Shredder has a brother, however like the opposite of him, he fights for good as a police lieutenant. Do they reunite and make up? Do they hell. Shredder is unrepentant about his bad deeds so the brotherly rift is never mended. Dodgy at the start but strengthens afterwards, with a few very good moments. One minor question I hold to this episode, when Bebop and Rocksteady are in a shoot-out with the cops with their laser guns, why do the 20h century cops have them as well? Oh that’s right (it’s a rhetorical question), gun bullets were deemed too violent or too graphic for the audience.
The high zenith-like moments that amuse or show real good cartoon quality are: when Lt. Saki brings his goody-two-show by-the-law demands of telling the turtles to slow down as they are breaking the speed limit and stop at the red light leaving Shredder to get away, Shredder showing a demonstration to Krang of what the Kojima brothers will do to the turtles and Krang then saying he will “turn the city to toast, Rocksteady goofing up trying to overload the system at the Nuclear reactor by falling down the stairs and Shredder’s reaction, Krang complaining that the Technodrome could crash land into the lava, the Technodrome beginning to move and the turtles reaching the nuclear reactor to save Lt. Saki from Shredder. Most of the fights are of a good standard.
The worst of the rot includes the small fight between the turtles and Bebop and Rocksteady at the reactor when the police are outside, Donatello’s wacky machine at the beginning of the episode which is just “filler-in” parts which have no relation to the storyline, April talking to the old man on the turtle-com, Shredder stealing the Kojima brothers diary which isn’t well done and the revealing of the hologram Kojima brothers isn’t any better with predictable banter from Bebop and Rocksteady (“what’s a hologram?”). On the whole though, a solid action-packed episode, and good to see a more Japanese theme, where our main characters have Japanese roots.
"MY BROTHER, THE BAD GUY" GETS A: 3/5 RATING.
