The Case For Donnie And April

I know this can be a contentious subject, and I'll cheerfully accept the contempt which is sometimes bestowed upon that species of fan, The Shipper, saving any thoughts about the label and the contempt for some other day. The fact is, in any and every iteration, I think it's pretty likely that Donatello will fall in love with April at some point, and (dependent on circumstances, temperaments, relative ages, etc) every once in a while he might have a chance. The metatext doesn't lie.

As far as I know, the 2012 show was the first version to explicitly address the idea that the resident TMNT polymath, who loves Shakespeare and/or Greek mythology, and gets excited over fractals and Dewey decimal and quantum processors, might actually be quite taken with the brave, intelligent young woman who becomes the Turtles' ally. I really appreciated the 2012 take on it... it was so horribly, painfully, realistically awkward. Donnie had so much growing up to do, to transform his attraction from a selfish adolescent passion into something that - as friendship or otherwise - was worth offering, and safe to accept. And April, who got so used to the attention that she couldn't just leave the poor guy alone when he was trying to get over her... oof. The whole thing was alternately torturous and sweet to watch. But they did grow, and their relationship matured over time, and whether it was patiently traversing ground toward romance, or just calming down into friendship, is up for debate. To me it always looked more like the former. I could be wrong, but for Season 5 I just assumed they were being written as a couple. That first shot of the two of them in the Kavaxas storyline, with Donatello sitting at April's feet and eating noodles like it's no big deal, seemed like a huge neon sign with an arrow - because no matter how much of a friendship they might develop, the Donnie I got to know on that series would always be on some sort of chivalrous high-alert around April, to avoid making a misstep. I'm pretty sure the only possible cause for the display of comfortable proximity in this shot is that they've been firmly established as a romantic duo... and I will pay five bucks to the first person who brings me proof that Ciro Nieli said I am wrong about it.

People sometimes get antsy about the idea of the Turtles having romantic inclinations and lives, but I don't really relate to that objection, because to me the Ninja Turtles belong to fairy tale. They have all the trappings of weird pulpy sci-fi and pop-culture homage, but that's just how we tell our fairy tales nowadays. We sometimes forget that those kinds of stories used to be dangerous and often turned out badly. That the happiness was contingent, and complicated, and often temporary, and that people died, and plans were frustrated. Sounds a lot like the Turtles to me. So here we are with Ninja Turtles and fairy tales, and, like the midpoint twist in a love story, April has very suddenly and very distinctly become a creature of fairy tale herself. In the 2012 series she's a mutant-alien hybrid. In the 2018 series she's in the process of becoming a conduit for magic and ancestor spirits and ninpo. In Mirage Volume 4, by 2005, she's a living drawing who at any moment might disappear into the dimension of Ebrik, to which the only portal has been lost.

Vol 4... I swear. As much as Peter Laird disclaimed against such pairings for decades, it looks an awful lot like he's setting up the idea of Donatello being in love with April. Maybe I'm imagining things. Or maybe Laird just realized that comic books and fairy tales have a lot in common, and he stopped fighting inevitability. Let's put aside the crazy coincidental connection that April's warp crystal origin makes between her and Donatello (and, come to think of it, 2012 April also assumed unto herself Don's commonly shown propensity for psychic/transcendental episodes), and jump right into Donatello's dream in issue #31 (available free, on Laird's blog online). In his dream, Donatello is wandering along through the countryside in a full-out Robin Hood, Lincoln Green get-up, when he comes to a log that acts as a river crossing. A huge figure in Shredder-like armour comes out of the forest to stop him from entering into "Shredwood," and they fight on the log, trading insults taken right out of Shakespeare, until Don knocks the guy into the river. His helmet having come off, the man turns around and reveals himself to be... Casey Jones. Casey says something cryptic about April, and Don wakes up to the phone ringing. I love how it calls back to their fight in the early Northampton days, when Casey and Don did not like each other, and when Casey was really kind of a jerk. But it goes a lot farther than that. To have a dream in which you are innocently going about your business, only to be antagonized and attacked by a faceless villain, and then to fight and overcome said villain, who turns out to be the husband of your very lovely friend, and who - after you defeat him - says the name of that friend to you with an angry look... I'm just saying there's some subtext here, and poor Donatello is probably in for some personal realizations in the near future. He obviously has no idea yet, because at the next instant he's awoken by a phone call from April herself, and with blissfully unaware naivety he goes on to tell her about this weird dream he just had.

So Donatello is undergoing a bit of a romantic awakening, as it were, but whether or not he has any chance with her is a whole other question. Keep in mind, though, that the characters' ages are suddenly clarified in Volume 4, and they are not nearly as far apart as we might have thought. A box of O'Neil home videos marked '62 (1962) is expressly stated to be from two years before April was born. This puts her birth around 1964, making her 20 years old during her employ with Baxter Stockman when she met the Turtles - as young as she could possibly be while credibly having the position, and somewhere between five and seven years older than the Ninja Turtles themselves. By the time the Turtles are in their 30s (as they now are in Vol 4), that's not an extraordinary difference. And Laird himself teased that Karai’s daughter from earlier in the series may have been adopted, hinting that Karai might be quite a bit younger than anyone assumed.

Look, hopefully none of us thinks Casey actually cheated on April in his drunken state, even though he did wake up in his underpants in Karai's bed (#30). (Eek.) That would just be too bleak and soapy for the Turtles.

Casey's grown into a pretty good person, and I think we all want both he and April to lead happy lives. But the mishap will out, even if he foolishly tries hide it. April is almost home, and Karai has just asked to use the bathroom. April will find Karai in their house. Casey will be nervous and weird. He won't know if anything happened or not, and Karai is probably going to Loki the crap out of the situation for a good five minutes before she admits that nothing happened. The result will be a huge fight between Casey and April, followed by some serious conversations about their marriage. How are those conversations gonna go? In some iterations Casey and April seem like a great fit. In the 1990 movie… in those few frames of The Last Ronin 2… even in the fan comic MNTG. But in Mirage, they hardly have anything in common other than Shadow and the secret of the Turtles. The Turtles aren't a secret anymore. Shadow is almost grown. So what's left? Much as they might care about each other, do they even have anything to build on, going forward? And if they do split up, Casey has never been the type to be alone for long. Doesn’t running around kicking butt with Karai seem like a pretty good fit for Casey Jones, instructor in Pain 101? In a FB post from a couple years ago (six? SIX YEARS! My gosh), Jim Lawson even posted a hypothetical picture for a possible end to Volume 4, and teased the idea that a woman's figure off in the distance with Casey might be Karai rather than April. Maybe he was just messing with us, or maybe not. (And sure, as of issue #32 Donatello is still the size of an action figure, but it would only take the flimsiest of happenstance to fix that.)

The thing that isn't really clear then, again, is would Don have a shot? As far as I can tell, that's largely dependent on April’s own journey going forward. If April learns to be happy with herself, and to feel like there's a place in the world where she really belongs... that her uniqueness is a strength rather than a liability... I think the chances are pretty good. The two of them are already great friends who arguably have more common ground than most of the other characters. And plus, you know... fate.

There's a romance buried in this story that is full on meta-textual. It's bigger than any one iteration, and it's continually evolving, and it all comes back to the Prime World of Mirage, and that is really fascinating. I love fairy tales. I love sci-fi. I love improbable creatures, and the inherent dignity of sapient beings pursuing what is right and true while living lives of usefulness and curiosity. And, let's be honest, I really love love. So I hope it works out... even if "life at best is bittersweet."