I’ve never been much of a TMNT fan: I faintly recall watching it at Nickelodeon in the 2010’s, when I was young, seldom catching one episode here and there. Never followed it to anywhere deeper than the surface, and as a result, most of what I know, I learned through cultural osmosis – Splinter is a wise rat, the four turtles have a fun back-and-fourth between them, each being a clear caricature of the trait they’re meant to represent, Shredder is the main enemy.

That’s the background I carried when I decided to take a look at The Last Ronin – which I picked up whilst traveling, simply out of curiosity and a distant recommendation I got in the past. It sat on my book shelf for months, until I got curious to peek and read a little.

The story starts off with a full blast, and it got me hooked right away. The ronin turtle, hardened by age and maturity, is everything I wouldn’t expect to see on the almost whimsical cartoons I was accustomed to expect from the franchise.
The visual language told me: “settle down, this isn’t going to all nice and peachy”.

As someone that only briefly dabbled in comic reading – I live in a country where this sort of stuff is awfully costly, and I don’t enjoy sitting through a translated piece of media, which makes it all the more prohibitively expensive – I found myself immediately immersed, and genuinely shocked at how well certain story beats communicated through the pages.

A silly example is a scene change from the lair to main villain’s tower. The page flip brought a color change that slapped me in the face and immediately brought a sensation of “ok, we’re not underground now”

Another clear example of this are the flashback scenes, so aptly presented in page flips, near all, and always fulfilled their intention of transporting me to a complete different state of mind – fuzzy, messy, distant.

That’s actually my main critique of the whole story: I wish the final scene would have also been rendered in the page-flipping, scene defining fashion.
I cannot help but let my eyes wonder at each page flip, and I kinda spilled the beans to myself there. But that’s honestly not a big deal, all things considered.

The characters are greatly portrayed, in a way that even a “normie” like myself could enjoy and get invested in their arks – no prior knowledge needed. What you must know shall be shown.

I particularly enjoyed how the ronin’s solo scenes have the other turtles represented as shadows over him, and how that evoked one of the most important traits of the TMNT that even I – again, through sheer cultural osmosis – acquired: the four turtles are almost a character in of itself. It felt right.

To sum up, The Last Ronin is a comic that transpires the love that has been poured into it, from the written story to the page direction, the unique art style to the color grading.
It’s fast paced, but knows when to give space for the reader to absorb the world that’s being laid out, and ultimately will keep you hooked from start to finish – I know I was.

Do yourself a favor and pick it up, if you have the chance.