Eagle-eyed Magic: The Gathering fans spotted what appeared to be a strange mistake in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set when its first cards were shown in October, but we've now received confirmation this was an intentional choice.
In all his card art appearances so far, Raphael is armed with a different weapon from the ones he normally carries. Rather than his usual triple-spiked sai, the red-masked turtle has a jitte, a two-pronged weapon, instead.
Unlike a typo in the recently-cancelled Monster Hunter Secret Lair, this doesn't seem like the kind of change that could've slipped in by mistake, so we reached out to WotC, and in response a representative told Wargamer:
"This is intentional and Wizards will talk about the process and the reasons behind this when we get closer to TMNT preview season."
Interesting!
Until that happy day, we won't know for sure why WotC might have made this deliberate swap. But, in the meantime, we can make an educated speculation, because Wizards has avoided sai weapons in the past, and been clear about the reason. In the Building Worlds video for Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, Wizards staff explain they avoided using Okinawan weapons in their Japanese-inspired plane because of the complicated history of this region.
Essentially, Okinawa was part of a separate Ryukyu kingdom until it was conquered by Japan in the 1870s. Since then it's been disproportionately affected by Japanese and then American imperialism, and some inhabitants still advocate for Ryukyu independence.
This history of oppression has direct links to weapons like the sai, as Okinawan weapons are commonly believed to have been converted from farming implements, after traditional armaments were banned (modern scholars have challenged this belief though).
We could totally see WotC making the same change for TMNT. Yes, the turtles live in New York, but they are ninjas, a traditionally Japanese occupation. WotC might've wanted to avoid throwing Japanese and Okinawan influences together in this MTG set, just as they avoided it for Neon Dynasty.
There's one problem with this theory, though, and it's a biggie. Most of the other turtles also use Okinawan weapons. Michelangelo's nunchucks and Donatello's bo staff are both of Okinawan origin, so of the four half-shelled heroes, it's actually only Leonardo who fights with a traditionally Japanese tool. But these have not been switched.
I personally suspect that, in the case of Raphael's sai, there's the advantage that there's a very similar Japanese weapon it could be exchanged for with minimal fuss, but perhaps I'm way off base. At any rate, it will be interesting to see Wizard's explanation for the change when we get to TMNT's time in the MTG release schedule.
It's also interesting that WotC is able to make these kinds of alterations to characters in a Universes Beyond set. It's fair to expect that their partners at Nickelodeon would have needed to sign off a change like this.
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