While the body design is entirely based on the modern animated Foot Ninja, the weapons are more inspired by the utter uselessness of the original animated F.O.O.T. Soldiers (remember, due to stricter laws regarding on-screen violence, they were a huge organization with hundreds of warriors…that couldn’t ever land a damaging blow on four humanoid turtles).

The animated Foot Ninja have dark-grey torsos, boots, and gloves with black sleeves and leggings. Unfortunately, we never got a dark-grey TOA torso (and now it’s too late), so I reversed those colors. The head stayed black with gold eyes, and a red hip-joint mounted GALI-style serves to represent the Foot symbol on the chest.

The first Foot Ninja is wielding a nagamaki. This Japanese weapon is the only historical polesword that I’ve ever been able to track down, and I thought it was a really cool concept until I did a little research into it. Many people incorrectly describe it as “a shorter version of the naginata”, but it’s very misleading. A naginata is a long staff with a short, wide, curved blade mounted to one end. Its light weight, so it can strike very fast. A nagamaki is essentially a really low-quality katana with a really long hilt (about as long as the blade itself). It provides a lot more leverage than a standard katana, but the blade isn’t as sharp, and it’s significantly heavier, which does a lot to offset any advantage you’d gain from the increased leverage. If you’re capable of using a nagamaki in battle, you’re probably better off just using a no-dachi, which is about the same length but with proportions that are more like those of a katana (in other words, you get more blade-length to work with).

The other weapon I designed was a kusari-gama, particularly because it looked like it could be an interesting challenge. Legend says that these were a favored weapon of the ninja of Japan, but in reality they are a highly ineffective design. It’s basically a kama (a harvesting tool that’s roughly equivalent to the sickle, but modified for use as a weapon) with a long weighted chain attached to the hilt (sometimes with another short rod, especially if the two sections are hollow and allow the chain to be concealed within). The two basic attack methods that are attributed to it are to entangle your opponent with the weighted chain and then slash him with the kama. This isn’t as effective as it might sound, because if your chain is wrapped around someone, your kama will be tethered to that person, and you won’t be able to put much force behind your attack, especially since your opponent will probably be struggling to break free (in other words, it makes a lot more sense to use a plain kama and a separate chain). A more complicated attack is where you twirl the chain around by the weighted end, and the kama strikes your opponent. Physics prevent this from being at all effective, as the blade will trail behind the hilt, and you’ll most likely just give your opponent a nasty lump rather than slicing him up as intended. The end links attach to the handles at 90 degrees, so this one required a pose that would make that look like the chain is hanging naturally.