>>113461437Not really. It initially depicts Utroms as an evil hivemind with a different name, merges Splinter and Yoshi, depicts instant hybridisation mutations instead of slow anthropomorphisation, changes April's origin from magic drawing to alien (also giving her psychic powers), reducing her, Karai and Casey's ages, depicts the Rat King as a mad scientist instead of a demi-god, etc. More importantly however, it pulled far more characters from other projects and contained mostly original stories.
TMNT 2003 On the other hand was indeed as close to the Mirage comics as the cartoons have ever gotten. While by no means as close as possible, 60-75% of episodes in seasons 1-4 were clearly based off some story found in the comics, with season having some conceptual similarities to the contemporary Laird/Lawson run. And even though containing original characters, any older characters were strictly lifted from the comics.
Seriously, the only way you'd make a more faithful cartoon would be to take fewer liberties with established characters, create almost no new ones and make fewer episodes over all to avoid being forced to make new stories.
