Hamato Karai is the overarching protagonist of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She is the founder of the Hamato Clan as well as the daughter of the leader of the Foot Clan, Oroku Saki, best known as The Shredder.
She was voiced by Gwendoline Yeo, who also voiced Shinigami in the 2012 TV series.
Appearance[]
Hamato Karai is a middle-aged Japanese woman with long straight graying black hair styled in a high ponytail, black eyes, light skin, and a thin figure. She wears a sage green jumpsuit with 3/4 sleeves, silver pauldrons, and a light olive green sash around her waist that drapes on both sides of her body with the Hamato Clan emblem placed on the center.
Personality[]
Karai is warmhearted and honest, however, she can be stern and serious if the situation demands it. Despite her irritation that Hamato Yoshi shirked off training his sons and not knowing Hamato Ninpo, she readily accepts that Splinter and the Turtles are her family despite how unusual it is that they're mutants.
Karai has a strong sense of justice, willing to leave her birth clan and create another to combat the terror spread by the Shredder and the Foot Clan. She is also very dedicated to her family, having sacrificed herself twice to save them. The first time trapping herself in an alternate dimension to repel her father for eternity and the second time to protect the Turtles from the Shredder's violence in "Shreddy or Not", partaking in a fight that ends her life, but death does not stop Karai from being with her family as her devotion to them continues even as a spirit.
Story[]
Karai makes her debut in the four-part series finale as ancestress of Splinter as the ninja master-turned-rat's maternal great-great-great-great grandmother, which prompted the Turtles to call her "Gram-Gram." In this comedic series, she is the biological daughter of Oroku Saki as opposed to being adopted by him, who recognized just how corrupt her father's soul was by the dark magical armor that warped him into the relentless, villainous Shredder. To put a stop to this battle of bloodshed, Karai went against her father and founded the Hamato Clan and imprisoned her own father in the Twilight Realm along with herself for five centuries.
After valiantly and tirelessly battling the once peaceful Foot Clan, Hamato Karai's spirit ended trapped within the Twilight Realm to suppress Shredder's full strength, and was referred to as "the weapon that could put an end to the Shredder" by her Hamato descendants, one of whom was Splinter's late mother. Once found by the Turtles and Splinter, she was surprised to see turtles and a rat standing on two legs and introduced herself as Hamato Karai, much to Splinter's excitement at meeting finally his maternal great-great-great-great grandmother. In the end, Oroku Saki is released from the dark force that had consumed his entire being and hugs his long-lost daughter. She then leaves for the Heavens with Saki's own essence to finally rest in peace.
