hyakujuuou - Tumblr blog

[hyakujuuou]

Jay: Look, I got distracted, but I was going to do my dishes. Now I can’t find my spknork!

Jay: Helloooo? Who moved my spknork? It’s rude to touch other people’s stuff, y’know.

Zane:

Zane: Kai… please procure The Utensil.

Ninja cooking/kitchen headcanons

Zane is a master of cooking and baking. It pains him to watch the others be bad at it, but he’s too nice to kick them out of the kitchen. He has a collection of novelty aprons.

Jay dabbles in a little cooking, but not very well. He likes experimenting with flavours, but he sometimes gets too adventurous.

Nya will try anything Jay makes, but only once. She’s his biggest (only) fan. She herself can make a few simple dishes, but nothing she’s particularly proud of.

Kai has never killed anyone with his food. He was never taught to cook, but he figured it out as a kid when he had to provide for himself and Nya. When he had the Sword of Fire, he would use it as a stove just to make Zane cringe. He does use his fire powers to cook, and Zane has to allow it because he’s the only one who can cook food that Nya will eat.

Nya is a picky eater. Apart from tasting Jay’s food, she’s very particular when it comes to her actual meals. She has one pair of chopsticks that’s hers and she refuses to use a different pair. She brings these to restaurants.

Cole likes to bake, but he won’t share the kitchen. The other ninja have wandered into the kitchen for a 3 AM glass of water to find him making two dozen cookies on multiple occasions.

Lloyd uses his ninja stealth to sneak into the kitchen and steal a mouthful of anything Zane leaves on the counter unsupervised.

Pixal does not cook but greatly enjoys watching Kitchen Nightmares.

Wu chronically underseasons.

On the other hand, Garmadon refuses to lay off the spices. Neither his nor Wu’s food is edible.

In her work as a historian, Misako reconstructed some ancient recipes. She likes to make them. Nobody likes to eat them.

Jay has one of those spork knives. He calls it his “spknork” and insists that everyone else should as well. Zane refuses to call it anything other than “The Utensil”.

One of kid Lloyd’s pranks was scraping the cream off of Oreos and replacing them with toothpaste. Jay ate a whole pack of these and asked Nya where she had gotten mint-flavoured Oreos.

[hyakujuuou]

Amen

something i will not forgive ninjago for: getting rid of jays eyebrow slit

[hyakujuuou]

Hi! We’re looking for Ninjago fans for our project, Ninjago: Champions of Spinjitzu. It’s a reimagined retelling of the original Ninjago story! We’re a nonprofit & volunteer-based project as well as a small but fun community! If you’re interested, DM us!

[hyakujuuou]

Ninja cooking/kitchen headcanons

Zane is a master of cooking and baking. It pains him to watch the others be bad at it, but he’s too nice to kick them out of the kitchen. He has a collection of novelty aprons.

Jay dabbles in a little cooking, but not very well. He likes experimenting with flavours, but he sometimes gets too adventurous.

Nya will try anything Jay makes, but only once. She’s his biggest (only) fan. She herself can make a few simple dishes, but nothing she’s particularly proud of.

Kai has never killed anyone with his food. He was never taught to cook, but he figured it out as a kid when he had to provide for himself and Nya. When he had the Sword of Fire, he would use it as a stove just to make Zane cringe. He does use his fire powers to cook, and Zane has to allow it because he’s the only one who can cook food that Nya will eat.

Nya is a picky eater. Apart from tasting Jay’s food, she’s very particular when it comes to her actual meals. She has one pair of chopsticks that’s hers and she refuses to use a different pair. She brings these to restaurants.

Cole likes to bake, but he won’t share the kitchen. The other ninja have wandered into the kitchen for a 3 AM glass of water to find him making two dozen cookies on multiple occasions.

Lloyd uses his ninja stealth to sneak into the kitchen and steal a mouthful of anything Zane leaves on the counter unsupervised.

Pixal does not cook but greatly enjoys watching Kitchen Nightmares.

Wu chronically underseasons.

On the other hand, Garmadon refuses to lay off the spices. Neither his nor Wu’s food is edible.

In her work as a historian, Misako reconstructed some ancient recipes. She likes to make them. Nobody likes to eat them.

Jay has one of those spork knives. He calls it his “spknork” and insists that everyone else should as well. Zane refuses to call it anything other than “The Utensil”.

One of kid Lloyd’s pranks was scraping the cream off of Oreos and replacing them with toothpaste. Jay ate a whole pack of these and asked Nya where she had gotten mint-flavoured Oreos.

[hyakujuuou]

Plot twist: it's the First Spinjitzu Master

I do not like creepy glowing Wu, no please, no more of that, thank you...

[hyakujuuou]

Here’s my quick Dragons Rising review:

Music: 9/10. Would be 11/10 but I hate the theme song enough to dock two points.

Comedy: 7/10 enjoyable.

Visuals: 20/10. The art style ended up being the only reason I finished it.

Pacing: 4/10 weird.

Characters: 3/10

Overall: 3/10 but I really want to like it.

[hyakujuuou]

Kai: Could I be the green ninja?

Cole: ???

we dont talk enough about how cole is canonically red-green colorblind

[hyakujuuou]

Note: this post talks about Dragons Rising, but no real spoilers.

For all of Ninjago’s shortcomings when it comes to representing Asian cultures, I think it’s hilarious that it CAN and DOES get worse.

Masters of Spinjitzu: there are times where it’s obvious that someone didn’t do their research, but for the most part, it just seems like we didn’t commit fully to representation, which was probably alright in 2011. Nevertheless, it doesn’t come off as malicious.

Dragons Rising: this is our French character. He has a comically heavy accent. He is a baker. He is a snail. He will have one line. We will not speak of the French again.

[hyakujuuou]

This post aged poorly

I love it when people make Ninjago headcanons involving nationalities from real life. We know Ninjago as a planet is Not The Same As Ours and none of our continents exist so whenever anyone says something like "which ninja do you think would speak French x3" I just imagine this

[hyakujuuou]

Note: this post talks about Dragons Rising but it’s all stuff that was in the trailer.

Something I find off-putting about Ninjago as a world is how several of the realms are just inhabited by essentially regular people and the other realms are inhabited by a fantasy race.

Imperium? Cloud Kingdom? Ninjago? The NeverRealm? Those are just filled with regular people.

Especially since Ninjago on its own is very diverse (multiple kinds of Serpentine, Shintaro’s citizens, the Merlopians, Geckles, Munce, etc.), it’s hard to really buy that the other places were once distinct realms with their own histories.

[hyakujuuou]

More meaningless rambling for tonight

The ninja’s relative ages weren’t confirmed until Hunted where Jay mentioned that they were “older teenagers” (assuming that refers to 18-19 year olds - technically adults but still in the “teen” numbers), meaning that they were younger teenagers at the beginning of the series.

Except at the beginning of the series, Kai owns the family blacksmith shop and supports himself and Nya. The ninja work as teachers. They can all drive and pilot with a lot of skill. Nya built Samurai X in a cave. They’re generally allowed and trusted to handle themselves like adults. Their relationship with Lloyd is distant— like young adults forced to babysit their younger nephew, not teenagers who could still have a little empathy for his rebellious nature. When they first meet him, they’re instantly dismissive of him in that “ah, children, we’ve all been there done that” way that says that they haven’t been children for a while.

Also, Lloyd being aged up with the tea was a big moment in which he sacrificed his childhood for the greater good. It’s not as dramatic if he just became a young teenager with the other ninja.

I guess the writers tried to go with that more tragic “oh they were just children when they were forced to fight in the war” thing towards the end of the series, but they also could have just let the ninja be older from the beginning. They’re Legos, so it doesn’t actually matter how old they are as long as they do cool things, in terms of “looking relatable/appealing to kids”.

[hyakujuuou]

It’s not the fact that Garmadon was resurrected and turned into a completely different character per se, it’s the fact that the writers chose to bring him back at all.

Because yes, the show did make his resurrection and the personality change make sense within the context of the show, but Ninjago is still just a show, meaning that the writers could have done anything and they still chose to make the choices they did with Garmadon’s character.

Garmadon is one of the few characters who had a clearly defined character arc with a beginning and a satisfying conclusion and taking that away from him where it wasn’t necessary is a bad writing choice. Also, since the new Garmadon is so different from classic Garmadon even though they share a name and (to a certain extent) an appearance, it creates friction between the two versions because they are essentially two different characters who have to be considered one. It’s also not like the new Garmadon is a progression of the development of the old Garmadon: the transition is only explained by Harumi’s actions and that isn’t enough to make the two versions of Garmadon into one cohesive character.

The other thing is that revived Garmadon, despite being nothing but an evil emperor, was allowed to stick around rather than being defeated like the other Ninjago villains. This puts him in a very awkward position as a character because he’s not a protagonist, but he wasn’t defeated like an antagonist, and he’s obviously too important to be shoved to the side and forgotten like other side characters, but he lost his place in the ninja dynamic and doesn’t want to get it back.

Tl;dr - the new Garmadon is forced into a really awkward place as a character and his new personality clashes so badly with the perception of him based on classic Garmadon that it’s difficult to get on board with his character. Exacerbated by the fact that “helping Harumi beat up Lloyd” is not a good enough reason to make classic Garmadon’s development and sacrifice meaningless.

Honestly, I don't really understand when people say "The Oni Trilogy ruined Garmadon's character by removing literally everything likeable about him" like. yeah. that is the point??? Mystake said, in s8, that if Garmadon is resurrected, he'll be NOTHING like he used to be, and he'll only be all the darkness.

The season clearly says him and classic Garmadon aren't the same, because Resurrected Garmadon is meant to be a shell of what Garmadon once was. His "wit" and "sense of humor" don't exist because he's literally meant to just be a dark conqueror and destroyer.

If anyone could PLEASE explain why they feel that way (preferably in a nice and respectable manner maybe idk) and think Resurrected Garmadon is a bad character for not matching a version hes not meant to, Id love to hear it !!! /gen

[hyakujuuou]

Trying to get to the bottom of this

A big thing might be Lloyd, Kai, and Nya having essentially the same design makes it feel like more of a continuation of the original series than the writers intended, especially since we’re used to seeing a different ninja outfit every season, so new outfits don’t work to convey the passage of time or character change/development.

Also the use of Lloyd, Kai, and Nya specifically, since they’re more fan favourites and I just see them more often in fandom/future AUs than Cole and Zane.

The first big thing I personally noticed is Sora’s design and the character descriptions in which they use he and she pronouns for both Sora and Arin. I just don’t think that Ninjago would make a trans main character, especially portrayed in this way specifically, after spending the entire original series skirting around any sort of representation, not just LGBT.

Sora’s design itself also seems like a fan work from the pink hair to the makeup to the cat theme. I think the main thing is the choice of cat ear headphones specifically. Something like “one of the other realms is populated by a race of cat people who have cat ears” seems like more of a Ninjago move, especially since we got Formlings. Sora feels like an OC for a different series. I don’t know how much time is supposed to have passed between the original series and Dragons Rising, but the only element of Sora’s outfit/design that visually connects it with the Ninjago aesthetic is the ninjargon text. Compare Arin’s design, which is a little more consistent with the original aesthetic.

That along with the prospect of using he/him pronouns, and that’s way more typical of fan OCs than character designs coming from professional studios, since that design would only really appeal to a very specific demographic of LGBT internet teens/young adults (which doesn’t seem to be the series target audience anyways) and given the attitude of the US specifically (and the world generally) towards transgender people, it doesn’t seem like a thing that a large company like Lego would risk their reputation with conservative parents over.

Another thing could be the specific elemental powers. In the original series, we’re used to seeing more natural element-based powers (ex. Water, Fire, Lightning) and powers that might be more ambiguous but are at the same time somewhat typical and self-explanatory (ex. Form, Sound, Mind). The elements I’ve seen for the new series (Technology and Heat) don’t neatly fit the description. It reads more like a fan trying to stretch the possibilities of Ninjago worldbuilding and come up with an OC power that nobody else has thought of yet and that won’t show up in a future season.

Also, most (or about half) of the new human characters in the trailer being female is at odds with the original series, where the characters are majority male. Not to say it’s a bad development, but it’s different.

And the use of more unique character designs and more variety of hair pieces/more hair textures represented definitely feels like a fan trying to increase Ninjago representation since we’re all used to essentially the same few hair pieces with the same few hair textures. Also not a bad development and I’m interested to see where this goes in terms of rep in Ninjago.

As for the premise of the series itself (“other Lego projects crossover with Ninjago), it isn’t actually that unrealistic for Ninjago, since Chima already made a short cameo in Possession and the idea of many realms which interact to a certain extent has been on the table since the beginning of the series. Realm travel happens in several seasons. It’s not like it’s a massive thing that came out of the blue and it’s the logical progression of the theme of the ninja having to face bigger and bigger threats every instalment.

The part of the premise that seems fanmade is the focus on dragons. It’s an existing Ninjago theme that’s been there from the very beginning, but it’s also been done and manipulated in so many different ways. Also, the idea of “a conquering society is using dragon power to power a takeover of x place” was already done in Hunted. Together, these make it seem more like a fan trying to put a spin on existing Ninjago themes than an original Ninjago idea. Again, feels like a fan trying to make sense of existing Ninjago worldbuilding.

And I’m not labelling it as a bad show before it comes out, but I will say that the trailers didn’t make it seem that exciting to me.

Unpopular opinion perhaps, but I think Dragons Rising looks fanmade and not in a good way.

[hyakujuuou]

Unpopular opinion perhaps, but I think Dragons Rising looks fanmade and not in a good way.

[hyakujuuou]

Also not a big fan of the later Ninjago seasons’ animation. The first few seasons were a little awkward (but it was era-appropriate), the middle seasons were good and it was interesting to see the animation/style evolve slightly from one season to another, and then the later seasons felt corporate.

The way I want to describe it is “the early seasons were a show about legos. The later seasons are a show where legos are the medium”. As in, the Lego style seemed to enhance the early seasons, but it seems to hold the new seasons back.

Also, I hate how the new corporate art style made older female characters age in reverse. Misako and Edna are old ladies and there’s nothing wrong with them looking like it. If Ed can look like he aged, so can (and should) Edna. Maya in the new seasons legitimately just looks like Nya with her hair down, and the fact that their voices are so similar adds to the effect in a bad way. Plus, there’s only so many things that one can do to make lego characters look distinct and refusing to give old characters indication of their age removes one of those few things.

Ninjago hasn’t had cool ninja outfits since Hands of Time. I can’t explain why, but the characters and animation look like they got the sleek corporate logo downgrade over the timeskip between Hands of Time and Sons of Garmadon.

[hyakujuuou]

“The writers mistook Ninjago’s appeal as the dark, epic moments instead of the very sweet interactions between the main cast” is the best description I’ve ever seen and it makes so much sense when looking at not just how specific characters are portrayed, but the tone of the seasons overall.

After Possession and again after Hands of Time, the tone shifts to be a lot more ominous and, to some extent, more mature. Seasons get increasingly more action-packed at the expense of wacky shenanigans-based comedy and the writers raise the stakes each season. The early seasons feel much more free in terms of the comedy, whereas the later seasons are a lot more serious. This causes the writers to need serious characters in order to pull the tone off: having silly villains or including ridiculous pranks is simply incompatible with the themes in the heavier seasons we get starting with Sons of Garmadon.

In this way, the old Garmadon becomes incompatible with the new seasons, especially since he was brought back and hadn’t been able to be subtly changed from season to season as, say, Wu had, so there would already be some conflict between the season and his character. His humour would be misplaced and him remaining loving would subtract from his potential villainy/evil (even though it would add to his character) and the writers’ priorities seem to have shifted in the direction of creating the most evil, menacing, threatening entity to be a villain.

Original Post

Ninjago ruined Garmadon's character post hands of time. I miss the fun loving evil but also good and caring Lord/sensei and I miss the relationship between father and son and the relationship between his brother Wu.

Now Garmadon is just a monster who only cares for a plant and a fake daughter 'cough cough Harumi' more than he does his own son.

The writers should have killed off Garmadon permanently or have him under mind control by Harumi and implied that the good Garmadon could still re-emerge.

In short the writers killed Garmadon, brought back a oni masquerading in his name and ruining the image the fans have on him going forwards thanks to the influence of the movie. Hopefully the writers can fix the father-son relationship going further but I don't we're be getting the old Garmadon back. I'll just go watch season 1 - 4.

[hyakujuuou]

I’m not a fan of how the new Ninjago villains are all trying to conquer and rule [whatever the highest-stakes area is] and I’m a little disappointed that this is the direction that the new series seems to be headed. Compared to other Ninjago villains/antagonists, it’s been done and it’s honestly boring. If the villain’s main motive is “to rule everything”, then I can’t help but ask “so what?”. Antagonists like Harumi and the Time Twins at least had some other motivation unrelated to the idea of being rulers: Harumi wanted revenge on Lloyd, and the Time Twins believed that they should rule because they were the most powerful. Antagonists like the Ice Emperor and the Oni don’t have that piece of motivation, so they become very flat, two-dimensional villains who don’t bring any complexity to the story, and, as we see, they’re never allowed to win and the events of their seasons don’t have lasting consequences.

If the new series does in fact go with the main antagonist(s) attempting to rule, I hope they at least attempt to rationalise it because “I want to conquer because I am evil” has been done.

Also, “I want to rule” really doesn’t have high stakes compared to motives like “I want to hurt Lloyd”, since it doesn’t provide any kind of direction or potential stakes. When the Oni came, the result would be Ninjago falling to darkness. The Oni would never be allowed to win because there would be very little direction for a story to go after they established control: everything would be dark and destroyed, and the Oni would move on. It was very final and it posed a scenario where the ninja either won or they didn’t. On the other hand, when Harumi came into power, she used her power to hunt the ninja down for her revenge, leading into the next part of the story. It gave her more options and actually let the audience see what would happen and how the fight would continue if the villain managed to win. Since the ninja have already faced and defeated villains who only wanted to conquer, I think this is the direction the new series has to go in.