ninjagobythenumbers

[ninjagobythenumbers]

happy finals season

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Extremely rough approximation, but based on a quick analysis of my data, I'd say about 18 iterations pre-merge with 87 episodes where a main goal is looking for the missing character. As I suspected, Zane's the biggest damsel in distress.

With the merge, it gets complicated because everyone is missing all the time. At multiple points they're not even aware someone's been kidnapped. Also, they often have to put aside the goal of finding missing Ninja for the sake of the mission. Still, here's the post-merge chart.

The episodes are very iffy here because, I mean Zane and Nya are certainly looking for their significant others every moment they has a chance to, but, unlike previous seasons, the rest of the team isn't so it's difficult to put an episode number on what's happening. It also feels weird calling the disappearance 1 interaction when it lasted for years. Not to mention, the disparities in episode length. Nevertheless, here's the total.

Correcting for overlap, that's 119 out of 260 episodes where they're looking for someone and certainly more than half the seasons. I will eventually calculate my Damsel in Distress rate in a precise manner (likely by tallying up whether each Ninja is missing episode by episode rather than using the everyone moniker, taking out the active search factor, verifying certain episodes), but for now, it's certainly an interesting approximation.

Someone should count the amount of times the ninja actively search for each other when it should be impossible to find them

One of them could be dead and you still have them standing up like “let’s go find that idiot” at the slightest bit of hope. I think it’s adorable.

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Season 18 Groupings

This is a spreadsheet that really only I care about, but I hope you enjoy nevertheless. It's basically a visual depiction of how the characters were split up each episode. I will also discuss my views on how well the show's managing to juggle a dozen main characters.

This is a broad overview. Go here if you want to see a legible version. For now, I am just going to show Dragons Rising so we can compare with Chaos Rising.

Quick Observations

Wyldfyre once again spent the season with Roby. I find it interesting that at this point, she really only has a close relationship with Kai. In earlier seasons, the ninja's relationships were sort of equal levels of closeness. I like the new variations.

Now that PIXAL and Jay are back, Zane and Nya once again have consistent plotline partners, making it easier to track them.

Love how much time Kai and Nya have spent together this era. I hope that doesn't entirely go away now that Jay's returned.

The main Ninja Group (purple) now pretty much always consists of Lloyd, a friend of his, Riyu, and a couple kids. I don't expect this to change anytime soon. Show's about them after all.

Cole really does not spend time with the Ninja anymore. Cool that he still gets featured instead of being retired forever, though I sort of expected him to mentor Frak. I guess he already has kids. Maybe in the future.

Love how, for this entire show, Zane has had consistent solo missions. Upwards of 5 seasons where he gets a solo episode and then backseats for the rest of the season. Such an interesting character attribute and a wild balancing technique.

Chart & Key

Here's the key. Sorry that the names are silly.

Discussion

At long last, we have all of the Ninja. PIXAL's absence has been hard on my chart. But now that she's back and Jay's been kidnapped, we got to have another finale togetherness moment. (Almost. I primarily base my categorizations on where the Ninja are at the beginning of the episodes and Cole started the episode at home.) Every time I think the show has peaked in its plotline complexity, I am proven wrong. Especially with Dragons Rising, because the show is now juggling upwards of 10 main characters at a time. This season, despite having a fairly large primary group, I ended up with characters in 7 different simultaneous groupings. I added Frak because he seems to be taking a main role and I'm really hopeful about a Serpentine joining the team. However, he is only here on probation. If he fails to have a consistent presence over the next few seasons or so, I'll strike him. PIXAL and the rest of the Ninja have tenure so no amount of dipping will eliminate any of them. Wu is absent from my chart, because he has a very inconsistent manner of participation in the plot due to his status as a mentor figure. But, I mean the Ninja are now doing the same sort of stuff he'd do so I might add him later. A difficult part about both incorporating Frak and Jay was the fact that, for a lot of their episodes, despite being in the same scenes with the ninja, they would often be on different sides or even in entirely different plotlines. The latter problem is primarily Jay's fault. I ended up ignoring these distinctions between the categorization is based more on sharing scenes than why they're in the scene.

I would have had to add another Busy categorization, but I decided to instead stretch the definition of Homebase instead, because sure the Land of Lost Things isn't all of the ninja's homebase, but it's Cole's home, so for now, it works. As an aside, I find it hilarious that Cole said "hey guys, I'm gonna go look for Arin in my house" and then he just didn't return all season. Clearly an excuse to go home to Geo and his kids. Zane's clearly also angling to get out now that PIXAL's back.

It always sucks when a Ninja is stuck at home, but it's necessary. It's impossible to give proper time to a dozen characters. It's also a long-standing practice in the show. There's hardly a season where a character isn't homebasing (usually Nya or PIXAL in early seasons unfortunately, later on often Kai or Cole). I think I might make a post later about the techniques I've noticed that the show uses to balance all its characters (Homebase, backseating, solo missions) as well as what characters usually end up in such delegations. Thanks for reading all this! Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions for additional charts.

[ninjagobythenumbers]

I have a more detailed post on doing the Bechdel test for the show overall if you're interested! Discussed all those earlier seasons you mentioned and how the female characters' roles impact the success/failure rate of each season. I should clarify that this season did not fail the Bechdel test overall! Only the pilot season and Rise of the Snakes failed so grievously.

Also, Crystalized did have more iterations of failures than this season. DR seasons have overall been easy successes.

It just happened to fail the reverse Bechdel test as well because most of the characters were in male/female pairings. I think any actual issue you notice is likely to be more significant than failing the Bechdel test as it's just a tool that's, at most, useful in aggregate. Often overlooks a lot of nuance. For instance, a few of the episodes that fail in later seasons are really great plots for female characters (ex: Pixal's solo episodes) but they fail because a named woman can't have a conversation with herself.

Season 18 Bechdel Test

I gotta say. This was not a great season for women. (That is, if you only go by the Bechdel test, which is really only useful as in aggregate for getting somewhat of an overview on representation. It is not a test that accounts for any sort of nuance. It is just for fun.) Here's the rest of the seasons for comparison. Full spreadsheet here.

As you can see, this season had more failures of the Bechdel test than any season since Crystalized. More than one of the episodes that succeeded would have failed if not for an exchange between Rox and Kur. (As I've been saying since Sons of Garmadon, having a female henchman to a female villain makes passing the Bechdel test easy. Super catchy saying.) This season also only had 2 named women introduced. Much less than prior DR seasons, but I will chalk that up to overall reduction in new characters. Just guessing off the top of my head, 5 men were introduced. At least. So hmm, I hope DR isn't losing one of its key Bechdel success factors - not having men be the default. That would truly be a regression. Aside from that, I don't think that this season's failures demonstrate any sort of destruction of the show's female characters or anything like that. It failed primarily because of two simple factors.

The main female characters were split up.

The characters' primary goal was to find two male characters.

Elaborating on these points, for the majority of this season, Sora was the only woman in a group while Nya and Wyldfire were in a group with Kai. You'd think that the Nya & Wyldfire group would save us, but both characters tend to only talk to Kai because that's the character they have a close relationship. Similarly, you'd think PIXAL joining the Sora group would help, but the two characters never end up speaking because Sora spent this season mainly speaking to Arin, Frak, and Lloyd and PIXAL primarily speaks to Zane. And I mean, this issue of female characters only speaking to male characters could be indicative of a larger issue in which they're really only accessories to a male storyline (ex: just a sister/girlfriend/mom). However, I think it's more due to this season's group breakdown. I'll also point out that Zane primarily speaks to PIXAL. They've always neutralized eachother in interaction data. I think she actually spoke to more people this season than him. I also think, more than anything, the lack of interaction between female characters at the moment is of an age gap thing. As demonstrated by Nya's line "My brother and his clueless friend," there's sort of an interesting dynamic in the show right now where the adult Ninja don't really know the young Ninja at all unless they're mentoring them. I kind of like it to be honest. It's pretty realistic that they're not all close and that they'd discuss more serious issues (ex: the loss of Jay) with their long-term friends rather than some teenager. The characters' goals are also of course an issue. Nya's looking for Jay. Sora's worried about Arin. Wyldfire's trying to save Roby's life. Thus, whenever they speak to each other it ends up being about the man they're looking for. This, naturally, could also be indicative of a larger problem. We don't want female characters' storylines to always revolve around men. Still, provided this isn't a consistent problem, I'm inclined to think it's just a quirk of the story as it stands right now.

My reverse Bechdel of Crystalized actually suffered from the exact same problems. They were trying to find Nya and they spent much of the season split up into heterogenous groups. You may notice that the split was the bigger issue. Same case for Chaos Rising.

Thank you for reading all this! I'll reiterate that I just do the Bechdel test on Ninjago for fun because it's interesting to see how an kid's action cartoon (something that would be exclusively aimed at boys in the 2010s) has changed over time in how women are represented. If you want to see this chart clearer or the rest of my spreadsheets go to this link. Please let me know if you have any other ideas for Ninjago charts!

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Season 18 Bechdel Test

I gotta say. This was not a great season for women. (That is, if you only go by the Bechdel test, which is really only useful as in aggregate for getting somewhat of an overview on representation. It is not a test that accounts for any sort of nuance. It is just for fun.) Here's the rest of the seasons for comparison. Full spreadsheet here.

As you can see, this season had more failures of the Bechdel test than any season since Crystalized. More than one of the episodes that succeeded would have failed if not for an exchange between Rox and Kur. (As I've been saying since Sons of Garmadon, having a female henchman to a female villain makes passing the Bechdel test easy. Super catchy saying.) This season also only had 2 named women introduced. Much less than prior DR seasons, but I will chalk that up to overall reduction in new characters. Just guessing off the top of my head, 5 men were introduced. At least. So hmm, I hope DR isn't losing one of its key Bechdel success factors - not having men be the default. That would truly be a regression. Aside from that, I don't think that this season's failures demonstrate any sort of destruction of the show's female characters or anything like that. It failed primarily because of two simple factors.

The main female characters were split up.

The characters' primary goal was to find two male characters.

Elaborating on these points, for the majority of this season, Sora was the only woman in a group while Nya and Wyldfire were in a group with Kai. You'd think that the Nya & Wyldfire group would save us, but both characters tend to only talk to Kai because that's the character they have a close relationship. Similarly, you'd think PIXAL joining the Sora group would help, but the two characters never end up speaking because Sora spent this season mainly speaking to Arin, Frak, and Lloyd and PIXAL primarily speaks to Zane. And I mean, this issue of female characters only speaking to male characters could be indicative of a larger issue in which they're really only accessories to a male storyline (ex: just a sister/girlfriend/mom). However, I think it's more due to this season's group breakdown. I'll also point out that Zane primarily speaks to PIXAL. They've always neutralized eachother in interaction data. I think she actually spoke to more people this season than him. I also think, more than anything, the lack of interaction between female characters at the moment is of an age gap thing. As demonstrated by Nya's line "My brother and his clueless friend," there's sort of an interesting dynamic in the show right now where the adult Ninja don't really know the young Ninja at all unless they're mentoring them. I kind of like it to be honest. It's pretty realistic that they're not all close and that they'd discuss more serious issues (ex: the loss of Jay) with their long-term friends rather than some teenager. The characters' goals are also of course an issue. Nya's looking for Jay. Sora's worried about Arin. Wyldfire's trying to save Roby's life. Thus, whenever they speak to each other it ends up being about the man they're looking for. This, naturally, could also be indicative of a larger problem. We don't want female characters' storylines to always revolve around men. Still, provided this isn't a consistent problem, I'm inclined to think it's just a quirk of the story as it stands right now.

My reverse Bechdel of Crystalized actually suffered from the exact same problems. They were trying to find Nya and they spent much of the season split up into heterogenous groups. You may notice that the split was the bigger issue. Same case for Chaos Rising.

Thank you for reading all this! I'll reiterate that I just do the Bechdel test on Ninjago for fun because it's interesting to see how an kid's action cartoon (something that would be exclusively aimed at boys in the 2010s) has changed over time in how women are represented. If you want to see this chart clearer or the rest of my spreadsheets go to this link. Please let me know if you have any other ideas for Ninjago charts!

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Season 18 Timeline Update

Nothing too exciting this season because, according to Ras, who would never lie about anything, there's only been a few weeks between season 17 and 18. I would have put a month between ToS and Chaos anyway, just based on the vibes, but it's nice of Ras to give confirmation. Everytime a character references an actual length of time, a spreadsheet gains its wings. It's also nice of the writers to withhold from another year long time-skip. Nice to Kai specifically, as his 30th birthday grows ever closer. Here's the full chart.

In personal news, I did find a good way to make the age chart legible.

It's a simple trick I like to call, "letting old man Zane's data go out of range." I toyed with having the y-axis start at 10, because the kids aren't really doing anything until they hit that age, but I think it's funny to see that they're toddlers in season 1. It's also getting to a point where I get confused between the x and y axis because there's been so many seasons. Oh, I also added Frak. He's here on probation. If he doesn't have a consistent presence over the next few seasons, I'll strike him. The rest of the Ninja have tenure, so they can dip as much as they want. If you're wondering why PIXAL or Riyu aren't included, they are on other charts, but I just have no conception of their ages, so they remain absent from this one. Here's the full data and a chart that lets Zane hang around.

To see a clearer version of this data, along with my other charts you can go to this link. I'll be posting the bechdel and plotline updates soon. Let me know if you have any suggestions!

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Working on Season 18 Spreadsheets

And somehow, it seems the first episode of season 18 (or season 3 of Dragons Rising if you don't enjoy high numbers) has failed the Bechdel test (are there 2 named women who speak about something besides a man). Now, it of course has 2 named women. The show hasn't failed that since a few blips in Crystalized. I don't think it ever will again (short of a solo episode like Pixal's or Akita's in Ice) because there's now multiple female main characters. This episode even introduces a new named woman. Hooray for Kur. And women do talk to each other, but not a lot and unfortunately, it seems, in this episode, all these people do is talk about men. We also have the unfortunate groupings of Kai, Nya, & Wyldfire and then Sora with the rest. Never good when Sora and Nya are split up because both Nya and Wyldfire tend to just speak to Kai rather than each other. Ultimately, in this episode, we end up having a few close calls with victory. (aka three conversations). We have Sora speaking to a woman about Arin. Unfortunately she's unnamed and Arin's a man so this isn't even that close. We have Wyldfire pointing out lightning to Nya. Unfortunately, Nya regards this conversation as about Jay.

And, for our last female conversation, we have Rox telling Kur not to kill two people in order to send out a message. This one, I could potentially consider victory, but there's two glaring issues. Kur does not respond verbally. While I have always counted non-verbal communication, it's contentious as to whether complying with a request constitutes participation in a conversation. Secondly, one of the people is apparently male. But I mean, who knows, and also even if he is, does he really count as the focus of the conversation? Thus, I ask you:

I should acknowledge that, in the early episodes, nearly every conversation I found left me wondering whether I should even count it. It's nice that now, it's extremely odd for me to be in such a situation. Normally, I hardly have to watch the episode to find a victory. Please let me know if you have any more thoughts.

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Do you guys think that today is Mark Severance's birthday or just Mark Scout's?

this is relavant because of the administration.

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Ninjago Character Search Engine

I made a tool where you can search Ninjago characters by name, type, allignment, species, gender, season, or a combination of all those factors. If you want to play around with it here's the link. I compiled all of the data myself so there's likely a few errors. I've already corrected where I had accidentally labeled Zane's dad as a serpentine. Please let me know if there's any problems!

How to use it

Basically, you just input the criteria you're interested in seeing. For instance, if you wanted to see all of the nindroids in Ninjago, you would do a search as follows.

An important thing you may notice here is I not only input "Nindroid", but I also input "New." I did this because my index has a new entry for each character each season. If you choose not you choose not to put "New," the output will include 21 Zanes, which is great but may not be what you're looking for.

Another thing to note is that if you're not searching by name, you need to make sure the name box is completely blank or you will get 0 results like in the following search where I left a space bar in the Name box.

If you are searching by Name, make sure the name exactly matches the entries or nothing will show up.

You can either view the entry in the index on the next sheet, or you can just find the person by inputting the proper criteria.

I also left some comments on the sheet with some useful tips! Feel free to ask any questions!

Criteria

I think it's important I explain how I created and employed my criteria as it can be pretty subjective.

Type

Type is one of my more subjective criteria. The options are Main, Supporting, Recurring, Guest, or Ensemble and I agonized over some of these placements. For instance, did Mr. F fulfill a supporting or Recurring role during season 9? Very difficult to say. Still, generally, these were my definitions. Main: Ninja (usually) or someone who significantly contributed to the plot and had a large percentage of screentime (it takes a lot for me to demote a ninja from main, but I had to in DR) ex: Lloyd in season 4

Supporting: A character that has a significant degree of screentime, their own personality/backstory, and helps another character push the plot along ex: Garmadon in season 4

Recurring: Pretty much any character that speaks in more than a few episodes ex: Chope and Kapau in season 4

Guest: A character with personality who speaks or otherwise makes a mark in only one episode that season ex: Morro in season 4

Ensemble: A character that's only in the background and/or has no personality of their own and/or is just sort of filling out an army ex: Acidicus in season 4

Allignment

Allignment is also a very tricky category. I had to make a choice about whether neutral or good would be the default for characters I don't know much about. I went with good as I feel like it fits the tone of the show. Thus, I assume for instance that Mara from Nya's class is a good person even though she's done nothing to demonstrate that.

Good: Default. Also, if you help save the world, I usually let it overshadow previous bad behaviour. ex: Arin in Dragons Rising (S1)

Neutral: You have to be pretty morally ambiguous to get this designation. I generally assigned it to influencers, anti-heros, somewhat redeemed villains, and members of morally unclear societies. ex: Agent Rodrick Allen in Dragons Rising (S1)

Evil: I generally assigned this to all antagonists, even if they weren't actively trying to destroy the world. ex: Rapton in Dragons Rising (S1)

Species

Here's a list of each species I included in my index.

Human Nindroid Demigod Skeleton Dragon Serpentine Beast Oni Ghost Djinn Hunter Construct Formling Munce Geckle Islander Merlopian Devonian Tide Unknown Miscellanous

Most of this criteria is pretty objective, so I'll only clarify the less obvious ones.

Beast: Any animal, monster, or creature. ex: Krag from the Ice Chapter

Construct: I applied this to any character created by another whether it be through magic or engineering. I excluded Nindroids because they're a large enough sub-category. ex: Bonzle from Dragons Rising or MiniPix Seven from Crystalized

Unknown: This just applies to the Forbidden Five as we don't know much about them but they don't appear human. ex: Nox in Dragons Rising

Miscellaneous: I only applied this in rare categories where not only was their species a bit unclear, but they appeared to be the only member of that species on screen. ex: Benthomaar from Seabound

Gender

Oh no, it appears I accidentally created a gender cascade. Anyway, I based character's genders primarily off of the gender of their VA , but I also took into consideration the pronouns other characters used to refer to them. I didn't do a thorough transcript search though, so let me know if I've made any errors. I designated some characters as unknown, usually because they neither spoke nor were spoken about.

Season

Season, like species, is also pretty objective but I'll clarify some of my choices. I only used titles for Day of the Departed and the Islandbecause they don't really fit into the numbered seasons. I used numbers rather than season names for the most part because they're more concise. I designated Dragons Rising seasons 1 and 2 as 16 and 17, primarily because that's how I view them, but also for this conciseness factor. I split season 17 into two seasons (17 and 17.5) because they're two unqiue arcs that different casts of characters, some of which have changed their allignments/types between part 1 and 2. I may do the same for 11 and 16 in the future.

New/Old

I put a new entry for each character so it was necessary for me to designate whether this was the first entry of the character or a repeat entry. Having multiple entries allows you to view how characters changed over seasons rather than only being able to see their initial criteria. It also allows you to see the full cast breakdown for each season.

That's pretty much it! Here's the link again. Please do play around with the search and let me know if you find anything cool. The link also includes all of my previous spreadsheets so peruse that at your leisure if you're interested. Thanks as always for reading this far and let me know if you have any feedback, made the exact same thing previously (looking at you @agenericplaceholdername ), or have requests for new spreadsheets or charts. I have a lot of options now that I've created this tool and I've very excited to use it!

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Ninjago Species by the Season

I made this chart upon @weirdcatbean's request. I also wanted to include allignment and centrality on this chart, but as you can see that would get pretty busy.

Here's the percentages.

Interestingly, it keeps a pretty consistent human:non-human ratio. The earlier seasons actually have less humans percentage wise, which I did not expect. However, I should note that this chart includes every single named character, so while yes there may be 36 humans in Seabound for instance, 19 of them are ensemble who were just there for Nya's funeral. I'll be making an improved version of this chart later that's a bit easier to read and includes some more relavant data points. Now, you may be wondering, why didn't I include what the chart looks like without the inclusion of ensemble from the beginning. I admit, normally I would. To explain why I didn't, I have to tell the story of how I came up with these numbers.

Methodology

While I could have just tallied up individual species season by season, I knew I would probably want to play with the data in other ways besides just this one chart. Thus, I undertook the massive endeavor of indexxing every Ninjago character by Name, Type, Allignment, Species, Gender, and Season. For instance, here's the pilot season.

You may be wondering what the New/Old column is all about. In order to include the full character breakdown for each season, I had to make new entries of each character every season. This created a lot of repeats, so to separate unique characters from repeats I noted whether character's were introduced with this season (new) or whether they were a repeat (old). This was also useful in that it allowed me to alter the criteria of a character with each season so I can accomadate for changes such as Cole turning into a ghost. Once I had compiled this data (839 entries and 292 unique characters), I attempted to use Google Sheets' pre-provided data analysis.

It was sort of useful, but it would only show the top 4 and bottom 4 frequencies and I couldn't copy and paste the data. It also was a bit fussy around filters. Thus, I did something a bit wonky where I filtered by season and just copy pasted the column into a different sheet.

I then used functions (ex: =COUNTIF(AC3:AC1002, "Skeleton")) to create my raw data table which you can view above. This process worked but it had a lot of problems. It was time consuming, didn't allow me to employ multiple filters, and, most importantly of all, it wasn't allowing me to use this data I had spent days compiling to its full extent. Thus, I decided to create a sort of search engine for Ninjago characters.

This search engine allows me to input criteria and recieve not only the total characters that fit the criteria, but a list of all of their entries. The fact it lists all of their entries may not sound that impressive, but trust, it is. (For me at least) Here's an example search of good, recurring Serpentine.

I am very excited about the potential of this tool. It's going to allow me to create a lot of great charts, including an improved Species by Season chart. For now though, I'm only uploading the original requested chart, because creating this tool has taken the better part of my day. I plan on sharing it, but I still need to work out a few kinks so you can look forward to that as well. I know I already said it, but I'm so, so excited about what I'll be able to make. Here's a preview to the search if you're interested. It also includes all my previous spreadsheets, but I'm still working out some formatting issues and stuff.

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Did anyone else realize Youtube was a massive Jaya shipper?

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Love that we keep making the same stuff. I think your chart looks a lot better than mine. It's interesting how we identified the unnamed masters differently. Also, I had the Cragling written down on an earlier draft, but it got lost in the chaos, so thank you for that. I can amend now. I totally agree with everything you said. I also subscribe to a theory I saw somewhere recently that Ras' plan was to get Jay out of the tournament from the beginning in order to encourage the Ninja to leave to go find him. That would work even if Nya lost because, he'd fight against Nokt next, and Ras could've kicked him out then. I also think the tournament being plain unpredictable is also very viable. They mentioned at some point that Roby refused to announce the matches to keep it exciting. Of course, Blekt had intineraries but they certainly could have changed them when Nya beat Jay so she'd have to fight Nokt and he could have convinced Roby just by telling him it made it more exciting. The lack of shatterspinners on the Lloyd/Zeatrix side could be explained by Ras planning on Lloyd getting incapcitated by the poison. I think that's a pretty foolish horse to place your bets on, but hey why not. I think a more likely explanation is that Ras wanted Lloyd to be distracted/tired by having to fight in a tournament so he could better corrupt Arin. After all, Lloyd's first two fights didn't even seem rigged. They were more to the contrary actually, because while Mr. Pale is possibly a trained fighter, Geo is certainly not. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there wasn't any evidence of foul play from Ras/Bleckt until the Nokt fight, which is odd because even fights against non-shatterspinners appeared to be rigged for the rest of the ninja (ex: Zane v Zur, Sora v Kizzie). I imagine there were quite a few off-screen matches. Not only is there the guy you showed here, but there also seemed to be quite a few other background characters who looked like elemental masters rather than spectators. I think a big reason we didn't get to see each elemental master is just so if they want to introduce an elemental master later, they're not held back like the earlier writers were because they can say they were at the tournament; we just didn't see them.

Tournament of the Sources Bracket

I just finished the season and I made this spreadsheet so my friend could do a little march madness. It's a bit chaotic because there was likely off-screen battles, and some people seemed to have just been made to fight more battles. The Master of Itineraries doesn't seem to care that much about fairness. I omitted the names of the masters who had elemental powers we saw during the Tournament of Elements, so as not to spoil which masters have apparently passed. I know I spelled Frak's name wrong. Non-Censored Bracket below. Beware. Spoilers.

Of course.

Non-Censored Bracket

It's cool to see what could've been if it wasn't for all of the riggings. I was truly suprised people on the same team weren't ever pit against each other. I'm curious if that was by the tournament's design as they did appear to enter it in teams.

Bracket with No Cheating

Sorry Nuero, but I just assumed. The match between Cole and Frak wasn't strictly rigged, unlike the others. However, the arena was designed to be advantagous to Frak, so assuming they're on even ground I'm giving it to Cole. Nothing about the Cinder v. Wyldfire match seemed weighted to one side or the other. I think the lack of rigging for both Wyldfire and Sora (up until the very end) demonstrates that Ras and/or Bleckt underestimates them.

It would've been cool to see a rematch between Cole and Zane after all these seasons. We've also never seen Lloyd and Nya fight. There would've been a lot of ethical questions for Sora to consider if she had to fight Zane -ethical questions she didn't seem to consider when fighting the tournament bots- so we can be thankful that didn't happen. Although, I assume if the ninja ended up in a fight against eachother, they wouldn't actually fight. It's more likely they'd strategically concede. Under this umbrella, I'd think Nya would have conceded to Lloyd so she could look for Jay. Cole and Zane would've had a battle of concessions, similar to Jay v Cole in season 4, which could have gone either way. Sora would have conceded to Zane or Cole. because she's insecure. Zane hasn't had much interactions with the kids or tournaments so it's difficult to say whether he would have accepted. Cole, I think would have pulled a similar move to what he did in season 4. Lloyd against Sora, Zane, or Cole would have also been a battle of concessions. So maybe Roby should have been thankful to his uncle because I'm sure he wouldn't have been happy about all these peaceful agreements.

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Tournament of Sources Spreadsheet Updates

Bechdel Test

This was a perfect season (bechdel test wise), but the fragmentation of Wyldfire, Sora, and Nya into different groups made it difficult in those later episodes. I had to strain to find dialogue in a couple of episodes that succeeded (I actually didn't find dialogue in episode 19 but @genericplaceholdername did so thank you to them). In the one where Sora fought Kizzy, I counted non-verbal interaction because Kizzy bowed in response to Sora. Sora was my hero this season as while she did mostly talk to Lloyd, Arin, and Cole, she, thankfully was also trying to figure out what was up with Jordanna. Wyldfire was pining after Roby and beefing with Cinder so she'd rarely talk to other women. As I predicted, Nya was thinking about Jay so she mainly talked to the older ninja as they knew him. Zeatrix would mainly only talk to Lloyd and Ras and Rox would mainly talk to her brother and Ras, so the female antagonists failed to be as helpful as I would have hoped. For the women fans out there, season one of DR is going to be your best choice, but season two is of course, still great. They just need to hang out more.

Groupings

Even more than season one of DR, parts one and two of this season really just feel like seasons in their own right. I've labeled accordingly and I may go back and give DRS1P2 a label of its own for consistency's sake. Riyu felt a lot more like a character this season rather than an accessory to someone else's plot line so I gave him his own row because he deserves it. As you can see, there's only been 3 episodes before this where he deviated from Arin/Sora, which is why I didn't give him a row until now. Tournament of Sources really made me feel like I had to change how I do this chart, because I've been operating based on what the ninja are doing in the beginning of the episode as up until now, those groupings rarely changed mid-episode. However, in this season, it seemed the ninja would be in a different grouping each scene, likely due to the fact there was no barrier of travel as, aside from Kai and, for most of the season, Jay, they were all in one location. As you can see, the ninja tended to go on little sidequests of their own, with Arin and Riyu going on the most, but they all gravitated towards staying with the team. I don't think the non-incapcitated ninja spent a single episode without meeting as a team, aside from episode 11 in which Zane was training and Cole was in an unknown location, presumably the Land of the Lost Things, because Geo mentioned he got the invite right after Cole left. I've kept Jay on the business trip designation, because he's still just doing what he's doing because he doesn't know who he is so it's an odd state between incapacitation and a mission.

I did have to add a new designation which I did not expect to have to do, but Kai was voided, Nya was in a cave, and Lloyd's a glass cannon. A crazy thing about this season is that, normally when someone's incapacitated, that's the main focus, but Nya and Riyu's capture occurred completely off-screen and they were the only ones working on Kai's recovery. There's a record number of different states of incapacitation. With Jay's amenesia we have 4 and depending on what Pixal's up to we may even have 5.

Combinations

Thanks to Kai getting voided and the overall structure of a tournament season, part 2 ended up being great for "Three's a Crowd." Sure, 2 fulfillments may look small but there's only 8 combinations left to complete. Half of them involve Jay so it might take a while. I do need to note that a massive asterisk should be put on nearly all of the DR fulfillments as I ignore the presence of the kids. I may amend to include them in the future, but that would be hundreds more unique combinations, so I need to wait until they've had a lot more scenes.

Timeline

Jay was still in the administration at the end of part one and he needed at least a little time to assimilate into a wolf cult, so I put 2 months in between part one and two, which I title Blood Moon and Tournament of Sources respectively. The reason I didn't put more than 2 months, aside from my policy of always putting the least time possible, is because Sora mentioned that saving the world had prevented them from going to the Administration to find information on Arin's parents sooner, indicating it hasn't been too long since the Blood Moon.

Ages

I only updated this chart because I updated the timeline. One interesting note of dialogue for me was Cole saying "You know I ran away from that dancing school my dad put me in when I was a kid." It's sort of a similar piece of evidence to Kai referring to Arin and Sora as kids, and it's interesting to hear him refer to his pilot season self as a kid, but it's also possible he ran away from the school much earlier than the pilot season. Thanks for reading this far! I'm going to start working on some suggested charts. Please let me know if you have any ideas or feedback!

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Tournament of the Sources Bracket

I just finished the season and I made this spreadsheet so my friend could do a little march madness. It's a bit chaotic because there was likely off-screen battles, and some people seemed to have just been made to fight more battles. The Master of Itineraries doesn't seem to care that much about fairness. I omitted the names of the masters who had elemental powers we saw during the Tournament of Elements, so as not to spoil which masters have apparently passed. I know I spelled Frak's name wrong. Non-Censored Bracket below. Beware. Spoilers.

Of course.

Non-Censored Bracket

It's cool to see what could've been if it wasn't for all of the riggings. I was truly suprised people on the same team weren't ever pit against each other. I'm curious if that was by the tournament's design as they did appear to enter it in teams.

Bracket with No Cheating

Sorry Nuero, but I just assumed. The match between Cole and Frak wasn't strictly rigged, unlike the others. However, the arena was designed to be advantagous to Frak, so assuming they're on even ground I'm giving it to Cole. Nothing about the Cinder v. Wyldfire match seemed weighted to one side or the other. I think the lack of rigging for both Wyldfire and Sora (up until the very end) demonstrates that Ras and/or Bleckt underestimates them.

It would've been cool to see a rematch between Cole and Zane after all these seasons. We've also never seen Lloyd and Nya fight. There would've been a lot of ethical questions for Sora to consider if she had to fight Zane -ethical questions she didn't seem to consider when fighting the tournament bots- so we can be thankful that didn't happen. Although, I assume if the ninja ended up in a fight against eachother, they wouldn't actually fight. It's more likely they'd strategically concede. Under this umbrella, I'd think Nya would have conceded to Lloyd so she could look for Jay. Cole and Zane would've had a battle of concessions, similar to Jay v Cole in season 4, which could have gone either way. Sora would have conceded to Zane or Cole. because she's insecure. Zane hasn't had much interactions with the kids or tournaments so it's difficult to say whether he would have accepted. Cole, I think would have pulled a similar move to what he did in season 4. Lloyd against Sora, Zane, or Cole would have also been a battle of concessions. So maybe Roby should have been thankful to his uncle because I'm sure he wouldn't have been happy about all these peaceful agreements.

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Ninjago Parkour Civilization Chart

For the purpose of this chart, all the ninja should be parkour noobs so I placed them based on who they were at the start of their respective season ones. If I did this based on where they all were now, it would be pretty boring as, save for maybe the kids, they'd all just be at beef/success. Here's a quick outline of my reasoning. Chicken/Succeed Cole (sensible) Zane (doesn't get hungry, chooses not to examine it) Sora (insecure) Arin (insecure in a different way) Beef/Fail Kai (reckless/ambitious) Wyldfire (reckless/overconfident) Morro (reckless/ambitious/dead) Beef/Success Lloyd (main character powers) Nya (ambitious in a more thought out way) Jay (lucky) Riyu (can fly) (I made this chart because it was rattling inside my brain because this minecraft movie is all over my feeds and I figured I'd share because it is a chart even if it's not as data-driven as the others.)

[ninjagobythenumbers]

Ninjago Groupings Episode by Episode

A.K.A. how much time they spend together

Key

This chart has each of the ninja sorted into who they were with each episode. For consistency, I designate the grouping based on who they're with at the beginning of the episode. So, for instance, if Zane is with the ninja at the beginning of the episode, he'll be sorted as "Gang's all here" even if he spends the rest of the episode in on his own little galavant. I will go through each season, so I can explain my observations and so you can see the chart closer up and come up with your own. First, I must explain each designation as I gave them odd titles for fun.

Purple refers to the main party. There will (almost) always be purple on the chart, even if the whole party's split as I designate it based on where either the majority of people started, or, where the main mission's at. For instance, if we have a party with all the ninja, but they gradually die off, as in Skybound for instance, Jay remains the main party as he has survived.

Busy is the first designation I'll turn to if one or more of the ninja has gone off on a separate mission. If there are two ongoing missions in addition to the main party, I'll use Double Busy. If there are three, I'll use Triple Busy. If there are four, I'll hope one of them fits into a separate category as you'll see with the Crystalized madness.

Homebase comes into play if a ninja is at the monastary, Bounty, or whatever's been designated the base at the moment. Gang's all here and Busies predominate however. This designation primarily applies when the ninja is hanging out with Wu or holding down the fort. Tragically, Nya and Pixal have this designation for much of the seasons.

If one or more of the ninja is kidnapped, dead, possessed, or otherwise incapcitated, this comes into play. For Double Involuntary to apply, at least two ninja must be in two different types of incapacitation. For instance, in Skybound, Kai and Zane were in a sword so they were Involuntary, but Jay was captured by pirates so he was Double Involuntary.

So far, this literally only applies to Jay (during Dragons Rising specifically). I used it because the audience knew where he was but didn't know how he felt about it.

I use this designation when the audience doesn't know the status of the characters long-term. A clear instance is most of the ninja at the beginning of Dragons Rising, the reason I created it. I also use it for those one-off episodes that aren't about the ninja such as "The News Never Sleeps." (This designation is named after an alternate ending for Cole in Hands of Time which my friend and I find hilarious).

Season Breakdown

In these early seasons, we really only have to deal with four categories. We get the occasional side mission such as Kai, Nya, and Lloyd living their pre-Ninja lives, but nothing serious. For the most part, the ninja are sticking together with their missions. If they break apart, such as in episode 5 where they split up to find Serpentine tombs, it occurs only for the episode, and doesn't extend long-term. While she is Samuai X, Nya is primarily on the Bounty doing various man in the chair tasks. Nya and Lloyd are competing for the damsel in distress title and Lloyd is winning. (Going forward, I am going to omit the Arin through Sora rows until they actually appear. Just know that they're toddlers off who knows where doing who knows what.)

Lloyd has joined the party. It's odd because he usually is engaging in the main plot, but in Child's Play, they act like they've always left him at home. Early season trends are continuing. While Nya's still on the move during the late season, she has been turned evil by a substance which is not something she wanted so she's still racking up Involuntary points.

Yay, Pixal's here! The core 4 continues to stick together but Lloyd has undergone on the first mission separate from the party. It doesn't end well as he gets captured, but hey as long as he had fun. Pixal is regarded as Involuntary as, similar to Nya in the previous season, she has been turned evil by hacking. Observe that the whole group gets together for the finale. This will occur nearly every season going forward.

This is our first elimination season, so we start to see even the core four break apart. This crumbling starts with the first episode, as Zane is, as per usual, gone. He's finally thrown his hat in the ring for the damel competition. As Pixal goes into Zane's head this season, I match her color codes to Zane but in a muted tone, as she's there, but she's not really there for anyone but Zane.

It's another elimination season, but they spend a lot more time all together than I remembered. For the first time, no Busy gets invoked as they're all always together or captured, but Double Involuntary does occur twice in two different fashions. With Pixal's designation here, I am presuming that Nadakhan had the common courtesy of returning her to life when Zane wished it all away.

Day of the Departed is really just a Cole solo mission. Zane dies again. Pixal is one again innovating with designations as she causes the first invokation of Double Busy once she's free. You might observe that I technically invoked Double Busy before Busy. I did this because Kai and Nya were the main plotline, while Double Busy was primarily occuring in the background. More characters in play is resulting in more categories of groupings, but, for the most part they all stuck together as has been par for the course during Masters of Spinjitzu.

We have a few little missions and incapacitations here and there, but for the most part it's a team effort. I really enjoy when they spend all season on the ship. Zane dies again. Pixal is gets to be part of the main crew again because while she may be on the Bounty, so is everyone else.

Hunted is in past tense for a reason. The Ninja spent half the time captured. I considered the core four to be the main party as majority rules, not to mention they had the ship and Wu. This is the first time we have a Busy designation last nearly all season. Hunted is sort of our first "splitting the party" season. It may have been accidental, but we'll see a lot of this going forward.

Being a movie, aside from a little father son fishing trip and a death fake-out, the ninja tended to stick together.

The ninja go back to sticking together, as in early seasons but it doesn't last long. For the latter half of this chapter, they split up into alpha squad (Zane, Nya, and Lloyd) and the boys (Cole, Kai, and Jay), which, as I like to point out, Lloyd will nearly always choose when he picks teams. Pixal may have been with the ninja in these first few episodes, but she was doing her own thing at homebase. We have out first side character episode, which is something I really loved about this era. Zane dies again.

As you can see, we're starting to have these long periods of splitting the party. While it's not as extreme as in Hunted, we have Lloyd going off alone and Zane off being evil, while the main party spends some time in the village. Cole even has one of his brief solo missions. Something I'll note about Zane. His evilness was very much involuntary as he needed amnesia, an evil staff, AND an evil advisor to make it happen.

I didn't count Jay entering Prime Empire as Involuntary because he did that on purpose. Pixal's finally off the bench. Or has Zane joined her? Hard to say but I ruled the former as Wu was not there and they very much had their own mission. We have a return of the elimination season, which funnily enough looks near identical to the elimination pattern in Skybound. Despite the fact he didn't enter Prime Empire, Zane insists on racking up his Damsel points.

This season was big on splitting the party, as indicated by the longest Double Busy so far for this many people. Kai and Zane get to be the main party even though they're not majority because when it gets down to a near 50/50 split, the designation is relatively arbitrary and I like to keep it at the top of the chart for pretty data's sake and so I tend to keep it with the core four, mainly Kai. You may observe that even when the entire party is captured, Cole doesn't revert to purple. Once a ninja has a designation, it sticks until they form a new grouping.

Cole and Kai get to chill at home for the first time. The rest of the party sticks together for the most part, which was surprising to me as I remembered Nya going off on her own more. It turned out that, similar to season one, these little solo missions ended up isolated within episodes. That is of course, until the end when she becomes the sea. I marked it as Triple Busy so I could reserve Busy for the main plots in the next season.

Crystalized is so long and complicated. It took me forever because, I mean, do you SEE episodes 22-27. You can see why I had to invent Triple Busy. It got so crazy I had to designate Kai as at homebase just because he was at the Newskids' hideout, which was serving as the current base. Nya is of course the sea at the beginning, but I designated her as Triple Busy, because she wasn't on screen for the most part. The ninja go to jail. Lloyd goes off for one minute and gets captured. Zane dies again. Near the end, each of the ninja spend time with a partner ninja except Lloyd who's alone forever. For the finale, they're all together again.

Welcome kids! This is sort of a reverse elimination season. it looks dismal at the beginning, but gradually we recover (mostly) everyone. Even if we don't see a character on screen, I start categorizing them when the audience knows their status. For example, Kai didn't show up until episode 4 but Lloyd told us he was off on a mission. Despite the spires of maybe dead, in the first part it's relatively simple. However, starting now, ninja, such as Nya, will just go off on solo missions like it's no big deal. The mid-season finale gets into some serious party splitting with Kai at homebase again, the discovery of Zane, and the kids off on their own, but ultimately all the active ninja end up together in the finale. In the second half, they party split into pairs long term. It's a good way to balance such a big cast. Zane doesn't have a little buddy so he spends some time at home and then goes to jail. Interstingly, though he's at homebase we do get some significant feature of what's going on in the monastary. We saw a bit of this with Seabound, but not nearly as much as we're seeing with DR. Lloyd and Arin find Zane (again). Kai and Wildfyre find things in common. Sora and Arin find Cole who goes off on a side quest. The audience finds Jay so he gets his Business Trip designation as we don't know how he feels about it. Similar to Pixal during the Zane's head period, I made this color muted as it's very in the background.

Blood Moon is simple for Dragons Rising standards, but calling it simple really reflects how many different categoriations there exists in these later seasons as compared to the old days. Lloyd, the siblings, and the kids go on an educational field trip. Zane stays at home until Cole visits and gets Zane to join his mission. Jay briefly joins Busy during his Business Trip, but no one knows it except Bonezal. Interestingly, they don't all join together in the mid-season finale, but rather, this time, it becomes even more fragmented.

This is my prediction for the Tournament of Sources based soley on the end of Blood Moon and trailer material. Arin will probably be off doing spy stuff and reflecting. Jay's doing something I may have to make a new designation for. Kai's in the void but I think he may be a suprise last minute addition to the Tournament that saves the day (or not). (Off topic, but if Ras always planned on going to the tournament, was this decade+ long Forbidden Five plan just him drafting people for his team?) It's not an elimination tournament because as far as I can tell, when you lose, you can just chill in the stands. They'll probably go off on their own little sidequests but I expect them to all, at the very least, stay in the City of Temples. I'm very excited to find out the truth in a couple days.

With this, I have now posted all my pre-made charts. I plan on making some new charts based on a few suggestions I've gotten already. I think it would also be cool to tally up the designations on this chart to see what the ninja spend most of their time doing. I'll also be posting the official Tournament of Sources updates for all my charts within the next few weeks. Thanks for reading this far. Let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas for additional charts!

[ninjagobythenumbers]

#spreadsheet

Normal people: hey man how's it going

Guy who loves spreadsheets: can I make you a spreadsheet