I have a bit of a gripe with DR's colour choices for the ninja's outfits
Okay technically, my gripe really starts with the SOTFS gis and then gets exacerbated by the Core gis onwards, but DR is gonna get mentioned a lot because I think it's where most of my complaints lie.
Actually, now that I think about it, it's kind of one of my biggest gripes with the redesigns overall. Colour wise, they're a bit all over the place and I feel like many of the ninja's secondary colours start to take over their outfits and cause a bit of a clash.
They did have secondary colours a bit in the pre-redesign seasons, but usually as accent. Most of the time, it was gold, silver, or gray. Nya was an exception as she was maroon with blue as her secondary colour. And yeah, it can be a little boring, but I think it worked because the colours weren't overly saturated and the secondary colours and accents were used sparingly. Shoulder pads, hood decorations, that kind of stuff. With the except of Nya with Kai and Jay, the colours don't really overlap so much. Each ninja has their own colour scheme and the overlaps are few. The colours, for the most part, complement each other. Dark colours go with dark colour, leaving Nya's blue + maroon and Jay's occasional silver arm as the main exceptions.
In SOTFS, the gi colours are still fairly muted and not as saturated as they'll become in later seasons. From this point til Core, gray is established as Nya's primary colour and while I personally prefer the maroon, I think the idea they were going for paid off. We start to see baby blue creep into Zane's design, but it's still fairly limited. I kinda think that the SOTFS are meant to be reminiscent of the ZX gis, and while I personally feel like there were aspects the ZX gis did a lot better, they still did a decent job. The ninja look like a solidified unit but all have individuality. Secondary colours are present, but not overwhelming. They're kinda expanding on the changes that were established in the movie/SOG (Nya using gray with blue as a secondary colour, sleeveless Cole, Zane having a blue accent). The thing is, they look like ninja. They look like they're meant to be taken seriously, that they mean business.
Prime Empire seems to be a risk, and yeah the colours are a bit much, but it fits into that neon video game world of the season. I do like that white became the primary colour of these gis, because it made them stand out and was reminiscent of the primarily black Possession/Skybound gis.
MOTM builds on the SOTFS gis, so I don't really have much to add. Seabound and Crystallized, we start to see that shift towards more saturated colours, but I think Core is where it explodes and then it starts to irk me.
I personally LOVE the Core designs, but I don't love the colour choices. For starters, Jay and Cole suddenly get new secondary colours out of nowhere. While orange does make sense for Cole because it's established to be his favourite colour in canon, yellow just seems like an odd choice for Jay, especially such a bright yellow. Cole's orange is also quite bright. Lloyd uses a *really* bright green for his secondary colour, Kai uses a bright orange-yellow. Zane doesn't have as much baby blue, which I think is for the best because his baby blue is quite bright too. And that's my problem. The secondary colours are too bright, and they're too prominent for colours so bright. They draw my eyes away from the ninja's primary colours. Three of the six ninja use blue, and at this point Pixal is still using blue in her Samurai X suit too. These don't like feel serious ninja gis, they feel like costumes.
And then in DR, things started getting annoyingly inconsistent. Nya suddenly switches to blue as her primary colour with gray as a secondary and maroon as a tertiary, but then in DR3 for the mech suits, suddenly switches back to gray? And the in her dragon form, she's back to primarily blue again. It's like they can't make their mind up on her. Cole's DR1 suit is half orange and Zane's is half blue. But Kai, Lloyd, and Jay (as a non-canon minifigure) don't get a new secondary colour? They just get different shades of red, green, and blue respectively. If we're gonna go off the secondary colours established, then they should be in orange-yellow, bright green, and yellow respectively. Which only adds to my bafflement when these colours *do* return in the dragon forms in DR4. We're now back to three of the ninja having blue in their designs (although thankfully Pixal is allowed to have purple and red in her outfits again), and that only gets exacerbated with the next gen ninja.
Arin's colour choices are thankfully a breath of fresh air. He primarily uses orange, and a very dark indigo. But then there's Sora, and I am trying to be kind to her because I know she's a fandom darling, but holy cow honey your design is a bit of a mess. She seems to have *four* colours competing for our attention. She is associated with pink, and then white seems to be her secondary colour. Okay, alright. We don't have a pink ninja and the only other one using white is Zane. But then she's got this dark blue, which is strikingly similar to the blue Pixal used to use. And she also has gold too, in her face markings and her left arm! It's a lot of bright colours all competing to stand out to you and grba your attention on an already very busy character design, and in comparison, Arin's orange and yellow seem plain despite their own brightness.
I truly LOVE the hair they gave Euphrasia because it is such a great addition when all female protagonists use ponytails and straight bangs. But now, she doesn't have a unique colour palette of her own. She's using light blue and white, and guess who is *also* using light blue and white? Zane! Zane, who has always had a subdued baby blue in his design prior to the movie, and is now half covered in it. After we've already established two other ninja use blue. And now we have a fifth important character using blue too. That's almost half of the main cast.
Honestly, I'm glad they switched to dark red for Wyldfyre because it helps her stand out against the rest of the cast. It also helps her red hair be an integral part of her design because if she also used such saturated and bright colours, her hair would get lost in her outfit. Frak gets gray and a very bright green, although to be fair he starts using the green before Lloyd's dragon form does. But the contrast of this blinding light against the rest of Frak's outfit is a bit of an eyesore.
Alright, I'm done complaining now. You're allowed to like the outfits, and honestly, please don't let me words completely spoil the show for you. But hopefully I was able to put into words why the colour choices of DR's outfits irk me so much and hopefully I won't get flamed alive for it.
