okay i really want to know, 5 things you'd change about ninjago
honestly the bigger question is 5 things i wouldn’t change about ninjago, but i suppose i’ll narrow down the top of my list of things that Need To Change
1. I’d fix the timeline so that it Actually Makes Sense and allows more room for exploration of other elements. Biggest thing is really to make the Serpentine War take place a long ass time ago with none of the ninjas’ parents being involved. By extension, I’d also end up changing the way the elemental powers work or carry from generation to generation (like one of my 50-some fleshed-out explanations of how the powers should work, instead of this arbitrary “and YOU get it from your parents, and YOU get it from your parents, and YOU’RE obviously adopted because your parents don’t have it, and YOU get it from your parents” etc. etc. etc. because honestly just no. No. That’s not good enough for me sorry. :P
2. More emphasis on the everyone’s relationships with other people, rather than just the core cast. I wanna see more of Kai and Nya bonding over remembering their parents. I wanna see more of Jay interacting with his parents. I want to learn who Cole’s mom is and see how that impacts Cole and Lou. I want literally anything to happen with Zane and Julien and Echo, because after S6 we are Incredibly Ripe for a discussion which I really want to see. Basically, I want to learn more about who these characters are, who they care for, and who they care about - unlike in canon Ninjago, where the team pretty much Exists as a singular entity that has no ties to any people in particular. TL;DR: I want a minor characters to exist for more than one episode sometimes.
3. No romance bullshit. Listen, back in S1 and S2, Jaya was cute. Now, though, after everything that happened in all the recent seasons? Sorry, no. It’s quite literally the opposite of a healthy relationship 90% of the time - the one example I can think of where they actually communicated with each other without all the other bullshit is TLR, but considering TLR is probably one of the best Ninjago episodes of all time, that pretty much shows the state they’ve been in. All the two of them ever do is try to kiss each other, even when they’re fighting almost constantly, which really isn’t a good way to figure out what’s wrong in your relationship to try and fix it. Basically, fuck the love triangle.
4. Fuck S3 in general. Sure, you can have a season with some of the same general ideas in its plot - I mean, if you can even find an overarching plot in S3 to imitate, which is a pretty fuckin hard task if I do say so myself - but the sudden genre switch from “mostly fantasy” to “mostly sci-fi” is a really fucking sudden transition, and it really doesn’t work well with the show’s strengths. The sad thing about S3 is that a lot of the concepts introduced in it are wonderful - Cyrus, Pixal, Hiroshi’s Labyrinth, Pythor’s return, the Serpentine underground city, etc. - but the plot is so unfocused and all over the place that it just comes off as complete bullshit. Hell, even the sudden genre switch could’ve felt more natural if the plot took a bit more time and cut out the love triangle bullshit. But it didn’t. So fuck S3.
5. General characterization cleanup. In the last few seasons, everybody’s really been coming off as pretty flat - Kai’s the impulsive one, Cole’s the sorta-serious one, Zane’s the smart one, Lloyd kinda exists, Nya doesn’t have character unless she’s arguing with someone, and Jay is a nightmare and makes me want to die. This one I’m going to split up into subcategories for each of the main characters because this is a huge problem.
Jay: He’s been so screamy and whiny all the time in recent seasons, and sure, he also was a little bit back in the earlier seasons, but the Hagemans have slowly turned him up to eleven over time. S6 was literally so bad at points that I could hardly sit through it. It’s gotten to the point where I can instantly tell that the Hagemans haven’t written the script for something if Jay doesn’t piss me off - and so far I’ve always been right, because I’ve been able to successfully predict it for Day of the Departed and S7, neither of which were/are written by them. It’s worth noting that both of them portray Jay a lot better and have a “normal” amount of focus on him, so it’s possible that S6 was only really especially bad because the camera was on him the entire time.
Cole and Lloyd: Back in the second half of S2 or so (though it only really became obvious in S3), Cole and Lloyd actually swapped a lot of their “personality” traits. Before the swap, Lloyd was more of the “foodie” character and Cole was the “default leader”, but around Child’s Play their traits actually got swapped around. Now, back in the olden days, all of the characters were more 3-dimensional, so it was really hard to tell - but as soon as S3 started it was very obvious that Cole was suddenly “goofy food-lover” and Lloyd was “default leader the team would be incompetent without”. I’d switch them back. #MakeLloydSillyAgain
Zane: Honestly, of all the Ninja, Zane’s the one that most pisses me off right now, even more so than Jay. While Jay’s just annoying and screamy, our current Zane is a completely different character than the one we had back in the early days of Ninjago. Both versions of Zane are smart, but while the old Zane was kind and understanding, the Zane we have now is very egotistical and occasionally quite mean-spirited. The easiest way to show the difference is by taking a look at the scene where new Zane asks for wishes from Nadakhan - new Zane tries to outsmart Nadakhan and gets punished for it. Old Zane probably would’ve wished for his friends to be freed. :/
Nya: I’m too tired to try to come up with reasons for this because honestly Nya’s character has always been treated like shit. One thing I’d definitely change doesn’t have anything to do with her - it’s that I’d have her independence be treated as an asset instead of a liability.
Kai: I don’t have much to say with him - of all the Ninja, his character has stayed the most consistent throughout the show. He’s impulsive and a bit rash at times, but he’s not stupid; and he’ll do anything he can to protect the people he cares about. In recent seasons, the writers have frequently ignored the “but he’s not stupid” part, but other than that he’s pretty much the same as he was at the beginning.
k so that’s 5, good job woods it only took you an hour to write all this shit
