I started watching Lego Ninjago, mostly because I needed a fun cartoon to watch between other shows. Plus, I love the humour in most of the other Lego shows or movies I’ve watched. I was not expecting to find something with such good world building and character development (/trauma). I’d been making some review posts on each of the seasons on tumblr, so I thought I’d post them here too.

With trying to get my blog up and running again I’m hoping this will help me get my momentum going again, and I’ll hopefully be able to pull some writing/character development tips out of these.

So here goes, season 1, and here are my notes:

• Nya. Look I grew up with cartoons where there was just the one girl and they were almost always handled badly. So I may have immediately been like ‘why is she not a ninja and also why has she just been kidnapped?’ But, I am actually fairly impressed with how they handled this, actively leaning into and addressing that there was some level of her capabilities being ignored, to the point of having Wu actually apologise to her for it simply not occurring to him. And she gets her own, potentially cooler thing, partially because she just got over Kai being so immature about the green ninja thing, which is kinda funny.
• Lloyd is so smol. Starts out a brat, but slowly you kinda realise he’s not, and needs protecting. Which then turns out to be the whole point of the other ninjas and yes I can get behind this protect this child.
• I don’t usually mind snakes but WHY ARE THERE VAMPIRE SNAKES so, so many snakes. I do like Pythor though – crafty and a dick. Great accent.
• Every second episode the boys being like: “Haha yeah we have so maxed out our training and are in peak condition so which one of us is the green ninja” and then they’ll go out on a mission and absolutely derp their way through it.
• Zane got his diagnosis, and it is robot. Good for him. (And turned off his own memories because his dad died and it hurt too much. Dang. Why was this scene so emotive?)
• Actively demonstrating Garmadon cares deeply for his son… then in the same episode dropping that Lloyd is the green ninja and I don’t know destined to murder his father or something.
• Just Garmadon. Like I love movie-Garmadon, he is hilarious, but i guess I expected him to be a bad dad in this. And he’s… not. He’s not stupid either. Seems to regret that he was turned evil, but this doesn’t seem to make him want to change, nor is it overdone for angst. Much more well-rounded villain than I was expecting.
• Cole has the strength-based element, but also, dance moves.
• Cole spawning his ride INSIDE the road train bus hell why not.
• “No one can wield all four weapons at once.” Solution: Get four arms.
• How quickly everyone gets on board with their role being to protect and train Lloyd, especially since they were being such dumbasses about wanting to be the green ninja.
• Theme song is now in my head.

What I’m looking forward to see how it’ll play out going forward is the ‘you’re the chosen one and have to defeat/fight your dad’.

• It’s one thing to say you’re still proud of your son for being on the opposite side when he’s so small and cute, and not a threat. Is Garmadon going to be so understanding once Lloyd gets skills and you know bigger, and a threat?
• I’m assuming Lloyd’s not actually going to have to kill his dad, but defeating/fighting/beating him up is still a big ask. Training to use his powers and be a ninja is going to fun. Having to fight his dad? Is he going to have issues in the actual execution?