I was surprised how much people loved the first set, so here's some more figures for my CMF Lloyd-inspired series: ninja trainees and Samurai X's. More to come eventually🤞
Also I don't have Frak lol
Here's the first post if you want to see the OG six ninja
Finally finished my custom team! I wanted to make a lineup of detailed, seasoned ninja figures that fit with the Mysterious Ronin.
I made sure not to reuse any suit line twice (so like I couldn't use 2 honor robe torsos) to keep them unique and gave them non-yellow skin tones just for fun. New ninja recruits coming soon 👀, lmk what you think!
Would've put them in the character display but it felt a little busy lol
Hey guys, just wanted to let everyone know that Dragon Jay is available in this Dragon Powers book and it's only like $12 from Blackwell's including delivery. Still a little steep for one figure but the other options are a lot worse.
The set he comes in is like $80, bricklink has him for $25+ counting shipping, and this book at Walmart is $17 so pretty steep across the board.
In the US we don't get the Ninjago magazine, but this is about the same price as one issue of that. I got my copy today and everything looks good, shipping took about 2 weeks. Just wanted to let people know 🙌
Link: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9781837251766
So most of us probably remember the drama back during season 8 when we found out the ninja seemingly forgot how to do Airjitzu. There was no acknowledgement of the change in the show, but the creators confirmed on Twitter at the time that the decision was made to limit the Ninja's power level. Tommy's short story Way of the Departed suggests that the technique was tied to dark magic and the ninja stopped for that reason, and nowadays, Doc Wyatt just says they don't practice the form anymore. I'll lay out some of the problems here, but if you just want to read the rewrite skip to the second last paragraph.
I don't mind at all that they lost the power, as season 8 and 9 were fantastic and would've had way different plots if they had to write around the ninja being able to fly, but both the lack of explanation in the show and the reasons the writers give are both a little iffy.
Let's say the dark magic explanation was the correct one, so the ninja prefer not to use Airjitzu. That doesn't explain everything we see in the show: for example, Cole fell off the Bounty into the Oni's darkness in season 10. The other ninja think he died, and during the fall he has every reason to think he's in mortal danger. So it doesn't really make sense for him to avoid using Airjitzu and risk his life just to avoid this "dark magic". Furthermore, the fact that there's this major plot point based around a fall makes the lack of in-show explanation a glaring problem: the audience naturally wonders why he didn't fly back to the ship like the ninja could in the past, and their only explanation is simply that they don't do that anymore. Imo it isn't exactly a bulletproof argument, and it's easy to lose out on some of the emotional impact watching the scene because you know he's only not saving himself so we can have a dramatic plot moment.
The second explanation, that they don't train Airjitzu anymore, works for season 10 but it doesn't really work past then. Take Cole: if nearly falling to his death isn't a good enough "scared straight" moment for him to reintroduce Airjitzu to his training, I don't know what would be. But in season 13 he nearly falls off the Bounty again, with no attempts to fly back. So the lack of training excuse really makes the ninja look bad.
I think all of these issues could have been avoided if Day of the Departed and Hands of Time were just tweaked a little in terms of writing. In DotD, they could've just explained that Yang used his own soul energy to empower Airjitzu, so when he passes on to the Departed Realm at the end, the technique is no longer possible. Then they'd just have to change a couple of scenes in season 7 to remove Airjitzu, and we're all good. If they really didn't want to use screentime for this, they could've just tweeted this explanation instead of the dark magic one, and it would at least give a good answer for the ninja falling/not flying in future seasons for fans interested enough to look it up.
I'm interested in any other rewrites you guys have, feel free to drop them below (or even just make a post about them). Thanks for reading!