u/Zontopho

I think Dragons Rising is a great show, and the writers have made a lot of tough creative decisions to try to make the story and world feel more cohesive, biggest being the merge, but I think it also negatively impacts the sense of scale when it comes to NINJAGO'S world. Before, when things were separated into different realms, most of them felt like they could stretch forever, and be a planet in their own universe. Now, it's known that they're all connected, and each realm realistically has to physically connect with each other on the same planet.

Some of the realms have been scaled down to act as narrative pitstops rather than lived in worlds. Cloud Kingdom is a good example of this I believe, compare its new iteration to the old one and it feels like it doesn't really have the sense of scale or culture that it had before.

The biggest thing that annoys me though are the background characters, more specifically the amount of them and the variety. It always rubbed me the wrong way that no matter what location we're in, most of the background characters are just recolors of models from the wildbrain seasons. The scene where Imperium stood their ground really disappointed me, there were so few people and I don't think I really felt the sense of scale that I think they were going for. There's a lot of scenes like that. I know the team working on the show most likely doesn't have the budget for that but I think regardless that's the impact on the show.