Mandate

Not brilliant, but most certainly a giant step up from their last attempt at a minisode. Only serious problem I had was with the "NEXO POWAH!!!" scene, that's going to be unbearble before we get through half the season if it happens as much as it has so far.

Hardly the entire plot, probably just the first episode. I'm glad to hear that Nadakhan isn't going to be shoehorned further into the lore (at this point, anyway), I had feared they were going to retcon the absence of pirates in Ninjago's recent history (not counting Soto). Anyway, when someone says spoilers, you really should be prepared for spoilers of any kind.

Don't let me discourage you from speculating, really. If you find anything more to connect Ronin and the pirates, go ahead and let everyone in the thread know. I've been burned by speculation before, which is probably the internal reason for why I seem to try to destroy it whenever I come across it.

I have Special Eyes... Are you sure? Ronin also shared similarities with the Zukin outfits, which would mean he has a connection to Chen. Except that's no longer canon. Forgive me, I forgot you hadn't joined Eurobricks when that kerfuffle kicked up. When we first started getting details about ToE, when we first got a closer look at Ash's torso (this was before even episode 37 was out, possibly even 36) and found out it was the same symbol as the Overlord's, a lot of people speculated that Ash had some connection to the Overlord (bear in mind this was straight after the Overlord died and Zane survived). Tox and Paleman garnered quite a bit of speculation that Ultra Agents and NINJAGO existed on the same planet, at the time we didn't know even half the names of the competitors so everyone assumed they were Toxikita and Invizible. As for Griffin Turner, oh boy, you have no idea about that one. When episode 35 leaked (still can't remember if 36 had come out) They Who Shall Not Be Mentioned™ began speculating that Griffin Turner was in fact, a resurrected Dr Julien. I'm not kidding. Finally, Skylor's Special Eyes. Can't remember any specific speculation surrounding them, not even any Batman jokes, but they were still a significant detail on a figure that had no actual purpose in the story. Wu was barely in the season at all, and the only reason he was there at all was just to snap at Garmadon for comparatively ruining his life and attempt a spell. You could have removed Wu from the season and there would be no difference. It's not hard to believe, I'm just pointing out that we've been wrong on speculating things quite a few times. I remember when I thought ToE would be set in Hiroshi's Labyrinth, and when people began speculating about Ash. If you want to see a more extensive list of times the community has been wrong, just look up Ninjago Theories' history.

Because we've never had endless speculation on minifigures (or details) that actually meant nothing before. Case in point: Ash's belt Tox Paleman Griffin Turner Skylor's Tell me: If Ronin is going to play a major part in this series, one that even the set designers were aware of when designing the figures, why isn't he in any of the Skybound sets?

1) No he doesn't. 2) Completely absent in the how. 3) what

No, for the hardcover versions of the dual character books (which are no longer dual in the hardcover editions) They actually aren't identical. They're close, but the details are all wrong.

For the main color? If you're thinking "dark" along the lines of what BIONICLE fans would call "Metru blue" or "Metru red", not that dark. For Kai, on the top and bottom ends of each book is a near-black shade of red, with the remaining 75% being a speckled bright red and dark red with Kai in an orange spinjitzu tornado. As for Jay, near-black shade of blue on the top and bottom ends, with what I can only describe as dark blue, normal blue and trace amounts of a vibrant azure mixed in. There's no way to do the colors justice, pictures can't match how incredible they look. The front of the books are arguably even better, with the glossy finishes over certain areas and black, wispy smoke to make the bright colors look even brighter. Wasn't a similar design used for the Zukin ninja?

I should have guessed LEGO would block this in Australia.

Just to add on to Aanchir's point here, since I've had all three (yes, three) editions of these books. Each of the "Character: Master of X" books features a short story and a story divided into chapters, whereas the two-sided books would feature full-color pages with illustrations, some facts, trivia and questions, but for each side there would only be one short story, the exact same one as featured in the "Character" books. If you're lucky like me and saw an 8-year old unintenionally ruin the only copy you had of Jay/Cole book that was four years out of print and thus had an excuse to buy the hardcover edition (which is strangely still being sold today), you'd get the books in a package where each character had their own hardcover novel rather than sharing it with another character. If you got the "Character" books, there's not much of a reason to buy the double-sided books since the only additions are some non-fiction trivia, the accuracy of which I've found questionable. Some useless info here, but the glossy finish on the raise hardcover surface is nothing short of beautiful alongside the darker color choices for Kai and Jay, the books themselves have been cleaned up a little with a proper "answers" page. Only gripe with them (other than factual inaccuracy) was that Zane comes on the back of his book with everything that wasn't white coated in blue, except for most of the gold on his Shurikens.

Doubloon is the Office of Naval Intelligence? I thought Mega Bloks had the rights to HALO Terrible jokes aside, the closest thing to Doubloon that I can think of is an Orc from Skyrim. I don't think we'll find out what he is for a few weeks yet, unless by chance the episodes air early in another country.

How so? They're both still fully-trained knights from an academy. That's more than Luke Skywalker had. I talked about this earlier in the thread, having a double-betrayal where the BoM tries to betray Jestro but Jestro comes out on top would do wonders for having a real villain. I hope we get a "Dark Knight" (not the Dark Knight though) at some point, if the lack of a black knight on the Nexo team is any indication that we could get one.

Except that Nexo Knights doesn't really focus on anything in its pilot episode. If I asked you what was outside the walls of Knightonia (I had to go to the website to find out the name of the city, if that helps) based on what you saw in the pilots alone, how much would you be able to tell me? If I asked you what sorts of unique locations Knightonia has, how many could you list? If someone asked you why the Book of Monsters wanted evil books so badly, would you be able to answer them? And if you can answer why the Book of Monsters wants them, can you answer what for? Nothing has had any particular amount of time and care put into it. Each knight, except Macy, is a facade. Clay cares about upholding the Knight's Code and being the "best knight" but beyond that he doesn't have any defining traits. Lance wants the title of knight, but doesn't want to do the work, and there's not really anything else to describe about him. Axl is concerned with eating food and smashing things, but he's not exactly a gentle giant. As for Aaron, I can't quite remember if he did anything other than fly around on a shield and shout "woohoo!" every now and again. As for the villains, there's a goldmine of potential here that I can't help but feel was wasted in some ways already. Jestro's relationship with Clay opens the door to some unique dialogue later on, but I can't help but feel we didn't see enough of Jestro and Clay together beforehand for there to be a real connection. The Book of Monsters is, as I've said before, sort of floating around being evil for the sake of being evil but again, there's potential here in the dates of monsters disappearing, his time on Merlock's shelf and Merlock's connection to this. However, he still has no defining trait other than "EVIL BAD GUY CHARACTER" and his motives for being such are unclear. With time that can be corrected, but the BoM and Jestro is basically Crooler and Cragger all over again at this point. Most of the secondary characters are very neat though. Merlock being a complete goofball (yet willing to sacrifice himself) makes for a very interesting character, and while I wish we could have seen more of them the kids were pretty good too. The Queen, being a better ninja than anything to come out of NINJAGO, has an interesting dynamic of sticking with the hopelessly incompetent King out of love for him. It's in these characters that Nexo Knights shines by taking your typical boring snorefest and turning it on its head, and it attempts to do the same with the knights but fails to do so because they're the main protagonists: every knight (except Macy) is just an archetype with very little, if anything, added to make them original. World building... there's some interesting stuff. Well, one interesting thing as far as I can remember, which I mentioned earlier being that monsters hadn't been seen for over a century, and the Book of Monster's claim of staying on the shelf for (over?) a century. But aside from Knightonia, of which we know very little of, we saw nothing of Knighton but some trees. External material doesn't count, but having seen the map myself I can't help but question if spending 3/4 of one episode trying to turn the power on and arguing over what to do (which ultimately led to nothing happening) could have been better spent introducing the knights' backstories. Maybe Axl came from the desert region where there was little food, hence his constant need to eat everything. Perhaps Aaron came from some boring farm village, giving him a thirst for action and adrenaline. This would have created a connection between characters and locations that could be explored in the future, and simultaneously shown us how vast and distinct certain regions are. But they didn't, and we know next to nothing about the world after 40 minutes of time. We don't need to explore every nook and cranny just yet, but when it comes to giving us a taste of what's to come and showing what we can expect Nexo Knights just falls flat on its face. I did enjoy the premiere of Nexo Knights but it has a lot of stuff to make up for in the future. I understand that the, what, 18 episodes they're releasing make it difficult to introduce too much in the pilot episodes but they really need to take a look at the ways NINJAGO has done this right, rather than wrong (Ninjago City = Knightonia, Ninjago = Knighton, etc).

Wow. MMvsSG was $30 and bumped to $40 over here, Kopaka and Melum is $25 and has been bumped up to $40. On a lighter note, the set descriptions for Onua and Umarak seem to think that a "BIONICLE head" is a feature to be proud of.

You realize you just said that I'm right? Here's the problem: the writers are being coy about everything. We knew more about NINJAGO's characters and world at this point than we do here. While NINJAGO was upfront and forthright with why its central characters (Garmadon, Wu and Kai) were involved in the story, here we know nothing. Out of Nexo Knights' central characters (Jestro, Book of Monsters and Clay. Macy should be here as well since she had more of a presence than Clay, but she's not the face of marketing), we only know the motives of Jestro. The Book of Monsters is set up to betray Jestro (though personally I want to see a double-betrayal and have Jestro come out on top stronger and more psychotic than ever), but it's never made clear what the BoM wants to do in the first place. Does it want to take over Knighton? If so, why? It's not for revenge against Merlock, as far as the BoM knows Merlock is dead. But there's no actual threat when the villain is the epitome of a Saturday morning cartoon doing evil things just because it can. Garmadon fit into the same cookie-cutter at the time, but at least we knew what he wanted. As for Clay, he's determined to uphold the "Knight's Code" at all costs. Again, why? This could have been solved with a five-minute flashback instead of a lame tournament at the beginning. Clay is completely unrelatable, and barring Macy so are the rest of the knights, who just seem to... exist in this primordial soup of a story. This is Chima again, except instead of character traits placed over an entire army's worth of clones they're condensed into a single group of characters. I'm not asking to be explained everything in the story, because that's never a good idea. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, NINJAGO, heck, even Chima all knew this. It's just that unlike said franchises, Nexo Knights doesn't realize it hasn't explained a thing. It's walking around unbeknownst to itself that its pants are down, and by the time it finds out it'll forget to do its fly up too. These are NK's pilot episodes, the very definition of a focus episode. This is where you establish your world, establish your characters, establish your tone and establish (to an extent) what's going to happen. NK hasn't done a very good job at any of these. There's potential here, no question about it. I'm hesitant to call it a disappointment because it's not, they'd have to be trying pretty hard to do that after that awful minisode they released. But simultaneously, there are a number of flaws they need to make up for later on, and if the jump in quality between episode 1 and 2 is anything to go by then I'll stick around. My biggest concern is that the finer details are going to be lost in the running time, which after Chima's first season is a real problem they're going to face.

Not sure if I could forget that that book exists. A comparison to the original masters of fire and water (pictures of whom can be found here and here, in case anyone needs them) reveals a heavy similarity. The only differences are the eyebrows, the cheekbones and the eyebrows. Even so, the shapes of the eyebrows on the actual character models are perfect matches for Kai's an Nya's eyebrows, respectively. Have we gotten direct confirmation yet as to whether or not they actually are Kai and Nya's parents?

Just saw episode 2. This series has potential, to say the most. I enjoyed Merlock 2.0 being a complete goofball and that the only people that were actually dependable were the kids (even if that was a big cliche), but aside from that... the BoM seems like it's evil solely for the sake of being evil. Yes, he's an evil magic tome, what more should be expected? But the problem comes with a lack of motives. Why does the BoM want to attack everything? Why does he need books to gain more power? Do they give him additional spells as if they were a power-up in a video game? (not that that's a bad thing) I'm unconvinced. The characters are flat for the most part; their personalities cliche and boring. For instance, Axl could be described as Hungry Hungry Hulk and no one would know the difference. Their motivations are unclear: why is Clay so devoted to preserving the "Knight's Code"? Why does Lance want to be a knight? Why is ever single robot that runs around some kind of comic gag? I understand that this isn't Harry Potter where you're actually meant to ask questions like this, but as a result of that I can't take this show seriously. It doesn't have the same qualities of NINJAGO or BIONICLE where the source material is mature enough to place boundaries on the humor, it's clearly intended for the same audience as Chima. It reeks of Chima's earliest faults (no surprise since it's the same company), so hopefully in the future it will get better as Chima did. Or so I've been told, I never watched Chima's final season

Yeah, but Merlock is at least 5,000 centuries old at this point. Why has Jestro chosen this path when he's clearly already outmatched? Maybe it was a magic cell phone and he was ordering a pizza? You didn't seem harsh at all to me.

It's not blinding me. The pilots and first few episodes of NINJAGO were mediocre at best. Watching Nexo Knights right now. I'll type my thoughts as I watch. Warning: these thoughts have virtually no context given and are potentially capable of destroying your brain cells. Read at your own risk. Eh, it wasn't too bad. Haven't seen the second episode yet, but they've got plenty of areas to improve in with this one already.

Villain team-up series? This has the potential to be either the greatest wave/season we've ever gotten, or the epic conclusion that screws up everything. Samukai, Chen, Morro, Pythor... yeah, things aren't looking good already for this series if they're bringing back dead people and changing villain statuses, yet not bringing back good 'ol Garmy or the Overlord. I don't mean to be rude, but is Lordofdragonss known for leaking things in the past?

Kai's motorbike must have broken LEGO's record for most stupid, pointless and shoehorned in play feature ever created. As for Nya's bike, I'm struggling to imagine what the point of the front of the bike moving up and down is supposed to be. The "Junk Jet" is pretty cool though. I'd like Jay's dragon a lot more if it weren't for that ridiculous "horns" and transparent wings. I'm not a fan of how random the color placements are on it either, but it's better to see the set in-hand for stuff like that. Other than that, they're looking pretty good. The spring shooters are in the wing arms. It's physically impossible to fit those inside the dragon's mouth given the space constraints shown by the images.

When did they say this? To be fair, they have forgotten stuff in the past. For instance, the constant rewriting of established lore and that time they briefly canonized the third-party developed Shadow of Ronin after confusing it with Realm of Shadows.

Elite elemental Samurai that aren't an army of comedians like every other army we've seen, a serious leader with proper motivations reflected upon in his or her character, complete consistency with the themes of the season and a "megaweapon" that involves former major plot points, eg the Golden Weapons. Buuut we're not going to see that happen since Ninjago's a cash cow so I'll just settle for Alien Space Marines VS Ninja