RavenRambles6229

Imo most likely, it's just that because they're already producing the pieces with the headbands, they just don't want to switch production without a very good justification when the design works perfectly fine for minifigs with the headband. First time it showed up was Shintaro, right? After Prime Empire and the Island, unless I'm forgetting something, that was the new normal.

I do think Cole and Lloyd is a bit of a false equivalence. It's probably closer to if, like, Cole and Dareth had the same hairstyle but different colors. Dareth is important, sure. But he doesn't have the same toyset presence that Cole does. With that in mind, Nya's hairpiece changed to Pixal's because she didn't exist in the movie, and nobody else aside from the main characters got a major re-design after the movie. So Nya and Pixal are holdovers from that. Agreed that it's long overdue, but I can see how it happened and I find it interesting. But hey, we're going on a good what, five or so years with the headband in the sets? The biggest problem is that it's a very Ninjago specific piece that's harder to justify using outside of the Build-a-minifig tower for anyone that isn't Nya.

Pixal's hairpiece however, is really easy to use anywhere for just about any generic female minifig in a random City set, or in any variety of colors for the BAM tower. My favorite example is the pommel of the sword in the Fortnite mech.

So if they decide Nya figs aren't worth it and want to cheap out, I can see them reverting her hairpiece to the one with no headband. But molds are, by FAR, the most expensive part of LEGO production. Especially for a dual tone with the headband. The only reason they would have made that piece on the first place, knowing it was so limited in use, to basically a single character, is, hopefully, because they plan on using it for the foreseeable future. Injection molding becomes cheaper the more the piece is used. Which is why sets with unique pieces find their prices insanely inflated compared to the $0.10/brick baseline. (This applies to all themes but is most noticeable in LEGO original themes where licensing isn't also a price factor) That is to say, they'll see the best ROI by using the mold for as long as possible. And because it's a great character detail that makes her match Kai and helps them both read a little bit closer to "ninja" even without the masks or with more out there outfits, I see no practical reason why they'd revert it outside of really REALLY cheaping out on Nya. She is however, probably the one I hear the least as favorites among kids in the store when I ask. I've heard Sora more than Nya. So it isn't impossible.

But Nya has honestly gotten some pretty decent showing in Dragons Rising these past few years. The worst thing is that she basically never gets her own sets outside of spinner packs. Cole, Jay, and Zane still haven't gotten spinner packs, but have still however, gotten sets. Kai, Lloyd, Arin, and Jay are USUALLY the ones to get sets. As in, it's Arin's off-road buggy or Kai's climber mech. Although Cole is constantly doing his own thing in mech land. Presumably for the variety in color appeal. And because there's overlap in blue between Nya and Jay, unfortunately I think they're going to continue to get lumped together.

Nya definitely does need better representation, but again, she's been a fantastic presence in Dragons Rising. And with the way the show is tackling issues of bigotry through a fantasy allegory (we are all dragons, no dragons in imperium), I do get the vibe that these writers are at least trying to make respect women juice a more regular part of their daily meals.

This is not at all about the sets for me- this is 100% about the show, and because it hasn't been flatly stated outside of the tags, the problem is very specifically that damned hairpiece that's shared between nya and pixal. Regardless of everything else- that piece has snowballed into a massive issue and a symbol of something larger.

The ninja have had headbands in the sets for ages now, and I don't think that's changing for all the reasons listed above. They knew ninjago was a forever brand, and so dedicating 'ninja' specific hair for all the mains was a long term investment worth putting some money into. That all makes sense.

But the show has never been run on this same meta. The headbands, until recently, were fun once and while style choices which fit the more rugged feeling installments, and revert back to normal every time they show up. They've had the option to do this since like the island, and it's only happened a handful of times across everyone. Dragons rising had the perfect opportunity to revamp their 'signature show look' to match with the sets and be the ones with headbands, but chose to launch with their hair as normal. They bring in the headband looks for the back half of season 2, before going back and forth on it through season 3. This is why I don't see the show keeping the headbands long term- because if we're taking the sets as any sort of an indication, headbands would be standard in show for half a decade now, but they're not. We just barely had our first two installment consecutive run with them. And to me this makes sense. The headbands feel special, they feel a bit extra, and they feel like a very POINTED fashion statement. All things which make sense for a set where you want the coolest looking minifigs, but not so much in a show where that much fancy visual clutter on half your characters 24/7 is a bit much.

All of this is fine, all of this makes sense, but it then raises the question why not just change the non-headband hair for either Nya or Pixal in show?

For the longest time after they ended up with the same hair, they were it. They were THE two female characters in the show. Full stop. And they shared the same hairpiece. A key part of any woman's expression of her personal identity, and ninjago took the two most front facing women in the cast and decided it was perfectly acceptable for them to just be the same. The girls both get their boyfriends the same way, and they both get to be samurai x, and they both get to be the smart mature builders.... and they both get the same hair. It's a massive visual representation of all these lingering effects of years of subtly bias writing against the women in the show.

I don't care what brought you to that point, once you get there, you HAVE to realize that's something that needs changing ASAP. So why not?

Clearly continuity with the sets is not a big deal, since the sets have had incongruent hair for ages now BECAUSE of the headband thing. If they wanted to change the hair in show, they could. End of. The cost of changing a hairpiece in show is SO MUCH more minimal- either creating a new digital asset, or simply color swapping an existing one currently utilized purely for background/side characters. So really, once you get yourself into a position where the show has its two most well known female characters with the same default hairpiece THERE IS NO EXCUSE NOT TO CHANGE ONE OF THEM. Once the sets quit lining up all together THERE'S REALLY NO EXCUSE NOT THE CHANGE ONE OF THEM.

'Pixal has to have her original because we want her to match the sets'. Okay fine. We've already established that doesn't really matter, but fine. Then change Nya's. We are no longer making sets without her headband, so there is no tether which holds you to her non headband design in show. That one can be literally whatever you want without affecting sets. It's just laziness at this point. And don't tell me that it's a branding recognizability thing, if putting her in a slightly different ponytail broke her show image, we wouldn't be getting the headband one, now would we?

The sets saw it important enough to make Nya her own 2 color hair mold because they saw the value giving her a unique look of her own which conveyed her character would have in the long run. This happened back in 2021. Meaning that this makes for one of the few occasions where the SETS were (accidentally) more progressive than the show was. By bothering to make Nya something unique of her own as a new default, they meaningfully put effort and money behind defining nya and (indirectly) differentiating between her and Pixal, in a context where these two characters rarely even interact. The show on the other hand has these two in the same space together not infrequently, as they do live in the same house, and work on the same team, etc, etc... And yet are fine with keeping a core part of their design identity exactly the same, despite the barrier for changing it being SO much lower.

This shouldn't have been a problem to begin with when it started 8 years ago. Nya's design was copied from the movie which used Pixal's hair because she wasn't in it. Fine. But there was no reason the show had to keep that decision. Not all the movie hair made it over to the show characters. They could have chosen something different for Nya, they could have meaningfully altered it, but they didn't. Pixal was completely rebuilt with a new design season 8 as well (with no set hair to bother you I might add), could have given her some new hair then- but they didn't. Once the soft reboot of the wildbrain era came around, maybe then, when updating all their character models and textures they might decide to differentiate between Nya and Pixal, especially with Pixal officially becoming a main character in this version of the show. But no, they didn't do it. Maybe in the Nya focus season, a celebration of the show finally giving us some proper female focus? No. Once Nya has to be reformed into a new person in season 15, one of the most Pixal prominent seasons of the show? No. Once we start a whole new show in Dragons Rising, either of these women might be afforded new character designs in order to finally visually separate them in a context which the writers KNOW they will inevitably be living together and interreacting again. No. Not even with Pixal's top to bottom cosmetic overhaul can we bother to give her a slightly different in show hair design. We are still stuck with scenes like this reminding us that it is too much logistical effort to commit to a change as big as... having different digital hair for a bit:

Despite the sets LONG moving on, the show has dragged Nya's pixpony kicking and screaming all the way through at least season 3 of Dragons Rising, and I predict will continue to hold onto it for long after, even if the set hair gets mixed in for flavor. Because at this point, she has probably spent more time with it on screen than pixal has-- it's hers now.

Maybe the Lloyd and Cole comparison is a bit much for dragons rising, but I think it's certainly apt for the 11 minute era. The show actually pushed Pixal as an equal main character back then, (even if they didn't always follow through on it the best) and any insistence otherwise is just Pixal erasure. She had large plotlines and interactions with all the team and character posters and solo episodes. We were supposed to think of her the way we thought of Nya in season 1. The way we thought of Wu. Even prior in season 10 they had started giving her real character plots outshining some of the actual ninja. And the reason her hair never got changed is the same reason they couldn't keep up with her main character status: the show is fundamentally uninterested in its second choice of female protagonist. She can be nothing but an extension of Zane and Nya, and so that's what her plots are, that's what her dialogue is, that's what her character design is.

I don't even think Dareth is an apt comparison for Dragons Rising Pixal. Pixal is considered part of the team, lives with them, and we must confirm her whereabouts each installment, even if she's going to be off screen. That means something. But even if that's the case, even if that's the level she's at, even if Nya has taken ownership of the pixpony-- what an insult to her to have to share the look with a side character like that! Has there EVER been a side character of meaningful prominence that shared a hairpiece with a ninja, on screen, simultaneously, let alone for an extended multi-season stretch? NO! Because that's THAT NINJA'S HAIRPIECE! Kids catch on immediately, and it's distracting! But not so for our female characters. Because Pixal is in this weird main character/side character limbo, because of the sets and the movie and the redesigns and whatever all else. There is an endless list of excuses to throw at the thing, but that doesn't make it any less of a problem.

Fact remains, if strange outside circumstances contrived Wu into getting Cole's hairpiece for all of the eleven minute era and beyond, you'd better bet that would've been straightened out in a heartbeat. Messily? Maybe. Incongruently? Maybe. But it would have happened. And it takes the show like 7 years to give in to the design pressure of the sets and accidentally give the women the same level of respect if the nya headband design actually sticks this time around.

This is an issue that the team is fundamentally uninterested in addressing, probably because they don't even clock it's a problem. And if it's true that it's finally being addressed this time, it will have been by happenstance for set synergy reasons nearly a decade too late. Even if nya never appears in the show with Pixal's hair again, the damage has already been done, so the bare minimum is no longer enough to repair my trust in their awareness of these issues. Fixing this is going to take effort.

i looked into the actual hairpieces. Pixal only had one minifig before the redesigns (not counting the s7 samurai x since this is about hair) and it's this one.

This hairpiece is #95326.

As you can see, it's only used in a couple figs. The latest being the top one, as a part of the CMF line. The CMF line being when LEGO does specialized minifigs with more unique molds that otherwise aren't used much/at all/completely new. The recent batch of Spiderverse Minifigs were CMFs, as well as the Mysterious Ronin Lloyd figs, for example. So aside from that special case, the last one was Toxikita in 2015. Pixal was in 2014 according to Bricklink. That is to say, this is an extremely specialized hair piece that doesn't get much use.

Well, I'm pretty sure they decided they didn't want to use it anymore. I say this because when the movie/s8 hit, so too did the redesigns.

Here's Nya's piece. It's called #25405pb01. The Additional numbers/lettering are definitely due to the silver ponytail. Well, let's remove the pb01.

25405. That's... not great. Around this time, presumably for convenience, they switched BOTH the hair pieces.

The crazy thing? Pixal didn't even get a fig WITH a hairpiece until the CORE series (the line of suits that the ninja wear when shown after crystallized but before dragons rising)

But it gets weirder. Now, this could be messed up, because the numbering on pieces with dual colors gets funny. But, do you wanna know what (aside from that random fortnite set) uses these hairpieces? It's a pretty generic woman's ponytail, so I thought for sure I had seen it in the minifig tower at work but, well.

Nada. As far as I have found, this hairpiece has only been used for Nya and Pixal. Which is... beyond baffling.

This paints such a weird picture. Pixal had a hairpiece that was not a completely unique LEGO piece, but most of the ninja had non-unique hairpieces at the time. (I'm pretty sure Kai was the only one with a bespoke headpiece)

However, around comes the movie, and Nya gets a new design. It's a ponytail with a silver headband. Which is neat, because her and Cole are the only ones to have dual-tone hairpieces and even then Cole only has it when his hair is tied back.

But then, for who knows WHAT reason, the show runners ALSO changed Pixal's hair when, I cannot stress this enough, she wasn't even going to receive a minifig with her hair for the then-forseeable future. And they made her use Nya's hair.

I'm sure you can come up with some kind of explanation in-universe about how Pixal may have used Nya as a reference when reconstructing a body since she was also using Samurai X but I wouldn't really buy that as anything more than fanfiction.

Considering all that, I think my new biggest fear is them giving Pix a purple headband, tbh. No matter how important we want her to be and believe that she should get to be, the fact remains that she's had two minifigs in Dragons Rising. So if not to the showrunners (although she definitely IS to the showrunners), then SOMEONE definitely is thinking of her as an unimportant side character.

I'm willing to give the showrunners SOME benefit of the doubt, solely to the point of saying that I think they would make her more important if they had more time across the board for the huge cast.

However, this does not change how fucked up this treatment honestly is. It wasn't Nya that happened to have Pixal's hair like I initially thought. It was Pixal that had her hairstyle changed to match Nya's hairstyle-- hairstyles that have only been used for these two characters specifically.

I like to think I know a lot about the sort of production chain that leads to these decisions being made! I have an education in this sort of thing! And that's what a lot of my initial statements were based on. Really sorry about all the misinformation! it really sucks that this is how things were for these characters. I've got no idea why beyond "eh, everyone's getting an update, go ahead and give pixal nya's hair but without the ponytail since it's a nice piece" or "hey the new guy we had designing pixal used nya's hairpiece instead of the cavewoman piece, is that okay? yeah sure they look the same and it'll be easier to make into a toy if they ever decide to"

Ick. really does suck that that's basically the most charitable explanation i've got, man. I think most likely it's just that they didn't think it mattered. and that... really sucks.

so at least we have the headband. which are often reserved for every now and again (despite being pretty omnipresent in the sets that feature hair pieces)

if it were up to me, i'd keep the idea of "headband is for every now and again" with everyone except nya, who also uses it to tie back her hair and as such wears it more often. maybe then in chill moments or whatever, she could wear her hair down. could use maya's hairpiece even. they'd never, but i do think it would be fun.

What responsibilities does this stupid dickhead have to be anywhere but the Monastery? He couldn't be assed to hang around long enough to help Rontu fight Ras and he couldn't be assed to come back for the mid-season finale???

Imo most likely, it's just that because they're already producing the pieces with the headbands, they just don't want to switch production without a very good justification when the design works perfectly fine for minifigs with the headband. First time it showed up was Shintaro, right? After Prime Empire and the Island, unless I'm forgetting something, that was the new normal.

I do think Cole and Lloyd is a bit of a false equivalence. It's probably closer to if, like, Cole and Dareth had the same hairstyle but different colors. Dareth is important, sure. But he doesn't have the same toyset presence that Cole does. With that in mind, Nya's hairpiece changed to Pixal's because she didn't exist in the movie, and nobody else aside from the main characters got a major re-design after the movie. So Nya and Pixal are holdovers from that. Agreed that it's long overdue, but I can see how it happened and I find it interesting. But hey, we're going on a good what, five or so years with the headband in the sets? The biggest problem is that it's a very Ninjago specific piece that's harder to justify using outside of the Build-a-minifig tower for anyone that isn't Nya.

Pixal's hairpiece however, is really easy to use anywhere for just about any generic female minifig in a random City set, or in any variety of colors for the BAM tower. My favorite example is the pommel of the sword in the Fortnite mech.

So if they decide Nya figs aren't worth it and want to cheap out, I can see them reverting her hairpiece to the one with no headband. But molds are, by FAR, the most expensive part of LEGO production. Especially for a dual tone with the headband. The only reason they would have made that piece on the first place, knowing it was so limited in use, to basically a single character, is, hopefully, because they plan on using it for the foreseeable future. Injection molding becomes cheaper the more the piece is used. Which is why sets with unique pieces find their prices insanely inflated compared to the $0.10/brick baseline. (This applies to all themes but is most noticeable in LEGO original themes where licensing isn't also a price factor) That is to say, they'll see the best ROI by using the mold for as long as possible. And because it's a great character detail that makes her match Kai and helps them both read a little bit closer to "ninja" even without the masks or with more out there outfits, I see no practical reason why they'd revert it outside of really REALLY cheaping out on Nya. She is however, probably the one I hear the least as favorites among kids in the store when I ask. I've heard Sora more than Nya. So it isn't impossible.

But Nya has honestly gotten some pretty decent showing in Dragons Rising these past few years. The worst thing is that she basically never gets her own sets outside of spinner packs. Cole, Jay, and Zane still haven't gotten spinner packs, but have still however, gotten sets. Kai, Lloyd, Arin, and Jay are USUALLY the ones to get sets. As in, it's Arin's off-road buggy or Kai's climber mech. Although Cole is constantly doing his own thing in mech land. Presumably for the variety in color appeal. And because there's overlap in blue between Nya and Jay, unfortunately I think they're going to continue to get lumped together.

Nya definitely does need better representation, but again, she's been a fantastic presence in Dragons Rising. And with the way the show is tackling issues of bigotry through a fantasy allegory (we are all dragons, no dragons in imperium), I do get the vibe that these writers are at least trying to make respect women juice a more regular part of their daily meals.

yall are getting this way earlier than instagram peeps

inspired by my previous eye piece heheh

And Lloyd fully remembering the maniac psycho that is Master Chen, just says, "Since Kai's lack of ability nearly got us killed while fighting his almost father-in-law."

More then once he's made a lesson about the importance, of never opening mysterious tombs without proper supervision! "Already done it twice! The first time was only mostly okay, but it took years for that, and the less said about the second the better."

He has the kids spar and makes them hash out petty grievances while doing it, so they get used to talking while fighting. Because - "You never know when you have to talk down a corrupted team mate while they're mind-controlled and trying to kill you."

History lessons have this underlying tone of - "You need to know this one the off chance that you some how time-travel. It is more likely then you think."

Ninja get invited to something? - "Alright, how many weapons did you manage to hide in your formal wear? No, I'm not upset that you tried, it's actually good forward thinking, I'm disappointed you couldn't bring more."

taglist under the cut(just ask to be added/removed)

Honestly I think s11 had the weakest finale (sorry spinchip). Aside from that, I'm hard-pressed to think of a finale that didn't at least tick the "cool" box.

So personally, I feel like s5 will be good and fun! Not that I was being asked but I am excited.

Oh how I'll miss you beautiful blue and your delightful, suicidal ass boyfriend yellow

Oh how I'll miss you beautiful blue and your delightful, suicidal ass boyfriend yellow