All right, so. Some time back, I asked if you guys would like to see an analysis of Ninjago where, instead of criticising it for handling Asian culture badly, I talk about what it does well. A fair number of you said yes, and so here it is!
Full disclosure: I live in Asia, but not Japan or China. I am of East Asian descent, however, and have visited both of those countries quite a bit. All that to say that I'm not speaking for all East Asians in this analysis, or even all of the East Asian diaspora. This is just the opinion of one Asian Ninjago fan.
Also, for this analysis, I will cover mostly pre-Dragons Rising Ninjago. DR is great, but I feel that with the Merge, the showrunners have taken the deliberate step to move Ninjago further away from its Asian influences.
Lastly, though I do it myself a lot, I do dislike the use of Asian as a shorthand for East Asian, because obviously they aren't interchangeable. Asians include South Asians and Southeast Asians, among others. So from here on, I'll use EAsian to refer to Chinese/Japanese culture (explicitly Korean culture is pretty much absent in Ninjago).
To get the negative stuff out of the way: yes, I'm fully aware that Ninjago's roots are in that particular brand of Orientalism where EAsian culture is exoticized and put on a pedestal, but not to the point where the show's designers even bothered to differentiate between Chinese and Japanese, a kimono and a qipao. The ninja are ninja in name only, with little resemblance to historical ninja. And it is a North American show dressed up in EAsian clothing, with light-haired ninjas bearing decidedly non-EAsian names like Lloyd and Zane. (You should see how their names are butchered in their Chinese and Japanese transliterations. To give you an idea, in Chinese Lloyd is 劳埃德 LáoĀiDé. Yeah, nothing like Lloyd exists in Chinese.) Don't even get me started on what passes as EAsian dragons in this show!
But, once you accept that this is a fantasy and not a historical documentary, everything becomes much easier to handle. And honestly, in Western fantasy, I've never seen anyone complain about the lack of cultural accuracy. So the Lord of the Rings was influenced by Nordic sagas but the Rivendell Elves don't look or behave like any of the actual elves of Nordic myth? Who cares.
Also, the archetypal ninja in black garb wielding shurikens? That's fantasy too. Historaical ninja didn't wear black exclusively, and certainly not head to toe black with the mask and all. They dressed to blend in with the common people, who were farmers, so they wore a lot of earth tones. And they definitely didn't use shurikens. The black outfit came about when the stories of the ninja were dramatized on stage, and actors wore full black to seem invisible against the stage backdrop. (If you've ever seen the Ninjago bunraku puppet show at Legoland, the puppeteers dressed in ninja garb are some of the most accurate stage ninja ever.)
I'm sure, too, that by the end of my post someone will be raring to get in the comments talking about how other Western media like Avatar or Kung Fu Panda or whatever does EAsian culture as well or even better than Ninjago. If you're one of these people, save it. I'm not here to compare which Western production gets EAsian culture better. I'm here to talk about Ninjago and how it actually handles EAsian culture better than most people give it credit for.
Now that the usual criticisms are out of the way, let's get to what Ninjago does well:
1. The lore and setting of the early seasons
Say what you will about the golden weapons, the First Spinjitzu Master, and Wu and Garmadon, but all of these are classic Chinese/Japanese fiction tropes. Any Asian watching this will find the story beats all very comfortingly familiar. And, the early seasons made the relatively unusual (at least in the world of Western cartoon media) decision to place most of the action in an Asian rural setting, which is something much of Asian media tends to feature.
And yes, it's odd that the ninja train in a monastery, but it's an obvious nod to the warrior monk culture a la Shaolin Temple. Ninjago as a whole actually reads far more Chinese than Japanese, despite being ostensibly about ninja, so once you realize that, it's actually quite impressive how Chinese it is.
2. The music
I am actually constantly amazed at how authentic the Ninjago Overture sounds. Granted, again it's Chinese instead of Japanese, but it is so amazingly good Chinese music. I could probably put it on for my elderly relatives and they wouldn't bat an eyelid. Special mention to the opening festival music in the first episode of Sons of Garmadon. I could put that on any commercial during the Lunar New Year period and it would fit right in. Mad props to Jay Vincent and Michael Kramer. Their presentation of the instruments used in Ninjago's score is far and away my favorite part of the 10th Anniversary video, as it only served to deepen my appreciation of how they tried to incorporate so many different instruments from different Asian cultures into the soundtrack. If you haven't seen it, go watch it, it's absolutely insane. They deserve all the awards.
3. The Confucian values
This might sound incredibly odd, but Ninjago actually embodies some Confucian values in ways that I haven't seen in a lot of Western shows.
Firstly, the respect for hierarchy. Of course, the ninja have the deepest respect for Master Wu, but they also show automatic respect for anyone superior to themselves, whether it's in age, power, or rank. The most recent examples come from their attitudes (especially Lloyd's) towards Egalt and Rontu, and the arc dragons. Even if they have to disagree, they do so with the greatest tact and politeness, because that's what we gotta do with our superiors.
Secondly, the emphasis on hard work and merit. The ninja might be elemental masters, but boy do they have to work for their powers. They could have been just born with their powers, but no - the show decided to do a whole arc about unlocking true potential (potentials, now). And after that, they still had to work to improve/maintain their powers. Season 11 might be one of the weakest seasons, but the opening where Master Wu is exasperated with what he perceives as the ninjas' laziness - that is peak EAsianness right there. Ask anyone with a Chinese parent.
4. The architecture and festivals
"Bruh," I can hear you thinking, "what's so special about the architecture in Ninjgao City? It's just pseudo-EAsian pagodas and roofs slapped on to skyscrapers, no?"
Bruh, you've just described most modern Chinese cities. They've absolutely nailed it with the Ninjago City skyline. The Sons of Garmadon intro (and most of what we saw of Ninjago City in that season) was set in what could have been Hong Kong, or Tokyo or Shanghai, and it really made me feel like hey, our part of the world is finally being properly represented in a Western cartoon.
The festivals, too, are pretty close to what we'd have come up with if we had been asked to create a fantasy EAsian festival. I've mentioned how Ninjago brings out some Confucian values like I've never seen, and the Day of the Departed takes it to another level. It's not Dia de los Muertos dressed up to look Chinese, like I thought it'd be, though obviously there are many cultures with a day dedicated to honoring the dead. In Chinese culture, there is a Qingming festival, where people get together to clean the graves of their ancestors and refresh the offerings to them. The Ninjago version obviously doesn' involve grave cleaning, but it does gets actually fairly close to ancestor worship, with its emphasis on quietly spending time with family to honor the dead. And the concert is pretty similar to the performances put on during the Hungry Ghost Festival. If this was all just a coincidence and the writers never meant for the Day of the Departed to look that Chinese, well, it really coulda fooled me.
I could probably think of more, but these are what come to mind for me when I think of how Ninjago does EAsia well. I mean, it's clearly got to do well enough in China for the entire Day of the Departed special to be remade for the Chinese market, and it didn't get there by being disrespectful to their culture. China's Legoland now of course embraces Monkie Kid as "their" Lego IP, and leave Ninjago to a somewhat less enthusiastic Japan to claim as their own. But before Monkie Kid, Ninjago did double duty in representing both of these cultures, and I'd like to say it did a pretty decent job of it.
