Just to be clear, I don't think this was done intentionally or maliciously or anything. My problem also isn't with the descriptions themselves, but rather the double standard- especially in terms of the content of this book specifically. Nya being described as Jay's girlfriend is fine, but the fact that her status as Kai's sister is the first thing in her bio (a piece of trivia which holds zero relevance to this book) is a bit sus. Skylor's relationship to Kai is mentioned in hers but not Kai's, despite Kai being the more overtly attached of the two of them, and their relationship being the center point of Kai's story in this book. To read Kai's story and not know that he's had a massive crush on her for a while would be to miss important information, and so I find it puzzling that it wasn't included in his definition. Especially when his description is very short and seems like it's trying to fill space, and Skylor's definition stretches across two pages, needing to include a slightly convoluted backstory- it's the double standard. Overall I think the larger pattern is more interesting. Of these six people in relationships, only the females have that fact mentioned in their bio. Yes, this is perhaps emblematic of their one dimensional writing throughout the show's history, but that in itself doesn't exactly make the show's treatment of female characters look great. For those expressing that female shows do this to male love interests- yes they do. But again, that's not my problem- it's the double standard. If the main character of a female aimed TV show was actively dating someone, I kind of have a hunch that would be mentioned somewhere in her bio. This statement also assumes that ninjago is not attempting to be gender inclusive, which I personally would disagree with. It's also worth mentioning that all descriptions of relationships here are male-ownership based. There is no variety. Nya's description says that she's Kai's sister- not that Kai is her brother. It tells us Pixal is Zane's closest friend, not that her closest friend is Zane. Skylor and Kai are not dating, Skylor is Kai's girlfriend. It's these little framings that all add up to prove that it's not trying very hard to value a female perspective. Again, I'm certain none of this was done on purpose, but it reveals the underlying biases baked into the show itself, and even just the way we think about relationships in general. This video is meant to be fun and light hearted, so don't get your knickers in too much of a twist over things ;)
Tbh, I wouldn't mind if it were just Skylor and Pixal, but NYA?! She is literally a main character and one of the ninja. It's kind of sad how they decides to make her description base around her relationships instead of, you know, BEING AN ELEMENTAL MASTER
Wasn't there a whole thing in Skybound about her not wanting to just be known as "the girlfriend" or the "female ninja" pretty sure it was a whole character arc or smth
*Nya having multiple character moments how she doesn't want to be defined as the "girl ninja" or "Jay's girlfriend"* The book: Imma pretend i didn't see that
@@insertunoroginalnamehere6189I'm pretty sure they remember, they just don't care about past seasons, haven't you noticed all the plot holes that happened one episode after another
Exactly cuz these are much more relevant to her character arc 💀 why do we need to immediately know that she’s related to one of the other ninja in the team?
It's really great that someone actually talks about these problems,it s necessary to inform both the fans (who haven't noticed) and the production team of this issue so HOPEFULLY they don't repeat these mistakes again. Great video BTW.
Don’t know if they’ll prevent a mistake like that again, but it’s nice that the problem is addressed to all of us. I really don’t stand for sexism (like that scene with Dareth from season 6 😒).
I don’t know what’s worse about Pixal’s description? The fact that Zane is Mentioned in hers, when she isn’t mentioned in His [which is Pretty Sexist, judging by how it happens with the Other Ninja] Or the Fact that She’s called Zane’s “Closest Friend”, When They’ve been Married since Season 4! And you Can Not convince me otherwise! [forgot to add this last time]
um, they haven't been married, but have been girlfriend and boyfriend. though I wouldn't be surprised if they had tied the knot before or after crystalized,
well I don't think this is really much of a problem, for Skylor and Pixal at least. s4: Skylors whole character purpose was *to be* Kai's girlfriend, and nothing else. s3: Pixal's character was also *to be* Zane's girlfriend, and nothing else. although they have obviously developed, this is just simply a way of describing versions of love interests. unfortunately this sexism has happened to both genders. such as Flash Sentry in MLP he had zero character, other than to be Twilight Sparkles boyfriend. and was described as such. for Nya however, she's had even worse treatment. in a add for seabound, they literally had to genderswap her, because Ninjago's target audience is boys. and while that is understandable, its still really messed up from a cannon perspective.
@@СветльоГанев that is incorrect. their relationship was confirmed to be cannon, and even then for just consumers, you just need to watch the shows seasons, and its pretty obvious. and back in the start she was confirmation as Kai's love interest. originally they were going to make his character a bit of a playboy like we saw in s3, but they invented skylor to tie the knot with that. We see that with the deleted ending for s7, where Kai has a kid with him as his son/daughter.
Just to clarify, I don't like that they did that in the glossary, and I know Ninjago is for girls too, I'm just stating the fact that it's not always female characters that get this treatment in media
@@NRG_Studios agreed. this always happens anyway to the opposite gender, whenever a love interest of a show targeted to the opposite of that gender, comes out. its really nothing specific to ninjago.
A really great point, unfortunately the writers of this book do not understand 1.the character journeys like Nya s independency and 2.their target audience aren't only 7 year old boys ,you know Ninjago has a fair share of female fans , I'm not saying they should respect female characters in female target media only,im a boy myself and I'm not happy about female characters being labelled by their male counterparts.
I don’r think that this was intentional, just misplaced, I could be wrong but still I’ll just go ahead and say I absolutely love the female characters in Ninjago.
hey hope your glad that ninjago is done making focus seasons cause you seem to be againts them since you like ninjago as an ansamble show, for me it's pretty disapointing like seriously the most nostalgic thing about ninjago for me is during the days when we get leaks about the focus ninja and speculate and it sucks now that they are done with them wich is a shame since i think kai deserves a solo season and zane should get another season as well i also would love for another jay season where they could explore his past and what happend to his biological mother, another cole season wouldn't hurt with maybe focusing on his relation with his dad and his relation with vania
With Pixal and Skylor, I think it is not exactly just a sexism issue. A lot of side characters will often be described as "the friend of [main character]" or "a great support for [main squad] during [big adventure]". It's coming over as sexist, but it was probably more likely supposed to make them sound interesting to new viewers by pointing out their relations to the main characters that people recognize on the merch and posters alone. Though sadly with Nya, I speculate it is the result of Ninjago's bad history with feministic messaging. To put it simply, your female main character constantly acknowledging her life in the shadow of her male colleges so openly actually drives her deeper in that shadow and only helps to take away her individuality as her own person with her own strengths, which will scar her image for the rest of the show's career. Even with the improvements in the newer seasons, Nya is still scarred with pretty misguided sexism today and it needs to stop.
Really good point, but I don’t necessarily believe they’ve done this on purpose. (At least not with Sky and Pix) Pixal and Skylor are technically considered side characters. Naturally, this means that their introductions (and oftentimes their existence) will be directly linked to a character. ATLA was the first thing to come to mind, so I’ll use that example here: if I were to describe Monk Gyatso, it would be more convenient if I addressed him as Aang’s teacher figure. Now, if I were to dedicate a book to describing the characters of ATLA, I’d definitely say “Aang’s was Monk Gyatso’s student” in Aang’s character description. That being said, if I was only given a quick paragraph to describe Aang, I’d probably mention him being the Avatar and the only airbender alive, instead of mentioning his teacher. That’s because the existence of his character is not dependent on Gyatso. The opposite is true with Gyatso. Although he has his own character, his character serves few purposes: be Aang’s teacher, give Aang a motivation to run away, and be unalived. Now let’s look at Ninjago: Pixal and Skylor both have their own arcs and characters. That still doesn’t change the fact that when given such a short amount of time to describe them, it will narrow down to “Zane’s friend” and “Kai’s girlfriend”. As for Nya…I guess it’s just because her being the water samurai doesn’t affect the story much, but being Jay’s girlfriend does. It’s also important to consider the fact that the initial purpose of her character was to provide Kai with a motivation to help Wu during the pilot. Like Pix and Sky, she now has a bigger purpose, but it’s still something to consider. (Still shouldn’t have done my girl dirty-)
I think for side characters their realtionships being a defining part of their character is fine but Nya is a *main character* there is no reason for her whole bio to be about her relations to other characters.
I don't want to be controversial or offend anyone, but personally I don't see it that way. I'm pretty sure the descriptions for the main ninja are copied and pasted in every book they appear in so it's just supposed to be a quick description. Most of the females you mentioned are recurring characters that are easily identified by who their with. Nyas might be overdue for a change but I don't take it as sexist. Just my opinion so don't come at me lol
Loved hearing your thoughts on the characters' bios. I also don't think the show/book has any malicious intent behind stuff like this, but one problem I keep noticing from the show is Nya seemingly getting shipped/hit on by older men alot: Ronin in season 5, Nadakhan in season 6, and even one scene in season 9 with Shadow. At least Nadakhan is evil, so we're not supposed to see his actions as good, but Ronin & Shadow have fought on the good side & Ronin was presumably going to kiss Nya (a teenager) on the forehead as shown through the blade that predicts the future in season 5. Again, I'm not hating on the writers of Ninjago, but seeing these guys (especially Ronin & Nadakhan who we know are much older) hit on a teenage girl really makes me not want to watch the show anymore, and I feel the fandom should be addressing this problem more. (Sorry for the long rant, but great video! 😁👍)
Ngl I kind of hate it when Pixal and Nya had their relationships in the glossary, for skylor it was probably just a confirmation that they were dating but the former two they have proved long before that they are way more than the ninja's girlfriends, pixal is a samurai and Nya is the water ninja They both had moments where they didn't want to be limited to a title so why? If they're going to label relationships atleast write in Zane, Kai and Jay's description that they are dating said girls
I could forgive Skylar and Pixal, (even though Kai is 100% more attached to her than she is to him.) But Nya? Really? She has said on multiple occasions that's not what she wants to be known by. 💀 This is what I would call disrespecting a character. This is the second time I've seen a writer do this. Make a character into/do something that they hate I mean. Like I know a writer controls the character but like, if you're gonna make them into/do that thing, why make them hate it in the first place? 😂 I think after a certain amount of time of a character existing, they sort of become they're own individual. So even though by "disrespecting" them, you're not actually disrespecting a person, it sort of breaks the immersion a little. (In my opinion.)
Just to be clear, I don't think this was done intentionally or maliciously or anything. My problem also isn't with the descriptions themselves, but rather the double standard- especially in terms of the content of this book specifically. Nya being described as Jay's girlfriend is fine, but the fact that her status as Kai's sister is the first thing in her bio (a piece of trivia which holds zero relevance to this book) is a bit sus. Skylor's relationship to Kai is mentioned in hers but not Kai's, despite Kai being the more overtly attached of the two of them, and their relationship being the center point of Kai's story in this book. To read Kai's story and not know that he's had a massive crush on her for a while would be to miss important information, and so I find it puzzling that it wasn't included in his definition. Especially when his description is very short and seems like it's trying to fill space, and Skylor's definition stretches across two pages, needing to include a slightly convoluted backstory- it's the double standard.
Overall I think the larger pattern is more interesting. Of these six people in relationships, only the females have that fact mentioned in their bio. Yes, this is perhaps emblematic of their one dimensional writing throughout the show's history, but that in itself doesn't exactly make the show's treatment of female characters look great.
For those expressing that female shows do this to male love interests- yes they do. But again, that's not my problem- it's the double standard. If the main character of a female aimed TV show was actively dating someone, I kind of have a hunch that would be mentioned somewhere in her bio. This statement also assumes that ninjago is not attempting to be gender inclusive, which I personally would disagree with.
It's also worth mentioning that all descriptions of relationships here are male-ownership based. There is no variety. Nya's description says that she's Kai's sister- not that Kai is her brother. It tells us Pixal is Zane's closest friend, not that her closest friend is Zane. Skylor and Kai are not dating, Skylor is Kai's girlfriend. It's these little framings that all add up to prove that it's not trying very hard to value a female perspective. Again, I'm certain none of this was done on purpose, but it reveals the underlying biases baked into the show itself, and even just the way we think about relationships in general.
This video is meant to be fun and light hearted, so don't get your knickers in too much of a twist over things ;)
Tbh, I wouldn't mind if it were just Skylor and Pixal, but NYA?! She is literally a main character and one of the ninja. It's kind of sad how they decides to make her description base around her relationships instead of, you know, BEING AN ELEMENTAL MASTER
Wasn't there a whole thing in Skybound about her not wanting to just be known as "the girlfriend" or the "female ninja" pretty sure it was a whole character arc or smth
@@lemonfire698 yep that was her whole thing
*Nya having multiple character moments how she doesn't want to be defined as the "girl ninja" or "Jay's girlfriend"*
The book: Imma pretend i didn't see that
That was literally her whole character arc in Skybound!!! It's like the writers completely forgot about that
Wild that the end of the season was everyone forgetting it 💀
@@insertunoroginalnamehere6189I'm pretty sure they remember, they just don't care about past seasons, haven't you noticed all the plot holes that happened one episode after another
@@rotemmenachemi2858 Actually not really, i just finished Hands of Time and I'm gonna start sons of Garmadon soon
Agreed
hate it when female characters are labeled by their male counterparts. so annoying. 🙄 thanks for bringing this to light! 💜
Nah Nya’s description is crazy 💀
They could have put some Sam X stuff or maybe the fact she turned into the ocean instead
There! You said it, why didn’t they go for that instead?! 🤦♂️
Exactly cuz these are much more relevant to her character arc 💀 why do we need to immediately know that she’s related to one of the other ninja in the team?
It's really great that someone actually talks about these problems,it s necessary to inform both the fans (who haven't noticed) and the production team of this issue so HOPEFULLY they don't repeat these mistakes again.
Great video BTW.
Don’t know if they’ll prevent a mistake like that again, but it’s nice that the problem is addressed to all of us. I really don’t stand for sexism (like that scene with Dareth from season 6 😒).
I don’t know what’s worse about Pixal’s description?
The fact that Zane is Mentioned in hers, when she isn’t mentioned in His [which is Pretty Sexist, judging by how it happens with the Other Ninja]
Or the Fact that She’s called Zane’s “Closest Friend”, When They’ve been Married since Season 4! And you Can Not convince me otherwise! [forgot to add this last time]
From the point you made, I can agree that what the glossary did was pretty sexist. And referring Pixal to be “Zane’s closest friend,” like what?! 🤨
um, they haven't been married, but have been girlfriend and boyfriend. though I wouldn't be surprised if they had tied the knot before or after crystalized,
@Ixanier Feliciano which episode? and do you have a timestamp?
Good shout actually. These descriptions are really weird
Ninjago writers never learn, always the same problems.
After reading the glossary, it made me feel like to NOT want to buy the book anyways 😅
Definitely not the first time stuff like this has happened, even though it’s been *12 years*
well I don't think this is really much of a problem, for Skylor and Pixal at least.
s4: Skylors whole character purpose was *to be* Kai's girlfriend, and nothing else.
s3: Pixal's character was also *to be* Zane's girlfriend, and nothing else.
although they have obviously developed, this is just simply a way of describing versions of love interests. unfortunately this sexism has happened to both genders. such as Flash Sentry in MLP he had zero character, other than to be Twilight Sparkles boyfriend. and was described as such.
for Nya however, she's had even worse treatment. in a add for seabound, they literally had to genderswap her, because Ninjago's target audience is boys. and while that is understandable, its still really messed up from a cannon perspective.
The thing about season 4 is that Skylor was introduced as a POSSIBLE love interest for Kai.They aren't together still.
@@СветльоГанев that is incorrect. their relationship was confirmed to be cannon, and even then for just consumers, you just need to watch the shows seasons, and its pretty obvious. and back in the start she was confirmation as Kai's love interest. originally they were going to make his character a bit of a playboy like we saw in s3, but they invented skylor to tie the knot with that. We see that with the deleted ending for s7, where Kai has a kid with him as his son/daughter.
They didn't even mention that Nya was the original Samurai X
While I agree with you, I think it's important to remember that shows targeted for girls do the same thing with the male characters
Just to clarify, I don't like that they did that in the glossary, and I know Ninjago is for girls too, I'm just stating the fact that it's not always female characters that get this treatment in media
@@NRG_Studios agreed. this always happens anyway to the opposite gender, whenever a love interest of a show targeted to the opposite of that gender, comes out. its really nothing specific to ninjago.
A really great point, unfortunately the writers of this book do not understand 1.the character journeys like Nya s independency and 2.their target audience aren't only 7 year old boys ,you know Ninjago has a fair share of female fans , I'm not saying they should respect female characters in female target media only,im a boy myself and I'm not happy about female characters being labelled by their male counterparts.
I don’r think that this was intentional, just misplaced, I could be wrong but still I’ll just go ahead and say I absolutely love the female characters in Ninjago.
hey hope your glad that ninjago is done making focus seasons cause you seem to be againts them since you like ninjago as an ansamble show, for me it's pretty disapointing like seriously the most nostalgic thing about ninjago for me is during the days when we get leaks about the focus ninja and speculate and it sucks now that they are done with them wich is a shame since i think kai deserves a solo season and zane should get another season as well i also would love for another jay season where they could explore his past and what happend to his biological mother, another cole season wouldn't hurt with maybe focusing on his relation with his dad and his relation with vania
With Pixal and Skylor, I think it is not exactly just a sexism issue. A lot of side characters will often be described as "the friend of [main character]" or "a great support for [main squad] during [big adventure]". It's coming over as sexist, but it was probably more likely supposed to make them sound interesting to new viewers by pointing out their relations to the main characters that people recognize on the merch and posters alone.
Though sadly with Nya, I speculate it is the result of Ninjago's bad history with feministic messaging. To put it simply, your female main character constantly acknowledging her life in the shadow of her male colleges so openly actually drives her deeper in that shadow and only helps to take away her individuality as her own person with her own strengths, which will scar her image for the rest of the show's career. Even with the improvements in the newer seasons, Nya is still scarred with pretty misguided sexism today and it needs to stop.
Maybe they added that to their defenitions because they were written to be their girlfriends?
Nvm the Nya description completely removes that
Really good point, but I don’t necessarily believe they’ve done this on purpose. (At least not with Sky and Pix)
Pixal and Skylor are technically considered side characters. Naturally, this means that their introductions (and oftentimes their existence) will be directly linked to a character.
ATLA was the first thing to come to mind, so I’ll use that example here: if I were to describe Monk Gyatso, it would be more convenient if I addressed him as Aang’s teacher figure.
Now, if I were to dedicate a book to describing the characters of ATLA, I’d definitely say “Aang’s was Monk Gyatso’s student” in Aang’s character description.
That being said, if I was only given a quick paragraph to describe Aang, I’d probably mention him being the Avatar and the only airbender alive, instead of mentioning his teacher. That’s because the existence of his character is not dependent on Gyatso.
The opposite is true with Gyatso. Although he has his own character, his character serves few purposes: be Aang’s teacher, give Aang a motivation to run away, and be unalived.
Now let’s look at Ninjago: Pixal and Skylor both have their own arcs and characters. That still doesn’t change the fact that when given such a short amount of time to describe them, it will narrow down to “Zane’s friend” and “Kai’s girlfriend”.
As for Nya…I guess it’s just because her being the water samurai doesn’t affect the story much, but being Jay’s girlfriend does. It’s also important to consider the fact that the initial purpose of her character was to provide Kai with a motivation to help Wu during the pilot. Like Pix and Sky, she now has a bigger purpose, but it’s still something to consider. (Still shouldn’t have done my girl dirty-)
I think for side characters their realtionships being a defining part of their character is fine but Nya is a *main character* there is no reason for her whole bio to be about her relations to other characters.
I don't want to be controversial or offend anyone, but personally I don't see it that way. I'm pretty sure the descriptions for the main ninja are copied and pasted in every book they appear in so it's just supposed to be a quick description. Most of the females you mentioned are recurring characters that are easily identified by who their with. Nyas might be overdue for a change but I don't take it as sexist. Just my opinion so don't come at me lol
Loved hearing your thoughts on the characters' bios.
I also don't think the show/book has any malicious intent behind stuff like this, but one problem I keep noticing from the show is Nya seemingly getting shipped/hit on by older men alot: Ronin in season 5, Nadakhan in season 6, and even one scene in season 9 with Shadow. At least Nadakhan is evil, so we're not supposed to see his actions as good, but Ronin & Shadow have fought on the good side & Ronin was presumably going to kiss Nya (a teenager) on the forehead as shown through the blade that predicts the future in season 5. Again, I'm not hating on the writers of Ninjago, but seeing these guys (especially Ronin & Nadakhan who we know are much older) hit on a teenage girl really makes me not want to watch the show anymore, and I feel the fandom should be addressing this problem more. (Sorry for the long rant, but great video! 😁👍)
Ngl I kind of hate it when Pixal and Nya had their relationships in the glossary, for skylor it was probably just a confirmation that they were dating but the former two they have proved long before that they are way more than the ninja's girlfriends, pixal is a samurai and Nya is the water ninja
They both had moments where they didn't want to be limited to a title so why? If they're going to label relationships atleast write in Zane, Kai and Jay's description that they are dating said girls
Does this include spoilers I havent read it yet mines still in America
Not really?
Some very minor ones
No
Thanks
NO COMMENTS! I’m done!
I could forgive Skylar and Pixal, (even though Kai is 100% more attached to her than she is to him.) But Nya? Really? She has said on multiple occasions that's not what she wants to be known by. 💀 This is what I would call disrespecting a character. This is the second time I've seen a writer do this. Make a character into/do something that they hate I mean. Like I know a writer controls the character but like, if you're gonna make them into/do that thing, why make them hate it in the first place? 😂
I think after a certain amount of time of a character existing, they sort of become they're own individual. So even though by "disrespecting" them, you're not actually disrespecting a person, it sort of breaks the immersion a little. (In my opinion.)
I noticed this myself when I finished the book and found it really annoying. Glad this video could highlight the issue
E