YMMV / Ninjago: Dragons Rising

• Catharsis Factor: After being so dismissive towards Ana/Sora for her entire life, disowning her for standing up against dragon cruelty, and trying to force her into siding with Beatrix, even when the latter has shown to be the real bad guy, it is without a doubt, extremely satisfying seeing Sora berate her parents for them being so abusive towards her and disown them back.
• Complete Monster: Empress Beatrix Vespasian-Orus, narcissistic despot of the realm of Imperium, is a genocidal maniac who devolves into truly depraved madness. Power-hungry even as a child, Beatrix imprisoned her sister and assassinated her father to take the throne, while perverting their realm's peaceful alliance with dragons to forcibly harvest their power for infinite energy. Beatrix subjects dragons to years of sadistic torture in order to extract their life force until they're "drained to dust", all while scheming to subjugate the mighty Source Dragons so that she can conquer the Merged Realms. Enabling and encouraging her subjects to hunt down every dragon in existence, Beatrix's cruelties are expounded when she responds to an escape attempt by spitefully trying to rip the life out of Riyu. Upon learning that the Ninja seek the Dragon Cores, the Empress—apathetic to their mission to stop the world-shattering MergeQuakes—steals the Cores to create a superweapon capable of annihilating anyone who defies her conquest, with not even Imperium's own citizens safe: when they rise up against her lies, Beatrix begins indiscriminately firing her weapon to create MergeQuakes throughout the kingdom, giddily cackling as she tries to kill everyone in her way and arrogantly refusing to believe the warnings that her actions will rend reality apart.
• Fanfic Fuel: Given that the central premise of the series is that all 16 Realms have been merged together, this leads to possibilities of crossovers with Legends of Chima (which was established to be part of Ninjago's multiverse in Season 5), or the return of characters from the other realms such as Akita or Faith.
• Ho Yay: A lot of the interactions between Geo and Cole have been seen as rather romantic by some fans, with a good majority of Geo's character revolving around thinking about Cole. His re-introduction in Season 2 outright has Geo reminiscing specifically on his times with Cole. Meanwhile with Cole, while he's definitely physically comforting to plenty of people both friends and found family included, shippers have fixated on the fact he's a good lot more physically comforting with Geo whenever the duo are on screen in the season.
• Like You Would Really Do It: The idea of Zane, Cole, Jay, and Wu having died in the Merge, which most fans thought wasn't likely, particularly due to the toyline showcasing the characters in new Ninja garb. The end of the first half of Season 1 has Zane rejoin the main cast, and the second half of Season 1 reveal that Cole is also alive and well. With that said, while Jay isn't dead, he doesn't rejoin the team in the first season as he's working with the Administration, seemingly unaware of his friends or what's going on in general.
• LGBT Fanbase: Among the trans community, in particular, trans women and girls, Sora is somewhat of a popular character, due to the fact that her story could be interpreted as a trans allegory. Some people have even gone as far as to headcanon her as trans herself.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Not only are the Source Dragons likely the most powerful beings within the Sixteen Realms, the fact that Claws of the Imperium were able to capture one of them shows just how dangerous they are.
  • When Lloyd obtains power from a Source Dragon to help his team escape from Imperium in the first half of the season, he's beset with a series of visions... One in particular being him in a wasteland filled with graves of numerous Ninja, way more than he knows, before a Source Dragon flies up to blast him to kingdom come. While it is implied the Source Dragon part of the vision, along with a later vision in Season 2, are to allude to Lloyd acquiring something from his encounters relating to these visions (The power of the Conduit from the Energy Source Dragon and knowledge of the Rising Dragon from Egalt and Rontu respectively), the gravesite part of the first vision still give a foreboding tone for what that could mean.
• Salvaged Story: Some fans felt many of the Sixteen Realms were largely underutilized in the original Ninjago, often showing up once and never being revisited again. Dragons Rising makes it a focal point that The Merge merged all of the Realms together, which means not only is the world of Ninjago dramatically changed, but also allows the other Realms to be better fleshed out, and possibly reintroduce characters from them.
  • While later seasons of the original series did have a criticism in relation to Kai and Nya not being as much of a sibling duo, with Seabound in particular having a vicious exclusion of Kai while the season focused more on Nya's relationship with Jay, Dragons Rising puts more of a focus on their sibling relationship, partly thanks to Jay currently being out of the picture.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The showrunners made sure to mention that the new series would be using new game engines to enhance the visuals, making for a more memorable spectacle than the last season. They weren't exaggerating. And thankfully, the fast-paced fight animations from the Wildbrain era are still around, meaning we get both beautiful visuals and extremely cool looking fights at the same time. Most agree it's the best Ninjago has ever looked, even outdoing the Oni Trilogy.
• Win Back the Crowd: After the original Ninjago series ended on the base-breaking to full on Audience-Alienating Ending Crystalized season, Dragons Rising had quickly re-captured the hearts of long-time fans of the series, with the new setting allowing for brand new world-building and characters, while also giving new depths and roles to the older cast without retreading any old character arcs, as well as running strong character writing for new main characters Arin and Sora.

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