Rise of the Snakes (Suits)

Hoo boy, this season has a lot of different outfits to go over, even if we ignore the pajamas and singer outfits for lack of relevance.

The first of these suits is the kendo armor, as seen in "Rise of the Snakes" and "Can of Worms".

These suits are pretty much identical to the training robes the ninja wore in the first couple of episodes, just with some armor added ontop of it, and a helmet instead of a hood. Lore-wise, they're something the ninja wear when training with their Golden Weapons, which makes sense, since there's a lot of danger inherent to those weapons. They look pretty good, but I do have to complain that the helmet's visor makes the ninja's foreheads look huge, given the lack of hair piece to cover it. Maybe if the helmet was designed a bit differently, I would give it full points, but as it is, the suits get a 8/10.

 

Next up, we've got the ninja's casual outfits, all of which look pretty different from each other.

Now, they are pretty generic outfits, but I do rather like that Kai got a shirt with the emblem representing his element on it. Wonder where he found it? Jay's outfit looks pretty good as well, which may be because he's the only ninja to actually have more than one color on their outfit. I don't really have anything to say about what Cole is wearing, but I really dislike Zane's outfit. Wearing an all-white outfit like that just doesn't look good at all. I'm sorry but it's true. He'd really benefit from maybe getting at least a differently colored pair of pants! All in all, I'd say a 7/10 may be warranted. Kai and Jay actually look good like this and I'm neutral on Cole, so Zane's outfit is the only one I actually dislike.

 

For our third set of outfits, we'll be getting to the ZX (Zen eXtreme), which the ninja use from "The Snake King" onwards, and will keep using until late in the second season.

Now, these suits are generally agreed to be the most iconic outfits the ninja ever had. They all look different from each other, but they do have enough similarities to look coherent. The most obvious of these are, of course, the armor plating on the shoulders and foreheads of the suits, but while they may each wear different armor, the gi underneath is shared between and Zane and Kai, and Jay and Cole respectively. Lloyd doesn't have any armor on his gi, which also doesn't fit with any of the established pairs, presumably due to the green ninja's gi not being part of the set Wu ordered. Initially, even the shared armor is missing, and it is only in "All of Nothing" that the armor plating on the forehead appears, and the shoulder armor only gets added in the next season. Despite these suits being incredibly iconic, however, there is one big disadvantage to the ZX suits; they're heavy armor. The ninja shouldn't be nearly as mobile as they were in their training robes, and yet nothing of the sort is shown on-screen. Even when it comes to individual designs, I have to say that Cole's outfits looks rather boring, because it lacks any bright colors, while Zane once again has a pretty bad outfit, both due to the colors being all over the place, with him wearing white, brown, gold and cream, but also because he's kind of the odd one out, as there's no real armor on his torso, he has a pouch with knives instead. Kai, Lloyd and Jay look absolutely fire, but that doesn't salvage the others. A 6/10 is the best I can do, I'm afraid.

 

Lastly, we're moving onto the ninja's NRG ... suits? They aren't really suits so much as a form the ninja themselves take. 

They only exist in the sets, and are meant to represent each ninja's True Potential, since translucent pieces weren't really used for minifigures back in 2012. Now, why they don't even slightly resemble the ZX suits I couldn't tell you, even though the the True Potential in the show still has the ninja in those suits, just made from their respective elemental power. I'll be frank; the only NRG ninja I think looks good is Zane. Kai, for some reason, has way less elemental effects printed on than the other ninja, making this version look less like a burst of incredible power, and more like the emblem on his chest has started leaking. Jay has bright yellow bolts of lightning, but his powers have never been depicted that way, and I really dislike it when they try and make yellow into his color, same with his Legacy Spinner and Forbidden Spinjitzu verison. Cole is pink for some odd reason? Yeah, I still don't understand that one. When was pink ever used to represent the element of earth? They should have used brown, like in the show. The Airjitzu versions released alongside season 5 are overall just a much better representation of the True Potential status, although Burst Kai and Cole may work even better, there's just the problem of there not being equivalent figures for Jay and Zane. But the NRG versions get a 3/10. That's really low, but with only one out of four ninja looking good in this version, I'd say it's fair.

 

Now, adding everything up, season 1, Rise of the Snakes, has gotten a total score of 6/10. That means the suits neither lowered nor boosted the score the season got by itself. Yeah, that seems fair enough.