Hi everyone it’s 4 Corners and recently I re-watched Hands of Time to figure out why it
ends up being the worst season in Ninjago’s entire run. To a certain fan demographic
it was so terrible they just left the show after watching this season. And personally
to me it’s very forgettable, events in this season keep slipping out of mind.
The synopsis of this season is that these ancient elemental masters were stripped of their powers
and sent through a time portal, forty years later both of them are back together after
escaping the portal at different years and seek the blades in which their power was extracted
and placed in. This leads to the bulk of the season's runtime as the Ninja try to retrieve
the Time Blades before the Time Twins do, but ultimately the Time Twins get all the blades to
travel to the past and reverse their ultimate loss. Unfortunately for them Kai and Nya with
their Fusion Dragon powers brought to awareness by their reunited parents are able to thwart this.
A common criticism I see with this season is that it’s a time travel plot and those are generally
risky and very hit or miss from a writing perspective. However as I narrowed the problems
down, I realized time travel was only really a big part in the first and finale episodes.
And as far as I’m concerned the very first scene with Acronix finally making it to present time,
and the finale where Kai and Nya traveled to the past as the young Krux and Acronix were
originally defeated by Wu and Garmadon with the help of the other Elemental Masters… were
actually the more tolerable parts of the season. So the problem wasn’t
in the time traveling bits of the story being the beginning and end.
It had to do with the main bulk of the season being everything in the middle. In my summary
of the season earlier most of the time I spent went into describing the intro and finale because
the middle is written in a way that it really doesn’t matter. Which is a clear red flag since
that’s literally 70% of the season and that’s also why I believe this season keeps slipping
out of my mind. For starters the problem lay in the canny animation looking overly glossy
at times. And some of the fight scenes especially when involving Time Blades were very choppy. The
Time Blades being so overpowered and vague didn’t help the believability of the fights one bit. The
rules to how long they took to recharge and to what effect they could be used were very unclear
and changed to match the situation. Towards the end there comes a fight with all the Time
Blades between Kai, Nya, Wu, Ray and Maya and the Villains on the Time Twin’s Hovercraft,
and it’s clear nobody making the show knew how to handle so much time power in one
fight because what we got was clunky and boring in terms of choreography,
and relied on everyone waiting on each other to attack. Not to mention vehicle animation was a
weak point as well. Just look at this desert chase scene, here we have a very awkward moving Cole’s
Rock-Roader. Generally it felt like there was no animation director for this season
to oversee and mesh everyone’s work. Another issue was the dialogue. I'm pretty sure this
is a result of the odd looking movement animation, but the things the ninja were saying didn’t feel
natural at all. It’s something that I’ve NEVER felt with Ninjago before. It’s a problem in
the middle episodes because with the intro and finale at least you're distracted by the plot,
but here that’s all you notice since the plot isn’t anything too captivating with the Ninja
seeking the Time Blades. Check out this scene where Kai and Nya literally call out to each
other as brother and sister as they fight the Time Twins in the Museum of Ninjago History. I’m
pretty sure the intended tone was a lot more epic then how it translated to screen. This awkwardness
might be due to the introduction of new writers to the Ninjago team. There’s a chance they still
hadn’t gotten comfortable in the Ninjago writing room, this being their first season and all. But
the point still stands. And just before I mentioned how the main plot of the season
wasn’t captivating, it’s because so many events in these episodes leading to the finale were the
product of silly mistakes. Wu fighting Krux alone in the Monastery to finish a forty year battle was
OK as we can pass that for a character flaw, but in another scene on top of the Temple of Airjitzu
seconds after the victory of an intense battle with the Vermillion, Lloyd literally holds the
time blades in the air and lets them get snatched by this relatively normal speeding General Machia
in the sky. And this unfortunately ended up being a major turning point for the season. Honestly to
me it feels like a very lazy effort to move the plot. Keep in mind all the Ninja are around Lloyd
cheering right now. A kid on the street like Lil Nelson could make that mistake, but not someone
who’s been fighting evil for years. The previous season Skybound suffered from this silly mistake
writing a little, but it was in a very forgivable way there. Another example of lazy writing driving
the plot is the way the Ninja get the Slo Mo Time Blade. It’s only thanks to the Commanders Blunk
and Ragmunk having a petty argument over their lack of eligibility to be Commanders in the first
place. I’m all for comedy in the villains, but when that comedy comes at the expense
of the story, how am I supposed to take the story seriously. These two commanders are literally the
main villains for a while as the Time Twins take a backseat which isn’t what I’m here to see. And all
this is why this season is worse than something like Secrets of the Forbidden Spinjitzu, because
while the concept is a little weak with all the filler episodes, at least they execute what they
did very nicely with flashy animation, natural characters and plots moved by decisions that make
sense. You still have the sense that it’s our same team, just a boring adventure in contrast
to Hands of Time where the team and characters feel so alien and weird with a plot moved by
trivial things that the potentially amazing plot involving Time Blades and time travel is taken
down with it. A few final things is this season feels claustrophobic for some reason I can’t put
my finger on. It spanned through the entirety of Ninjago Island going from desert to underground
sewer system to Boiling Sea but it all felt so enclosed. Which is weird because I never even felt
that with a season like Master of the Mountain where the whole thing literally took place in
one mountain. I also couldn’t care much for the Master Lloyd character arc and while I do like
P.I.X.A.L Samurai X, the way it was introduced was something I couldn’t care for. Especially when it
brought out action scenes like a car driving on the wall at medium speeds which looked really
goofy. The whole mid-season seemed to have played it way too safe with a plot that was
supposed to be more ambitious than anything we’d seen before, and it didn’t even do that right.
But in the end to put it simply, Hands of Time was an empty shell and proves that cool
powers and bad guys aren’t enough to make an action T.V show. The recipe involves stakes,
natural characters and a whole lot more to make the final dish good. I’m glad Ninjago
went down a completely different path in quality with its following season
being Sons of Garmadon. And honestly this is why I’m very excited for the possibility the
Time Twins could return in Ninjago’s future, as the writers have definitely upped their
game and I think alongside the amazing animation company Ninjago has now being Wildbrain Studios,
this concept could be executed the amazing way it should’ve been. Thank you for watching,
I appreciate you watching till the end, and as usual I’ll see you in the next one bye bye!