It should be noted that, just before Chima began, the Thundercats reboot was killed off, and a lot of people really liked that. The production of the Chima cartoon may have contributed to CN’s decision to axe Thundercats, since they’re conceptually similar IPs and CN put the earlier show on an inconvenient schedule for most viewers. As such, we lost an interesting cartoon for…this. That salt may be contributing to the distaste for Chima, even if it’s not directly responsible for Thundercats’s cancellation.
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Topics like these seem to force people to overcome base forms of criticism and justify their arguments in a more neutral way. That’s my theory.
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I greatly enjoyed Chima back in the day when I wasn’t cynical and liked the vast majority of what LEGO put out (I was equally into Ninjago then, so there wasn’t any competition to me). I was captivated by the combination of sets, world, and show. I do acknowledge the show is more childish than some LEGO productions, though I was never bothered by the acting. Its been years since I last saw the show, but I distinctly remember a moment while I was rewatching the first episode where I was sipping water at the line “…until we reach the Age of Becoming. Then we can plug CHI whenever we want!” and spit-taking (though it was more of a dribble-take). The fire and ice story and the phoenixes were the greatest thing ever to me, influencing my continuing love of phoenixes. I also played Chima Online and got along fine without membership. For all of nobody who asked, my eagle character was called Swimmer Soaring Megabyte (LEGO online game naming system).
In short, younger me had a blast with this theme whose flaws I was willing to overlook, so I still look back at it fondly.
On the subject of strange plots, there was also the time an episode or 2 before or after where the crocodiles almost committed triple genocide by the ravens’ doing in a conflict that started, funnily enough considering the Gorrilas Gone Wild, with the wolves wanting to genocide the eagles with crocodile assistance over the framed theft of their Mother Tooth, and the lions sided with the eagles.
And there was the time with Reegul were Laval and Cragger, as the TTV coverage put it, shoved a wheelchair-bound biracial kid down a hill and laughed at him. Also, Lavertus and Laval were exiled for stealing regular and golden CHI straight from the source, but in earlier episodes the wolves and ravens got away with those deeds unpunished. And Eris being incredibly dumb by not flying away from Cragger’s charge in the first episode.
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I never go into Chima because it came out just when I lost interest in LEGO, but looking back I appreciate it for how original it was.
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Dom de la whoosh (or however the heck it’s spelled.) is ironically the only thing I can truly remember from the show, and that scares me.
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I never got many Chima sets because it was was after my system phase. However, I will concede that even today, I STILL remember how dope that wave 1 crocodile dreadnaught set looked, and I wouldn’t mind getting one.
I also slept hard on the Chima Ultra Builds. I recently got a used bonk lot that included Chi Cragger, and that thing is really creative.
Oh yeah, I also remember liking speedorz more than spinjitsu spinners.
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pfft imagine being a primarily constraction builder
Never owned any speedorz but that is true as far as I can tell.
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My issue with the speedorz as a kid is, although the sets definitely had more variety, the actual scoring of the game was based entirely on chance at the end.
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Just curious, how do we know that Chima was meant to be a drug allegory, rather than an unfortunate comparison?
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This. As much as the show made a bad first impression with Season 1, it did get increasingly better as it went along. In my opinion, the final season with the Fire vs Ice ark was actually pretty decent overall. That is further enforced by the fact that they managed to actually pull of a satisfying conclusion, unlike most of the original themes in LEGO’s portfolio.
By contrast, Nexo Knights, which never really got as much hate as Chima did, ended abruptly after season 2, and had its planned final season cancelled at the last minute.
So I am left wandering… which is better? Getting a mediocre TV Show with a pretty good ending, or a mediocre TV Show with not ending at all? I don’t know about other people, but I personally would rather choose the first option.
I am pretty sure it was just an unfortunate comparison. I really can’t comprehend the people working at LEGO being fine with an intentional drug allegory.
The Chi was just meant to be a power source, that’s all. Any sort of drug similarities it may have had were most likely unintentional.
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Honestly, the Nexo knights show wasn’t nearly as bad as Chima.
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In what way wasn’t as bad? Just because it had batter voice acting? At the very least, Chima had an interesting premise and world to explore, while Nexo Knights’ show was made up almost entirely out of pointless filler episodes.
So even if Chima had worse production values, at least there is more to talk about after watching it (for better or worse). With Nexo Knights, you are going to forget most of the stuff that happens in it as soon as you’re done watching, because they are all just repetitive filler episodes.
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Yeah, when I was younger and actually played with my Chima sets, I always had the Lions be the bad guys, hoarding Chi, and the have the Crocs be the good guys, just trying to get their fair share.
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Better voice acting, cooler villains, and more tolerable characters. Just because it doesn’t spark as much discussion as Chima doesn’t mean it’s worse. After all, people make essay length discussion videos about The Room.
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But Chima clearly had much bigger impact than Nexo Knights, whether that being from people absolutely loving it or absolutely hating it. Nexo Knights just came and went, having little to no impact.
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and chima didn’t?
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Having an impact doesn’t mean that it’s inherently better.
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Wait, so I wasn’t the only one to do that?
Also, it can be mathematically proven that the lions hoard Chi. Here’s an extract from that analysis I was talking about earlier:
In the background of one scene, 5 Chi orbs are produced in half of the Chi Pool in a minute, allowing us to conclude that the lions receive 10 orbs per minute. This indicates they would receive 14,400 Chi orbs per day, already more than 450x the amount they give out in total on distribution day. We can now find that they receive 432,000 orbs in April, June, September and November, 446,400 in January, March, May, July, August, October and December, and 403,200 in February. They usually give away around 30, showing that per 31-day month, they keep 446,370 orbs.
By a year they would’ve accumulated 5,255,640 orbs and given away 360.
don’t ask why I did this
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OK, since you asked I won’t.
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No, but it would certainly help it be more remembered in the long run.
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