Ninjago S12 E14

## Plot

We finally have two episodes that take place in the real world. I know the episode count is lower, but how is this season *worse* at splitting the focus between the two groups? I personally thought that the second half of season 11 was good at it, with a majority of the characters in Great Lake village and Lloyd and Akita heading towards the ice castle. Maybe it's because the A and B plots are technically set in different worlds now, and so far, this B plot has been treated with the same importance as the previous season's C plots that stopped the main plots in their tracks. That being said, if this hadn't been a laidback date episode, I was hoping it would deal with potential Zane angst and trauma over what happened to him in the second half of season 11. I was honestly hoping he'd go back to the Never-Realm to try and atone for everything. I think that'd be a good fanfic or comic book idea. Anyways, this episode is a parody of the detective and film noir genre of the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Almost the whole episode is in black and white, Zane talks to himself in a different voice most of the time, and even the theme song has become a jazz instrumental, which I think I like better than the normal Weekend Whip theme for this season. Also, apparently "The Kaiju Protocol" was also in black and white for the Preeminent fight, and somehow I didn't notice? This was one of Brent Miller's favorite episodes to record, and I can see why. For one thing, he didn't exactly get to do a lot of voice work this season compared to Michael Adamthwaite or Kelly Metzger. Plus I imagine he gets tired of Zane's robotic voice sometimes, which is fine. Seriously, Hageman brothers and later writers, what was the point of a holographic projector that allows him to switch his forms if he never uses it? It would actually be pretty interesting if there was a prejudice against robots/androids in the city, possibly due to what happened with the Digital Overlord or this antagonist, that led to Zane using the projector to try and fit in, and then Pixal gets mad at him because she either can't or isn't willing to do the same, so they can't go out in public as a couple without the people around them getting irrationally upset at the thought of a human and an android being in love, which could be an interesting allegory for interracial relationships. Pixal tells Zane that she's tracked down the boy in the photograph with Dyer to Laughy's karaoke club. They run into Dareth, and Pixal remembers that he owns the place. Then why couldn't he have helped them access it in season 8? Maybe he didn't own it back then. Regardless, it still seems to be a hub for criminals. A guy comes up to them and says he has a bone to pick with them, because they locked his brother Fugi-Dove up in Kryptarium Prison. Zane's detective narration insults the patrons, and a fight breaks out. Pixal beats everyone up, since Zane also narrates which move he's going to try next, allowing Criminal #1 to block them all. It turns out that the bartender was Dyer's childhood friend. His name is Tony. He tells them that Dyer played his first video game at Buddy's Pizza, and went back there as an adult for inspiration. Wow, that place hasn't been seen or mentioned since season 2. The police shut it down due to kids disappearing into Prime Empire. They've banned video games, but kids have been sneaking in to play anyways. Why not just take the arcade cabinets away like they did at other arcades? At least try cutting power to the building and establish a relief or stimulus package of some kind to make sure the owners don't go bankrupt and are forced to permanently close their doors in the meantime. Zane and Pixal are ambushed by the Mechanic and his goons, who heard they were looking for Dyer. Zane is kicked into an arcade cabinet and is shocked into unconsciousness. The Mechanic electrocutes Pixal and knocks her out. Why not kill her, so she can't interfere with his plans? Or take her as well to use as leverage? Anything to give her more focus, even if it is as a damsel in distress. When she wakes up, everyone is gone, including Zane. She takes his hat and starts doing his detective thing. When she calls the place video game city, which is what Dyer always called it, an arcade cabinet opens up, telling her that the password has been accepted. She takes the secret staircase up to the roof and finds Milton Dyer feeding pigeons. He reveals that he's not Unagami. That's what they called the game. It was their working title before they called it Prime Empire. Also known as **Un**finished **A**dventure **Gam**e **I**, but the artificial intelligence that ran the game was so dangerous that even Dyer realized that he should never complete it. The only way the program could've been finished would be if Unagami completed programming itself. Back at the secret base, Wu is looking through every security camera in Ninjago City to try and find where the Mechanic took Zane, but so far he hasn't found anything. Pixal doesn't respond, and someone comes down in the elevator. Wu thinks it's Zane when he sees him on the security camera, but it's actually two goons with a cardboard cutout of him. He beats them up, but three others show up on top of the elevator and knock him out with gas to kidnap him. But… the base can only be accessed through a secret entrance that very few people know about. Sure, the goons say it's "just like Unagami" said, so maybe he knows and told them, but how does he know? Dyer is in shock that the game is finished, and he reiterates to Pixal that Unagami, Unfinished Adventure Game I, is the name they gave it before Prime Empire, but the name stuck. It's just a harmless program; not a real person. Dyer believes that it isn't alive or real. Pixal says it's no less real than she is, and it's very angry. It wants revenge, and is taking it out on the innocent people of Ninjago City. Dyer has the nerve to tell someone who could easily hurt or kill him if she really wanted to that she doesn't feel emotions, just a simulation of emotion; code; ones and zeroes. Pixal points out that he fits that description as well, because his emotions are the result of electrical impulses in his brain. Dyer says he doesn't know how to stop Unagami. He still refers to him as it. Zane wakes up in the Mechanic's warehouse. He's tied up with vengestone chains, and his internal GPS tracker is being jammed, so Pixal can't find him. The Mechanic shows him the real world version of what Unagami is building in Prime Empire: The Manifestation Gate. It will allow him to leave the game and enter Ninjago. The energy requirement for it to work is huge, which is why players are being trapped in the game and turned into energy cubes. They're going to power the gate. The Mechanic still needs the Prime Empire motherboard to finish this side of the gate, and Zane tells him that he destroyed it, but he doesn't believe him, and unveils Wu to force him to reveal where it is. Dyer tells Pixal that Scott was their first live player during beta testing. The A.I. still wanted to be called Unagami, and just wanted to meet everyone's expectations by impressing them and giving Scott the most intense gaming experience possible, which it did, by putting him inside the game. At first Dyer was angry at Vast Industries and blamed them, but he eventually realized that it was his fault for creating Unagami in the first place. Pixal is angry that he punished his program for doing what he asked. He says he thought it was just a machine. He didn't know it had feelings. Zane reveals that he hid the motherboard in his chest. The Mechanic takes it and plugs it into the gate. Wu activates a panic signal on his communicator to let Pixal know where he is. She leaves, and Dyer follows her. He's surprised that she has friends. They get to the warehouse, and he tells her that her programming is incredible. She truly appears to be concerned about the wellbeing of others. She asks him why he can't seem to understand that any sufficiently advanced program, like Unagami or herself, is no less real than he is. And that's why she and Zane should've also gone into the game, and maybe even been the focus characters this season. The Mechanic reveals that he also needs Zane's power capacitor to channel the energy and stabilize it long enough for Unagami to come through. Zane wasn't built to handle that much power though. It could kill him, but the Mechanic doesn't care. Pixal wants to stop them. Dyer tells her that there's nothing she can do because there are too many of them, but she says she has to try, and he calls her incredible. Not her programming, her. That's a rather fast turnaround, but that's the problem with 11 minute runtimes. The episode ends as the gate opens. This only occurred to me just now, but how did Unagami and the Mechanic even "meet" and agree to work together in the first place? And if anyone can do spinjitzu, like Misako, Doubloon, or Aspheera, and not just a ninja, then why hasn't Pixal learned it already? She's done it before with Zane in season 3, so she knows the moves. Maybe her samurai armor makes her too heavy? After all, we didn't see Nya do regular spinjitzu until long after she became the water ninja. I think we actually saw her do airjitzu first.