My, god. It's beautiful.
I have no idea what the story is behind any of the characters, and honestly it doesn't affect my feelings on the set at all. I kind of like having a blank slate and just having a bunch of ninjas fighting each other.
When Ninjago first came out, I was in the dark ages. I had been tempted by stuff, and upon seeing LEGO ninjas, I was immediately drawn to it. But almost all the sets left me cold. Even after coming back into the LEGO fold in 2012, almost all the Ninjago stuff just looked like a disappointment to me. It was all mechs or tanks, or some other stuff that I personally never wanted when I thought of ninjas. I wanted awesome temples or ships, maybe throw in some mystical stuff to play up some cliches. Sure, some sets here and there tempted me, and some of the dragons looked decent, but nothing screamed out to me to buy immediately.
Well, it seems that Ninjago finally achieved black belt rank. The summer sets all are calling to me hard. Creepy zombie ninjas? Awesome! Wait, a zombie dragon with ninjas riding it? Sign me up! I need to get all of them.
But this temple is what the theme should have always been in my opinion. Just enough touches to hit some silly stuff and cliches, but enough class to it to look like classical Japanese architecture.
The build is wonderful and there are some really cool techniques that I am going to steal (like the way the leaves are attached to the trees), and a few "duh!" moments. The stairs in particular are one of the "duh!" moments. There is nothing fancy to it at all, but it is done using some parts that were new last year and it is so obvious that this is what they should have been used for instead of angled walls.
Just a magnificent set from beginning to end. Lots of playability, lots of great figures, and it looks awesome on display. And yes, I played with the light brick theater quite a few times while building it.
I cannot recommend this set enough. I am just beaming after building it, as I finally have a ninja set that I always wanted.
