Sunday, October 8, 2017

The Secret Code in The Lego Ninjago Movie

Tonight my family went to see "The Lego Ninjago" movie, which was pretty good, but a little pale in comparison to the amazing-ness of "The Lego Movie". (And probably a step down from Batman ~ if you're only going to see A Lego movie, see THE Lego movie.) There were some very funny/cute parts mixed in though, so it's definitely a fun family flick!

I've picked up my Japanese study again lately, so at some point in the film I started paying attention to the lettered sashes that each of the main ninjas wear, thinking it would be fun to see if I could pick out some Kanji or Kana. I quickly realized the letters weren't Japanese at all, but some made-up lettering. 

I noticed one 'letter' repeated on the main ninja's sash, and I wondered, could this be the word "ninja" in a simple letter replacement code?

The Secret Code in The Lego Ninjago Movie

With that in mind, a glance at the ice ninja's sash showed the letters I _ _, so I figured I was on the right track. 

The Secret Code in The Lego Ninjago Movie

The A, I, and E all matched up with the "water", "fire", and "Earth" ninja's sashes, giving us more letters in the alphabet ~ 

The Secret Code in The Lego Ninjago Movie

But it was hard trying to catch glimpses of the sashes during the action, so I looked up some images when I got home. And sure enough, there were several pics with the whole alphabet charted out too!

Ninjago Alphabet

The lightning ninja is the trickiest to figure out, since part of his sash is covered, and it uses only one letter we've seen so far. Checking the chart we can decipher that his sash reads "spark".

The Secret Code in The Lego Ninjago Movie

I think this secret alphabet is a fun little detail in the movie, and I'll definitely pay more attention to the buildings next time to see what some of the signs reveal. I also feel like a big nerd for noticing the code and trying to crack it in the midst of fight scenes, but I'm sure I wasn't the *only* one who caught it. Right??

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