About Me
Hi! I'm Ninjazane! My real name is Justin, but most people online just call me Zane. I am a longtime gamer, Youtuber, Twitch streamer, and up and coming blogger here on my website! I'm 22 years old, and am a college graduate currently living in Tennessee. Here you can find out a little bit about myself, including many questions you might ask about me.
Why do you like Ninjago so much? How did you get into the show in the first place? Why Zane?
My brother and I and my neighbors loved Ninjago, and we were all diehard fans when the show first came out back in 2011. Each of the four of us were most like one of the ninja, and I ended up being most like Zane. So I always felt more of a connection to Zane than any of the other ninja, and I saw myself in him. The huge shock to me was the reveal that he was a robot in episode 7, that was huge in the show. But ultimately I think it developed his character nicely, and allowed for many more stories to be told. So even though he may be a robot, he still has a lot of things that compare to me as a person which I always thought connected to me well. Ever since my neighbors, my brother and I started watching he has been my all-time favorite ninja, and even though they have all fallen off the show since then, Ninjago continues to be one of my favorite shows of all time. And the funny thing is I still haven't seen past season 9!
How did you get your username?
I first created this username as part of the LEGO Message Boards back in 2014. It was back in the peak of Ninjago: Rebooted and I was in the 7th grade. I created my LMB account May 16, 2014. I remember this day vividly. When I went to create my username, I wanted to go with "ninjazane" because I really liked Zane and he was a ninja. Of course it wasn't available, so they gave me "ninjazane7474" instead. Also with me still being 12 at the time, I never thought of putting a capital N at the beginning so for the remainder of the life of the LMBs until 2017 my username remained "ninjazane7474" with no capital N.
What were the LEGO Message Boards? What was your experience like with the boards?
The LEGO Message Boards were a website that allowed a community of LEGO fans to post and chat about different brands of LEGO using different forums. You could start topics, respond to other posts, like posts, and even do things like have a signature under your posts. There were forums like the Ninjago forum, Star Wars, Super Heroes, a general Community Chat, and many more just like those. Some forums even had subforums, like for example Ninjago had two, a Stories and a Roleplay subforum. I was most active in the LEGO Dimensions forum, Ninjago forum, and Community Chat. I was actually the most liked user in the Ninjago forum, as well as I even had an interview on the Boards done of me. Looking back at that interview now I can see how much I've matured since I was on those boards. But I met a lot of good friends from my three years on the boards. Unfortunately in early 2017 we got the announcement that the LMBs were shutting down, which sucked. However it taught me a lot about the perks of community, and I will always thank them for that. If you want more info about the boards, check out the wiki here.
Pictured here above was my Signature on the LMBs
What got you into YouTube?
I actually first got really into YouTube watching a channel called The Brick Show. They posted LEGO Reviews and covered pretty much everything LEGO. I was really into their coverage of Ninjago, watching pretty much every review they ever did of the theme. I even got to meet them eventually at Brick Fest Live! in 2016. Since then, their channel was terminated due to breaking copyright on YouTube, but the memories I have watching them still exist. But they inspired me to make my own spin on LEGO Reviews and so I started my YouTube Channel in December 2014, focusing mainly on Ninjago at the time but eventually branching out into something much more. You can see more of the history of my channel on the videos section of this website.
My brother, I, and one of our friends talk to Jason from The Brick Show at Brick Fest Live 2016.
What got you into Dimensions?
If you have been here long enough, you'd know that my YouTube channel started out as a Ninjago channel solely, with no real gameplay videos. That changed in mid 2015 when I started getting a lot more into gaming. I always loved playing the LEGO Games on the Wii, but I had no current machine that could play all the current games coming out. The last LEGO Game that came out on Wii was LEGO Batman 2. But I heard about this new game called LEGO Dimensions that combines all the franchises into one game (if I'm being honest it had Ninjago in it too so it had me sold already). So I asked for an Xbox 360 for that Christmas, and I even bought packs before having a console to play the game. Unfortunately I didn't get an Xbox 360 for that Christmas, but something better: an Xbox One. Ever since that day my content changed until I took my break, and even now I still play the game. The knowledge I have after years of playing is really good, and it'll be hard for me to find a more favorite game compared to this.
Why did you suddenly leave YouTube in late 2017?
If I'm really being honest with myself, I have no idea! It's been a long time since it happened, so my best guess is because I got overloaded with school obligations. I did a few extracurriculars in high school so I was constantly busy. I still played some videogames, as well as getting into Switch, but it wasn't to the extent I was before. And at that point I was collecting little to no new Ninjago sets, although I still watched the show up until season 9. The only place I was still somewhat active was Twitter, although even on there my posts weren't very often. So the short answer is I don't know, but the best guess is too busy for content creation.
Taken in Australia on one of the excursions on our cruise. There were also lots of Crocodiles!
These are the splits from my first ever SMO run on February 4th, 2018.
How did you get into Super Mario Odyssey?
I actually first got into SMO because of the challenge videos from DGR, FearsomeFire, and DannTheMan. I liked the videos so much, it made me want to get a Switch, so for Christmas 2017 that's what I asked for. While unfortunately I didn't get it, I did get some money, enough to where I was able to buy the console myself. So the next day I bought it, and got SMO a couple days later. I remember playing the game casually, and it was a little easier for me because I had watched a lot of videos about it. One thing I also remember is trying the impossible jump for hours. Now this was back in January 2018, so we didn't know too much about the game. One thing I did know is I wanted to speedrun it. There was a guide back then but it wasn't a very good one, it was made by Ninpalk. But that was how I learned to run the game. My first run of the game was on February 4, 2018, and after I got a 1:22 later in the year that was what remained on the leaderboard until I started streaming in 2020.
Why did you start streaming on Twitch?
This one probably will be explained better in a blog post later, but this is the shortened version. I made a Twitch account in 2016, and the reason I made one at the time was to follow the Brick Show, who really didn't even stream on there much at the time. I really liked the guy that did the recordings of gameplay and wanted to support him. I even won a giveaway too. But I never posted anything myself until 2018, when I uploaded two SMO runs to Twitch. I think the reason I put them there and not YouTube is because I didn't want to make it seem like I'm going to make a ton of YouTube content again, and I never really talked about my Twitch channel, so that's where it went. Then in 2020 the pandemic hit. I actually started watching Twitch again a couple weeks before school shut down because of 4 caps, but the pandemic made me miss interaction so I ended up on Twitch more. I wanted to stream for myself after being reminded of my old YouTube channel, so I did, starting in June 2020 with me finishing Dimensions (you can see how long it had been since I even played the game). At first there was no commentary, but eventually I upgraded my PC and got a good mic and that's how I found a passion for streaming.
This was a screenshot taken in June 2020, you could see how long it was since I played the game last!
Do you have any hobbies other than your content?
Yes, actually! I am a really big fan of running! I actually did cross country and track in high school and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately in college I've just had too busy of a schedule to be able to run cross country as a sport, but I still do run casually and have some races I do sign up for occasionally! Additionally, I even ran my first Marathon in April of 2022! Another good hobby of mine is music. I was a music business major, so I do like music, although I generally don't have favorite songs. I was in Marching Band all four years in high school, and my primary instrument was (and still is) Euphonium. My favorite type of music is Jazz, and the reason for that is because in high school I was also in the jazz band for three years (I played trumpet in jazz), and I really enjoyed playing in that band. I now don't play very often, except for sometimes at church when I can.
Do you have any siblings?
Yes, I do. I have one brother that is about a year and a half younger than me. I think I am happy I am the older brother, and I'm happy there are only two of us. We bonded a lot when we were younger, and both of us built each other into what we are today. We actually streamed together in December 2021, you can check out our streams of It Takes Two here.
Taken in Australia on our cruise ship in Sydney the day our cruise took off. We had taken a flight of 14 hours the same day so I was pretty tired.
What kind of travel have you done?
I have actually been to all 50 US States! I have been fortunate enough to be gifted with such wonderful trips with my family to a lot of different places, which I have to thank my dad for. He knows a lot about different workarounds for travel because of how he has done it a lot for work, and that gave him the status for cheaper travel. The last state of my 50 was West Virginia, which I made it to just after finishing college. I have also been to Canada, as well as Australia (pictured on left). I love having the gift of travel, and I definitely don't take it for granted! If I need to leave you one tip about this, it's make sure you're not wasting money on little things, so you can save for the big things. That has definitely worked for my family.