Ninja Storm has it's fans, and I'm sure it's ok, but it's where the franchise died for me. The shift to Disney made it feel way more ironic and belittling of the material. I'm. not saying old PR was edgy serious or lacked campy humor, but the Disney seasons is when it started to feel like the show was aware of how ridiculous it all was. I always got the feeling that Disney didn't just not care about the franchise, but felt the material was beneath them so there's this feeling of disdain for playing it too straight and this need to jangle keys and add goofy humor to undercut things.
It was especially jarring coming off 4 seasons of characters regularly dying or all these melodramatic backstories