Spotlight: Card-Jitsu Shadow

In my last post, I touched on a famous rumour of a mysterious fourth element known as Shadow. I mentioned that while this started off as nothing more than another rumour, the Club Penguin Team slowly began to leave references to the element existing in game. So, in this edition of Spotlight, I’m going to be showing you all every single reference to Card-Jitsu Shadow that have been discovered in game.

Let’s start off with recapping a few of the easter eggs I briefly touched on in my last post. First of all, each element has it’s own suit. This suit consists of four items – a helmet, a mask, a coat and a pair of sandals. These items mark each player’s progress through the various forms of Card-Jitsu as they can only be earned through winning games of it.

While a Card-Jitsu variant for the element of Shadow was never released (let’s not get ahead of ourselves – it is just a rumour after all), the Team did actually create and implement the four items of the Card-Jitsu Shadow Suit into the game’s code – the Shade Sandals, the Midnight Mask, the Nightfall Coat and the Helmet of Shadows. As you can see below, the outfit was mainly black and dark grey with a gold trim.

I would like to note that the middle gem of the amulet (which is what originally sparked the rumours of Card-Jitsu Shadow) can actually be seen on the Helmet of Shadows.

Like the other ninja suits, when all four of the shadow items are worn together, they allow the player to perform a special dance and a special wave. When dancing, the player summons a thick, grey cloud that engulfs them leaving them completely invisible, whereas waving results in a black void falling down your penguin, hiding it as it goes. You can see both of these in the animations below.

The next reference to Card-Jitsu Shadow that I mentioned was in a comic in issue #459 of the Club Penguin Times. As you can see, the black belt briefly mentions the element of shadow.

I also mentioned that Sensei revealed in game that “There might be Shadow some day”, but I didn’t mention that he wasn’t the only penguin to reveal this information. Multiple Club Penguin Staff Members such as Spike Hike and Polo Field have also revealed in equally passive tones that Card-Jitsu Shadow may have been planned.

And with that out of the way, we can dive in to some other Card-Jitsu Shadow References that I haven’t mentioned before. Around the same time that the Card-Jitsu Suit was added into the game code, a new power card was released called the ‘Mobile Fire Power Card 1’.

When this power card was used, the player would suddenly don a full Shadow Outfit and a lightbulb would fall down beside them casting the penguin’s shadows across the Dojo. Then the player’s shadow grows much bigger and scares the opponent’s shadow away, before chasing the opponent, themselves, away too. You can see this in the Youtube Video below.

The last major reference to Card-Jitsu Shadow in game that I know of was actually the first one I discovered. A little-known fact is that if you get enough ninjas to all do their special dances in the same room, they begin to affect the weather – with the effects getting crazier as more and more ninjas join in.

For fire ninjas, the sky turns orange and eventually fireballs start shooting across it, for water ninjas the sky turns deep blue and eventually starts raining and for snow ninjas, the sky turns cyan and eventually begins snowing.

So where does the element of shadow come into this? If you get an equal number of water, fire and snow ninjas all performing their special dances in the same room, the sky turns a very dark purple and colour-changing clouds begin to circle the horizon.

Some have taken this to mean that Shadow is the balance of the other three elements, and while I don’t want to support or debunk this theory in what’s meant to be a purely factual post, this can also explain why what fans have taken to be the Shadow Gem sits in the middle of the amulet – it’s the middle ground, the connecter between the other three. Then again, that’s just speculation.

But that’s all for this spotlight post. Do you think shadow would ever have actually made it into the game? Is there anything I missed? Feel free to leave your thoughts and theories in the comments below, and, as always,