Ruthless Review Of Mata Nui
Entry posted by Seranikai
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...no, not the titan version. I'm not stupid, what a waste of money. 
sys.err//
[injecting enthusiasm]
all.fine.for.now//
THE CANISTER BIT
So, here we go. The canister is, as usual, made from plastic. I didn't have any other canisters to compare it with, so I chose random things from my desk. It's larger than my iPod, yet considerably smaller than my TV. About the same size as a Wii, by the looks of it. I hope that helps. Anyway, it's sort of tapered to one side, with stripey bits on one side and BIONICLE shouting at you from the other. The lid is, quite deceptively, yellow. The reasoning for this is beyond me, as the set inside is yellorange. However, there is no doubt an explanation involving Takanuva's light-bending powers, a couple of alternate universes, and the refracting properties of a prism. So let's go with it. The lid features a very bland pattern of ridges and a slight bulge in the middle, quite dull and not really worth your attention. We move instead to the stickers. Two giant stickers cover the front and back of the canister, holding the lid securely in place. Very securely. Seran had to use a knife to cut through the stickers ( 
) to get the lid off, but that's another story.
The front sticker features a gorgeously CG render of Mata Nui himself, standing with legs heroically one in front of the other, shield raised and launcher poised, his head tilted slightly to the side as if in silent pain from the weight of his two tools. As we've come to expect on a Bionicle canister, the word 'BIONICLE' is plastered over the top of the image, with some fancy new bevels and a shiny gradient. Well done, artwork company, you've mastered layer styles in Photoshop. 
Continuing down we find the words 'Mata Nui', written in the Bionicle typeface we've all come to love. Because love it we must, seeing as it's everywere. It's also got the same fancy effects applied, so it vaguely stands out from the background. You'd have thought that MATA NUI IN SET FORM would have more of a fanfare announcing his arrival in plastic incarnate, but no. Just a bit of a bevel and a black stroke. No drop shadow though, how silly.
The background image is very yellow, suggesting that our dear friend is either standing heroically in a desert, or standing in one of those fish tanks with the coloured sand and wondering how he got there. Presumably to stop this very confusion, the artist has dropped in the Skrall shield pattern. They had the clever idea of making it yellow, so it really stands out from the yellow sands, and yellow Mata Nui, and yellow text. Speaking of the text, it proclaims, still in the fancy Photoshop styles, that Mata Nui himself is between 7 - 16 years old, presumably, and that he's somehow connected to the year 8989. It's interesting to note that 8989 is in fact 89 repeated twice...spooky, considering this is Mata Nui it applies to! But wait, it doesn't end there! 8+9+8+9=34, and 34x6=204. If we add those digits together, 2+4, we get 6, and add 1995 and we get 2001, which happens to be the year Bionicle started and Mata Nui's first appearance...spooky! The canister also tells us that Mata Nui is apparently a Glatorian Legend, despite only being on Bara Magna for about a week, and the tiny Lego logo in the corner tells us that he's a Lego set. Lucky, really, I thought he was a cake at first, and I was quite surprised when he turned out to be made from plastic and not icing sugar.
If we revolve the canister 180 degrees, we find the sticker on the back...and it's yellow! Gosh, how exciting! It tells us that a new movie has come out of the closet, something called 'The Legend Reborn', presumably the short title for 'The Legend Reborn with Awful Animation, Terrible Dialogue, and Unforgivable Music, Yet With Nice Textures so the Fans will Love it Anyway'. It's on DVD now, supposedly. Beneath this we find that Mata Nui has some friends, and most amusingly Number 9885 (they have no names, only numbers...like Chinese food) is in a pose that suggests he really needs to go to the toilet, what with his bent legs and pained expression...lovely. We can also see that you can fire spiky black and gold things with use of a launcher, decipher leet to get something probably not worth the effort on Bionicle.com, play the BIONICLE ACTION FIGURE GAME, and if all else fails, it suggests that you stuff Mata Nui into his canister and leave him to gather dust on a long forgotten shelf. There's also a minature essay of legal information, a 0-3 year old child looking severely depressed at his inability to play with a Bionicle set, some barcodes, and in my case, a sticker saying that this set cost me £8.99, which I have only just realised, and now feel quite annoyed that I didn't bother checking the price before I bought it.
The underside of the canister is considerably more interesting than the rest, saying Copyright 2008 LEGO group, recycle someone called Pete, and the mysterious code 64869, no doubt something earth-shatteringly important. You heard it here first
PURCHASING YOUR SET
Simply take your selected set to the till, hand it to the nice lady/man, smile sweetly, remark that you don't need a bag as you're doing Christmas Shopping and already have twenty of them (thus making it quite clear that you're not buying this toy for yourself, savvy) hand over your credit card, do some wizardry, get back your card, and trudge home through the snow (actual buying experience my vary, see back of can for details).
DISCOVERING WHAT BITS OF PLASTIC AND PAPER ARE INSIDE
So take the set home, to the car, wherever, and dump the pieces out. WAIT! take a minute to gather them all up, make the dog drop the piece that will soon become Mata Nui's head, and arrange them into neat little piles. Glare at the canister for telling you Mata Nui would be yellow, and shake your head at the decidely non-yellow pieces. There's no yellow here, folks. None. There is, however, an instruction leaflet, but you won't be needing that. Pieces of note include the New and Improved TM mini Mask of Life, because obviously the last one was just too cool with its swooshy shapes and awesome curves - so cool in fact that children everywhere were getting hurt, so they had to tone it down a little. Or a lot. Other new pieces include the tiny Iron Man head, UDDesque pieces (in silver and yellorange, oooooh) leg guard thingys, and MY GOODNESS HE'S GOT HANDS AAARRhfsgbsklgr*gsvbskvbs@@Fvfsvs#~svsdvscslulwat.
CONSTRUCTION
sys.err//
no_construction_exists
[proceed to next section]
just.about.fine//
MATA NUI INCARNATE IN PLASTICK FORME
Well goodness me. I have, at this very moment in time, have Mata Nui standing on a shelf in my bedroom. Yes. You heard right. This is no illusion. This is no alternate universe. This is not an hallucination brought on by too many Muaka Burgers. MATA NUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Etcetera. Well, no. Not really. It's Mata Nui's spirit trapped in the Mask of Life, with a form made from dust and bits of yellow sand.
Oh.
Well, that makes sense.
sys.err//
[acceptance injection]
stablised//
So yes. It's not the real Mata Nui, but Mata Nui/Ignika in Glatorian form. As such, he uses an Inika torso. And Metru hips. Clawed feet. Inika legs. You know the rest. BUT WAIT! I am not saying he's awful. No, no, no. This coagulate of random parts actually looks quite nice. The yellorange and black is beautiful, once you accept that fact that he was NEVER going to be gold. Face it, he wasn't. The Krika chest piece looks ok, it fills in the torso nicely, apart from the GIANT GAP IN HIS CHEST! Turn him to the side, and you can SEE RIGHT THROUGH HIM! Egads, he literally has no heart. Or internal organs of any kind. Poor guy. Apart from this, his torso is ok, except...and this is really, really important to Seran...the colour layering fails. Ask DV or Tiome about this, and they will surely agree. Possibly. Basically, his colour scheme quite clearly and rightly is yellorange armour over black. This is fine. It looks lovely. Seran loves it. BUT NO they RUIN IT ALL with a black Metru chest armour over yellorange Metru hips. FAIL. UTTER FAIL. The entire illusion of grandeur is destroyed, so much so that Seran had to fix it with black Metru hips and a yellorange triangle thingy from Keetongu. Now he looks positively gorgeous. The arms are a bit meh, but the insanely awesome UDDesque armour things are just too awesome, so we accept that as good and move on. The hands are good, they really add...fingers...to the whole set. The legs are fine, if a little yellorange. Actually no, the lower legs are balanced out by the giant yellorange upper arms, so it's all ok. The new ankle armour things are great, very loose, but still, they look great and blend in fine. The head is tiny, but it looks more in proportion, so we accept it. We don't embrace it, no, no we don't, but we accept it.
The tools are a bit eeeeeeh. A shield? Good idea, Mata Nui is more the shielding type than the big sword type...give him a shield. That's fine. WAIT A MINUTE, I didn't say give him a shield that's missing the shieldy bit...seriously, what's going on here? His shield has two giant holes in it, making it pretty useless in terms of being a shield. Maybe a double-ended boomerang, but not a shield. And the launcher is just meh...it launches, that's it. What else do you expect it to do? Seran, of course, ripped off the launcher after using it a grand total of twice, and replaced it with Jaller Mahri's sword. Much better.
THE ROUNDING UP BIT
Well, to be honest, Mata Nui isn't all that bad. He's got a good colour scheme, if you fix the FAILTASTIC colour layering. His design is alright, if you sort out his weapons. His redeeming feature is the small head and UDDesque shoulder things, they just exude cool and awesome and win and stuff. Probably sand too, after he's been in the desert for a while.
There's not much to say, really. He doesn't do anything, apart from fire Thornaxeseseses, and Seran's doesn't even do that anymore. He does, however, look fabulous sitting on Seran's Famous Shelf, where he proudly stands next to Vezon, a plastic llama, a black sheep, and a homemade knitted cow. He's easily the most yellorange of the group, and that's all that matters really.
Here's to Mata Nui.
The last Bionicle set. *
-Seran
*For dramatic purposes, you understand.
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