matoran masks

[boston100]

I was wondering if the mask the matoran wear affect what masks they get as toa? for example kongu wore a miru. If karzanhii had not taken his mask would he have had a miru? this has probably been explained somewhere but i couldn't find it.

[Zidonaro]

The only thing that happens when a Matoran become a Toa, is that their masks will become great, and becoming a great mask means that you can use its powers.

 

Masks never change because a Matoran become a Toa, only in special cases (Like when the Ignika unleashed a wave of energy at the Toa Inika and changed their masks).

 

So yeah, if Kongu still wore a Miru in his voyage to Voya Nui, he would wear a Great Miru, tho it would be organic because of the the Red Star 

[bonesiii]

There's different views on this. One possibility is that maskmakers ensure that Matoran masks are made out of the correct mixture for that mask power, so that if that mask's wearer happens to be Toa-ized, the mask will be in the right shape. We saw six cases of evidence of this with the Toa Metru, all of whom wore Matoran masks in the right basic shape for the actual powers they got.

 

Another possibility is that while that may be done sometimes (and in the case of those six), it might not always be done. It would be more efficient to just use a single Kanoka, rather than mixing Kanoka, so only the eight basic Kanoka powers would be likely to be used under this theory. This makes sense too because when you mix two Kanoka, half the mass of each disappears, so the resulting disk has normal mass for a disk, rather than twice the mass, even though two disks were used to make it. While this would be more cost-efficient, it would also possibly be considered too low quality to be allowed, since it might result in mismatched label-shapes with powers for new Toa.

 

Evidence for this can also be found with the Toa Metru although it's less clear, since they were not sure what powers they had. (But another explanation of that could be there may be thousands or more possible mask shapes so they might just never have bothered to look into it. And there have been other interpretations too like that they actually did know the power but weren't sure how to activate it.)

 

And another factor is that transformations to Toa and Turaga seem to automatically update the shape anyways. Vakama had a stylized Noble Huna shape as a Matoran, yet the shape changed just fine to the Great version. And of course, when Turaga-ized it turned to the Noble shape (as did the others'). So, maybe if it had the wrong shape, it would always change shape in transformations to Toa, so the mismatch would never happen. It's even possible the transformation system works the other way around -- that regardless of which powers were used in the molding of the Matoran mask, the shape used is "read" to force that power onto the resulting Great Mask, though this seems unlikely. (It would be possible though; either way there has to be a registry of shapes matching powers in the programming of protodermic powers, so technically the registry could be used in either direction. Just depends on how the Great Beings set it up.)

 

I strongly lean toward theories #1 and #3 (they do, as standard procedure, mix the right shapes even though the actual power drains out for Matoran level masks, and the shapes are changed in transformation to match power type and power level, so if somebody did cheat and use one of the eight basic powers instead, the resulting Toa mask would be the right shape for that basic power). But so far as I know currently, a combination of #2 and #4 is just as valid given what we know so far. (Unless Greg has specifically answered this. The question has come up in S&T before but I have not seen a direct canon answer.)

 

Notice that if theory #3 is true (the powers aren't changed on Toa-izing, only the shape), then whether #1 or #2 are the standard procedure, it's still possible (this much we know) for a Matoran maskmaker to use whichever way is NOT standard. So, without specific confirmation that Kongu was really wearing a Miru-powered mask (or that it would be changed into one upon Toa-izing under theory #4), we can't really know if it would end up with Miru power. Depends on what the maskmaker of that particular mask chose to do -- cut corners or no?

 

Translation: You'd have to ask Greg.

Edited July 1, 2014 by bonesiii