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First LEGO Elves Webisode: "Crushing It"


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If you enjoyed the LEGO Elves TV special "Unite the Magic", you've probably been looking forward to more stories with Emily Jones and her friends from Elvendale. Wait no longer! LEGO has posted a new webisode titled "Crushing It" which is just under four minutes in length, featuring the same animation style and voice acting as the previous full-length episode. Does somebody in Emily's group have a crush, and what will the others do to find out for sure? Watch the new webisode to find out!

 

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Romance in a lego storyline? What is this madness?

*Looks at Emmet and Wyldstyle*

 

*Looks at Nya and Jay*

 

*Looks at Eris and Rogon*

 

Yeah... not all that rare. Bionicle was kind of the exception to the norm.

 

Anyway, this episode was fun. The animation's still shoddy. It pretty much decimated my OTP. But still fun. I suppose that's a testament to the writing quality? All the Elves characters are such dorks and I love them.

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Formerly Lyichir: Rachira of Influence

Aanchir's and Meiko's brother

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So much cheese. So much.

 

Also the 'crush' concept is way out of date - that's my generation's term for "emotional high caused by another person that is brief, fleeting, and doesn't amount to much, despite the character's stupid belief that their emotions are out of control and must be acted upon." 

 

(Good ending, though?)

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I think this was pretty funny. I wasn't expecting the reality show confessional parts, but they were brilliant. I think they're handling this overdone story idea as well as they can, and all of the characters are fun and likable enough to make it work.

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"You are an absolute in these uncertain times. Your past is forgotten, and your
future is an empty book. You must find your own destiny, my brave adventurer.
"
-- Turaga Nokama

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This is alright, but to be honest I'm still kind of mad that relatively minor themes like this and Mixels get a more substantial media output than Bionicle, which used to be Lego's top theme and played a part in saving the company. Between this and their failing to even announce that the Ordeal of Fire tv special was even happening, let alone when (I only caught it thanks to this site), I'm convinced that someone high up in TLG hates constraction and wants it to fail. Of course sales are a factor or whatever, but it's a two-way street: Lego has to actually promote (adequately) their lines to even get people's attention and make money off of them. That may be part of why Ninjago was a success: it started with a well-produced TV (may be a good way to maximize viewership) special that turned into an equally well-produced show, whereas Bionicle gets some online episodes that will only be sought out by fans already following the line and aware of them.

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Thank you, BZPower staff. In the past, I wish I showed more appreciation for all that you do. From one Bionicle fan to another, thank you.

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This is alright, but to be honest I'm still kind of mad that relatively minor themes like this and Mixels get a more substantial media output than Bionicle, which used to be Lego's top theme and played a part in saving the company. Between this and their failing to even announce that the Ordeal of Fire tv special was even happening, let alone when (I only caught it thanks to this site), I'm convinced that someone high up in TLG hates constraction and wants it to fail. Of course sales are a factor or whatever, but it's a two-way street: Lego has to actually promote (adequately) their lines to even get people's attention and make money off of them. That may be part of why Ninjago was a success: it started with a well-produced TV (may be a good way to maximize viewership) special that turned into an equally well-produced show, whereas Bionicle gets some online episodes that will only be sought out by fans already following the line and aware of them.

Yeah, I noticed that, too. Watching the Elves pilot, I found myself asking, "Wait... is this better than BIONICLE?"

"You are an absolute in these uncertain times. Your past is forgotten, and your
future is an empty book. You must find your own destiny, my brave adventurer.
"
-- Turaga Nokama

nichijou2.jpg

Click here to visit my library!

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Between this and their failing to even announce that the Ordeal of Fire tv special was even happening, let alone when (I only caught it thanks to this site), I'm convinced that someone high up in TLG hates constraction and wants it to fail.

Not only is this a fairly ridiculous conclusion to draw, it also ignores that the Elves special's original airing was REALLY poorly advertised, and if I hadn't seen it mentioned on Eurobricks I wouldn't have been able to report it here. Also, I wouldn't call this a minor theme — it's actually this year's "Big Bang" theme (that is to say, a theme LEGO devotes a lot of attention and money to marketing its launch, like Atlantis, Ninjago, Friends, or Legends of Chima). Between that and this being the first in-house theme for girls since the launch of LEGO Friends, it's almost surprising how little promotion we've seen for this theme so far.

 

Not to mention, the amount LEGO has invested in promoting the BIONICLE reboot is hardly insignificant. We're just seeing it used differently. Elves had its first year's story told in one 22-minute episode, with character videos cut entirely from that footage. It's now gotten the first of who knows how many short "filler" webisodes. BIONICLE had its backstory told in a 105-second episode, then six 30-second character videos and nine 90-second story videos... just for the first half of the year. And there's no telling how many videos we could expect for the second half of the year. If we get as many story videos for the second half of the year as for the first, that would mean 31.75 minutes of animated media altogether, and that's assuming no new character videos or other videos. Difficult, then, to say LEGO Elves will have considerably more media than LEGO BIONICLE by year's end.

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Between this and their failing to even announce that the Ordeal of Fire tv special was even happening, let alone when (I only caught it thanks to this site), I'm convinced that someone high up in TLG hates constraction and wants it to fail.

Not only is this a fairly ridiculous conclusion to draw, it also ignores that the Elves special's original airing was REALLY poorly advertised, and if I hadn't seen it mentioned on Eurobricks I wouldn't have been able to report it here. Also, I wouldn't call this a minor theme — it's actually this year's "Big Bang" theme (that is to say, a theme LEGO devotes a lot of attention and money to marketing its launch, like Atlantis, Ninjago, Friends, or Legends of Chima). Between that and this being the first in-house theme for girls since the launch of LEGO Friends, it's almost surprising how little promotion we've seen for this theme so far.

 

Not to mention, the amount LEGO has invested in promoting the BIONICLE reboot is hardly insignificant. We're just seeing it used differently. Elves had its first year's story told in one 22-minute episode, with character videos cut entirely from that footage. It's now gotten the first of who knows how many short "filler" webisodes. BIONICLE had its backstory told in a 105-second episode, then six 30-second character videos and nine 90-second story videos... just for the first half of the year. And there's no telling how many videos we could expect for the second half of the year. If we get as many story videos for the second half of the year as for the first, that would mean 31.75 minutes of animated media altogether, and that's assuming no new character videos or other videos. Difficult, then, to say LEGO Elves will have considerably more media than LEGO BIONICLE by year's end.

 

Before I go on my rant, let me say that what little media Bionicle 2015 has released I have liked a lot, honestly more than the Hero Factory episodes and possibly TLR. I like all the generation 1 references and other clever things like the Temple of Time which I found lacking in the often less sophisticated Hero Factory writing, and in terms of the animation itself I really like the increased freedom of creative/varied locations, dramatic camera angles, and dynamic figures and movements that the cartoonish 2d animation allows, honestly in my opinion it's a better storytelling medium than the more limiting TV-budget cgi. And its better than nothing of course, and I guess I like the 90-second scenes better than one 30-minute Hero Factory episode as it for the whole year (although it's similar, we're still left waiting most of the time especially compared to Generation 1 of Bionicle that had stuff to actually talk about the whole year through be it web serials or comics etc). But obviously even if something has some good qualities doesn't make it exempt from criticism, and I think mine is absolutely correct and valid in this case.

 

Come on Aanchir, really? Even for you, this is a stretch. Those episodes could have been produced by an amateur on basic animation software for hardly anything. Numerous fan-created Bionicle projects, for instance the Tohkann animations, are far more impressive. This looks like a series of MS paint stills with occasional basic movement (like a character's head tilting or whatever, we're not seeing anything complex like illusion of form, moving camera etc). I like the cartoonish Tartakovsky-esque art style, but seriously this looks like an amateur production created by one of the wealthiest and largest companies in the world. I can't believe you're equating seconds (really?) of screentime to a substantial output. Besides the really short length (which would be perhaps justified if the production values were better, ie like the old Ghost animations), there's hardly any movement at all (lots of still images, super cheap), indication that the actual animation production (rendering the characters' movement etc) was minimal at best. Besides, not that I'm asking for this much, but toy companies have been using feature-length animations and even television cartoons to promote toy lines since like the '80s, and even back then those had much better animation that this. Especially with Lego being an enormously successful and wealthy company in comparison to other toy companies, that they somehow can't or unwilling to afford to expend more for the storyline is ridiculously stingy. I mean since the dawn of animation, whether it's the old Looney Tunes or Disney cartoons, to the Hanna Barbara animations, to Care Bears and GI Joe in the '80s, to the computer-based animated television series of the 2000s, has consistently been longer and of greater quality than this. And this isn't even taking into account how creating good animation has become massively cheaper and more common over the past few years.

 

FYI I would be fine with either primitive animation and a greater quantity of content (justifies lower production values, would actually be a great way to tell the story but potentially risky) or little content like we have now but better production values (akin to what we got with the original Bionicle). This is the worst of both worlds and it really sucks no matter how much you deny it. I like it but I wish there was more, there's not enough to tell the story nor to maintain interest.

Edited by Toa Zaz
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Thank you, BZPower staff. In the past, I wish I showed more appreciation for all that you do. From one Bionicle fan to another, thank you.

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