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Thing you hate about the 2015 webisodes


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What things in the 2015 Bionicle webisodes that you hate?

 

For me, it will be everything that the Skull villains in the webisodes doing. All the Skull villains has potential, but once again TLG making all of the villains to been that "I just standing at here, evilly laughing and waiting for you to defeat me" kind of villain. What TLG did for the villains is just disappoint me.

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Let me think....

 

Well, I'd love to voice my opinions on this, but I only have one, and it's not very good. :P

 

Seriously, there was only one voice for every character, and while the dialogue was corny to begin with, the only actor they used didn't handle it very well. Yes, I get that it's supposed to be geared more towards a much younger audience, but still. :glare:

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They didn't actually set up the skull spiders as villains properly before letting the heroes blast them into oblivion. You need to show your villains doing something villainous so that the audience is invested in them being defeated. Basic storytelling. Shuffling slowly towards people and then getting blasted does not count as villainous.

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They didn't actually set up the skull spiders as villains properly before letting the heroes blast them into oblivion. You need to show your villains doing something villainous so that the audience is invested in them being defeated. Basic storytelling. Shuffling slowly towards people and then getting blasted does not count as villainous.

This ties into my biggest problem with the animations, which are the villains. Hands down the worst part of the webisodes, and of the 2015 story as a whole. They were villains because the story said so, and were presented in the most bland, cliche, generic manner possible. To top it all of, they got approximately zero characterization (which is especially disappointing in light of the decent characterization the webisodes managed to give the Toa). 

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Nothing springs to mind that I totally hate about the webisodes. I do wish there were more of an opportunity to focus on the Toa learning to admit to their own weaknesses and tolerate and appreciate one another's weaknesses and strengths. Maybe the Netflix series will offer more of an opportunity for that. I also wish Onua's lethargy, Pohatu's fear of the dark, and Tahu's forgetfulness were brought up more. And it would've been nice if Gali got more opportunities to shine. I also would have liked to see opportunities for the Toa to form some more individual bonds, like how Pohatu and Kopaka or Lewa and Onua ended up being there for each other a lot in G1.

 

A lot of these things might've required increasing either the length of the webisodes or the number of webisodes. I don't think we needed more or longer webisodes to tell the story they set out to tell, but it would've been nice for them to have had an opportunity to tell more stories. The webisodes were good in my opinion, but they could have been better.

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The topic title is loaded; it implies the webisodes are bad enough to hate instead of just being mediocre at worst. "Shortcomings" is a better term than "things you hate"

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Elemental Rahi in Gen2, anyone? A write-up for an initial video for a G2 plot

 

I really wish everyone would stop trying to play join the dots with Gen 1 and Gen 2 though,it seems there's a couple new threads everyday and often they're duplicates of already existing conversations! Or simply parallel them with a slightly new 'twist'! Gen 2 is NEW, it is NOT Gen 1 and it is NOT a continuation. Outside of the characters we already have I personally don't want to see ANY old characters return. I think it will cheapen the whole experience to those of us familiar with the original line...

 

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Who sets themselves a limit of a minute and 30 seconds? That was a stupid idea that held back the potential of the animations.

Probably a way of cutting costs.  The animation studio probably charges based on length of animation.  As you say, though, it's unfortunate that they set this limit on the main vehicle of the storyline.

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The one things I dislike about the site, is the amount of unused space on the site, it seems very empty to me. I realize it says "webisodes" not "website".

 

The thing that I don't like about the webisodes is that... They don't really capture any sort of sense of surreal-ness that BIONICLE had back in 2001, heck we for one don't even know if the inhabitants of Okoto are organic, biomechanical, or completely robotic! I mean we know that they reproduce sexually, unlike the Matoran, Toa, and Turaga of years past, but thats really all we know about them, as for the island itself, I feel like it doesn't really grasp the sort of wonderment that Mata Nui did, these things could have been addressed in the animations, but they simply weren't, either due to time constraints, or just a lack of lore created for the re-launch. Which I doubt heavily that they don't have deep lore, but so far we have no such thing... Yet. I dunno, I'm still keeping my hopes up.

Edited by Toa Imrukii
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Who sets themselves a limit of a minute and 30 seconds? That was a stupid idea that held back the potential of the animations.

Probably a way of cutting costs.  The animation studio probably charges based on length of animation.  As you say, though, it's unfortunate that they set this limit on the main vehicle of the storyline.

Actually, at NYCC they mentioned the reason for it was to make the videos "shareable" via social media — something that people could watch while scrolling through their Tumblr dash or Facebook news feed without worrying about it taking up a lot of their time. The G1 webisodes from 2002 and 2003 did include "E-mail to a friend" links, but that's a whole different ball game than today's social media landscape.

 

I doubt it had anything to do with cutting costs, since the webisodes as a whole add up to nearly 30 minutes of animation, so it really wouldn't make any difference cost-wise whether they broke it into eighteen 90-second episodes, nine three-minute episodes, or three nine-minute episodes. All together, the Okoto webisodes from 2015 are longer than the Bohrok webisodes from 2002, just broken apart into shorter chunks. Obviously, doing more webisodes would have cost more and taken more time to produce, but that wouldn't necessarily mean making changes to the length of the webisodes individually.

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DESTROY ALL THE WEBISODES!!!

 

If I'm going to be committed to destruction, might as well go all the way, right? :P

 

Actually, at NYCC they mentioned the reason for it was to make the videos "shareable" via social media — something that people could watch while scrolling through their Tumblr dash or Facebook news feed without worrying about it taking up a lot of their time. The G1 webisodes from 2002 and 2003 did include "E-mail to a friend" links, but that's a whole different ball game than today's social media landscape.

Okay, that's a noble goal for a social media marketing strategy. But it's not good storytelling. As the final product shows us, there isn't enough space to tell a good story in that short a time frame. 

 

A better strategy would be to make those 90-second videos...and then link to a video in the Facebook post or Twitter thing that's 10-20 minutes long that tells the whole story in detail. Low-commitment fans can just watch the 90 seconds, but that 90 seconds should entice the buyer to see the longer video and watch it. 

 

Taking one class on internet marketing doesn't make me an expert, but I think that's the idea. I guess they needed to prove that Bionicle was worth the longer videos...but they were giving away pieces of shiny gold. I would have liked it much better if they had put those funds into a better story, but that's my bias talking. Hmm. 

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believe in the power of netflix...however, it is only four episodes.hopefully it too doesnt suffer from the time problem.i mean, Ninjago did it okay... right?

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All one voice and no world building at all.

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Oh boy.... From least to most:

 

The dialoge: At least a missed opportunity for a hidden meme (Pohatu should have said "I never asked for this"). Other than that is simple and does the job. It's not high art, but no one was expecting it to be.

 

Pronuciation: Some Toa have somewhat different accents, I suppose to distinguish them somehow, but some times is wierd. I swear I hear Pohatu and Onua say "Hit the liver [you know, the vital organ an skeleton would not have])

 

Mistakes: In an episode they mixed up Stone an Earth. Not world shattering, but even f they corrected it later, it still happened.

 

Reused animations/Recaps: This is especially obvious during the episodes when they recover the Golden Masks. Seeing the episodes every week or so as they were released, it didn't bothered me. But watching back to back is annoying: At least 4 minutes of recap could have been cut for more characer development. Speaking of which:

 

Underdeveloped villans: None of the baddies was interesting in the very least. Most of them were beaten in one episode. The Skull Grinder only had one line of dialoge and gets beat with two hits, for Mata Nui's sake!

 

Underdeveloped heroes: While the Toa did have an arc learning how to work together and accepting their role as heroes, most of their personallities are underplayed, especially Gali. I'm not asking for deep philosophical debates between them, but they rarely seem to act as characters and not plot-drivers. Ekimu is OP, but I kinda give it a pass because he was set up as a powerful near-mystical being. The Protectors were non existant, with only one talking in the ever-loved dialect of exposition.

 

The first half is Tahu-centered: I understand that showing the six Toa going through the same beats dedicating one episode to each. I know kids like more the red characters. But still, I can't shake the feeling that Tahu only stole screen time, for he didn't develop much until later.

 

The voice "acting": Suprise, suprise... This is the biggest problem. Even if the idea was to show the videos as a narration by one of the Protectors, it doesn't work. I mean, one guy for around 10 characters. Come on. I know Lego doesn't have as much faith in Bionicle as much as their other lines, but at least hire more voice actors. Gali suffers the most from this, rarely sounding as a woman. Again, I don't think the voice actor is a bad one, but making him do all the voices was a very bad mistake that, at least for me, made the animations lose most of their potential.

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Pronuciation: Some Toa have somewhat different accents, I suppose to distinguish them somehow, but some times is wierd. I swear I hear Pohatu and Onua say "Hit the liver [you know, the vital organ an skeleton would not have])

I think that was supposed to be "hit the lever". Still, lever is pronounced really weird. 

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Pronuciation: Some Toa have somewhat different accents, I suppose to distinguish them somehow, but some times is wierd. I swear I hear Pohatu and Onua say "Hit the liver [you know, the vital organ an skeleton would not have])

I think that was supposed to be "hit the lever". Still, lever is pronounced really weird. 

 

Pretty sure that's just the British pronunciation...and I'm pretty sure the voice actor is British, after all. Personally I like the fact that the toa all speak differently...would you really prefer it if their voices were all identical? That just seems silly.

Edited by The Silent King

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Kathok

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

 

Pronuciation: Some Toa have somewhat different accents, I suppose to distinguish them somehow, but some times is wierd. I swear I hear Pohatu and Onua say "Hit the liver [you know, the vital organ an skeleton would not have])

I think that was supposed to be "hit the lever". Still, lever is pronounced really weird. 

 

Pretty sure that's just the British pronunciation...and I'm pretty sure the voice actor is British, after all. Personally I like the fact that the toa all speak differently...would you really prefer it if their voices were all identical? That just seems silly.

 

I'm Australian and I say it as "Lee-va", just like in the vid. What amuses me is that with the revised pronunciation of "Lewa", folks in Denmark and a few other places that say "w" as /v/ would pronounce Lewa's name as "Leeva" as well.

 

So Onua would be saying "I hit the Lewa!"...

 

...which could potentially be a bit confusing...

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Bad voice actor. All of the fights are too short, all villains were defeated in 1-HIT KO And Kulta fell them all 6 heroes in a single swing and they dont even use their weapons to block his attack and defend their masks .

 

It's like the Toa were over-leveled when they arrived, being able to one-shot all their enemies, but the "final boss" was suddenly at level 100... instant defeat! :P

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Well, the big issue is time limit, but, as a great man once said, "Time limits are the root of all evil."

 

My biggest issue with Gen-2 as a whole is the lack of characterization.  I didn't feel like I knew any of the characters well for ages, and now(after reading the graphic novel), I still feel like I've only gotten a good glimpse of Pohatu's character.

 

With Classic BIONICLE, the plot was impeccable, but for the most part, so is this one.  What both the webisodes and story in general need is deeper characters.  I feel like this is where LEGO went wrong by choosing Wyndham as an author.  He was used to doing histories for Star Wars, not stories.  The difference is, a history tells you what the characters did, and a story tells you who the characters are.

 

Also, I have to agree that the fights were way too easy-short(to use Chute-Speak).

 

Characterization is my biggest beef with 2015, but heck, I like the sets 20x more than Hero Factory, so I'll keep buying(including the graphic novels and books, should they get better).

Edited by Kessen
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Despite that the animations are a great start of the new Bionicle line, it has some rough aspects that I am not too fond about. Here is this list:

 

1. How are the CCBS joints being animated: I you look closely at the characters' joints, they look a little disconnected. Would you imagine a character saying, "Hey. Your forearm is a little disconnected to your elbow. I don't know why it's floating, but I'll connect it for you." Strange, uh? Would you also imagine the forearm falling from the elbow to the ground when it floats? A little inaccurate in the animation.

 

2. Having only one voice actor: why having one guy to voice all characters? Seems too much for the poor guy. It would be better if Lego had hired more people. I mean, many of the characters sound like that their voice sounds too similar. Plus, Gali would have needed a female voice actor to make her sound more feminine. Why having one guy actor do it? And also, the "lever" pronunciation is confusing for how Pohatu and Onua sounded it.

 

3. How the first six episodes focused on Tahu: I understand that fans like red characters more than others usually, but the other Toa may have the same struggles during their quests for the Golden Masks as much as Tahu does.

 

4. The villains: I feel disappointed about them. They are like "Hello, foolish heroes! Come and get me! (Evil doing and evil laughing, waiting for the heroes to get and defeat him)". It also is like when the Toa meet a certain enemy for the first time, they defeated him, it or them, and the bad guys never came back. They just stay defeated.

They lack a lot of character development along the way. Plus, Kulta, Skull Slicer, Skull Basher, and the Lord of Skull Spiders are leader-type members, so shouldn't they call more Skull Spiders, Warriors, and Scorpios for reinforcements? Anyway, it would have been cool if any Skull Creature would return to get revenge on the Toa for kicking its butt. And also, I wish the battles could have been longer.

 

5. Gali: Other than doing the Unity thing with her fellow Toa, she does the least one-person activity than them. Poor Gali.

 

6. Kopaka's and Pohatu's masks not being drained: The Skull Warriors got defeated without any on of them draining Kopaka's mask. A Skull Scorpio stole Pohatu's mask, but never took its energy out. I don't know why that happened. I believe people would look at the Warrior and Acorpio sets and think this: "If they didn't drain them, are they canon or not?" I felt like this could be the same condition as Vezon's shield in his Vezon & Kardas set back in 2006 (happy 10th anniversary). Anyway, I hope that new second graphic novel coming in a few months will make up for this.

 

7. The Toa's quests for the Golden Masks being too short: I wish there could be added obstacles during their journey, so I wouldn't feel that they are short, despite the fact in the story that they took weeks.

 

Overall, I believe this would be all because of time constraints. This is probably because of money. I don't think that have 1 minute and 30 seconds is long enough to make up for these disappointments. The web series could have gotten better if each episode is longer to, say, 2-3 minutes. I felt like this is another Hero Factory: Invasion From Below episode: short videos that fill the entire storyline, except the fact that the Bionicle webisodes took, like, a year to finish the storyline. It's too bad that the web series had ended because of the Netflix show coming sometime this month (is that right?). I liked the webisodes because it was good, but, as I said, it could have been better. I am going to miss it because it made my year. I also hope the Netflix show will make up for it.:( It's 22 minutes per one of four episodes, so that'll do.

Edited by Lenny7092

I like Lego, Bionicle, and Hero Factory!:)

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