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what are matoran supposed to look like?


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The Great Beings based Matoran off of Agori, for one. If memory serves, Av-Matoran were the first type of Matoran created, so perhaps the Karda Nui Matoran would be what you're looking for? But then BS01 says that the following Matoran created after the Av-Matoran were smaller in stature. So, the Metru Nui Matoran, pre-Cataclysm would be a good bet, I think. 

(disclaimer: none of this banner art is original, I just smooshed it together in gimp. Torchic, Matau)
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Metru nui matoran definitely. 

Mata Nui matoran were explained as having body issues after being stuck in the sleep ball for so long

 

Post bohrok mata nui matoran were explained as being rebuilt and upgraded using parts from the broken bohrok.

 

Voya nui matoran were explained as being broken matoran that were very badly rebuilt by karzahni. Karzahni who was ashamed with his horrible skills banished them to voya nui. 

 

Mahri nui matoran all came from voya nui, so would have the same horrible body of being badly assembled by karzahni. 

 

Unmutated Karda nui matoran were the original matoran, so you can maybe think of them as being the original look, but they were different from matoran in the sense that they could use light element powers and turned into bohrok when they died. I think there's enough differences from them and normal matoran to justify them almost being an entirely different group that doesn't necessarily look like what the majority of matoran should look like.

 

Mutated karda nui matoran like Gavla have obviously been mutated and would look different than normal matoran.

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Honestly, I would say the Av-Matoran are the best representation of the "Great Beings' as built Matoran" again due to the similarities to the Agori... but, did we ever really see a vanilla Matoran anywhere in the whole saga?
 

  • 2001 Mutated shrunken Matoran
  • 2003 Rebuilt Matoran
  • 2004 Metru-Nui Matoran
  • 2006 Mutated horribly rebuilt Matoran
  • 2007 Mutated by pit mutagen Matoran
  • 2008 Early prototype Matoran bigger in size due to Karda-Nui energy

Sure there is no story of mutations in the Metru-Nui Matoran, but how do we know if that is actually the case? Metru-Nui was certainly advanced enough to probably do a rebuild similar to the 2003 Matoran's, so its possible over thousands of years of living in the city the Matoran were also tweaked and modified over the years both to keep up with the city's fashion sense (where else have we seen silver mask highlights on a Matoran?) and help improve them for work. The only thing that supports the Karda-Nui Matoran being the vanilla model over the Metru one is that Mazeka and the other ancillary Matoran in 2008 also share the Karda build. This gets more complicated when we consider the movie models of the Matoran only had unique models for the Karda-Nui style ones in Legend Reborn, and the Miramax trilogy used a base rig for all Matoran that had extra detail parts that were never available in set form or so highly modified from the set form they are unrecognizable in the film (like Hahli and Hewkii's chest plates). 

With that said, first all the story stuff about mutations and all that is just a thinly veiled way to try and handwave why Lego sets just look different from year to year. My guess is there is really no true "factory fresh" Matoran left in the whole Matoran Universe by the time the events of the story take place, and all Matoran populations are going to bear some mark of mutation, rebuilds, or even just aesthetic styling different from other populations. 

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23 minutes ago, Xboxtravis said:

My guess is there is really no true "factory fresh" Matoran left in the whole Matoran Universe by the time the events of the story take place, and all Matoran populations are going to bear some mark of mutation, rebuilds, or even just aesthetic styling different from other populations. 

Actually, this reminds me of that interesting thing where the Turaga of Metru Nui can create more Matoran using machinery in Metru Nui somewhere. Maybe the Turaga has a 'Matoran Blueprint'? Which doesn't answer the question at hand, but I'd guess if you found mint Matoran anywhere, it would definitely have been there. 

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(disclaimer: none of this banner art is original, I just smooshed it together in gimp. Torchic, Matau)
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Those pesky firespitters... 
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34 minutes ago, Aderia said:

Actually, this reminds me of that interesting thing where the Turaga of Metru Nui can create more Matoran using machinery in Metru Nui somewhere. Maybe the Turaga has a 'Matoran Blueprint'? Which doesn't answer the question at hand, but I'd guess if you found mint Matoran anywhere, it would definitely have been there. 

True, that is assuming the blueprint itself hadn't been altered and modified over time. 

They are made out of Lego after all. :P

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All aboard the hype train!

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Xboxtravis said:

the Matoran were also tweaked and modified over the years both to keep up with the city's fashion sense (where else have we seen silver mask highlights on a Matoran?)

i think that the silver highlights were to show that these masks were powerless, but i'm not sure where i read that.

and also, thank all of you for the replies! you have all been very helpful.

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22 minutes ago, Heyzorks said:

i think that the silver highlights were to show that these masks were powerless, but i'm not sure where i read that.

and also, thank all of you for the replies! you have all been very helpful.

Yeah that is the official explanation, but I call it a "fashion trend" since Metru-Nui is the only place we ever saw it in use. Mata-Nui, Voya-Nui, Karda-Nui, etc. never seemed to use a silver highlight on powerless masks. Again though, its a case of lore being built around a physical set feature that only existed in one year. 

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All aboard the hype train!

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, Xboxtravis said:

Yeah that is the official explanation, but I call it a "fashion trend" since Metru-Nui is the only place we ever saw it in use. Mata-Nui, Voya-Nui, Karda-Nui, etc. never seemed to use a silver highlight on powerless masks. Again though, its a case of lore being built around a physical set feature that only existed in one year. 

On mata nui though, they went 1000+ years with no toa though. And because of memory loss, none of the matoran remembered toa. As we saw, masks also break and need to be replaced over time.  So theyre making new masks all the time, and no great masks exist (they probably couldnt even make any because of a lack of pure enough protodermis). Why go out of their way to make marks to distinguish powerless vs great if 100% of their new masks are powerless anyway. So from that perspective, it makes sense that no one would even need to do markings. 

 

This is different from metru nui where people actively made both great and powerless masks. Metru nui even had giant storage rooms of great mask surplus (we saw nokama take some to hide for the future toa mata). I think it makes sense for the mask makers to put markings to distinguish between a powerless and great identical copy. A skilled maskmaker can likely tell the difference by holding them, but I'd think a normal matoran would probably have no idea the difference between them.

 

Edit: voya nui, mahri nui, and karda nui also had no toa at all, so again, no need to distinguish powerless vs great masks since they likely only made powerless for personal use.

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15 hours ago, jchavoya said:

On mata nui though, they went 1000+ years with no toa though. And because of memory loss, none of the matoran remembered toa. As we saw, masks also break and need to be replaced over time.  So theyre making new masks all the time, and no great masks exist (they probably couldnt even make any because of a lack of pure enough protodermis). Why go out of their way to make marks to distinguish powerless vs great if 100% of their new masks are powerless anyway. So from that perspective, it makes sense that no one would even need to do markings. 

Mask making was not an active process on Mata-Nui, the lore pretty clearly establishes that the art was lost after the Great Cataclysm and never practiced on the new island. Since the silver highlights were a paint application the canon explanation for the loss of silver was due to weather chipping off the paint and revealing the bare mask below. Any mask worn on Mata-Nui is one kept from Metru-Nui, even the replacement unpowered masks we saw some characters wearing by the time of MNOG 2 or the Copper Masks of Victory which were once used for the Alkini championships in Metru-Nui and brought to Mata-Nui as a Kohli trophy. 

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All aboard the hype train!

 

 

 

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11 hours ago, Xboxtravis said:

Mask making was not an active process on Mata-Nui, the lore pretty clearly establishes that the art was lost after the Great Cataclysm and never practiced on the new island. Since the silver highlights were a paint application the canon explanation for the loss of silver was due to weather chipping off the paint and revealing the bare mask below. Any mask worn on Mata-Nui is one kept from Metru-Nui, even the replacement unpowered masks we saw some characters wearing by the time of MNOG 2 or the Copper Masks of Victory which were once used for the Alkini championships in Metru-Nui and brought to Mata-Nui as a Kohli trophy. 

I believe you, i just don't remember reading that part. Was it in an interview, or actually in story somewhere? On another note, how could the art possibly be lost if one of the 6 leaders of the island was literally one the greatest mask makers of all time. Why not train people?!?!? Solid protodermis was mined in onu koro, and they used it to make goods.  They probably couldn't make a great mask out of it without purifying it heavily, but i don't see why it wouldn't be possible to make ordinary powerless masks.  

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I'm surprised no one has pointed out that the Mahri Nui Matoran actually represented the standard Southern Continent Matoran build. They had been "repaired" by Karzahni before going to Voya Nui, but the Mahri Matoran's exposure to the pit mutagen reversed those changes. Therefore, we know that the standard Matoran on the Southern Continent looked like the Mahri Matoran.

I presume there's no "standard" version of Matoran across the MU, and that there are slightly different builds based on the location. Metru Nui had its own standard build, as well as the Southern Continent. And at least some places had the Av-Matoran build as the standard (as indicated by Mazeka).

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1 hour ago, Toatapio Nuva said:

I'm surprised no one has pointed out that the Mahri Nui Matoran actually represented the standard Southern Continent Matoran build. They had been "repaired" by Karzahni before going to Voya Nui, but the Mahri Matoran's exposure to the pit mutagen reversed those changes. Therefore, we know that the standard Matoran on the Southern Continent looked like the Mahri Matoran.

I presume there's no "standard" version of Matoran across the MU, and that there are slightly different builds based on the location. Metru Nui had its own standard build, as well as the Southern Continent. And at least some places had the Av-Matoran build as the standard (as indicated by Mazeka).

Did it actually ever say the water returned them to normal? I remember reading that it mutated them and made them bigger and stronger than how they were on voya nui, but i don't remember it saying that it restored them to their original forms. From what we know of the mutagen, this also seems unlikely that it would fix all voya nui matoran and restore them to factory condition but would horribly disfigure anything else (it also seems unlikely it would give all mahri nui matoran the same exact build, but that's a different argument).

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This is a very difficult question to answer unless you consider the movies 100% canon (I don't, because it brings up too many issues that clearly exist for... various reasons).

One thing we can be certain of, though, is that the lego sets aren't truly representative of their "actual" appearance. So at the end of the day, all we can do is speculate. There are quite the number of artistic interpretations out there for how Bionicle anatomy looks like, so pick your favourite. ^^

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17 hours ago, jchavoya said:

I believe you, i just don't remember reading that part. Was it in an interview, or actually in story somewhere? On another note, how could the art possibly be lost if one of the 6 leaders of the island was literally one the greatest mask makers of all time. Why not train people?!?!? Solid protodermis was mined in onu koro, and they used it to make goods.  They probably couldn't make a great mask out of it without purifying it heavily, but i don't see why it wouldn't be possible to make ordinary powerless masks.  

Loss of resources (not enough pure protodermis and no Kanoka discs) is the main issue. Most Kanoka protodermis was sourced in liquid form and refined in Ga-Metru as outlined in the 2004 Metru-Nui guide, solid protodermis didn't seem to be used for it. Yes Vakama was a skilled mask maker, but he wasn't a skilled protodermis refiner or a Kanoka disk maker. We see on Mata-Nui the Matoran are using bamboo discs in-lieu of Kanoka for that reason. We see these parallels IRL too, all Damascus swords are imitation materials now made via folding metal since the original process to create Damascus steel is now lost, there are plenty of great blacksmiths around still but they don't have access to the original Damascus steel anymore. Kanoka production did not restart until back on Metru-Nui following the events of Mask of Life, so it made no difference that Vakama was the best mask maker around he simply lacked the equipment to actually make any new masks.

Edited by Xboxtravis

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15 minutes ago, Xboxtravis said:

Loss of resources (not enough pure protodermis and no Kanoka discs) is the main issue. Most Kanoka protodermis was sourced in liquid form and refined in Ga-Metru as outlined in the 2004 Metru-Nui guide, solid protodermis didn't seem to be used for it. Yes Vakama was a skilled mask maker, but he wasn't a skilled protodermis refiner or a Kanoka disk maker. We see on Mata-Nui the Matoran are using bamboo discs in-lieu of Kanoka for that reason. We see these parallels IRL too, all Damascus swords are imitation materials now made via folding metal since the original process to create Damascus steel is now lost, there are plenty of great blacksmiths around still but they don't have access to the original Damascus steel anymore. Kanoka production did not restart until back on Metru-Nui following the events of Mask of Life, so it made no difference that Vakama was the best mask maker around he simply lacked the equipment to actually make any new masks.

I get a lack of pure protodermis as being an issue why they couldn't make great masks, but powerless masks didn't quite need as high quality material. I feel like it would be just as tough to melt down and form a powerless decorative mask, as it would be to melt it down and make lava boards, tools, weapons, etc

 

I feel like your IRL parallel is my comment exactly. We lost the process to make great swords because of lack of material. But we can still make imitations that might not have the same properties. The matoran lost pure protodermis, so cant make great masks, but they could make imitations without the powers and properties of great masks (which would be powerless ordinary masks). The powers seem to come from pure protodermis, but the mask making itself would just be a matter of shaping raw material.

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21 hours ago, jchavoya said:

Did it actually ever say the water returned them to normal? I remember reading that it mutated them and made them bigger and stronger than how they were on voya nui, but i don't remember it saying that it restored them to their original forms. From what we know of the mutagen, this also seems unlikely that it would fix all voya nui matoran and restore them to factory condition but would horribly disfigure anything else (it also seems unlikely it would give all mahri nui matoran the same exact build, but that's a different argument).

It was Greg who originally said that it reverted the changes made by Karzahni. Looking at BS01 now though, it's not quite as clear. Some of the pages say that indeed those changes were reversed, but the source is lacking. Other pages seem to imply that only some of the changes that made the Matoran worse off were reversed. So I'm not sure if there's a "new" canon that only some of the changes were reversed, or whether Greg's original comments still apply and the Mahri Matoran were actually restored to their original forms.

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If I remember right, members of The Shadowed One's species are specifically said to look different from each other (eg. compare TSO and Conjurer to Tyrant and Ancient) because the tech used to manufacture them evolved over time. It wouldn't be a stretch to think that the tech to make/maintain/repair/rebuild Matoran could have varied from continent to continent, thus explaining the differences between the different groups we saw over the years.

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10 hours ago, (-Kopaka Toa of Ice-) said:

I've always preferred the metru matoran build. it combines a decent ammount of height and poseability.

I did too, but I did enjoy the Mahri Nui Matoran's head being more poseable. I would've like those guys to have colored eyes like the Metru Nui Matoran, but I guess we can't have everything :P

 

 

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