Leaderboard

Top 3 favorite things about G1: 1) This is kind of silly/specific, but I feel like the team dynamics between the Toa teams in the books helped me a bit, socially. I remember learning sarcasm and there were other characters in TV shows/books that used it, and it was funny, so I tried taking that on a bit. But I remember reading about the Toa Metru, and when Onewa and Matau were sarcastic and kind of rude to Vakama all the time, I remember feeling bad for him. It was a really minor paradigm shift, but as kid-into-pre-teen, I think it helped me see the other perspective from a vantage point (somewhat removed reader) where I could process the interactions more. tl;dr - I liked the characters. 2) I also looked forward to new environments - jungle, city, rugged anarchy island, underwater, desert planet, etc. The created universe in the mythology was able to have all that variety in setting, and it didn't seem contrived or just shoehorned in for marketing, like "oh, all of the sudden we want to sell underwater sets so let's flood everything or something". A wide enough world where lots could happen, yet there was always room to discover new mysteries, if that makes sense. 3) While I do agree that toward the end of G1, the storytelling mediums became difficult to follow (serials, multiple strings of guide books, all corresponding with books, movies, sets, albums, not to mention a whole city's equivalent of a fanbase across multiple online hubs), I do think that the initial sets, books, and then movies initially provided a reasonable amount of consumer variety that would appeal to a much wider audience than either of those alone. My brothers, who loved the sets, could do their thing, and I could read the books to them and feed them source material to shape more play time with said sets. We absolutely loved that song "What it Takes to be a Hero" and would jam out to it like the nerds we were (probably still are). So, ways to interact/consume media in multiple formats, but nothing too crazy.

Echo Zane from Ninjago

Per what Confused Piraka said, it seems like these questions are in the interest of a potential fan project anyway? As for the question, I liked about G1: That (early on, at least) it made reference to lots of stuff that remained unexplained. I'm thinking here about how it made reference to characters, creatures, and locations that we never saw in detail. I loved reading and re-reading the encyclopedias and guidebooks like Rahi Beasts or Metru Nui - City of Legends or BIONICLE: World when I was a kid. All these little details that didn't relate to the main thrust of the plot, and often were left largely unexplained, made the world feel so expansive and alive. I liked how willing it was to reinvent its setting. 2004's Metru Nui was so different than the Mata Nui of 2001-2003, in terms of tone and genre conventions, and pretty much every year after that did a place that was significantly different from where we had been before. Even though I ultimately have some preference for the first few years of the story, I think it's very confident and interesting to keep going new places. And yeah I have to echo Nato's comment about the themes: recombining very fundamental themes felt positively mythic, and allowed it to speak to people of different ages very effectively. And for G2: It had a unique aesthetic which we hadn't seen in G1: Okoto wasn't just renamed Mata Nui, the City of the Mask Makers was a unique contribution to the franchise's visual vocabulary. It dispensed with some of G1's more regressive tendencies, like the gender restrictions on elements. The sets having gear features again was a nice touch, and they were incorporated into the design really well.

IC: 'Vrill' [Ko-Koro, Solstice District] A Toa stumbled into the Glacierpool, Ko-Koro's former bastion of mediocre fights to watch with mediocre drinks... The war was lost... The treaty signed. I was not caught... I crossed the line. I was not caught... Though many tried. I live among you... Well disguised. I had to leave... My life behind. I dug some graves... You'll never find. The stories told... With facts and lies. I have a name... But nevermind. The last time the Cy-Toa had been here was... earlier that evening, actually. Before that? Hard to count. Not in the state he was in, at least. Luckily, few optics turned to the apparent drunkard. Well, few stayed on him, at least. None thought to upset him on the warpath to the abandoned lot. There were still some frozen beds there, which might even be habitable if sealed off by the drunk Toa's element. But slightly better mattresses existed at other frost rat dens like Drifter's for nearly the same cost. Plus, despite his stubbornness, he had more than enough widgets in reserve for a classier joint like Rhanus's, too. Why come to the Glacierpool's grave then? Something the agent had spied on the elemental plane earlier that day. The nameless Toa picked himself up after falling over one of the formerly-load-bearing walls, dusting off the ash that remained from a furniture fire that had been long since been snuffed out. He didn't bother to reabsorb the spilled crystalline flask, because that's when he saw it - the pile of broken glass. With an exhale of relief, he went limp and fell into the mass of former bottles. His mask glowing as he fell, the shards wrapped around him like a kaleidoscopic blanket, soothing the ache of what had been his elemental reserves. He needed rest - maybe it would clear his head. A pleasant lie. The Cy-Toa saw the crossroads, but his choice had already been etched into the Wall of History. Sleeping on it wasn't a vain search for clarity; all he needed was the strength to walk the only path. OOC: Vrill on ice for a little bit here while some other things percolate.