Arcee

Re:recolors Personally, I like the thought of gold Tahu or orange Tahu, but I think the Uniters didn't do recoloring very well. Keeping the mask colors for characters (e.g. Tahu, Pohatu) who had little of that color elsewhere was a move that was a little too "safe" IMO. Recolors are a nice way to avoid the "why are we just getting the same heroes over and over?" complaint. It's seen with alt modes/redecoes in Transformers sometimes and is even reflected in the story occasionally (e.g. Prime Beast Hunters Bumblebee). So, a predominantly gold or orange Tahu would've been cool I thnk, but they played it so safe that it didn't work (that is, a red mask, an orange body, an overabundance of gold). Assuming we get the same old Toa next year, I'm really hoping for some experimentation that's a bit more bold than this year's was.

I think the closest Lego will ever come to this is Uniters: animal friends who become armor. A small set which has no playability and exists only to augment bigger sets goes against the "impulse purchase" nature of the small sets I think.

Old Bionicle promo material is all so cool to look back on. So much glow! Everyone sure was liberal with their Photoshop filters back then, weren't they. The best IMO were always in the comics though. As a kid with no access to the internet but a thorough knowledge of the Matoran alphabet, I remember waiting in absolute awe when I saw the end of this comic. Like, "why the heck does it say Vakama?" and "is this guy the new Toa?" Dumb kid that I was, I thought the Kanoka shooter was a new version of Turaga Vakama, sitting on this guy's shoulder. Just, no clue at all that this shadowy guy was Vakama.

I'm pretty excited for the new Umarak and Flame Beast, but I'd like to get Umarak the Hunter, Gali, and Uxar before even touching the Summer wave.

I hope you made this entry well aware that everyone was gonna give you wise-guy answers Anyway I would meet myself before facebook was invented and give her the idea for facebook. That's my wise-guy answer, AND my serious answer.

When did that happen! I didn't even know we were doing this. Well I'm glad I hopped on the train early, this name is PRIME real estate

I was never really active on the MSPA forums, what were people freaking out over about Vriska? I know she was a pretty polarizing character at some points, but I'm guessing this was something more than that. Just curious lol. It was basically that! As a polarizing character central to the storyline, nobody could agree on whether she was a "good guy" or a "bad guy", and from that discussion emerged a lot of more nuanced stuff like "if she's a complex character with good and bad points, were her bad points less severe and/or justified?" or "why do readers hate/love her so passionately?". In fact the thread was still active by the time the forums got shut down a month or two ago. The thing is, the more passionate about Vriska people got, the more dramatic I think their opinions got. Suddenly it was easy to declare that she was a complex character, but Vriska lovers and Vriska h8rs were just really adamant about yelling at each other and often turning it into a personal attack (which I guess makes sense, she was a bully character and most of us have more experience with bullies than we do, like, green skull monsters or whatever, so it is easier to take personally). That's why the G1 vs G2 debate around here really reminds me of the Vriska debate on the MSPA forums (and to a degree the Dave x Karkat debate). I mean, any big fanbase is gonna have polarizing arguments like this... but it's a pretty big debate, IMO, if you can easily end any conversation by saying something like "Vriska Serket is a villain, all of her heroic acts were done out of selfishness" or "Bionicle Gen 2 shouldn't have ever happened, the story puts G1 to shame". One person's opinion (or trolling attempt!) is enough to essentially sabotage the thread starter without some form of moderator intervention.

This reminds me of Homestuck communities honestly. On MSPA's official forums they had to quarantine discussions about Vriska Serket to its own thread and it went on for years. That said though I'm not sure that's the best approach lol. It's irritating to have something so base-breaking that it completely derails every discussion on a forum, but maybe there's something less harsh as trying to corral all discussion into one chaotic place. Forums are funny places. As a medium forums seem to value calm and civil discussions over people yelling at each other, but a forum is where someone goes when they're passionate enough about something to get mad about it. I think some level of not feeding trolls would be advisable in something like a discussion about toys but like, that's just my opinion I guess and something you can't really...enforce. Something relevant to the discussion, though, since I want to contribute to the OP: I think G1 and G2 are apples and oranges in a way. Every time I miss G1 I have fan works to turn to! G2's building system is a lot of fun though. I think not having fun with Bionicle is against the very reason I still like Bionicle as a 23-year-old. It's an escape from real-world stress I guess. G1 and G2 are both fun and I hardly have any desire to compare them. Edit: typo

(hehe, do I spy a JoCo quote in this article title...?)

All skull creatures are trapped in a state of Schrodinger's Plot Device, wherein they are dead unless the story needs to bust out some low-level bad guys later on Except for Kulta and Bashy I guess, who are just in jail or whatever instead of dead. Same goes for them otherwise though!

Bionicle, generations 1 and 2, are metaseries. They're full of different media made by different people with different ideas. I think it's kind of weird to say that there needs to be a consistent theme across all media. For instance, look at Gundam. The cartoons for Gundam '79 and G Gundam have pretty vastly different themes, not to mention different shows existing at different degrees of "just toy commercial"ness. Bionicle's G1 Ignition comics are gonna have different themes from the 2015 novels. Bionicle: The Legend Reborn is gonna have different themes from Time Trap, or just the Adventures books in general. G2 probably has a lot less depth overall than G1 in plenty of ways (namely complexity/worldbuilding) but there were a LOT of really dubious choices made in the storytelling in G1, not to mention inconsistencies between media. I think stripping this down to the "theme" of the whole metaseries is pretty disingenuous, when there were plenty of stories in G1 that were really aimless in terms of themes, too. There's a lot of Bionicle out there. Where one thing failed at a thing, another thing probably succeeded at that thing! Maybe the 2015 website animations weren't as cool as the MNOG, but I'd take Journey to One over The Yesterday Quest any day!

Oh snap, great use of the Hero Factory head! Now I'm surprised I've never seen it used like that before. (personally I'm ok with Mega Bloks. I'll pretend to hate them for the old rivalry's sake but rules were made to be broken right?? Is that what the shoulder armor is, or is Noob just joking?)

I don't personally believe the "Ekimu is evil" theories at all, but I think everyone saying it's impossible in Bionicle needs to be reminded about a certain Turaga Dume Ekimu just doesn't have that kind of depth though. He's a jerk, yeah, but he hasn't done anything that seems evil enough to warrant this kind of plot twist. Like, totalitarian dictator who sends out robot police with the motto "surrender or run"? Definitely evil. A guy who is just there to hand out power-ups and exposition, and is kind of rude? I think this is just a case of unfortunate implications to curtness in a series with a really generic sense of good and evil.

The Toa Metru had some weird design choices (monochrome, dull colors, lots of molded-on mechanical detail, strange gear function, clones) but they're still the coolest-looking to me. They really just look like they belong in their cyberpunk dystopia environment. Where the Mata had stylistic anachronism and the Inika had the confidence of a toy line that had six years to develop its aesthetics, the Metru did the best at just looking at home in their story. Add that onto my nostalgia for them and their cute dynamic (who would've thought the wise Turaga would be so dysfunctional!) and they're definitely my favorite team.

It'd be pretty rad to see completely new colorschemes for the characters, the Uniters did sorta touch on this by reducing the abundance of the mask color but I'd like to see it taken further. Gali having blue take a backseat to her orange, or a primarily yellow Lewa with green accents. Unlikely, I know, but I can dream. Realistically, 2017's heroes will probably be a new power-up for the six Toa we have, and I'm expecting Ekimu to have some sort of role in the main hero roster now. It's really too early to start thinking of specific design predictions tbh because stuff really can just happen. If we're going by current trends the heroes might have a lot of metallic and transparent elements. I hope not because that seems to be the Uniters' thing so making a wave where it's even more prominent would underwhelm the Uniters' aesthetic theme and just look plain silly.

It seems like the "I didn't mind/notice when I was a kid" sentiment is pretty common, in this thread at least, and that's actually how I feel about them as well. I didn't really notice clone sets until I registered on BZPower when I was 15. I don't think that it's a coincidence that this is common, but also maybe we didn't care as kids because clone sets were all we really had. I think it's an interesting discussion because where do we draw the line? Are clones only the recolored waves like Vahki? Are they the recolored waves with a couple unique molds like the Bohrok or the Toa Hordika? Or are they any model that uses similar builds with some variance as far as height or bells & whistles go, like the Toa Mata or the Toa Metru? Nearly all of the canister waves in Generation 1 were clones, save for the later years which often had some really bizarre designs in order to have custom builds, which I do respect but it also makes me wonder if they'd have been better off just doing clones sometimes. CCBS, imo, opened up a new world of versatility in design. Love it or hate it, but there's no denying that it's just plain easier to do stuff like bugs or beasts or even just have figures who are bigger and smaller than the others. Personally I'm a big fan of what the Toa Masters in 2015 did with some big, armored models, some little models, and then Onua. In fact, I'd be really happy to see some multi-purposed CCBS shells that could give every single figure a unique build making everybody as different as Onua, Tahu, and Gali were that year. IMO the Toa Uniters tried to capture the success of the Masters but their idea of custom builds is overabundance of awkwardly-integrated technic elements that all result in similar-looking figures. Now don't get me wrong, I do actually think the Uniters are decent figures, but their unique/"custom" elements really just remind me of some of the less successful attempts at custom builds in G1 like the Mistika: awkward and often difficult to pose naturally. Overall though I'd say G2 did a fantastic job with avoiding clones, even in small sets where one might think clones would be inevitable (like the Protectors). This reply ended up really long so I'll wind it up with my opinion in simple terms: Unique builds are always the best-looking and most fun. However it's understandable that it's just not feasible to do that all the time because unique molds for every $15 set just aren't practical. So I'd take a clone wave over a wave with a bunch of awkward-looking attempts at custom builds any day. After all, custom builds seem to be something valued by adult and teen fans the most, while most kids are content just having cool-looking figures.

Sadly when I moved across the country last year I had to sell my old collection, save for the masks and other rare collectibles that I kept :,( When I was younger, though, it was all just in a bin. It really made MOCing tough, having to spread everything out on the floor Since then I only have a handful of gen 2 and Hero Factory sets, not enough parts to get back into MOCing. As such I've got a little spot on my shelves for them (my partner collects My Little Ponies and similar 80's stuff so we display them with those, we had a pretty silly display where Lewa was having a tea party with some other toys, the teacup handle fit right into the slot in his hand!) Archiving by set seems like a pretty good idea though and if I ever start collecting again I might borrow that idea. I always had the problem of never being able to reassemble figures as a kid because everything ended up scattered around.

Eh, I think there's a pretty big problem with expecting viewers to do research to find out why the heroes are doing what they're doing. Plus, "bending minds" is just this super vague info-morsel they dropped on a page of the Bionicle website. I feel like the mask's importance and its power could have easily been mentioned at the beginning, just how they made sure to establish who the Toa were, who the creatures were, etc. At the very least for new viewers. I really don't think I can complain much because after all the MoCo is essentially just a MacGuffin in the same way the Mask of Light was. But I still think the series would've been vastly improved if maybe they took a few seconds to explain what all the fighting over this thing was about.

About what I expected, which isn't a bad thing! Nothing too incredible but it's cool to see the heroes in cgi animation again. The ONE big problem I have with the series is the same problem I had with most incarnations of last year's story...what the heck is the Mask of Control?? Like, they made sure to emphasize that it was important and through context I gathered that it was powerful, but in those two episodes all I really gathered is that it's the Great Mask of MacGuffins. It sure would've been nice if maybe at the beginning Ekimu was like "well there's this Mask of Control and its power is _____ and it's important because ____." Without that the episodes just felt kind of...directionless. The whole conflict was "we've gotta get this mask before Umarak does but we're not gonna tell you what it does or why Umarak can't get it"

Very exciting! Not that it shares that many aesthetic similarities, but the quality reminds me a bit of recent Transformers cartoons (like Prime and Robots in Disguise). Like, nothing too fancy, but if it means we get to see the Toa in action, I'll definitely take something that isn't quite "cinema quality" yknow? At this point, I'm inclined to say the animation is a huge step up from the g1 trilogy, and maybe on the same level as the Bara Magna one...whatever that one was called. The one thing I'm sure will never measure up to the trilogy is the music. For a series of kids' movies that are hard to enjoy without some sentimental attachment, the score was actually really fantastic. The most important thing here though is that there's a show! And last year I was worrying that G2 wasn't gonna have much of a story.

Heh, I was sorta into Kalmah when I was a teenager and the coincidence definitely didn't go by unnoticed... I always thought they were the kinda music the Barraki might actually like. Sorta dark and sludgy compared to most...folk metal? Is that what Kalmah are? Folk metal?

I've only skimmed the thread so sorry if it's been mentioned a lot: My biggest concern though is MOCing. Matching a single-color mask with a figure, no problem! Matching two colors... well, that basically dictates a large chunk of your color scheme. A red mask alone will work in just about any color combination you choose, but a red/silver mask might look kinda icky if it's the only silver element on a red-and-gunmetal model. That said though, I like the blended masks a lot. It might be inconvenient as far as MOCs go, but they do look very nice alone or on the original designated figures. If only collectible masks a la 2001 were a realistic thing to hope for... I'd be so chuffed to see blended masks AND some solid masks in varying colors available. Looks like the closest thing we're gonna get is things like the protector masks though...

Considering I never ever bought sets toward the end of G1 and I only picked up a few Hero Factorys, I'm happy just getting one figure from each wave. Preferably, though, enough to eventually do some CCBS mocs with! Lewa's looking like my favorite G2 hero so far so "all the Lewas" sounds like a reasonable goal. And hey, I've got both. Already winning!

Let me just say: while I'm still pretty undecided on how I feel about the style as a whole, I'm in LOVE Tahu's expressiveness. Particularly that one clip where his eyes widen. I was pretty incredulous about how a show with set-accurate characters would be (no mouths and such) but I'm pretty hopeful about how they're gonna handle facial expressions. Also, dunno what everyone's saying about the voice! The voice clip is only a few seconds long so I don't know what's expected here. If that's what Tahu sounds like when he's calm, that's fine by me. Of course, odds are it's just a narrator for this particular clip so it's probably pretty early to jump to any conclusions