Nato G

I know some folks like to whine about the "Inika build", but personally I prefer articulation over gear functions. So Jaller gets my vote.

Absolutely agreed. He was Nuju's translator for way longer than he was a Toa, and most people who knew him as a Matoran never even saw either of his Toa forms. The fan continuation story Legacy Weapons actually does include a scene in its final chapter where a statue of Matoro is unveiled. The author went with a statue of his Mahri form, but also placed Matoro's original Akaku at the base of the statue, which I think is a nice middle ground.

Unfortunately most of the Bionicle books don't work well in isolation, and that's with context. I don't think any book would work well as a one-off for the uninitiated. There's a reason that the first three movies are awkward abridged versions of each year's story, cherry-picking events from across multiple books and leaving out other stuff.

I feel like there's room for debate there. Even the worst of the serials and side stories have redeemable qualities, expanding the scope of the story, revisiting forgotten characters, exploring unseen locations, or introducing plot points that will be important later. For example, Federation of Fear is delightful dumb fun, throwing together a bunch of villains from previous years for a pointless adventure (the entire Bionicle storyline could function just fine without Miserix existing) but that story also introduces Tren Krom, who's vitally important to our understanding of the GSR and the Great Beings, and arguably single-handedly responsible for the heroes being able to win the final battle in 2010. Without Federation to set him up earlier, Tren Krom's role later in the story would have come out of nowhere. The dimension-hopping stuff gives us some fun what-ifs, especially Toa Empire and The Kingdom. Even weirder plotlines like the Shadow Takanuvas serve a purpose, demonstrating how dangerous and far-reaching the ambition of the Makuta could be, and showing that Toa of Light aren't the instant win button that many characters assumed them to be. I think the issue isn't so much that the serials and podcasts existed, just that they - and the rest of the story - were so spread out across different locations and mediums that it made Bionicle's story somewhat inaccessible and hard to keep up with. I think the web content tends to cop a lot of the blame for that issue, because it came out on a different website, only released sporadically, and sometimes had weird overlap that was hard to keep track of. But when you read everything in chronological order it all fits together pretty naturally.

I feel like the realistic answer is that if I were sent to the Bionicle Universe I would probably just die. Most of the story's world is a lawless post-apocalyptic dystopia filled with horrible monsters and overpowered villains. There are very few places to live where my life wouldn't consist of significant hardship and constant fights for survival. To that end, if I had to be something I'd probably want to be a Makuta. At least then I'd have the power to avoid or overcome most of the awful coming my way.

The way I see it, any Matoran could become a Toa. It's just a matter of the need being there and the right circumstances aligning for new heroes to rise.

Nuju also gets my vote. The dual-moulded tools are awesome, and I'm a sucker for asymmetric mask/head designs.

The map we got in the encyclopedia is indicative only, and doesn't accurately represent the actual size, position, or presence of all the landmasses in the Bionicle universe. There are a bunch of locations that are mentioned in-story, but aren't present on the map, and probably even more islands out there between the main continents.

Inferno has always bothered me because it feels like Greg is just being forced to check boxes and cram in every set and combiner that didn't appear in any of the four earlier 2006 novels. Which results in this super awkward rushed ending that's heavy on exposition and cameos. Irnakk shows up for one quick scene with the Piraka, while Botar shows up for two seconds to capture Brutaka. The Toa get attacked by the Protodax, who are immediately chased off by Umbra, who gets effortlessly defeated in a quick fight scene. Then in the finale we get the Vezok/Reidak fusion, followed by Vezon, Fenrakk, and Kardas (who use all of their powers at least once, with Vezon literally explaining how each ability works as they use them). And the ending where the Ignika randomly flings itself into the ocean feels super awkward and forced. After that much buildup, there had to be a more organic way to facilitate that setup than having the macguffin yeet itself for reasons that were never really explained or justified.

Hakann is also my favourite, albeit for a different reason. So many of the villains in Bionicle had these grandiose ambitions for world domination, but Hakann's motivations were a lot simpler: "Somewhere, there are Toa fighting and dying right now, and when they're gone, no one will even remember their names. How many Matoran do you think recall the names of the Toa who fought in the war against the Dark Hunters? But they remember Makuta and Nidhiki and Roodaka. Good gets forgotten, evil never does." There's something weirdly relatable about just wanting to be remembered. And unfortunately, real-world history just proves his point about villains being more memorable than heroes. That quote really resonated with me when I first read it, and it's stayed with me a lot longer than most dialogue from Bionicle.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I've always deeply disliked Time Trap. There's so much in that book that's poorly done or doesn't make sense: bringing back the Karzahni plant just to immediately kill it off again, one lone Visorak still running around, the random Krakua vision that has still never been explained, and a whole bunch of supposedly ultra-powerful villains acting like inept morons. Time Trap is the book that made me stop taking Makuta seriously as a villain. With all of the powers he's supposed to possess, his actions throughout the novel are inexplicably idiotic. It's like he's holding back for no reason, even in life-or-death fights, and it can't even be justified as being "part of the plan" like it is most times he loses.

As much as it pains me to say it, I'd drop the Barraki. I love those sets, and the whole backstory of the League of Six Kingdoms. But it frustrates me to no end that the story did absolutely nothing with that plot after 2007. The idea that these six other races who'd been all but erased from history were the true "chosen people", not the Matoran, and that the Great Spirit himself hand-picked six ruthless warlords and allowed them to use military might to enforce peace throughout the universe... it changes everything we thought we knew about the history of the Bionicle world. The return of the Barraki should have completely upended the entire religious and political foundation of Matoran civlisation. It would have been an amazing opportunity to have the heroes question everything they'd been told, and wonder whether Mata Nui was truly worth saving (a question the story flirted with at other times). Instead, the Barraki went back to jail and became minor nuisances in the serials, without their truth ever being told. In place of the Barraki, I'd have had the Piraka pursue the Inika into Mahri Nui and become mutated themselves. Having a villain team transform and return the same way the heroes did would have been an interesting angle to explore. As it is, after all of the build-up and characterisation they had, the Piraka got turned into snakes off-screen and imprisoned, leaving their stories frustratingly unresolved.

There were a lot of elements that made Bionicle stand out as unique. To me, the biggest one is that both the sets and story encouraged creativity to a degree that we rarely see in kids toy lines. The universe is so vast and rich that fans could could easily come up with their own heroes and villains within the world that could effortlessly exist alongside the main story. Even some of the more controversial aspects - like introducing multiple Makuta, or the multiverse - just made it easier for people to tell their own stories without fear of it not being "canon compliant".

I'd argue the most dangerous villains are the Great Beings themselves. They're geniuses, and they could do so much good... but they're all ego, and no wisdom. They don't care who they hurt, they don't think about the consequences, and they leave their experiments and failures roaming free to continue causing damage. The entire Bionicle storyline is a cycle of flawed creators making flawed creations in their image, with each iteration becoming more distorted and unstable, and it all begins with the Great Beings.

I don't think I've ever seen this particular statement before, but I got a real laugh out of reading it. This part in particular aged like milk: There's some fantastic irony in the fact that they killed Bionicle so they could grow the buildable figure category, but ended up changing things so drastically that it killed the entire buildable figures system instead. Just goes to show that not all innovations are improvements. I bet they regret "embracing the uncertainty" now.