Bionicle Guru

A new exo-planet approximately 1400 light-years away has been found circling a star just like ours, in approximately the same distance from it as Earth is from Sol, and is not that much bigger than our planet (Surface gravity might be around 2g, so twice that of Earth's). Distance is not an issue. I'm packing my bags now to head over to this world and stake my claim on the planet for the eventual interstellar wars that will break out amongst the various planet-kingdoms that will spread out through the Milky Way! Just have to go fire up that hyperspace engine, and I should be good to go. Who is with me? I'm packing extra water bottles in case of no surface water. Plus, it will help me lose weight just enough that I don't weigh terribly more than an ordinary overweight person here in the United States. Please keep that in mind should you choose to accompany me. After all, I don't want to hear you complaining about needing a hoverchair to get around once we're there simply because you now weigh over 500 pounds.

Like a genie freed from his lamp, the premier perks activation for the week of BZP's anniversary have allowed me to come forth and blog once again! Perhaps this shall be a more fruitful week than last year's, but you never know! What if I have nothing useful to write about? What if I suddenly fall off the face of the Internet this week? Such are the worries that keep strong, basement-dwelling men and women awake at night. This first entry is just a re-introduction, I suppose. Tonight, I plan to dine on some fine Popeye's chicken whilst assembling my recently-acquired Load N' Haul Railroad (MISB from 1992!). I'll finish redecorating my parents' basement tomorrow. Have to wait for that big-boy paycheck to come through, anyway, before I make the big renovations! Stay tuned!

My best friend, who to this day is like a brother to me, bonded with me initially over our shared enjoyment of BIONICLE back in 2001. We avidly collected the sets for two years, and then he lost interest whereas I kept following the comics, movie, and other media. He was (and still is) fascinated by and collects Lego sets, so BIONICLE still comes up periodically in our discussions. Nothing like how we used to talk about it back in middle school, though! I recently brought up that fact to my girlfriend (who is my best friend's sister-in-law), and even gave her a quick run-down of how I fell in love with the story and the sets back when I was 12. She found it interesting, so I'm not going to push it and say I obssessed over it for ten years after that! So, outside of family, those are the only people I ever really discussed and talked about BIONICLE with (outside of all you fellow BZPers, of course).

Ooo boy. I had so many theories back in the day. Mainly, they were trying to reconcile the enigmatic "You dared to oppose your brothers!" line that the Bahrag shouted at the Toa just before they were trapped in a protodermis cage. I was desperately trying to find what was the "Toa-Bohrok" connection. One such theory came about after getting the Toa Inika and noticing how similar Nuparu's Mask of Flight was to a Krana Vu (?), which gave the Bohrok the ability to fly. The Krana Ca and the Kanohi Hau also bore a resemblance in shape, appearance, and power, so I figured there had to be a link involving something the Bahrag produced. Some became Krana, and others were "transformed" into inanimate Kanohi. The Inika's masks looked more like Krana because they were partially "alive" and therefore more like their Krana cousins. Naturally, I couldn't quite account for how the mask makers in Ta-metru originally came about their craft if Kanohi originally came from a Krana-ancestor. And two years later, we discovered the truth about the Toa-Bohrok relationship. But it was a fine idea at the time, so calling it outlandish now is only a moniker from retrospection.

My nostalgia for BIONICLE is a core component of my general nostalgia for my teenage years. The years of 2001 through 2003 and 2006 through 2009 are prime examples of time periods of great change and notable events in my life, many of which I look back on fondly in the midst of my busy, professional adult life. I am just so lucky that in those years, TLG produced so many cool BIONICLE sets to accompany the story of my life. I still cherish those mask collections and canister sets I've collected, and like many have already noted, building them again is a sure-fire way to invoke the flood of memories in my mind.

Listening to it over the years, the sound of it does suggest some pattern that conforms to actual words. Perhaps they are just some random sentence spoken by one of the engineers and modulated to sound deep and un-English. Repeated enough, and it sounds like a chant. My sister studied sound recording engineering, and it is likely such a tactic was used. So it likely means nothing of significance in BIONICLE, but that shouldn't stop us from imagining it could.

It's belated now, but I hope you had a good one! Maybe one day you will grace this site with one of your wondrous BIONICLE set reviews again.

Elves was definitely conceptualized as a girls' theme... nothing "pushed it into" being a girl-targeted concept. Well, I don't work for Lego and am not privy to their plans in the Futura division, so yeah, I made an assumption. I made that statement because I vaguely remember reading rumors (before "Friends" was announced) that a Castle-like subtheme was in the pipeline that would focus on elves (like the dwarves and orcs from the late 2000s). There was even that Lego Elf warrior from one of the collectible minifigure line-ups, so that added fuel to the Medieval Elf subtheme. Therefore, I found it strange to turn out to be a girl-targeted theme years later.

The Hypno Cruiser is still my second-favorite time machine (after Doc Brown's DeLorean) in all of fiction. I didn't get it as a kid, but in college, I nabbed two MISB editions of it. I built it and can confirm that fascination and appreciation is still valid. Back on topic, I thought the strangest sets had to come from the Galidor. Those figures of the red monster with many appendage (Ooyni?) were weird regardless of whether Lego produced it or not. Conceptually, I find the "Elves" theme rather strange as a whole. I know in mythology, elves take on different forms, but I never associated them as pastel, princess-friendly flamboyant fairies. I suppose the strong sales of the "Friends" theme ("I'll be there for youuuuuuu!!!") kind of pushed Elves into being another girl-targeted concept, but the end result was still a bit off-putting to me. Oh well.

Baron Von Barron has been dead the whole time. Sam Sinister was just an identity thief. Spoiler?

Keyser Soze

That battle between Onua and Lewa-Wearing-An-Infected-Miru was really epic. It was the first time we really saw the a Toa vs. Toa fight, and Templar Studios really made it look cool by having it take place in the dark of a Nui Rama hive. The sparks flying from Lewa's axe hitting Onua's claws, briefly lighting up the room each time they made titanic contact, to the end result of Onua switching to his noble mask of telekinesis in order to knock Lewa's mask off his face, was just exhilirating to watch. The next year's Lewa vs. Onua fight in the comic "Into the Nest" was cool, too, but still just an echo of how awesome that animation turned out.

Man, we've come a long ways since the days of excessive emoticon use were extremely frowned upon. I'm almost expecting a burnmad blast in a topic one of these days. Anyways, an important thing to appreciate about my favorite Toa that I did not fully become cognizant of until much later in my BIONICLE fandom: he is the audience's stand-in for the introduction to the world of BIONICLE. Takua was not a fully-revealed character in the early stages of the Mata Nui Online Game (the game, played from the silent, first-person perspective, kind of made you feel like just some random entity who came into the world, but was still recognized as part of it), so BIONICLE Comic #1: The Coming of the Toa was the first opportunity for many to actually get in the head of someone like us who was viewing Mata Nui for the first time. Kopaka's personality is appropriate for us; guarded, inquisitive, but carrying some small measure of anticipation for greatness. It is what several of us felt upon immersing ourselves into the BIONICLE mythos and toyline. Over the course of the theme's life, Kopaka stopped being the main lens through which we viewed BIONICLE, but his importance was not forgotten. Greg Farshety, who considered Kopaka his favorite Toa, would often return to Kopaka's perspective in the BIONICLE books, continuing to remind us of that first entry into the world of Mata Nui. I still like Kopaka the most, but I didn't really appreciate that role of his until BIONICLE was over. A part of me wished "Journey's End" concluded with an Epilogue from Kopaka's perspective, perhaps even a reaffirmation that the scattered parts of the worlds had been made whole, made complete. And that the darkness cannot stand before a world united.

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/ATH/Mira/img_0737.jpg <-- My Kanohi Nuva collection was a complete windfall gained from an eBay seller. The "missing" masks are currently equipped on my Toa Nuva http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/ATH/Mira/updated_2001_great_kanohi_may_2011.jpg <-- My Great Kanohi collection. The picture is out of date. It is complete now, and I need to get another photo with that long-hunted black Kakama! http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/ATH/Mira/complete_noble_kanohi.jpg <--My Noble Kanohi collection. Also was obtained complete from eBay. I have a decent-sized Kanoka collection, a wide array of Krana, and some cans full of Kraata. Nowhere near complete for any of those, though. I do have some nostalgic gems like the orange Vahi and trans-neon green Miru (TNGM). I am still looking to obtain a full set of those European misprint masks and the copper mask of victory. Then, I might finally consider my BIONICLE mask collection complete.

I personally like to go through the CGI images included in the old instruction manuals for sets as my story refresher. In captionless images, they hit on the important beats (The Toas' arrival, the discovery of the Exo-Toa, the Bohrok Kal robberies, etc.) while still exuding that old, often-discussed BIONICLE aura of mystery. As time passes and we grow older and forget more of the fine details, images like these will continue to evoke the glories of BIONICLE long past and suggest a mythic story that will only grow in appreciation as the decades roll on.

That one Inika ad from 2006 with the voiceover regarding what it truly meant to be a hero...at the time, I was caught up in how epic it sounded and looked. Now I can look back and appreciate the slight subversiveness of the commercial. It successfully sold you the "toy" ("You may have your light-up sword, your multi-shot Zamor launcher...") while simultaneously telling you all that stuff wasn't important. It is what you do with it that makes you a hero. From a "Lego is an altruistic company" perspective, you can see a message for creative, free-form play over pre-packaged, gimmicky diversion. A bold statement for any company, if you want to read that deeply into it.

Hoto Bug in the house, lighting up your Onu-koronan caves.

Darude - Sandstorm ...oops, wrong meme....

I just now saw this blog entry. I'm touched, and thankful that one of my lost posts from the Old BZPower was preserved here. That, my friend, is an EPIC win!

Hey pal, I know some time has passed since these posts, but how far along did you get with saving BORNICLE? I regretfully never imagined all of that being deleted back in 2003, so very very little has survived in my possession. I remember reading comments from fans at the time who had been collecting and saving the story on their own computers, but I have no idea if they are still active. Clearly, I am the author of BORNICLE, so that explains my interest in this (in case that wasn't patently obvious).

The only thing I am not a fan of are these ham-fisted personality quirks. It's Lego, so I can "tone down" the construction of the Toa sets to make them look a little more to my personal liking, but I'd be basically creating my own head-canon with reference to their personalities. I get a whole "Saturday morning kid's cartoon" vibe from what the website is presenting. Maybe these are "prototype" personalities, much like how the original Toa had references to their differing ages and being "incarnations of elemental spirits" back on the original BIONICLE.com (us old fogies will recall those were quickly scrapped).