Toatapio Nuva

So, I finished going through the second book in the collection, and I found these minor errors:

Page 129: "The Fire Toa had touched his mask" - remove the "had".

Page 129: "The masks' awesome powers had just helped the Toa defeat [the] fearsome Rahi" - add the "the" where indicated.

Page 134: Full stop missing at the end of the sentence "Tahu cried, leaping forward and dragging Lewa out of harm's way"

Page 136: The sentence "recovering from their remarkable victory over Makuta" has been split into two paragraphs for some reason.

Page 137: "The village [was] in danger" - add the "was"

Page 142: "plumes of acrid smoke traces ugly patterns in the air" - should be "traced"

Page 147: "in the hope of of answering these vital questions?" should end in a full stop, not a question mark.

Page 147: "Perhaps the most tragic example of this was in Le-Koro, not so long ago" should end in a full stop, not a question mark.

Page 153: This is a bit different since it's in a comic, but for some reason the text doesn't mention "Krana Za", but simply "Krana". Not sure if you can change that though, since it's an image. Also, a few pages later, the comic page where Gali jumps into the water is missing.

Page 182: "all that [does] not belong will be removed" - add "does"

Separate note: I noticed that the book does not include the "you dared oppose your brothers" quote from the Bahrag, although it's quoted much later in Swamp of Secrets as part of the revelation that the Bohrok were once Matoran. The line was only in the comics. Perhaps you should incorporate that quote from the comics into the text of the book? It would require adding these quotes: "You dared challenge the Bohrok swarms? You have no hope! The mission will proceed!" and "You dared oppose your brothers! Therefore you must fall! Mata Nui will be cleansed!" in the spot after the Toa decide to shed the Exo-Toa but right before Tahu shouts "Toa! Surround them! We must combine our powers!"

Page 197: The line "What happened to Cahdok and Gahdok? And how are we going to get out of here?" is not needed, since it's in the following comic too.

Page 221: "Tahu leaped toward Gali, Pohatu, [and] Kopaka." - add "and".

Page 223: "This is no time to worry, about our pride" - remove the comma.

Page 245: "Gali held her breath as a ripple of [energy] radiated out from Tahu's mask" - add "energy".

Page 246: "Onua said, hurling the chunk of stone" - It's the same way in the book originally, but I guess it should really be "hurling a chunk of stone", since no stone is mentioned before this moment.

Page 248: In the middle of the page, Pahrak-Kal is written Pahrak_Kal.

Once again, a positive remark: I hadn't noticed before that you incorporated the mini comics from the Bohrok sets and McDonald's. They actually fit in really nicely! Also, kudos for editing "Theft of Fire" to menion sonics instead of electricity, since it's now more consistent with the rest of the story.

By the way, I spotted this piece of text from the Bionicle style guide synopsis, which I think would fit perfectly after the part where the Toa retrieve Tahu's Miru from underwater, as its own separate section:

 

@Toatapio Nuva, would you be willing to release the text of the books you typed up in a word doc somewhere?

Here you go.

I haven't uploaded all of them yet, but will do when I can. For now, the Chronicles and Adventures series are all there.

EDIT: All the books have now been uploaded!

Has this ever been confirmed? I always thoughts the pods themselves were designed to place their hosts in a coma.

I agree, I'm pretty sure it was the pods themselves that induced coma.

In my opinion, the timeframe in which the side effects of the pods manifested themselves. The official story recites that the Matoran lost their memories of Metru Nui and shrank in size after being awakened: it was a gradual process, giving the Turaga the time to realize what was happening and react accordingly.

In a way, this makes sense, because it explains why the Matoran, one thousand years later, did not remember the pods at all and neither did they recall using the parts of the airships brought to Mata Nui by the Toa Metru to build their villages: their memories of the whole period were probably hazy.

However, in Time Trap, when awakened by Makuta, Ahkmou's memories have already been wiped (it isn't said whether he has shrunk as well).

The full explanation is probably a combination of those. The shrinking and memory less may have already started while the Matoran were in the pods, but continued over the next months, or even years. They may have already lost their past memories when they woke up, and as an after-effect their memories gained from the immediate aftermath also disappeared over time. It may have taken them a while to recover from the coma, and permanent memories didn't start to stay until a while later.

There is also the question of Turaga Dume: he stayed in a pod for a very long time, yet his memories remained intact, as did his body; of course, it might that, being a Turaga, some of the functionalities of his Matoran Sphere had no effect on him...

The canon explanation is that Dume's pod malfunctioned, which is why his memories weren't wiped. It was also the reason he woke up on his own (though I always disliked this deus ex machina explanation...).

My advice would be to steer away from Takua's point of view and tell whatever you can through third person narration. I mean, there are already the scenes where Takua gets a new vision, but then you could just cut to the scene he's seeing and tell it in third person. The reader will get the idea that Takua is seeing it, but we then get to read it as a regular part of the story.

Also, it might make things easier to just stick to either the portrayal of the book or the walkthrough, but not both. Or maybe just add the Toa Kaita's lines from before and after the battle? Those are simple lines of speech, so they would probably fit pretty well at the beginning and end of the battle, as long as the tense in them is changed to fit the narrative of the books.

Makuta's Diary does go through the past events without adding anything per se, but the events are told differently from Teridax's perspective and they do offer some insight on the exact steps of his plan, which none of the books really do. I feel that they thus have some added value.

I looked at the Kaita/Manas changes, and that's not what I meant. I meant that within the paragraphs, there are sentences from both the MNOG walkthrough and the book. So, in these paragraphs, there are both sentences in past tense, present tense, first person and third person at the same time, which makes it incoherent. So maybe either edit those paragraphs to only include one style, or divide between the MNOG walkthrough and the book more, so that no paragraph has all those writing styles mixed in.

The 2009 reordering plan looks good. I do agree with not putting Secret of Certavus first. The Glatorian comic 1 is a much better introduction to the Bara Magna story, since that's essentially what it was meant to do in the first place.

Oh, and since you've been discussing Makuta's Guide to the Universe, what about just using the entries from Makuta's Diary? Either together with Reign of Shadows or at the end of the 2008 story?

I just finished reading the first book (though as part of the complete PDF with all the stories) and found a few errors:

Page 8: There's a full stop missing from between "But he still felt uneasy" and "Aside from his name"

Page 12: "These three concepts has given the Matoran a purpose, sometime to strive for always" (should be something)

Page 48: "The legend prophecy six heroes descend..." (It's actually like this is the original text, but it does seem to be a typo, so maybe you'd be interested in correcting it?)

Page 48: The scene with Kapura as been separated into two paragraphs. Not sure if that was the intention, but it seems odd.

Page 56: An entire section of the Po-Koro section of the MNOG walkthrough is missing. It ends at "so it's very hard to miss, and when you" and suddenly begins again at "Take this Carving Tool". In other words, it skips the entire Nui-Jaga battle.

Page 56: On the same page, there's a random "Call me Chronicler" line. I think you may have left it there by accident, as it was a subheading in the walkthrough.

Page 69: "Time for a new plan, he though" (should be thought)

Page 92: Press enter between "Rama sneak-swoop-smash and fly out of reach!" and "Who are you?"

Page 92: Press enter between "Le-Koro Matoran!" and "And who is Matau?"

Page 97: "I am grateful to bid rid of the omnipresent white" (should be "be")

Page 99: "he is telling me what I am to do testing me to see..." should have a comma between "do" and "testing"

Page 101: There's a factual problem here. Vakama talks about the Toa already having acquired the golden Kanohi and being on their way to Kini-Nui, even though in this version of the story, the Toa don't get them until they're already at the Kini-Nui. Might wanna think how to recocnile that.

Page 102: A "-sign is needed before "It seems that dark times have fallen..."

Page 107: After "cut out of the temple walls" there's a full stop, which should be a comma

On another note, the combination of the book and MNOG sequences of the Toa Kaita and Manas fight is a bit... akward at times. The problem is the irregular change of perspective. At times it's in first person and present tense, whereas others it's in the past tense. This is fine when these sections are divided, but when they're fully together, it becomes very odd and incoherent. I'm talking about pages 116-119. Also, on page 119, there's a random "He felt his mind slipping away, as if in the moment just before sleep. He closed his eyes..." at the end of a paragraph. It refers to the Toa Kaita splitting up, but that has already happened at that point. If the intention was to refer to Takua, then that's also weird, because the sentence is written in third person, and all Takua scenes so far are in first person.

On a positive note, the canon version of the Shadow Toa fight is seamlessly put together, and I enjoyed reading it a lot. I am starting to feel that I like that version more than Hapka's.

They basically sacrificed their Toa power to awaken the Matoran from their coma. Due to the sheer number of Matoran that had to be awakened, it took up all of the power and that's why they became Turaga. Toa power has healing properties, so I'm guessing that's what the effect was on the Matoran.

A simple piece of art, but really cute, and plenty of detail. I like it.

I already commented on youtube about this, but in summary: I think the animation and character interactions were very nicely done, but I wasn't particularly fond of the portrayal of Gali. It seemed a bit incompatible with her G1 character, with all the jokes and petty reactions to her insecurities. Aside from Gali herself, I did enjoy everything else in the video though, especially all the cleverly used lore.

I liked them a lot, actually. As a kid, it didn't matter to me that they were clone sets, because the story for them was awesome enough to make me want to buy them all. It was always the story that compelled me to buy the sets, rather than the sets themselves per se.

I'm actually curious, where did this whole "Pohatu was always orange"-thing come up? I've never heard of that retcon before, and nothing in the story supports this in any way.

Speaking of disappointing retcons though:

1. Love as non-canon (I get it, they don't reproduce, but that doesn't mean they must be incapable of feeling the emotion)

2. Great Beings are just intelligent Glatorian (yes, this is a retcon, cause earlier Greg specifically said that the Great Beings were NOT Glatorian)

I wouldn't mind helping with voice acting. What kind of roles/voices are you looking for?

(My mic isn't particularly high quality, but it doesn't sound bad either)

 

DId I mention this really, really sucks? MoL's graphics may have been technically proficient for a DVD movie in 2003, but the character designs were, are, and will always be hideous. More importantly, it clearly took the canonical nature of the Matoran Universe's biology in a different direction than what was originally intended - which in my opinion was a result of taking the "biological" part of the Bionicle Portmanteu literally rather than figuratively. The people in charge of making the movies had no idea how deep the metaphor of the Bio-Chronicle went, and at this point I'm convinced Greg F. didn't either.

I'm gonna have to point out here that the characters were always intended to be partly mechanical, partly organic, and even the core story team considered the movie portrayal of the characters to be canon. The sets were never meant to be the definitive representation of them in canon. So overall, the movie versions of the characters were always intended as the official representations, and it wasn't up to Greg, or even the producers of the movies.

You have done a massive service to the Bionicle fandom TuragaNuva, and I'm glad I got to be part of this project. It's definitely a great way for old fans to go through the entire story, conveniently gathered in one document, but also an easier way for new fans to jump in. I particularly like the way you included even the Hordika search for the mask of light-episode screenshots. Kinda reminds me of some of the promotional Lego comics from the late 90's, which had little text but a lot of stuff happening in them.

All in all, fantastic work! As a die-hard Bionicle fan, I am very greatful for this.

 Also if the matoran have organs/ organics then how can they just be taken apart and rebuilt without killing them?

Another of the many things wrong with the rebuilding... shame it will probably never get retconned

Actually, there's nothing wrong with it - the rebuilding merely involves replacing the mechanical components, without changing the organic ones. In fact, I think the organic tissue reshapes itself according to the new mechanical structure (for example, new muscle tissue would grow if the limbs were made bigger). If anything, you could compare the rebuilding process to a safer version of surgery in the real world.

 

What is the OGD?

Official Greg Discussion

The Kualsi holds appeal, but it's line-of-sight limitation is the main put-off; my main interest in a teleportation Kanohi would be to make my long-distance relationship a lot easier, and there's no way that one would be able to get me all the way across the ocean. Ruling out that, then...

You know, you could solve that limitation by choosing the Olmak. That way you could easily cross the ocean in a matter of seconds.

I'd choose the Rau. In the real world, what would be more powerful than the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere? It's something no one else can do.

Whenever Greg was asked about this in the past, he usually replied with "they can use Kanohi Nuva, which no one else can do". He rarely specifically mentioned their other abilities. He has confirmed that their sheer elemental power was boosted as well, and the Nuva symbols are a key part of this, but I doubt the increase was more than 50%, or even 25%. We've seen regular Toa perform some impressive feats with their elemental powers, so doubling that power would have far greater consequences than what we've seen with the Nuva. Judging by old Greg answers, the Nuva "upgrade" was more about greater control (with both the Kanohi Nuva and the elements) than power. This doesn't mean there wasn't a boost in power at all, but rather that it probably wasn't that dramatic. I would estimate it to be at around 25%, or slightly lower.

Question... is it okay for a non-profit fan tribute to call him "Jala?"

I doubt the Maori people are gonna sue one person over a fan comic based on a discontinued toyline.

I'm pretty sure they were listed on Bionicle.com.

The idea of Makuta trying to convert one of the Toa is a very interesting premise. Kinda reminds me of the plot for the original BZPRPG.

Sweet, I really like the artwork and the concept behind this. Looking forward to whatever you have in store for this retold story.

I remember it being in one of the first few bionicle books.

It may have been, though the chapter books weren't actually published until 2003, meaning that the legend's appearance in other media predates those books one way or another.

Actually, Lhii wasn't mentioned in any of the novels. I think the first book with a mention of him was the Encyclopedia in 2006.

It all depends on how the story would be set up. The Toa Mata are indeed very iconic, but using them for the sake of nostalgia can also undermine the story. I felt that G2 was only using them for this reason, and failed to respect them as actual characters, rather than simply money-making machines.