Jacks

It's just an advertising video made by people minimally familiar with canon long before the canonization of 36-hour day. this. Promo videos tend to be semi-canon at best

It's all right, lots of good variation, not much jumped out to make me either love or loathe it. 4/5 Well, because you said it...

I usually play through MNOG1 at least once a year, which usually leads to me watching all the Templar animations. Sometimes I watch LoMN too. The memories I have of the first times I experienced all those things do not make me sad -- for the passage of time is inexorable and I will simply never again be the person I was back then; sadness over this fact would be futile -- but rather hopeful that gen2 might affect the eight-year-olds of today in the same way gen1 affected me.

The Toa Mahri video was promotional material, not story material. I think it's safe to say that we can consider MNOG more canon, especially since the sundial itself reappeared in the story years later.

I'm not saying it was a mistake, I'm saying it wasn't necessarily an improvement. It was a change in design sensibilities that was not necessarily connected to a change in quality (well, a significant drop in quality if you consider the durapibilty of the pieces themselves, but that's neither here nor there). Let's take the Toa Mahri as an example. Yes, they looked very different from their predecessors. Yes, they looked different from one another, but this was because wildly varying amounts of effort had been applied to their designs. Jaller was a major standout, whereas Hewkii was such a sad jumbled mess that he was really only worth purchasing as a parts pack for keetorange joints and interesting blades, and the remaining four were pretty unremarkable compared to either of the former two. The only thing that unified them as a team was an oversized one-piece blaster with ammo that launched inconsistently and got lost almost immediately. But did they sell well? Heck yes. How much of that resulted from the marketing or the fact that 07 gave us a very fast-paced exciting story I do not know, nor do I know how much of those sales were to new fans v. preexisting fans, which is another tidbit we'd need in order to use this to rate the design sensibilities. In any case, if we're gonna use sales figures as an indicator of quality, we need to wait the better part of a year before we can include the Toa Okoto in this discussion on a level playing field. That was a bit rambly, though. The bottom line is that I agree with you that nobody likes clone sets -- the issue I have is that it takes an absurd amount of willful nearsightedness to describe the Toa Okoto as clones while keeping a straight face.

yo that is a totally rad hypothesis of which I myself never could have thought. So basically you just replace 10 with 6, 100 with 36, 1000 with 216, etc?

This. Not only does it not require more canonization of trivia, it's more interesting.

Are you serious? I was never 100% happy with any G1 Toa Team as far as sets were concerned. They were always either clones (with near-identical parts, proportions, and builds) or completely lacking any sort of visual unity (the Toa Mahri relied solely on tubes and blasters to convey their affiliation, and the Phantoka and Mistika had slightly more unity as far as color schemes were concerned, but only among their particular group of three). The new Toa have unifying features (like their chest patterns and the general unified look granted by the CCBS), but their builds, proportions, color schemes, and armor configurations are more diverse than ever before. Yeah I'm serious. The new Toa are more alike than you say in build. Different proportions are basically the same bone and shell pieces in a different length. Not to mention they all use the exact same feet except for Onua. With the exception of gearboxes and shoulder armors, they all follow the same scheme, and I'm left struggling to find a reason to buy them besides to own the main cast (mind you, I am going to buy them all, I just don't know why, I want to like them but idk). If anyone is a new fan, what would be their inclination to buy the sets if they're all so similar? They don't really have any attachment to the characters yet. Because all the Toa are different, even if they use similar pieces. Lewa's is average in height, but his raised shoulders and lanky arms give him a simian look. Onua is obviously a powerhouse, but also one of the shortest Toa. Pohatu is the same height, but with the leanest build of all the Toa (he is also the only Toa with his armor arranged asymmetrically). Gali's height and skeleton proportions are average, but she has an exceptionally streamlined design. Kopaka is taller than average, with extremely heavy armor on his shoulders and upper and lower legs as well as slightly raised shoulder joints. Tahu is the tallest of the Toa, with lean upper legs and flared lower legs. To put it a different way, the new Toa's differences are obvious in this image, which actually downplays the differences in their heights. Really, if old-school fans like us could be convinced to collect the Toa Metru who were all completely identical builds except for two being taller than the others, or the Toa Hordika and Toa Inika who literally had zero differences in their body proportions between team members, then it's silly to say that the differences in the new Toa aren't substantial enough for new fans to care. Post-2006 Toa teams may have had more diversity than the new Toa as far as molds and textures were concerned, but their visual unity suffered as a result. Thanks to their mishmash of incompatible textures from across various years of sets, only the weapons and environment-specific equipment clearly told you which of the Toa Mahri, Phantoka, and Mistika were on the same team, whereas the new Toa all adhere a shared visual language while still having as much variety in their builds or more than any of those teams. As I recall the Hordika and Inika were the most unpopular waves at the time, making Lego do the switch to make all the sets different. As you say, you can tell that the Toa were from the same team by their accessories. That's really all they need. Why give up uniqueness to make them look similar? Each Toa is a specialized individual with their own elements, powers, personality, etc. They're not some military force that needs uniformity to look like a team. Look at other hero teams from other franchises: the Autobots, the Avengers, the Justice League. Every character is practically their own design. Comparing the Toa to the Avengers straight-up does. not. work. Each of the Avengers has their own separate origin, context, etc. They're all totally independent of each other, and the fact that they sometimes team up is incidental to who they are. The Toa were created as a team. Yeah, they have to learn to work together effectively, but they are intended as one unit. Their status as a team is fundamental to their identities. They may not be a "military force" as such, but the mantra from G1 still applies here, I think -- six heroes, one destiny. The only Toa team that you could reasonably compare to the Avengers is the Mangai. Furthermore, in the post-Zamor launcher era, the yearly gimmicks were minimally functional (and pretty ugly but that's just my opinion) so why would you choose that as your one defining characteristic?? You are correct that the Hordika/Inika were the least popular, and prompted the change in design sensibilities, but that does not mean the change was an improvement -- that's a significant jump to conclusions. If anything, the 2015 Toa are the result of the design team learning from the mistakes of 2004-06 and the mistakes of 2007-10

Sadly fitting, too, given that we also know that all the MU species are doomed to eventual extinction since the GSR contained the only means of producing more of them.

yoooooooooo we're posting jazz now?? lemme get in on this omg yes hmm not a fan of all the synth. It makes it sound a bit like waiting room music. Its saving grace is that no waiting room music would ever dare to use a chord progression so deliciously weird as the one in the first two verse sections it's really a little more funk than it is jazz but I can dig it. Funk is hecka fun to play. 3.5/5

Didn't restarting the GSR deactivate the failsafe, though? The mask looked pretty darn gold to me when it got launched into space/landed on Bara Magna. totally makes sense as the easiest way to get Mata Nui far away from his body as quickly as possible though

Like fishers and Iaredios pointed out, destroying the Ignika would have had catastrophic results. Because it's a Legendary Kanohi, it's connected to all life inside and including the MU. In the same way that destroying the Vahi wuld shatter the fabric of time within the MU, destroying the Ignika could potentially snuff out the life of the GSR and all the life inside it -- including whatever spirit is in control of the robot -- in the blink of an eye. re:Vezon & Kardas- the reason Matoro was able to remove the Ignika was because it had chosen him as its bearer. Also I'm fairly sure they were frozen in a stasis field, not solidified time. The Dekar/Hydraxon thing was a totally cheap move. It would've made more sense for the Ignika to resurrect the original Hydraxon. Plus Dekar had so much potential as a character, just wasted in an instant :c

I don't think that "designed for use within the MU" necessitates "nonfunctional outside the MU" -- we've also had an instance of extra-MU Vahi operation, and I have a memory of Greg confirming that the Legendary Kanohi functioned outside the MU, just not at their full potential power level (granted, I also have a memory of Greg saying it would be 100% physically impossible to have doubles of any Legendary Kanohi within the MU and I might be wrong about that? who knows) What I think is interesting is that most of the instances of extra-MU Legendary Mask use were very close to the MU exterior -- probably close enough to still latch onto the fundamental forces at work in the interior. Ignika on Bara Magna is a fun loophole, since it's tied to the life of Mata Nui, and surprise! guess who's inside it so: what's going to happen now that the GSR is toast and Mata Nui is dormant? I'm guessing that the power of the Legendary Kanohi might just fade away

I sure as heck appreciate it -- that's one detail I've incorporated into my own headcanons since you brought it up in the Headcanons thread a few months ago although wouldn't 100,000 divided by twelve be 8,333 rather than 83,333? Hmm, if we incorporate that into the figures, it turns 100,000 years of Bionicle time into 12,500 years of our time. Still pretty manageable

The best way I've found to articulate is as follows: Great and Noble Kanohi are like batteries. They create and/or store power. Let's take, for instance, the Mask of Speed. When it is activated, it makes the wearer faster by its own innate power. If it's damaged, it stops working. Legendary Kanohi are not batteries, but conduits for energies of an entirely different order of magnitude. Let's use the Vahi as an example here. The Vahi is connected to the flow of time in the entire MU. It is not generating its own power, like a Kakama would, but rather grabbing the fabric of Time itself and yanking on it. This is why it creates distortions when damaged, rather than shutting down. Likewise, the Ignika is permanently tapped into the life of the Great Spirit and everything within it. Creation is a bit harder to explain, but if the analogy works for Time and Life, I can accept it as well. None of this is canon, necessarily, although I've seen nothing that directly contradicts it So the reason there can only be one Mask of Time within the GSR is that you can't have the fabric of Time pulled in multiple directions (as we've seen, time in Bionicle is not particularly flexible). Artakha could make six new Great Discs, but if one were to fuse them and try to forge a new Vahi, either the old one would shut down, or the new one would not work at all. And that's just within the GSR -- you could make a new Mask of Time outside the robot, but you'd have to make it a conduit for the fabric of Time everywhere in the universe, and there's probably nobody with the willpower necessary to make a mask like that work.

I really dig the texture here -- it's like harsh but without being abrasive or grating? I don't really know how to articulate it. The harmonic structure is also really cool, especially the stuck-record break around the third minute. also some groovy syncopation. 5/5 EDIT: had to give Part 2 a listen as well -- I'm a sucker for songs with multiple movements, and I was not disappointed here

Artakha as tarnished also sets up an interesting contrast with his brother -- Karzahni is more rust than tarnish, even if his colors don't really reflect it, and as we have seen, he only got weaker with age. also fun fact they did try to clean the statue of liberty one time early in its career, only to quickly realize that de-tarnishing did it more harm than good, hence its current appearance

2/5 there isn't much dynamic or textural variation, it's just heavy all the way through (except for maybe like 15 seconds around the four-and-a-half minute mark? and even then only a little), and as it's a pretty long song, it kinda succumbs to monotony after a while.

Nah, I'm pretty sure T1S is right about the Makuta thing, although it's been quite a while since I read Maze of Shadows. Artakha forged the Golden Kanohi and the Kanohi Nuva, as we have established in earlier posts. BS01 is pretty clear on the matter.

You are correct, but only about the Kanohi NUVA. Artakha was the only being who knew how to make Kanohi Nuva, and so they could only have come from him. The regular great masks came from Makuta's practice. Artakha made the Kanohi Nuva and the Golden Kanohi, in fact. The Golden Kanohi were hidden within the Kini Nui (yeah, I was totally wrong on the Suva thing -- my brain always reverts to viewing MNOG as 100% canon ) and it was the Toa Mata's collections of masks that unlocked them, but the collected masks did not create the Golden Kanohi. also thanks for the memory jog re:Maze of Shadows. That is not one of the books that stuck in my mind

It was to hide them from Makuta, but also to ensure that only a Toa could retrieve them. Vakama is a mask-maker. He'd have easy access to wherever Kanohi were stored on Metru Nui. No conundrum there. Perhaps they realized they would have to become Turaga -- or at least Vakama may have, through visions; he was the one who realized that Toa power was needed to reawaken the Matoran. Or perhaps they did not have time to consider which masks they were bringing and just grabbed five copies of the first twelve masks they found. In that case, destiny could have played a role in ensuring that they masks they took were the right ones. They were used to construct the six villages. Remember the elevators in Onu-Koro and Le-Koro? The bridge into Ta-Koro? The pump in Ga-Koro? Repurposed airship machinery, every bit of it. It's all on BS01.

The Toa Metru brought the 30 extra Great Masks (and the 30 extra Noble Masks) and hid them around the island before becoming Turaga. Given that the Golden Kanohi were actually zapped to the island by Artahka, who made them in the first place, I would guess that the Suva may have been his doing as well? I'm not really clear on the whole Suva thing either tbh

I'd be frustrated with people who only read the books in the store too -- I mean, come on, it's five dollars. They were probably the cheapest items available in the entirety of my local Barnes & Noble (granted, I bought the books more consistently than I bought the sets so idk maybe other people just budgeted differently? still though, it's only five dollars) (or 7 in Canada shamefully, I don't know the prices anywhere else)