Wrinkledlion X

Side note:

I still find it very hard to imagine McDonalds selling Matorans XD

Over here the ones you refer to as McTorans were sold in teensy weensy carton boxes beside Turaga on toy shop counters.

Really! What country was this?

Dumb people spend more? What are you even talking about

Just out of curiosity--do you have promotional items, like Good Guy and Bad Guy from 2006? 

I think Greg will canonize anything we ask him to at this point. Dude does NOT care anymore. 

^ We got a gold star post here!

Yeah, Lewa's probably my least favorite this time around, too. Odd, seeing as he's always been one of my favorites in the past.

The big surprise for me this wave is Pohatu, however. I have a fondness for Pohatu Mata, but I didn't expect the new one to be so appealing. I do hope they go with trans-yellow rather than trans-lime for his bones, but he looks really cool either way.

I am now suddenly super okay with the way Kopaka's new mask looks because I was looking at the main image on the BIONICLE home page and the way he's posed made it very briefly resemble a Noble Matatu.

WHOA I saw it instantly when I checked. Good eye.

I don't think transformations will occur as often as in old BIONICLE. Hero Factory had an advantage of having a built-in excuse for the heroes' new appearances, and I'm sure LEGO will come up with something that allows them to redesign the Toa regularly without making it seem redundant, as multiple transformations would be.

I figured that in Bionicle 1.0 they were trying to go for something like that with the Adaptive Armor, but they never really got around to capitalizing on it. I hope they come up with an easy way of explaining transformations without making it a big deal--perhaps armor switching is just a normal thing for Toa to do in the reboot? 

 

Any chance of a few more shopped pics Lucina? Maybe try losing all the gold in favour of silver as it's already been said that those parts are available in silver. If it looks good I may even bricklink them for the release date so I don't have to spend money on a set that looks so wierd!

 

Another good one would be to make those 4 purple pieces black (if they're available in that colour!) Maybe show us how it would look with ZERO gold and purple. I might build that set myself if it looks good... 

 

 

(apologies for some traces of gold)

 

definitely makes for a subtler look. not bad.

 

I prefer gold because lunar limo but silver onua is definitely an okay look.

 

I can't say i'd be optimistic about making the purple black; then he would be monochromatic. I always prefer a black color scheme to have a bright highlight color.

 

Hmm. He looks kind of nondescript with just silver... What if we replaced the silver with black, and left the gold?

(That may be beyond the power of a quick-and-easy Photoshop, I dunno)

@Rahkshi Lalonde

 

Then the original plot has to break down halfway through, and the entire franchise ends with a psychoanalysis of the Toa.

 

Naturally, fans aren't too pleased, so a new feature-length replacement ending is made where Pohatu's deep-seeded self-loathing turns everybody into orange goo.

*turned into liquid protodermis

Personally, I'm glad to see him with purple as a secondary color. Bionicle was always in short supply of purple after 2001's Onepu and Nui-Jaga, which was disappointing because the MNOLG made purple one of the main Earth colors. It's made some appearanced in Hero factory, but seeing purple return with Onua is great, both as a return to classic roots and as a boost in color usage. The same goes with the trans purple. (Gosh, I remember back in the day when we were holding out for a purple Toa... who never appeared.)

 

The gold and silver is a bit much. Honestly, I would go with more silver myself. The gold highlights work with the purple, but it pulls too much attention away from Onua's true primary color, black. Silver is more toned down and I feed would work better with black and purple, moreso than with other colors. Including both silver and gold does make it look a bit cluttered color wise, but I don't think they make that gold armor piece in any other color, just like with the silver claw/shovel pieces, so that might be part of their reasoning.

 

And, IMO, I always saw Onua and Pohatu as being about equal in strength, with Pohatu maybe being a bit stronger naturally but Onua getting a big boost from his mask that makes him stronger overall.

 

I always assumed Onua was the big, upper-body-strength strongman-type, whereas Pohatu was the lower-body-strength athlete type. It seemed implied to me from early on, what with Pohatu's kicking-tools and Onua's digging claws. I just didn't like that Pohatu was significantly stronger after they both had their own Pakaris—it made Onua's Pakari seem redundant somehow. 

I don't think Bionicle would've lasted as long with just the Toa Mata, because the Toa Mata were one-note characters in the original theme. Every subsequent Toa team had more character development and depth, whereas the Toa Mata were little more than broad stereotypes.

 

The new theme seems to be adding more depth to the characters already by giving them more concrete and interesting flaws, so I'm eager to see where the new line can go with them.

 

I prefer the line to focus on a core group of characters, so I hope they stick with the Mata for a while. I don't know why you think they were more one-note than their successors, though? They may have been simpler character types, but they had strong and well-defined personalities, which a lot of the later Toa teams lacked. The Metru weren't so bad, but the Inika/Mahri seemed to have been sucked dry of all personality compared to their time as Matoran. And even among the Metru, there were some sketchily-drawn personalities; Onewa, for one, never seemed to have much going on outside the movies, where his sole trait was "pessimistic." 

I would argue that the Mata had some of the most well-drawn personalities of Bionicle's first run, which makes it natural for them to return as main characters. (And so far I'm enjoying the additions to their personalities, though only time will tell how well they're incorporated into story.)

I love the new Onua. I do think it was a mistake to include silver, but I love that they're characterizing him as a strongman once again. Greg always insisted that Pohatu was the strongest Toa and Onua had average strength, but I never bought that as the original intention of the character. 

Loving the claws as well. And I don't see the problem with his proportions—obviously they're not realistic, but I don't mind cartoon proportions on an action figure. 

LOVING the Samurai Jack/Clone Wars-esque art for the animation. Great influences, too--Studio Ghibli, Satoshi Kon, Triplets of Belleville... All personal favorites of mine. 

I am a little wary at the prospect of voice acting, but I'll take it as it comes. I do think it's a shame that all the "Matoran" appear to wear the same masks, but I figure that might change with subsequent waves of sets. Overall, seeing these background paintings has me more excited than anything so far. 

You're killin' me son, you're killin' me

 

 

Where did this info on the old Vahi come from?

 

Twitter

 

Whose Twitter?

Technically it says he "communes" with plants and the wind. Maybe he controls wind but can "talk" to plants, or vice versa. The phrasing is pretty ambiguous, so we might not know his exact powers until we see him in action. 

Yay for the green small guy and the blue small guy finally officially appearing.

wait where

I'll reserve my opinions on the new backstory, but right now I'm busy fawning over Onua. I'm still puzzled about his gold+silver color scheme, but it actually looks strangely good in some of these pictures. 

I'm just really happy they made Onua the strongman of the group. That's how I always saw him, so I was never fond of that Greg-ism that "Pohatu's the strong one, Onua's just a regular-strength Toa with a Pakari." It always seemed very counter-intuitive to me. I also like that they're characterizing him as "sleepy"--I'm ambivalent about some of the Toa's new personality traits, but this is a good addition for Onua. They're making him even more like his element: dormant but immensely powerful. 

Well, look for yourself:

I spy gears

Some of the concept art here depicts a Defender/Protector in a Turaga-like role: https://twitter.com/RusBionicle/status/520276060433178624

 

 

not really feelin' only having two eye colors. They aren't even distributed 50/50. four of them have yellow eyes.

My friends and I don't have a 50/50 eye color distribution either.

 

 

your friends and you aren't a wave of LEGO sets

 

I just like to have an even distribution among a Toa team, though even better would be returning to the days of unique eye colors.

 

I do wish they had individual eye colors. 

(though I don't know if onua could handle any more colors)

I think there's a clear resemblance to his original mask, it just looks like it got half-eaten by a machine. You can see he has his original grin in the form of those wide holes around the mouth. You can see the design progression here, though I agree they lost something in the translation: https://twitter.com/BZP_Tweets/status/520261897892163584

I like that middle-top design; wish they had gone with that one.

Apparently a lot of Bionicle terms haven't been dropped, but there aren't as many references to those terms. "Things will be simpler without complex names in the story."

 

Ah well, at least terms like "Toa, Kanohi" haven't been gotten rid of entirely.

Where do they use "Kanohi?"

It does seem almost certainly like a hard reboot, but I can live with that. Looks like they're trying to recapture some of the elegant simplicity of the early story.