J46 Nui

New Umarak looks really impressive, but I wish that he kept his trans-green parts instead of trans-yellow-green. I have way too few parts of the former and way too many of the later.

"LEE-wah" is how it was pronounced in last year's webisodes, as well as how it was pronounced in Bionicle: Mask of Light. Since those are the main places I'm used to hearing it out loud, it would probably be more jarring to me if they had used the official G1 pronunciation "LAY-wah". It has been a while since I have seen MoL, so I just assumed that the pronunciation found on BS01 was how it was said. Now I am confused as to why BS01's pronunciation is different from what it is usually pronounced as.

So they are pronouncing Lewa differently than they used to (LEE-wah instead of LAY-wah). The change doesn't bother me at all, but it is weird that they changed it.

A second Umarak set? That is kind of odd. So I can assume that he gains a new form sometime in the story. I kind of wish that that set was a new character so I would have six bad guys to face off against the six Toa, but it is no big loss.

I am a huge fan of the very stylized visuals of the first few movies, but this still looks good to me despite sticking close to the sets. I enjoy cell shading, and the few breaks from the set that the model took all looked good. I just wish that they had taken a bit more liberty with the design and gave Tahu a mouth. It looks like his eyes are going to be very expressive though. I really hope that the fights in this series looks good are are choreographed well. That is one thing that the older movies never did satisfactorily for me. I really hope that this series is still on track for next month.

A Nya minifig in the style of the techno or tournament robes with the half-face mask and hair. I missed out on the first year sets where she had her hair included, so it would be great to see it again.

Is it just me, or does that Alfred look almost exactly like the Lego version of Stan Lee from the Lego Marvel games?

For the most part besides one scene in the beginning and one near the end, which are told in different perspectives, it is completely new. It is about what the defenders were doing while the Toa were in the City of the Mask Makers. Any more than that would spoil it, but it is not another recap of the known story.

I like everything about this set except for the weapon. Overall, I still prefer the Masters to the Uniters, but I do like that these sets call back to their earlier designs. I just wish that these had more solid weapons and better color schemes all around.

I like Pohatu enough that I am looking forward to picking this up, but I absolutely hate his weapon. All of the Uniters could do with more of their primary color. It is kind of disappointing that the best thing about this wave is their masks. I do plan on picking up all of them, but I am expecting to still like their Master versions a lot more.

I don't really agree with the review. All of the pictures in it made Tahu look good, and I have no problems with the chest. It is kind of weird that there is a near complete absence of actual red pieces, but I do plan on picking this set up.

I would've preffered an actual shield instead of the blaster thing, but the set still manages to look good. This is probably the set that I am looking forward to the least though. I think the other toa look better (despite some of them having bizarre weapons), and have better color schemes. They should have given him gold shoulders like they did last year. Then the gold on his legs would not stick out so much. The mask is a bit weird to me. It looks like a G2 version of the Akaku Nuva, which is fine and looks good, but all the rest of the team's masks look like advanced versions of their Master masks. It is just kind of weird that his mask is a much bigger departure from his previous one than what is seen with the rest of the team. I'm not saying that I don't want it, or that I think it looks bad, but it is the lowest on my set purchasing priorities.

I believe that the masters were the best set versions of the characters that they represent, but I may like Uniter Onua a bit better than the master version. I thought the master was too broad (I did not like how he couldn't even touch his other hand because of his massive body and short arms). This version looks like an updated version of the master that gave him a much needed slimming down. Though I may do some modding to fix the out of place asymmetry. I also enjoy the new mask. It works better as an evolution of the Mask of Earth than a Pakari, though. I also like how these sets are clearly new versions of the Masters. I disliked it in Gen 1 where I wouldn't be able to tell that 2 sets were the same character without being told their names. The only sets that did this well in G1 were the Nuva, Kal, MoLtoran, '08 Takanuva, and Stars. But most of the time, new forms would be like the Phantoka/Mistika, where there were next to no details in common.

Between "Afterman" and the English lettering on some of the Mata Nui concepts (I think it was along the lines of Unit 02 or something like that), I wonder if some of the early concepts of the Great Beings had them being human.

Really? I can see how some of them (like Onua's and Lewa's) could be cumbersome, but Kopaka has a pretty basic sword, Tahu has two swords with their own function, and Gali and Pohatu have pretty typical polearms with added flails. Honestly I was generalizing a bit. I have no problems with Onua's or Kopaka's weapons, though I think Kopaka's blaster looks a bit odd aesthetically. Tahu's is fine for the most part, but the function looks really useless and not fun. All it does is allow him to extend his swords just the tiniest bit, but not in any significant way to make a difference. Also, I do not see any way for the weapons to lock into a position besides just letting gravity decide how extended it will be. I really dislike how Lewa's weapons are held. I know there are some real world weapons that are held that way, but as far as I know, none of them are bladed. I especially do not like the piece that connects it to his hands. Even though it is a friction piece, I still think that it will flail around a lot. All I can imagine is Lewa's weapons constantly being knocked out of any useful position during battle because he does not have a good grip on them. There is a lot to say about Pohatu's weapon, which is the second worst of the bunch. I am fine with it being a polearm. I am also okay with the blade being enormous for a pole arm, since exaggerated weaponry is pretty standard for Bionicle (though I think a longer pole to go along with the long blade would have looked a bit better). What I have a major problem with is that it is a flail/pole arm hybrid. When Pohatu uses the pole arm part of it to stab or strike, he is in constant danger of being hit with the flail, and when he uses the flail, he suddenly has a blade that is twirling around really close to his body. This combination of weapons is way less than the sum of its parts. It combines a flail and a pole arm in a terrible way that makes both parts of the weapons way less effective than when they were not combined. Pohatu would be better off having a flail in one hand and a pole arm in the other, which would look way better and would only require an additional piece. I will give it one thing that I will not give Gali's is that since its flail consists of a stone, Pohatu should have some control over it to make sure he does not constantly bludgeon himself. And finally to the worst of the bunch, Gali's weapon. It has everything that is wrong with Pohatu's along with 3 terrible bonuses. First off, the flail bit is bladed and not made of any material she has control over. So while Pohatu is only in danger of being bludgeoned if his concentration slips, she is in constant threat of being sliced or stabbed by her own weapon. Second, it has a hilt. Why does the pole arm have a hilt? Pole arms do not have hilts, they are meant to be gripped by the pole, hence the name. Being able to hold a pole arm anywhere along its pole length is important because it allows the user to adjust their hands to have a good grip on it. Having the hilt kind of makes this less accessible, especially because it is a bladed hilt. The out of place sword hilt looks bad on this weapon. She would look ridiculous if she was holding it just by its hilt. If there is one hilt, why is there not another one for her other hand? Why is it placed at the very end of the pole? That isn't a usual place to hold a pole arm. WHY IS IT PLACED RIGHT NEXT TO THE FLAIL? She is already in enough danger of hitting herself with it without having to place her hand right by it? How does this hilt function when she flips the weapon around to use as a flail? As a flail, her hand would be placed right at the neck of the weapon, which is not very conductive to flailing, as well as her hand being in the area that is being flailed. The last major flaw, and by far the worst is the propeller. What is it there for? Navigating through water? No, because it is placed off center on the side of an asymmetric object. Here's an experiment to show just how bad this propeller would be at helping Gali move through water. Go down to the nearest marina, get a boat and a boat engine. Now instead of putting the engine on the back of the boat, put on the port side, a quarter of the boat's length from the bow. You would not be able to control that boat at all. Is the propeller there as a weapon? No, because the blade will be completely embedded into the enemy before the blade can even reach it. So it may appear that the propeller has no purpose, but I believe it does have one. See, it is dangerously close to Gali's non-hilt hand. So while that hand is safely out of the flail's reach, it can still be maimed by the otherwise useless propeller, because the designer of this weapon obviously wishes Gali bodily harm. Gali's weapon is like a sword with a spiked grip. It may look like a weapon, but really it is only meant to hurt the person who holds it. Gali's weapon may just be the worst weapon in the entirety of Bionicle, and that is saying something considering that this franchise has exploding boomerangs. I play a lot of table top games, and I know exactly what would happen if I asked my dungeon master if I could use a weapon as ridiculous as Gali's. First, he'd make me take every feat that relates to exotic weapons to have ever existed because this thing is so foreign to the concepts of weaponry that I would need to know everything there is to know about weapons in order to use it offensively. Then I'd have to take every rank I can in weapon-smithing, because any blacksmith that is not aligned with the darkest of evils would not make a weapon for me that would so obviously lead me to my doom. I would never find any legendary magic version of this weapon because every heroic champion of yore that dared to wield the Hilted Bladed Pole Arm Flail with Optional Propeller Attachment to battle never made it out. Finally, the first time I try to swing this weapon, I would be cleft in twain, because this weapon appears to be designed to be absolutely fatal to its wielder. Every bard that would sing tales of my party would kindly leave me out mostly because of sheer embarrassment, and partially because including the phrase "Hilted Bladed Pole Arm Flail with Optional Propeller Attachment" would destroy their melody. People will avoid the area that I made my fateful swing in for generations because an instrument that had destroyed a person so utterly must have been cursed enough to blight the land it had been used on. Future historians would eventually recover the weapon, and decide that it must have been an optional weapon used in some harsh, bizarre rite of passage by combat in order to weed out the weak minded. So yeah, I don't like that weapon that much.

I really like the new sets, but I am not feeling the weapons for any of the Toa. They just look like they are supposed to flail about when someone uses the gear function, but none of them look that good as actual weapons.

Maybe the new eyestalk is part of the combining with the creatures function. I think the creatures heads can lock into the new eyestalks somehow, to both keep the head's position relative to the mask's, and to lock the mask into place.

I love Umarak's antlers. It also says that he has a bow that is not shown, so he has multiple weapons, which is cool as long as they can store on his body somewhere. So the new gimmick this year is just the Phantoka one, but better looking? I'm okay with this, especially because of how the head of the creature and the mask combine.

I really like the concept art that we have been getting, but I wish that we could get it in desktop wallpaper size.

Worst case scenario, it is just a repackage of the webisodes (though the new name would be strange). Best case, it is the Bionicle TV show I have always wanted. I am fine with any result on this scale.

I love the cut to Onua after Lewa says that they should try not to break anything.

To be fair, in the book when it was going through these events, it explains that Pohatu ran into the Scorpios back in the stone region.

I would honestly be disappointed if Lewa did not lose his mask. I really like Lewa's resting on his axes pose. If I wasn't moving at the moment, I would have tried to see if it is possible to pose his figure like that.

So do the names mean there will be some sort of return of the three virtues in G2?