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Why is Metru-Nui so Segregationist?


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So why can't matoran of magnetism or gravity, or any of the others live in Metru-Nui?

 

Now I do know that those elements were made later in canon after Metru-Nui and originally weren't there but was their separation ever fully explained in the story? Why do all of them have to live in separate villages? Why are only fire, water, air, earth, stone and ice united into one big super-city?

 

Are Metru-Nui matoran like racist or something?

 

Now I can understand why SOME tribes would be kept separate, like the De-matoran (sonics) due to their incredibly acute hearing which forces them to make as little noise as possible, making them stay separated from other noisy beings, but the other seem like pretty normal matoran by their descriptions.

 

Was their some sort of event in history that made them decide to stay apart or is that simply the way they live (socially and geographically)? 

 

Or is it the Great Beings that purposely kept the matoran separate, since they're the ones who laid the foundation for Metru-Nui, and if so, why?

 

Or does it have something to do with the Mata-Nui robot? Did they simply spread matoran throughout the robot body so they could keep it working in that particular area? But these matoran seem to live in pretty simple villages, only Metru-Nui has been proven to have a direct impact on the robot's health, and plus the most of the other southern islands have no known inhabitants to do any sort of work there.

 

Is Metru-Nui simply not big enough to fit most of the other matoran in the universe? It seems like a pretty big city, I feel like it could hold more residents there.

 

What do you guys think? Am I simply missing some sort of important canon material? Are matoran really racist?

 

 

BTW: !!! I do realize 'racist' probably isn't the right word in this situation but the idea works for what I'm trying to say here. !!!

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I think it's more like that the Mata Nui robot needs different Matoran working in different spaces. He needs Ba-Matoran down in his legs, he needs Ce-Matoran and Fe-Matoran and Av-Matoran in his chest. The six original (Ta, Po, Onu, Ga, Le, and Ko) Matoran are all essential to his brain area. 

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I think it's more like that the Mata Nui robot needs different Matoran working in different spaces. He needs Ba-Matoran down in his legs, he needs Ce-Matoran and Fe-Matoran and Av-Matoran in his chest. The six original (Ta, Po, Onu, Ga, Le, and Ko) Matoran are all essential to his brain area. 

That makes sense, but why? Only Metru-Nui's operation has truly shown how that works, with running things like the Great Furnace and other stuff I guess, but as far as I can tell there aren't many other place in the matoran universe that have similar advanced systems (if any, except Artakha, the island city).

 

And plus, if one looks at the map of the MU that is shaped like the Mata-Nui robot (where each system of islands corresponds to that part of the body), it is known that the islands located in the legs are largely uninhabited and un-populated (right? I'm not 1000000% on that, but that's what "Makuta's Guide to the Universe says"), so wouldn't the robot fail to work under that logic? 

 

What you're saying sounds right, and I'd like to agree but it would also presumably cause the Mata-Nui robot to fail.

 

And plus is there a particular significance as to which certain matoran (such as the six original elemental matoran being located in Metru-Nui) must be located in certain parts of the body? If yes, why? 

 

Bionicle can get so confusing sometimes, am I right?   :D  :P

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There was never any word on what regions required which Matoran; that has been left entirely up to the fans. I've been working on an extensive series of headcanon for where certain Matoran would have lived, which I was intending to post to tumblr; I might post it here, too.

 

But officially, there are no guidelines. All we know is that the six main breeds were present in Metru Nui and in many locations across the universe, that the Av-Matoran lived in hidden tunnels above Karda Nui, and that some De-Matoran lived in the Northern Continent and some Ba-Matoran on the Southern. Anything other than that is totally up to us to decide for ourselves.

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And plus, if one looks at the map of the MU that is shaped like the Mata-Nui robot (where each system of islands corresponds to that part of the body), it is known that the islands located in the legs are largely uninhabited and un-populated (right? I'm not 1000000% on that, but that's what "Makuta's Guide to the Universe says"), so wouldn't the robot fail to work under that logic? 

"Largely uninhabited and unpopulated" doesn't meant that there aren't a few outposts in vital places. Mostly I got the impression that the area is completely automated and under the control of Mata Nui: all the bendy legs and jet rockets down there could hurt the Matoran, so they were kept away.

 

What you're saying sounds right, and I'd like to agree but it would also presumably cause the Mata-Nui robot to fail.

Why must this be so? Right now I'm looking at two facts:

1. The Mata Nui robot works.

2. There aren't a bunch of Matoran in the Southern islands.

 

Therefore, having a bunch of Matoran in the Southern Islands is not essential for the Mata Nui robot to run.

 

And plus is there a particular significance as to which certain matoran (such as the six original elemental matoran being located in Metru-Nui) must be located in certain parts of the body? If yes, why? 

 

Bionicle can get so confusing sometimes, am I right?   :D  :P

I don't know. I would imagine that you would need a certain amount of Ta-Matoran in certain places to resupply the Matoran with masks, and possibly some Ga- and Le- Matoran to make sure things got from one place to another, but beyond that I'm not sure. 

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They only had six elements because those were the ones represented in physical 2004-2005 sets. The story team wrote six elements on Metru-Nui because that's what was in the sets, and kids want to read stories about the characters they bought. There could be more elaborate ideas but in the end it boils down to a practical story devised to suport a basic marketing idea.

 

That said, it was stated that the island was segregated into primary elemental districts, but matoran of other elements were shown living in other districts. If tertiary elements existed in the matoran population of Metru-Nui, they were never explicitly denied, they simply weren't mentioned.

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They can live wherever they want (barring the tyrant regions of the MU, depending), but beings of one element tend to want to live in a place with a feature related to that element. Ta-Matoran tend to like heat, for example. There are many places where they do indeed live together. Voya Nui is one major example.

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I'd say that the matoran weren't segregationist, they just usually stayed out of each other's regions to avoid interrupting their work unless they had important tasks that required the efforts of two or more elements. 

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I think the reason only the six "prime" elements could be found in Metru Nui was because in addition to being the most common, they also did the jobs most suited for a "brain". Think of Ta-Metru as the gross motor functions (Forges), Ga-Metru as the higher thinking functions (schools), Po-Metru as the fine motor functions (Sculpture fields), Onu-Metru as the memory database (Archives), Ko-Metru as the sensory processing (Knowledge towers), and Le-Metru as the communication network that keeps the whole thing running (neural synapses). (I know it's not an exact comparison, but still. If somebody can find a better one, hit me). Can you see Matoran of another element working in those professions?

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I've always had the headcanon that Matoran of other elements in Metru Nui were basically treated as second-class citizens and forced to do the real dirty work of maintaining the infrastructure of the city.

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They were the six main elements the Great Beings chose. The six primary elements lived in several places. There could have been a few other matoran living in Metru Nui, but not enough to warrant its own Metru. I don't think the other Matoran weren't allowed or anything like that.

The way I see it is like where a lot of Italians live together in one spot, or a lot of Asians. They can live wherever they want, but they choose to live next to others who are similar to them, whether it be by race, interests, or jobs. (I apologize if that sounds racist. I'm not trying to be.)

~Xeo~

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It think that as a whole, there were many more Matoran of the main six than the other elements. The GBs also probably decided that the main six were most suited for work in Metru Nui and so we see many of those there.

 

There was no mention of secondary element Matoran in Metru Nui, mostly because Matoran were generally(generally, there are obvious exceptions) content workers who stayed and worked where they were manufactured. Or born. Or whatevered.

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The story came together over a few years and several writers who sorting plastic toys by their colour. It didn't ocur to them at the the time the implications that would be made if adult fans thought about it too hard.
Hopefully should the story ever be rebooted, they will do away with things like sorting colours into districts and gender-specific elements.

In the meantime, it's just kinda funny to think about that without realising it, the story team wrote their Utopia city to be a racially segregated communist dictatorship.

And Vakama is so brainwashed in his devotion to it that he moved his people back from their tropical paradise to the crumbled ruins of their totalitarian slave-state.

Yikes.

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In the meantime, it's just kinda funny to think about that without realising it, the story team wrote their Utopia city to be a racially segregated communist dictatorship.

And Vakama is so brainwashed in his devotion to it that he moved his people back from their tropical paradise to the crumbled ruins of their totalitarian slave-state.

Yikes.

 

Wow, I never really thought about it that way. Yikes is right.  :blink:

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In the meantime, it's just kinda funny to think about that without realising it, the story team wrote their Utopia city to be a racially segregated communist dictatorship.

And Vakama is so brainwashed in his devotion to it that he moved his people back from their tropical paradise to the crumbled ruins of their totalitarian slave-state.

Yikes.

I honestly never thought that Metru Nui was supposed to be a Utopia. I just rewatched the old Vahki animations and it definitely gives off a very dystopic vibe.
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The dictatorship thing was definitely intentional. It was meant in part as a hint that the leader actually was evil, which was true at the time since Makuta was pretending to be Dume.

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The Vakhi were made to be scary and dystopian to promote the story year 2004 where Makuta had secretly taken over the city and between Morbuzak an the Drk Hunters, Metru Nui had been pretty dark and miserable lately, and the Toa were hoping to restore it to the utopian city it had been before all the Toa Mangai had been killed off.
The oversight in the story is that even back in the good ol' days, Metru Nui still had a single, unelected leader and robot law-enforcers and everyone was bound to one job their whole life based on what colour they were.
It's something which sounds just fine if you're a kid reading loose story updates and maybe a monthly comic. It's only we, the more active fandom who read deep enough into it to realise that should actualy be horrifying.
Like how Pokemon is basically cockfighting. We just imagine our way around it because we don't want to ruin the fun of the story. I guess (pre-makuta) Metru-Nui is just that one communist dictatorship in a million that happened to work out alright for everyone.

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The oversight in the story is that even back in the good ol' days, Metru Nui still had a single, unelected leader and robot law-enforcers and everyone was bound to one job their whole life based on what colour they were.

It's something which sounds just fine if you're a kid reading loose story updates and maybe a monthly comic. It's only we, the more active fandom who read deep enough into it to realise that should actualy be horrifying.

This coupled with the fact that the virtues the Matoran live by, "Unity, Duty and Destiny" are, if you think about it, almost the polar opposite of liberty, equality and fraternity. Like it or not, Metru Nui basically is a communist dictatorship and the fact that this slipped by the story team is kind of alarming.

I don't necessarily think it's storywise all that bad that Metru Nui is morally grey like this. The unfortunate implications come together only if the story never addresses it as a bad thing, like how Greg sort of made the Order of Mata Nui CIA mixed with the Inquisition and still liked to portray them as purely good guys. From the point of view of the story they were just as pure heroes as the Toa, and I find that troubling. Have we forgotten the part in some web serial where Mazeka straight up murdered a Matoran?

 

In my headcanons I've found a way to somewhat rationalize all of this. Metru Nui's oppressive, paranoid and overprotective regime is suddenly more understandable if you remember what they're trying to protect their citizens from. Face it, even before Mata Nui went to sleep, the Matoran Universe was a wretched hive of chaos and war with no central peacekeeping force to stabilize the world. Not only the Brotherhood of Makuta threatens them, there's also a militarized mafia in the form of the Dark Hunters and all sorts of sociopathic mercenary types.

Tragic as it may be, freedom is a luxury of peacetime.

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