Poll: Do you like Bionicle 2001-2010?

[fishers64]

This one shouldn't be a hard one to answer...right? Go vote! 

[believe victims]

It was a decent story that just happened to drag on too long for what it was, accumulating too much worthless info and bloat. i voted "Yes", because I still thought it did okay for what it was: a nine year story about the power of teamwork and friendship, and raising a giant robot.

 

If you asked me during it, it would depend on when. For much of my time as a fan, I was a kid, and didn't have much in the ways of critical thought (save for dinosaurs; that's always been my thing). Near the end, though, I was generally disillusioned, and began questioning the story's quality.

 

(MNOG is and always will be perfect, though.)

[Jobber]

I liked the G1 Bionicle storyline overall, which is why I choose "yes". But if you were to ask me during said storyline, my answer would be the exact opposite. I only liked the 2001-2005 and 2008 story arks, and completely ignored anything in-between or after.

[Aanchir]

I voted "Strong Yes" and "About the Same". However, that isn't to say classic BIONICLE was flawless. It's just that as such a big part of my childhood, I loved it and still love it in spite of those flaws.

Something I have pretty much always known about G1, though, is that while it was great for me, it was not consistently great for everyone. Not everybody's experience is like mine. I have some very good friends who collected BIONICLE sets for one or two years but never got into the story and never became lifelong fans like I was. So if I criticize BIONICLE G1 for things it did ineffectively, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy it at those times.

I loved the Mata Nui Online Game, and played through the whole thing — but I know there are other people who didn't enjoy it that way or didn't have that kind of patience, and thus missed out on one of the best world-building devices in the theme. I loved the dark tone of the 2007 storyline, but I am well aware that kind of over-the-top broodiness is tantamount to self-parody for a lot of people. I loved the way the BIONICLE Stars paid tribute to fan-favorite sets and made the best of a bad situation, and that's a point where even many of my fellow BIONICLE fans have ALWAYS disagreed with me.

 

Perhaps most importantly, I did not love BIONICLE G1 at the exclusion of all else. I do not for a minute think that enjoying BIONICLE for so long meant that people who didn't enjoy it the same way were stupid or didn't deserve a theme like BIONICLE to cater to them. I've enjoyed too many good stories in my lifetime (including many different types of BIONICLE stories) to think that a good story can only be told one way. So I can't help but roll my eyes when I hear claims that G2's unnamed characters and lack of theme-specific jargon amounts to "dumbing things down", or that characters who suffer from clumsiness or confusion or forgetfulness are too pathetic for anybody to care about, or that character designs need to be covered in greebles and textures to avoid looking cheap or repetitive.

 

BIONICLE was not my only passion. It was not my first and it will not be my last. I have regrets about some of the stupid things I wasted my time on as a BIONICLE fan, like far too many terrible fanfics, and dead-end debates (the fact that BIONICLEsector01 still uses an arbitrary and often nonsensical color index is a testament to how little I achieved in my time there). But I loved the first generation of BIONICLE, and those memories will always be special to me.

Edited March 9, 2015 by Aanchir

[Lyichir]

I voted "yes" and "better than what I chose above". Bionicle was in many ways one of my biggest interests during its run, and if it had lost all appeal to me I probably wouldn't still be active in communities like this. But I'd be lying if I said its appeal hadn't decreased any since its end, if only because so many better things have happened since then and in some ways those put the classic Bionicle's flaws into sharp relief. The CCBS is one of those, turning the previously ramshackle Bionicle building style into an actual system that improves quality, ease of building, and consistent design language across the board. One of those things is The Lego Movie, which managed to tell a more interesting and compelling story than Bionicle without any faux-gravitas or pretentiousness. And even outside of Lego, I've generally matured since then, and been exposed to more things, and Bionicle (especially the classic theme) is nowhere near the core of my interests anymore.

[Fry]

Why would anyone be here if they didn't like Bionicle

[TheSkeletonMan939]

Mmmm....

 

Yeah, strong yes.

 

A lot of people complain that what was once a fantastical world became too complex, too bizarre, and too hard to keep up with, but personally I think those are the best sorts of stories: the multi-layered ones.

 

You could read the comics and have a brief understanding of the story year. Read the books and you discover a lot more about the story year. Read the serials, Greg Q&As, etc., and you've got quite a lot of fun reading to do!

 

Depending on your interest in Bionicle, you could read about it at the level of depth of your choosing.

[fishers64]

Why would anyone be here if they didn't like Bionicle

They could just like Gen 2, and not care for the old Gen 1 stuff. (This poll specifically asks about Gen 1, in case you didn't catch that. )

 

Admittedly, it's a bit early for that sort of bias, but I see it popping up in debate anyway. The best thing to remember is that nostalgia and novelty are both preference adjusters in the positive direction.

[Toa Smoke Monster]

My choices were 'Strong yes' and 'Same as above.' Though the story did have flaws, overall I really enjoyed Bionicle's entire run. I liked reading the books and serials, learning more about characters and seeing where the story went each year. 

 

I also liked the sets, though I did stop collecting them after 08. But I was mainly into the story by that time, which was one of the reasons why I stopped getting them.

[Banana Gunz]

Do I like Gen 1? Of course! Is it perfect? Definitely not, but the good things it brought mean more to me than its flaws and the inspiration behind every idea has truly affected me. Regardless of execution, Bionicle was bold and wasn't afraid of it, and that is most appreciable. If I didn't love old Bionicle, I wouldn't be here.

 

If Gen 1 was still running well... honestly, I chose that I would see it in a worse light than I do now. Of course, it's not a huge difference, but now that it's over, I've chosen to focus more on why I like Bionicle rather than what I dislike about it.

[Sir Kohran]

2001 to 2004 were great. The MNOLG (most of all), the comics, movies and CD tie-ins succeeded in creating a rich, lively, engaging story and world. The earlier years weren't without flaws - the Bohrok stuff was largely pointless in the long run, and the second MNOLG was a major letdown. But generally the first four years were very enjoyable, though that couldn't be said of 2005 due to it dragging out a story that'd already been resolved in the previous year.

 

It was 2006 to 2008 that more or less killed my interest in the line. I never recovered from the decision to shift nearly all the canon story into books I couldn't buy, whilst movies abruptly stopped and games all became non-canon, or the abandonment of the fantasy feel for cringeworthy attempts at extreme darkness and edginess. The alternating between Nuva and Inika was also irritating (why couldn't it just be one team or the other?). A common complaint about later Bionicle is that its story got too complex, and whilst I agree to some extent, I don't think that would've been much of a problem had that story been easier to access and truly enjoyable to experience. Why Lego decided to change Bionicle so much for (what I think was) the worse is something I've never been able to work out.

 

The Bara Magna reboot in 2009 did show some signs of recovery with a fresh location and a new movie, but we all know what news we got that November.

[Ford]

I chose "Strong Yes" and "Depends on when asked during Bionicle's run". Toward 2007ish I started to lose some interest, I must admit. I never really had much access to a compute growing up, so I would miss parts of the story which were available exclusively online. It eventually got to the point where I was only following the story and not getting any of the sets, which changed in 2009. You know how far that went...

The comics were my main dosage of story material, and considering I only got them every two months (unless it's 2008 and 2009, where you would have to wait nearly four months to get any story material whatsoever!) the wait times were almost unbearable!

[Voltex]

I selected "yes", and "stronger than above" - I'm not going to lie, as a kid, Bionicle was probably my Star Wars. I can't count the number of ways it inspired me or influenced me creatively, but it continues to do so to an extraordinary amount even now. That said, looking back on it after all this time I can definitely recognize a variety of flaws with it, and there were always those "off" years (2005, some of 2007, 2009). 

[toa kopaka4372]

I could have sworn there used to be a BIONICLE fandom around here…

 

On a more serious note:

 

“Strong yes” and “About the same.”

 

I loved G1 growing up, and looking back on it 5 years later, still do. To be honest, I thought its execution was so fantastic that there’s very little I would change in terms of its story. Set-wise I know that there was a bit of a drop in quality in the later years and that LEGO has since devised better building systems, but in terms of story? Still absolutely love it, and I will continue to defend it (but not blindly, of course).

 

I did first learn about BIONICLE by reading ‘Tales of the Toa’ in my classroom’s library, though. It was so fun and exciting that I read the other two Chronicles books we had, and from there I set out to learn more about this strange and intriguing universe. I had a friend in school who introduced me to the theme better, even lending me a Matoran set to see how the sets look up close and letting me borrow the Metru Nui guidebook.

 

That guidebook, I think, is really what cemented my permanent love for BIONICLE, and it’s one that my friend ended up letting me keep. I still have it to this day, with its tattered cover and wrinkled pages, on my bookshelf, and I still have a lot of affection for it. The complexity of Metru Nui blew my mind. It was one of the most detailed settings in stories I’d ever come across, complete with the intricacies of mask making, of the transportation system, of the wildlife…my kid self absorbed all of it and was hungry for more. That kind of expansive, detailed wolrd-building is something I came to naturally associate with BIONICLE.

 

 

Following BIONICLE from 2005 onwards was such an incredible, engaging experience, unparalleled by anything else in my childhood. I used to play games on the website, new and old, wait eagerly for every online update, excitedly go to the nearest Toys R Us to get the set of my newest favorite character, be delighted when leaked images of the sets came out, devoured every book I could get my hands on, and then the serials when that became a thing, and in general was utterly entranced by the epic storyline unfolding before me. I remember being genuinely scared for the heroes in 2007, and was stunned when Matoro died, though that was nothing compared to the mind-blow that was 2008. When Bara Magna rolled along as well, I fell in love with it too. Joining BZPower in 2008 introduced me to the wider fandom and made the experience all that more enjoyable (my reaction when  I found out I could actually PM the author of the books I’d been reading….).  Aside from all that, BIONICLE was without a doubt the greatest creative influence of my childhood. I was inspired to do so many things I never would have done otherwise, and it is what inspired such a strong love of writing and reading in me, both fundamental parts of who I am today. All in all, it was a thrilling and happy experience, and I’m grateful that BIONICLE G1 gave that to me.

 

Of course, I’ve now had 5 long years to reflect on G1, with all its merits and flaws, and in the end…I think I may actually have a greater respect for the story now then I did when following it. I have a bit of an unpopular opinion in the fandom, or at least on BZP, namely that 2001-2003 is sometimes overly praised and that whatever came after sometimes unfairly criticized. I don’t know if it’s nostalgia for some or simply the fact that I became a fan during the Metru Nui saga, or both, or neither. But looking at the first three years, they were indeed marvels of great world-building, of establishing atmosphere, of telling a simple yet engaging story. But I do truly think that it was the later years that elevated BIONICLE far beyond the realm of most stories for toylines. Those were the years when characters become noticeably more complex, when the thematic threads of the story became denser and more sophisticated, when the stakes became higher, when the world really fully materialized, and when all the build-up actually paid off. I know people dislike the execution, dislike the abrupt shifts in locations, characters, the darker tone, the over-abundant side plots, and some of the solutions to the original mysteries. That’s perfectly fine; they are all entitled to their opinions, just as I am to mine…and I personally think those years had great storytelling.

 

I do strongly believe that BIONICLE G1 is generally underappreciated by many of its fans, though I do believe that may also be because many didn’t have access to some of its best content, the books. Over the past year, I’ve reread most of the BIONICLE books, and I’m impressed by how much they hold up, sometimes even coming across as better. They’re not Shakespeare, and yes I wish they were longer, and the prose isn’t exactly that of a literary masterpiece…but all of that aside, they are great books, almost all of them. Reading them straight through reveals an extremely cohesive story, one that expertly built on itself, loaded with tons of foreshadowing, smooth exposition that was never overwhelming, lively settings, engaging conflict, compelling characterizations, and some surprisingly consistent themes that are not the Three Virtues, although they can definitely be linked with them. There’s a lot of subtlety and nuance in places I didn’t expect, and I’ve come away with a greater respect and appreciation for the amount of thought, creativity, and imagination that went into crafting this story.  

 

Reflecting on it too, I don’t think the tone shift in 2006 was actually as much of a shift as it’s made out to be. The story had been going down that path from as early as 2003, steadily getting darker and more serious each year. 2006 initially over-did its darkness, as is painfully noticeable in Island of Doom and the comics released at that time, and was the silly tryhard edginess that its critics accuse it of being. It eventually struck a better balance that also helped make the darker portions feel legitimate, not cheesy and the stuff of self-parody, noticeable in the book Dark Destiny. The year even went as far as making the Piraka’s constant backstabbing intentionally comical, and there is a dry wit and comical undertone to Legacy of Evil that makes it such a thoroughly enjoyable read.

 

It was 2007 that really managed to establish that sense of darkness that came across as seriously as it was intended, I think, and the ending of that year was brilliant. Downfall remains one of my favorite BIONICLE books, and a favorite in general, for how beautifully poignant it was, and not just because of Matoro’s death. Everything in that book, especially the individual conflicts and stories of all the characters, came together in a spectacular fashion, and I think it’s a good example of what BIONICLE at its best could achieve.

 

I think there might be a tendency among many, even avid fans, to trivialize BIONICLE’s story because it was, at the end of the day, a story written for toys. But personally, just because a story was originally brought into existence for the purpose of selling merchandise doesn’t mean, to me, that its content was written just for selling toys. There’s a difference. Bob, Greg, all the people that worked on the story, they were chiefly concerned with telling a good story. There was no need for them to go as far as they did, to realize this theme’s world far beyond was is necessary to just sell toys. The ideas they brought to the table were ambitious, perhaps sometimes too ambitious. In the end, though, I think that ambition was realized. I can go back and relive BIONICLE G1’s story on its own, without new set releases, because it holds up perfectly well as that: a flawed, yes, but truly great story nonetheless. 

[Ballom Nom Nom]

As a whole, strong yes throughout. The story definitely declined precipitously in the later years, but the early story was great. Set quality was also very high during the years when I played with completed sets, and by the time the set quality decreased most noticeably I was mainly using the new parts for MOCing, so no negatives there!

 

~B~

[Dorek]

Strong yes, and about the same.

 

I've always liked BIONICLE and the myriad of things it could do; two whole years spent on flashbacks, giant robot twists, alternate universes, it's basically every fun sci-fi/fantasy theme in a killer jumble.

 

Far from perfect, obviously, but for a massive transmedia effort supported almost entirely by a LEGO toy, I think it was pretty phenomenal.

 

I feel like the inconsistency of the serials tended to sour people on it a lot towards the end, which is a shame. 2007's tight, cross-woven storytelling was incredible; 2008 was still pretty good, and allowed for even more worldbuilding, although it came at the expense of focus in the latter half.

 

Still, there was always something to consume with BIONICLE, which was I think its greatest asset; it had something available for everybody who wanted it.

[Saint-14]

Strong yes, about the same

 

I'd say it's harder to like it more than a 'strong yes' would warrant, and I feel the same way about it now as I do in the post, although nostalgia goggles do tend to blur perception.

[Makuta Miras]

Strong yes and higher. 7-9 year old me defies logic.

[steelviper77]

Strong Yes, but lower. I've really only gotten to observe my brother's bionilcles past 2006, and really only been able to appreciate any of it since a few months ago when I started caring again. The books were always too confusing for me to read as a little kid so I never knew the story, just little bits and pieces I could understand from the movies. I sucked at keeping things together so there is probably not a single bionicle in my house from pre 2015 that is assembled anymore, and all of the pieces I deemed "cool" (Usually things like masks or other collectables or set exclusive pieces like bohrok hands) would get lost so quickly I couldn't admire them. I thought Bionicle as a whole was really neat, but I had no way to really appreciate it then, and had it not been for a reboot that I feel gives me a new chance to experience the franchise, I would probably be stuck with buying one or two each wave and then forgetting about it like I did with everything else.

 

I do plan on sometime soon trying to get my hands on the books and actually being able to understand them though, but I don't know if that will influence my opinion since it was entirely founded on how the sets looked.

[The Hip Historian Iaredios]

1. Strong Yes

2. About the same.

 

While I loved Bionicle, I loved other things just as much, such as Star Wars. My interests have grown since then, but the story was pivotal to the building of my character. Judging by my answer, I guess you can tell that while I love a lot of things, Bionicle is still pretty dang high. Its just too cool and interesting. And unlike a lot of people, i actually loved the location change with Bara Magna (there was no reboot here!), as it mixed traditional fantasy elements (minus magic) with what Bionicle had created, and I love genre and elemental fusions (why do you think I drink water all the time?); I apologize for not getting butt-hurt and xenophobic when the story progressed. Even to this day I like the location and try to develop the cultures a bit more in a project I have been working on (banner in signature).

 

 

Anything else that could be said was already well pinned and put by 'toa kopaka472' up above, great job on that.

[MrSciFiGuy]

I loved bionicle in 01 when I first got Tahu, I loved it even when I was frustrated at the Stars sets, and then I loved the serials. I love 01-10 even more now since I can appreciate it all. 

[Nidhiki of the Shadows]

1.) A resounding STRONG YES.

2.) About the same. I enjoyed every year, I have no doubt I would continue enjoying the story if it continued to this day. 

 

Having reread, rewatched, and replayed the entire G1 story not too long ago, I can definitely say it still holds up considerably well. The characters are fun, the narrative plotlines are riveting, the mystery is intriguing and the action is non-stop. The books are very well-written and the films are still extremely entertaining. Its just impressive to see such a well-thought out story and how much it was foreshadowed in the earlier years of the line. Astounding amount of depth to the world and one of the best examples of a successful transmedia approach to storytelling I have ever witnessed. 

 

-NotS

[PokamuTheChexGuy]

Yes/About the same

 

I strongly dislike the set designs from 2005 and after save for a select few. I feel like the story could have had a few things done differently/better and I still feel that the visual atmosphere from 2001-2002 from various posters/commercials and whatnot was the absolute best.

 

Bionicle was a good chunk of my childhood, I can't dislike that.

[LegoSWfan]

For me, 2001-2010 WAS bionicle.

[Toa Doublebee]

I voted "strong yes" and "about the same"

 

 

For me, 2001-2010 WAS bionicle.

 

 

For me 2001-2002 WAS BIONICLE. 2003-2008 was BIONICLE . And 2009-2010 was BIONICLE?

[LegoSWfan]

not really a fan of the glatorian years. tbh.

[doodleloot]

Strong yes and about the same.

Bionicle had a huge influence on me as a kid, I would go so far as to say that it shaped my childhood in a way (in a good way, that is). No other franchise has kept me this interested and invested from the very beginning to even after it ended.