Thread by @M1STERRYAN

last year, i made an exhaustive 307 tweet long thread chronicling the lore of bionicle. it starts much stronger than it ends but it was the most fun i've had on this website and i hope this year will let #BionicleMonth be just as fun.

https://twitter.com/M1STERRYAN/status/1178883738538844160

if you missed out on this thread here it is in a much easier way to check it out threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178883…

i'll be chronicling all of this year's #BionicleMonth drawings in this thread to keep things nice and neat

now i know what you're thinking, and spoilers for last year's thread, but "mr. ryan you covered all of bionicle, you drew a picture that said 'the end' and everything"

yes, but in 2015, bionicle got a reboot!

...but i want to take a look at this part of the timeline real quick

so imagine this, you're getting into middle school, one of your favorite things just ended, and you're at an age where toys are starting to not be cool anymore. this won't actually happen, but bear with me. you walk by the toy aisle at walmart and see a bionicle(?) named william

i actually don't remember if i was getting into middle school or deep into middle school at this point, but i like to keep everyone on their toes.

anyway, my interest in hero factory was not quantifiable

*at the time*

homies were just the Stars sets but with a different aesthetic, something which, according to some, would not be enough to save the Stars

i'm gonna be here real quick, but i'm not here for negativity

i've been thinking a lot about how there's a lot of things that i never got into because i wasn't the right age at the right time. in 2011, bionicle was a decade old, it was inconceivably obtuse with so much lore and story and it's asking a child (or adult) a lot to get into it

i don't think i could ever get someone my age Into bionicle. they can appreciate it and respect it but i could be wrong but i'm not sure if i could make a Fan. and with the massive monolith that bionicle was, Lego was probably thinking the same thing

so they did the unthinkable and took the leftovers from their last year of bionicle, and gave it a......

....simplified story.

no obtuse names borrowing from polynesian culture, no thousands of years of villains scheming.

just heroes named preston saving the day

so i've been ragging on the Real Names these dudes have and i'm being facetious, their last names or code names or whatever were their "actual" names

so william was called William Furno, or just Furno.

so interesting thing, these 7 folks were the only heroes in the Hero Factory toy line. They get a ton of different versions and armors but it's just that 7 and a massive swath of Monster of the Week style Villains. no time skips, no 12 different Red Dudes. Simple

They also got mini figures, which were some of the coolest minifigs around. The legs were pretty fragile though :/

I’ll be back tomorrow

anyways hello welcome back to #bioniclemonth

one of the problems with drawing something i don't know 100% about at 2 in the morning is that i will get things wrong, and i forgot about two of the hero factory heroes. so here they are to cover my butt

i think the most important part about this was that these heroes weren't the only heroes in the lore, they were just one team out of hundreds. this encouraged the all important Custom Fan Made character shtick. that being said, kids are gonna do it regardless

With that in mind, here’s my hero factory hero, Jefferson Coldfusion. He’s the hero with the fattest butt

jefferson coldfusion looks a little different from previous bionicle builds, because hero factory would take on a building system with a new range of parts, focused almost entirely on ball and socket pieces.

early on, bionicle had a new batch of core parts every year that made the previous one somewhat obsolete, the Character and Creature Building System (CCBS) was a safe and easy means of making an actual building system that didn't do that sort of thing.

the ccb system had only minor variations as time went on but it pretty much stayed the same, and was, for better or worse, relatively versatile

jefferson coldfusion

jefferson coldfusion having a giant dump truck butt is not just a bit, i made him that way to point out a somewhat annoying flaw in early ccbs sets: that they are completely devoid of details on the backside at times

another problem with the ccbs system is that if you want to mitigate that problem and really bulk up your hero, it'll be left with very little range of movement, as the armor parts will easily block joints and make it somewhat fragile

this makes it seem like the ccbs is bad and that's totally not true. despite its shortcomings, it gracefully pulls off interesting designs like the splitter beast from hero factory's Invasion From Below line

the invasion from below line was the one that had normal sized ccbs builds but they were mechs piloted by the minifigs i talked about earlier. while there was lots of humanoid mechs in the series we got some slight variety that the ccbs easily allowed

the ccbs also brought out some really small parts that are incredibly valuable to someone like me, who has been trying to make the smallest Bionicle possible

this little dude is but a teeny tiny testament to the versatility of the ccb system, those pieces comfortably fit with parts that are almost 5 or more years older than them

They also play well with parts possibly almost a decade older than them

I also have a purple little guy who is in need of a new left hand

but yeah my Defense of Hero Factory more or less became an introduction to the ccb system

here is a simple rundown of my thoughts on it.

now why am i talking about the ccbs so much? because that 2015 bionicle reboot featured, in my opinion, the most graceful usage of that system

and so, let's talk about the reason for the season

so what do you get when you mix the iconic look and mechanics of bionicle with the modern, versatile system of hero factory?

really close to perfection

the ccb system was going in full force with this reboot, going as far as it could to give each toa a different silhouette. kopaka and tahu were really tall, onua was incredibly wide, and pohatu was a shrimp

the reboot also gave onua purple accents, a genius move

the reboot borrowed a trick from i'm gonna guess 2012 era hero factory where they use the shoulder joints as armor joints, but this time they put a gear system in there as well, so that every toa had a simple action feature, just like the good ol days

the gear system was also incredibly snug and well made, so that the action arms would only move if you turned the main gear, preventing a problem that early toa had where they would flail uncontrollably if you didn't do some custom fiddling around

the reboot also made excellent use of a piece that had been around for a while, but in my opinion, not used to it's full capacity until this point. the Technic Liftarm 1x3 with Ball Joint in Middle let a limb piece have armor on the front AND back, adding some much needed chunk

and what would bionicle be without a bunch of Little Guys? the Protectors were about half a toa in size, but all had different body types and constructions. some were really simple some had more going on. meanwhile, Korgot the Earth Protector, had a stud shooter for a torso

they were the matoran/turaga equivalent but they were also like, at least twice the size of most of the original bionicle's matoran

also korgot was a girl, which really isn't that important but for bionicle it was a big deal because she isn't Blue

alright.

remember how the very first wave of bionicles had a mask that was held to the toa's face with a lego stud, and there was a "game" involving knocking each other's masks off? remember how they eventually got rid of that, in favor of more sturdy axle based masks?

well, the bionicle reboot did away with the axle masks and went with new masks that fit into the temples of the toa's head instead

this made them very unreliable and felt very insecure

Now my PhD in Bionicle would be for nothing if I didn’t have some kind of solution

So you wanna take a rubber band, preferably the ones from the Bohrok sets, and tuck it under the chin. Then put the mask on, making sure it goes over the little tongs. Then wrap it around twice. Hopefully, it’ll hold

should we have to do this to keep it secure? of course not. are they still cool? for sure. that gives you all the more reason to find whatever trick you can to keep them secure

hello and welcome back to #bioniclemonth the month where i talk about and draw bionicles

this is a positive thread full of joy but i've actually been saying mean things about bionicle these past few tweets

and i'm gonna do it one last time

the toa all had different masks, but the protectors had the same one. it's no big deal and i'm sure it saved money on making new molds

but as they say, variety is the spice of life and this kinda tasted like wasp dinner

okay angry ranting over, it's time for something pretty good

to coincide with the toy line, lego came out with animated shorts going over the lore and storyline of the bionicle reboot. they had a crisp clean style that almost perfectly translated the ccb system to illustration

you can watch them here, they're pretty fun and even better, very short. there's also some pretty funny moments from the narrator who voices every character

there's also some interesting easter eggs scattered about the series, mostly just the mask of time, if my memory is correct

let me just say that seeing the original mask of time while these episodes were rolling out was pretty nuts. sadly as far as i know, nothing would really come from it

tahu is very likable

the first wave of bionicle 2015 had the 6 toa and the 6 protectors, and they each came with the villains of the wave: the skull spiders. they were masks with lego bars along the sides that allowed for clip legs to be attached to make a 4 legged spider

if you got a toa set you'd get your guy with their normal colored mask, a gold version of that mask, and a skull spider mask. a pretty neat deal in my opinion but it also leaves the series with really wimpy villain

this would be like if they didn't make bohrok and just had their little krana be the villain for 2002

that's of course, a lie. there was another set for 2015 and it was the lord of the skull spiders. he was the massive commander of the legions of skull spiders

alright maybe i was stretching the truth there too, because the lord of the skull spiders was about half a tahu in size

don't believe me, here's a screenshot of a jangbricks video about the set

i know, i know

i took a break for the day not just for personal reasons but just because i want to make sure i'm getting everything correct here. i already made some mistakes with the hero factory thing but that's okay because i don't have a PhD in hero factory

i remember hearing somewhere that food metaphors are bad but let's imagine the storytelling of gen 1 and 2 of bionicle as delicious cakes where the pastry part is the story and the icing is the lore

i really have a lot less to talk about to get right into the reboot's story

don't think of this as a slight against either run of bionicle, gen 1 has an entire decade of every conceivable piece of media behind it and gen 2 was around for just 2 years, doing what it could

and by "what it could" i mean an 18 animated shorts, a comic that i never managed to find when it was coming out (quite typical of bionicle, i wouldn't have it any other way, and a few episodes of a cg animated netflix series

okay so let's talk about this story now

having hundreds of thousands of years of backstory can get confusing so the reboot takes certain parts of gen 1's original story and slightly changes them. the parts it takes the most inspiration from would be the original year's premise, as it was before the lore kicked in

instead of the godlike beings mata nui and makuta, our story begins with a pair of noble mask makers on the island of Okoto.

these brothers are named Ekimu and uh Makuta

ekimu wears the mask of creation, and makuta wears the mask of control

in contrast to gen 1's mask making being a humble but still important blue collar carving/smelting job, the reboot's mask makers were incredibly important blacksmiths who could fuse the elements into metal

i don't think they were actually gods but they might as well have been

there's also some production art of makuta with silver as his dominant color, and i like that a lot.

it also works really well for his character, because he was tired of being second place to ekimu. it's like poetry

ekimu's masks were the toast of the town, which lead makuta to seethe with envy towards his brother.

very simple stuff going on here, no million year old secret plot to take over the gigantic planet sized robot living under the earth.

as far as i know.

this would lead makuta to break one of the sacred rules of mask making that banned the infusing a mask with more than one of the islands elements.

combining all six elements of fire, ice, water, earth, stone, and jungle, makua created the Mask of Ultimate Power

quick aside,

all the gen 1 green guys were the toa of air, but in gen 2, Lewa was the Toa of The Jungle

i guess it makes sense because air is everywhere and the toa are all kinda based off of a biome

we get a quick lil joke about it in the animated shorts though

anyways makuta would don the the Mask of Ultimate Power and would be transformed and corrupted

okay another quick aside

spoilers i guess but we never got an actual physical Mask of Ultimate Power. a gold prototype would be made but that's about it. that would also be one of the best visuals on the mask we could get. otherwise, the it's always hidden in clouds of shadow

there's also some concept art of the mask that shows streaks of energy of the six elements wrapping around the mask. it was woefully not used as the final design but i guess it would make for a brittle toy and a headache to animate

also it's a very descriptive name that doesn't leave any questions to what it can do but "the Mask of Ultimate Power" probably deserves a name with more panache

and before you try to throw a "well mr. ryan it was a children's toy line of course names are gonna be simple" i will agree with you but also point to any of the names that the previous iteration came up with

this would not be the end of easy to read names though

speaking of "for kids", just so we're clear here, i have no real problems with easy names. i like weird creative stuff, but something like Lord of Skull Spiders is 1: an actual group words that a child might be learning and 2: not close to profiting off of cultural appropriation

that's also not to say that lego is still doing that. i'm pretty sure they're still doing the whole thing where they uhh ask first before using aspects of a culture they're not familiar with

ANYWAYS

makuta was just envious, and he only made the mask as a means to be seen as better than ekimu. however, putting that incredibly powerful mask on turned his envy into evil rage.

makuta was becoming unstable not just emotionally but physically. that much power in one mask could destroy the island of okoto.

ekimu did what had to be done and confronted his wrathful brother

with a mighty swing of his hammer, ekimu knocks the mask of ultimate power off of makuta's face. the unstable mask then explodes, nearly destroying half of the capital city of okoto, and sending the other half into a rift to the Shadow Realm

no not that one

the explosion scattered the six golden masks of power, as well as ekimu's lifeless body.

he was found by the protectors, who would hear his spirit whisper a prophecy of 6 heroes arriving from the stars to use the masks and save okoto

little bit of revision here, the shockwave also knocked ekimu's mask of creation off, so it was lost too

anyways, the protectors put a standard mask on ekimu's body and entombed him in the Great Forge in the City of the Mask Makers and retreated back to their displaced villages

a thousand years would pass, and a hoard of skull spiders would begin to wreak havoc on Okoto.

outnumbered and outgunned, the Protectors joined together to perform a ritual to ask for help from the stars at the Temple of Time

no, not that one

i am going to talk about the protectors for a moment

it really isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things, but the dudes on the left are not the same bionicles as the dudes on the right

a Protector is a job that's passed down from parent to child at some point in their life.

at some point, gen 1 of bionicle did almost everything it could to shy away from romance and procreation but the reboot just goes and gives everyone a pair of loving parents

now i think the main reason i couldn't tell the two pairs of protector groups apart is because, sadly, as i've complained before, all the protectors have the same exact mask

these two characters live a thousand years apart from each other but the story tells us what they do literally seconds apart

just a different mask between them, that's all i ask

when budget and time constraints are a big factor of the production of a piece of media i think a lot of slack is deserved in criticism of it.

however, the mata nui online game from 2001 has more visual variety in a group scene than something that happened over a decade later

i am being mean and i am sorry bionicle

anyways after the protectors' ritual, six comets would crash onto the island of okoto

and so, the toa would arrive

the reboot sets never came in the plastic canisters like the original bionicles did so we don't get a little nod to the first wave of toa and have the new ones crash to okoto in a canister looking thing, the toa themselves are the comets and they just hit the earth

this is not a complaint about the reboot, could you imagine the size of the canister that Onua could fit into comfortably after you've assembled him

hello welcome back to #BionicleMonth

after the toa crash land onto okoto, the protectors educated them on who they are and what their task is

that task at the moment being recover the golden masks of power, so that they can stop the skull spider invasion

long story short, they get the golden masks

i am going to talk about the golden masks now

originally, the golden masks were awarded to the toa when they collected each of their great kanohi masks. the golden mask, while being a rare "chase" mask for bionicle fans to get in real life, granted the toa all 6 of the powers of the great kanohi masks

the reboot's masks of power just gave the toa the power of their element, and the golden masks were the same thing but without training wheels

they weren't bad though

aside from lookin snazzy and making them mighty, the golden masks also had a telepathic connection with ekimu's spirit, so that he could act like a much needed guide for the 6 heroes of okoto

the spirit of ekimu would tell the toa to go to the city of the mask makers, to stop the evil that was festering there.

and that's where the toa meet each other for the first time

right at the gateway of the city of the mask makers, the lord of skull spiders attacks the toa

but with their combined power, the toa defeat him with ease

without a big evil spider in their way, the toa enter the city of the mask makers. but they weren't alone

this would mark the end of what i will call chapter one of part one of the bionicle reboot. despite some shortcomings, i think it started strong. simple, but strong

the complaints of 2015's bionicle not having enough Bad Guys was made irrelevant by the second batch of dudes to come out that year: the Skull Raiders. under the leadership the massive Kulta the Skull Grinder, they had taken residence of the abandoned city of the mask makers

the skull raiders line introduced two new masks and two new parts to accentuate their skeletal properties.

we got a limb piece that mimics a radius/ulna bone and an armor piece that looks like a ribcage

the skull soldier had a really neat ""bow and arrow"" with a stud shooter that worked really well

these dudes really worked well with the ccb system if only because without the armor parts, your system is just a skeleton.

so it makes perfect sense to make a bunch of skeleton dudes with less armor pieces than their bulk toa contemporaries

was this a lazy move? i wouldn't say so, a few of the skull raiders' parts count went towards an interesting action feature rather than chunkiness

but, if i had to say it was lazy, it was lazy in such a way where i look at the designers and go

the skull raiders got the upper hand a few times, and they stole some of the toa's masks to corrupt and drain power from

the sets for these skull raiders came with a corrupted toa mask that was a blend of gold and a transparent accent color matching the raider and the mask's toa

Some of the toa who would get a corrupted mask didn’t have enough gold armor (Pohatu) to make for a perfect ensemble when they wore it,

but they were pretty neat in general

alright i wanted this to be a fully positive thread and i've already broken that rule a couple times but i'm gonna do it just once more real quick

it's probably an unfair comparison due to the parts count, but it is a little bit heinous that the over a decade old Nui Jaga managed to have poseable legs and the skull scorpio, with god and ccbs by it's side, didn't

also the skull scorpio's tail stinger is annoying to draw

quick aside about the skull slicer, he was apparently a sports champion back when he was alive, but he was revived and enslaved by the lord of skull spiders and enlisted in the skull raider army

the toa defeat him in an arena very similar to the one we see in metru nui in gen 1 but i think it would have been neat to have the skull slicer come back, struggling to remember his past as an athletic hero of okoto

a set of that champion version of him would've been cool too

there's some lore that says that his swords were permanently welded to his hands but that's not the case for the toy or the animated shorts he showed up in

anyways i've gotten slightly ahead of myself here

after the toa beat the lord of the skull spiders, ekimu's spirit contact's tahu's mind to tell him to find his resting place and bring the mask maker back to life

this lead the toa on their journey through the city of the mask makers, where they would have a handful of battles with the skull raiders

earlier i made a mistake and said that ekimu's tomb was in the great forge, but his tomb was down the street from the forge. close enough

during their battles with the skull raiders the toa obviously lost their masks, but i think it's very interesting just how much screen time is given to the maskless toa. it's only split second but back in my day masklessness in bionicle was like, i dunno, nudity or somethin

speaking of masklessness here is a #bioniclemonth public service announcement

the concept of Unity is no stranger to bionicle, though the reboot kind of just makes it "fight something at the same time" and even then that isn't the solution

speaking of unity, when the toa finally get to ekimu's tomb, they combine their elemental energy and resurrect the mask maker

in the animated short of the toa resurrecting ekimu, the narrator says a quick line about how the toa never met ekimu before but they all seemed to have known him well, as though they in fact have met him

they don't seem to follow up on this and it is best not to dwell on it.

despite doing what they set out to do, the toa brought ekimu back from the dead just a little too late. someone was using the Great Forge, and the only mask maker in town had been dead for a thousand years until just now.

Kulta the Skull Grinder, the leader of the skull raiders, was priming the forge to destroy the mask of creation

this was maybe not the best thing to be happening

with ekimu on their side, the toa raced to the great forge. but the skull basher, kulta's bovine lieutenant, was waiting for them.

onua rushes in

if you were watching the shorts and expecting a big choreographed battle of the 5 other toa working together to defeat the skull basher

at the risk of sounding like a jerk to the group that made this under probably very strict time limits, join the club

having beaten the skull basher, the toa and ekimu confront kulta, though they get more than they bargained for when he puts the mask of creation on

ekimu ordered the toa to buy him some time as he rummaged through his things from ancient times, looking for a means to defeat the super powered skull grinder. the toa were merely waves crashing against a mountain of skeletal wrath

in the short, while ekimu is looking around his things, there's an old kanohi hau in the background

for a mask gifted with the power to create, the mask of creation made kulta strong enough to break the toa's golden masks

weakened by their masklessness, the toa struggled to hold kulta back. but thankfully, they bought ekimu the time he desperately needed

ekimu's hammer filled him with power and all the dirt and dust covering him crackled off his body and he shot energy from it like a gatling gun

the actual physical hammer toy just had a shooter that launched teeny tiny lego studs so it wasn't as impressive as it sounds

after stunning kulta, ekimu charges him and knocks the mask of creation off his head with his mighty gatling gun hammer

the day is saved, ekimu dons his mask of creation, and fixes the toa's broken masks

and that was the end of the first year of the bionicle reboot

i am going to talk about this first year and some things i liked and didn't like

right off the bat i'm not a fan of lewa's and gali's new masks

i never want to be called a genwunner who hates anything new but there's something about the new masks that doesn't have the same vibe as the older ones, lewa especially

the other masks were flawlessly updated for the modern age so it's upsetting that these two didn't get quite the same treatment

i am not a fan of the rhetoric used to describe the skull raiders in this biosector01 page on them. this may be more criticism on the site than the reboot itself but it could have been very easy to just make them mindless zombies brought to life by makuta and not """savages"""

This actually makes the lack of lore a strength for the reboot that it unfortunately didn’t make the most of. When I watched the shorts, I thought the skull raiders were dead okotans controlled but Makuta. Leaving some things to imagination leads to less yikes moments, I think

There’s also this description in the “skull army” article so that’s a head scratcher

The idea of the skull raiders being called savages suggests that ekimu may not be the nicest guy, which would be bold but also add too much complication to this simple story

Speaking of skull raiders, I think it’s very funny that Makuta ordered/ controlled Kulta to destroy the mask of creation, and not capture it and use its power

Reboot Makuta is just very petty I guess and I dig it

I almost completely forgot about the mobile game that came out for the 2015 line

It was a good Train Ride game where you just mindlessly tap on spiders but there was so much to do that i havent unlocked ekimu, let alone clear the first chapter for any of the toa

You can’t get the app anymore but uh I still have it because I have a PhD in bionicle 😏

if you were wondering about what happened to kulta and the skull raiders, after this they kinda just disappear. there's a novel that says that he ran away to the skull raiders underground hideout but for 2016, he's Gone

that's okay though because there was a new bad guy working for makuta in town

meanwhile, ekumi used his mask of creation to create new armor and masks for the toa. a little more gold or silver, and a little more organic, this would be their Uniter form.

pohatu even got taller

and is that an old Nuva symbol i see?

there was, however, unfortunately, sadly, a small problem. the uniters' action feature gimmick was a waist swivel that made way for more interesting poses that a bionicle just couldn't do

this meant they all had gears on their butts.

there was also a much more personal problem. i don't have any of the uniters. man, i don't have any of the 2016 sets. they just, weren't around me. i couldn't find them anywhere near me, so i could only look on in envy. but only slight envy, those butt gears are kinda lame, dude

nowadays with the magic of the the internet i can EASILY find myself a 2016 bionicle set.

but at what cost?

anyways the toa getting new armor was the start of the new tie-in media for 2016: the Journey to One. it's a 5 episode cgi show that tells the story of the winter and summer bionicle lines

any show that is under 10 episodes gets an A+ from me but the Journey to One has its ups and downs. the mix of 3d animation for the characters and 2d for their powers looks neat, the voice acting is very sleepy, etc

i'm getting into tin foil territory here but JTO feels like it's trying to get lots of people to like it and so it feels corny at times

this is in contrast to Mask of Light: The Movie, the Citizen Kane of Cinema, which was made to appeal to nobody on earth but bionicle fans

back on track, a long time ago, back when Ekimu was making the golden masks of power, he needed elemental crystals to imbue them with, and so he went to the dragon-like guardians of the elements, the uh, Creatures of the Elements.

as Uniters, the toa were to join forces with these creatures to increase their power tenfold

if you like bionicle but you haven't seen the show, i will give you a forwarning that pohatu is not the gruff grumpy dude he was in the shorts in this

he gets better by episode 4 (of 5 lmao) but he starts off incredibly mean to his scorpion who just wants to save the day

i think it's fine to have this but i also think it would be much much better to have him be averse to fusing with Ketar because he's afraid of scorpions but he never outright says that, he just hates him

this isn't to say that pohatu isn't gruff or grumpy anymore, he is.

the man is just also out of his mind rude

anyways, the elemental creatures were also important because they found makuta's old Mask of Control and hid it away inside a place called the uh, Maze of Control

this mask had the power to control minds and transform things, so it could be a dangerous tool in the wrong hands

speaking of The Wrong Hands, Umarak the Hunter was working with/for Makuta to capture one of the elemental creatures and find the mask of control.

an ancient being as old as Okoto itself, Umarak was able to manipulate and travel through shadows with his Hunter Mask

makuta was trapped in the shadow realm so he needed minions on okoto to carry out his tasks

he was a lot more proactive in the JTO, if only because we see him represented as a flaming shadow to talk with umarak several times

no! not that one!

here gen 1 purists here's your cookie

hate that takua drawing because it looks very...

you know

quick caveat, if you're a grandma and you're into bionicle

my dms are open

so where was i?

ah yes

umarak was like a little bit of boba fett, a little bit of starscream he's good i thought he was alright

umarak commanded a small horde of shadow traps, which came in all of the elemental creatures' sets and were like skull spiders mixed with bear traps.

and so that's basically the setup for the Journey to One show. toa get an upgrade an some pets, okoto gets a new ancient villain, and they're all after the mask

lmao

this mans wearin a pizza topping

i keep getting side tracked

anyways, the toa have to unite with the elemental creatures and i'm gonna save us all some time and say They Do. the creatures are located in very similar locations to where the golden masks were found.

gali has to deal with a whirlpool both times

the creatures were powerful and territorial, so the issue of uniting with them couldn't be solved with might, the toa would have to humble themselves before the creatures to gain their trust.

this made the prideful tahu and the stubborn pohatu have a bit of a hard time joining forces with their creatures

meanwhile the friendly lewa and the humble onua befriended their creatures basically as soon as they met

gonna talk about onua for a lil bit

if you remember last year's #bioniclemonth thread, i briefly mentioned that onua and pohatu's elements of earth and stone are quite similar and are usually visually represented in a similar way, perhaps to the point of redundancy between them.

the reboot, and the Journey To One show specifically, make a much better effort to visually separate pohatu's and onua's powers by having pohatu manipulate rocks and sand, and onua manipulate purple crystals that erupt from the ground

I think this is a much better step in the right direction, if only because purple crystals look pretty

Another thing about Onua, the 2015 shorts personified him as a bit of an oaf, who speaks slowly and simply but Is very strong. However, the JTO show has him as maybe the wisest of the toa, even moreso than Gali, who is usually relegated the position of “the wise one”

This is great for Onua because I really like him in the show, but maybe not great for Gali, because they don’t really give her much of a personality. Not even just “the girl one” she’s just kinda there and maybe quips a bit, just like everyone else

anyways when the toa first fuse with their elemental creatures, they're given a vision of a massive door in the middle of an even more massive shifting labyrinth

this is the cleverly named maze of control, and where they would need to go next

however, makuta was probably forcing umarak to be a little more proactive than he usually would be during a hunt, because lewa would clash with umarak while he was befriending Uxar, the elemental creature of the jungle

using tendrils of shadow, umarak forced uxar to fuse with him, and he would get a glimpse of the maze

this glimpse, and makuta's knowledge of things, would have umarak needing to capture an elemental creature again, so he can get his hands on the mask of control.

the clever hunter was going to find a weak point in the toa's unity and exploit it

and boy did he find one

and so, from the shadows, umarak would watch as the toa made their way to their destination

just wanna take a moment to complain that i have to draw 12 good guys in a scene if i want to include everyone and that's starting to lose its fun

there's a scene in the show where umarak ambushes the toa with shadow clones to feel out where the weak link is. they weren't much of a match for the toa, but umarak was off in the distance, watching. this is where he learns that pohatu doesn't work well with ketar.

now say it with me folks

no,

not that one

anyways, the toa's journey leads them to an island off the coast of okoto, and this is, in my opinion where things get really good

for one thing, they all have a race to the island that shows off their powers in fun ways

alright, so let's imagine it is 2016 and you're a bionicle fan and you haven't been into the reboot very much. it's very simplistic and is lacking the real lore and mysticism that the original had and that's really your only problem with it

i would like to think that the island the toa go to that is just a massive crater with a maze carved into it would be maybe something to jumpstart any lost interest

the maze of control was a shifting labyrinth filled with traps, it was linked to the toa, and may or may not have came from space like the toa did. In my opinion, it had the most potential for lore and intrigue out of everything in the reboot

the traps in the maze were basically just giant floating stone cubes trying to smash the toa, and they do a somewhat decent job at it

after some Antics, the toa come across a huge room a door on the floor with six familiar symbols surrounding it.

i forgot to mention it earlier but the tilework on the floor and walls of the maze would light up when someone was walking near it, it's pretty neat

without another way out, gali tries to read the writing on the floor around them. the writing suggests the room is a puzzle, but she doesn't get quite enough time to finish it because more stone cubes start accosting the toa

pohatu finally uses whatever amount of brain was given to him and remembers that the stone blocks that are falling on him and his allies are made of stone, something that he and ketar have the power to control.

so, they fuse and whip up a sandstorm to take care of things

after pohatu and ketar stop the stone cubes, gali gets a moment to read a riddle about uniting and standing like a compass, which lewa easily figures out because he knows what colors are

so there was a bit of a syntax error a few tweets ago that i didn't notice but the big room they're in doesn't have a door in the middle. i misremembered and thought i fixed it after fact checking it turns out i didn't. pretty bad typo there too. my bad

anyways with the united toa standing on their symbols, the floor opens up in front of them leading to a darkened basement. pohatu removes ketar from his back as soon as he's allowed to, which is maybe the worst mistake he could make at the moment

maybe with their combined power, pohatu and ketar could have held off umarak, or even defeated him. but the hunter captured ketar, forced him to fuse with him, and overpowered the toa of stone with his own element

with pohatu easily dispatched, umarak escapes from the maze with the mask of control in hand

pohatu, fueled by either rage or his newfound friendship with ketar, chases closely behind him

at the top of the cliffs above the maze, pohatu demonstrates his connection with ketar by helping him separate from umarak by sheer force of will.

umarak, would still have the upper hand though, and give pohatu the decision to defeat makuta, or save ketar's life.

and so pohatu became a loser for the right reason

the toa return to the city of the mask makers emptyhanded but still in good spirits

meanwhile, hidden away from prying eyes, umarak the hunter has a meeting with makuta, where he decides he's going to take the mask of control for himself, and become self employed

so, makuta shows off how powerful he is by using the mask of control not only without wearing it, but also being in another dimension. now i don't know if he uses the mask to manipulate umarak into putting the mask on, or if that was just umarak's greedy hubris

regardless, umarak puts the mask on and makuta uses it to distort and corrupt his body into a goliath of a creature. now a mindless servant of makuta, umarak the destroyer had a mission to lead an army to turn okoto to rubble

umarak the destroyer was one of the larger sets from the second half of 2016 and had the gimmick of a jaw piece attached to the bottom of a head to make it and a mask look like a giant gaping maw

conceptually, i love this idea. having a glowing skull in a giant mouth is just great

however, in excecution, there's a lot of dead space under the mask, so it sometimes looks like a kid wearing a fake beard that's too big

the other sets that would have this jaw piece were the lava, storm, and quake beasts of the shadow horde that umarak commanded. similar to the original bohrok sets from 2002, these three beasts were just three flavors of thousands of beasts that stormed across okoto

the show does an interesting thing with the beasts by making them basically immortal unless their masks are broken, so having tons of them was certainly overdoing things on makuta's part. we've already established him as very petty though so it's not unexpected

the shadow horde was just a distraction though. something to keep the toa busy while umarak searches for the fragments of the mask of ultimate power, or the Forbidden Mask, as the journey to one show calls it.

i like that name better

the fragments of the mask could reopen a portal to the shadow realm (no not that one) and let makuta come back to okoto and begin his reign as the Dark Lord

no, not that one.

now, come with me. it is time for a quick detour

if you remember, the first run of bionicle had all of the good people of the world follow the virtues of unity, duty, and destiny. the matoran and toa must all stick together, do their purpose in the world, and uh, fulfill their destiny somehow

scholars have spent less time philosophizing over the concept of christianity's holy spirit than i have of the ethereal idea of destiny in bionicle

but anyways the animated shorts had a quick scene where the toa are trapped underground in their darkest moment and they are reminded of their Duty to the people of okoto who asked them for help

and while it's less about a nation of people being united, and more robot super heroes wearing animals on their backs, the entire toyline for the beginning of 2016 was all about Unity

and so the second half of 2016 did everything it could to be about Destiny

you know what, fine

YES

that one

but how, you ask, was this made to be about destiny?

well, we don't find this out until a little bit later, but a very long time ago there was a prophecy made that was basically every single event that has happened in gen 2 of bionicle so far, and what will happen

and since they're basically gods but not really gods, ekimu and makuta know this prophecy, but were sworn to keep it secret. however, that didn't mean makuta wouldn't try to push things in his favor while relying on ekimu keeping the toa oblivious to the future

so when the city of the mask makers is attacked by the shadow horde, ekimu knew it was going to happen.

and ekimu also knew that onua would retreat during a lull in the battle to talk about his suspicions of the motivations of the attack.

ekimu then calls Agil, the hawklike creature of light, and becomes a glowing crystalline toa

toa ekimu was the other large set for 2016, and came with a simply beautiful transparent blue mask of creation

alright where's my tin foil hat

there it is

with ekimu having the knowledge of everything that is ever going to happen means that it's easy and fun to assume that since he knows that bad things are going to happen to people and that he hasn't done anything about it, ekimu is actually a bad guy

and while that's a fun exercise in rewatching things, i think maybe that is bionicle fans grasping for some kind of excessive depth in their story. which is good!

but as we should know by now, gen 2 of bionicle is bionicle with training wheels

so when a conversation like what's shown here happens, it's more than likely intended to be taken at face value.

gettin real into tin foil territory here but i feel this conversation also makes it so that ekimu isn't stepping on any important toes

ekimu's hawk, Agil, had been following umarak during his search for the forbidden mask shards, and he was getting close to accomplishing his goal. in fact, umarak was already on his way to where the Capital City used to be, before it was sent to the shadow realm (no not that one)

if you have any doubts about destiny being the theme of the second half of 2016, the toa leave the elemental creatures to defend the city of the mask makers from the shadow horde because it's so important to stop umarak from letting makuta back to okoto

capital city used to be in the region of stone, and that's exactly where the toa would find umarak

umarak summons a bunch of shadow beasts and it is here that we find the fun fact that ekimu isn't all that great at fighting. it doesn't really come into play later, but it's kinda funny

if you've seen the show you may notice that i have jumped around a fair bit because the toa meet umarak and then they fight and then he runs away, and THEN they fight in the desert, and i'm basically stitching two fights together and ignoring an episode break

so in this big fight against umarak and the shadow horde, in the middle of the desert, pohatu envelopes himself in stones and creates a massive sandstorm and creates an earthquake that wipes out the platoon of shadow beasts

somebody on the writing team was really looking forward to making pohatu use the desert at full power and say "this is my house" and i do not blame them

as a reminder, umarak's goal was to find the shards of makuta's broken mask of ultimate power, and bring them to the site of the results of ekimu's and makuta's fight: The Black Crater.

no not that one

unfortunately, the toa would not make it in time to stop umarak

from the depths of the black crater (not that one), a massive crystal mountain would form, and inside this mountain, a portal to the shadow realm (not that one) would begin to form.

the top of the mountain, umarak started a ceremony with the forbidden mask shards, but the toa weren't far behind

the toa attack umarak but the shadow portal is growing stronger and its influence seemingly severed their connection to okoto's elements

using tendrils of shadow, umarak captures the toa, but ekimu and agil unite and use the full force of their power to bathe the area in light

this blast of energy reverts ekimu back to his Small Fry Mode, and agil is no where to be seen

this blast also weakend umarak, if only for a moment or two

gali rushes in

however, gali gets grabbed by a giant hand made of dark energy, and her soul is shlorped into the shadow realm

in the shadow realm, gali sees the dark lord makuta preparing to invade okoto. there were some okotans who had been trapped in the initial blast that created the shadow realm who were loyal to makuta, and they made up a small part of his army

makuta is also wearing a dark version of the forbidden mask and i do not know why, i am sorry

meanwhile, in the light world, the toa fight umarak to prevent him from finishing the ritual, hopeful that gali will return soon. during the fight, umarak destroys their weapons, but they vow to fight for as long as it takes

a very scientific graph of my findings on this weaponless fight scene

just for clarification this scene is like two seconds long

also, the toa say gali a lot in this part of the show and they pronounce it like "tally" or "cali" and not like "gah-lee" like how it's been pronounced for over 15 years at that point.

not sure if this is the right way to pronounce it but i haven't found any proof of that yet

speaking of gali, while she was in the shadow realm, she discovered the prophecy that only ekimu and makuta know. you know, the one that tells everything that happened and what is going to happen? the Destiny one? yeah that one.

now that she knew the prophecy, gali knew exactly what she had to do and where she had to be

back in the light world, things were looking grim. umarak was easily beating the toa hand to hand (or rather hand to claw), and the portal just needed one last piece of the puzzle for the ritual to be complete. and that puzzle piece was umarak.

umarak's body was turned to dust and his corrupted mask of control was absorbed into the portal above, and the realm of darkness was now open to the public

two things would come out of the crystal in the center of the portal, half of makuta's body, and gali's spirit

while makuta struggled to push his way through the crystal, gali tells the other toa what they must do to stop him

as it turns out the toa are such a massive source of elemental energy that everything else gets its power from them. they aren't just masters of their element, they are an embodiment of that element.

so even in a world without a connection to the elements, the toa are still incredibly powerful, they just didn't know it. but now that they do, they unleash their full power on makuta to banish him to the realm of shadows again.

this would be the last thing the toa do though. unleashing that much power was too much even for them, because as soon as makuta was sealed in the crystal, the toa returned to the stars to watch over a much safer okoto.

and that, was that

We’re not done yet though, there’s still a few more days left in Bionicle month

so where does this leave bionicle

well, next year it'll be 20 years old, so if you're a hopeful person, lego might do a nice little thing to celebrate that. and you'd have to be a particularly hopeful person for that, i think.

do i think they're gonna do yet another reboot after stopping the previous one only two years in? buddy i'll be surprised if they just re-release some old sets and put a "20 years" somewhere.

now i could hem and haw over the recent lego ideas bionicle set anniversary that got 10k votes but was ultimately rejected being a sign they had something else in mind, or how takanuva was involved in the planning stages of the second lego movie

i could also start ranting about how lego's ninjago has filled bionicle's role and how the last ccbs sets came out almost 3 years ago.

but instead i'd like to do something else

this is really just an excuse to talk about bionicle some more

so let's play a game.

this, is not a possibility and doesn't happen:

this is more or less a wishlist of things i'd like to see from a possible bionicle reboot

first things first i find it astounding that the original bionicle masks and heads used parts that matched the system they worked with but the gen 2 masks and heads used a completely different setup.

i would like to see ball and socket based masks so you can get some fun stuff

i also think that hero factory did great with their armor add-on parts that you could use to really bulk up your dudes, but i'm sad lego never got around to making masks/helmets that could accept those add-on parts

i've worked with kids as a teacher for a little over 5 years now and lego minifigs are the most popular thing my students have smuggled into school. they're pocket sized and easy to personalize and i don't see why we shouldn't get some actual capital M Minifigs for bionicle

the toa could represent topographical features, rather than elements. this way you don't get any confusion between stone and earth, and less positing over whether gali can control kopaka's ice or not.

since we don't have to worry about having tons of toas of air in the same place, we can make more toa based off of different land features.

makuta should also be a ninja. if this doesn't work out his parts can go to ninjago, everything works out

this also opens up the world for a variety of official and fan made toa, despite the fact that technically, my example here is a fan made toa

speaking of fan made bionicle stuff, i recently accidentally stumbled across some ancient bionicle fan games and it was an eye opening experience for me. the games themselves weren't all that special and i'm not going to share much of them because someone might get embarrassed

but someone made a very simple game about their simple little matoran dude just running back and forth dodging rocks. and it was simple but they loved their little dude so much they made two games about em

and making your own thing and running with it is very bionicle to me

which is why i think they should bring something like this back. i'll even trade the minifigs for it, i love these things so much

conceptually, it's such a strange concept these days. it's like a 5 dollar toy booster pack where you don't get anything but a dude's face in a different color but the value that can be to a kid with a custom bionicle is priceless

but even if they don't reboot bionicle any time soon, or they don't just re-release the first toa, people are still going to make their own stuff using bionicle as a springboard and i think that's just wonderful

so that was originally planned to be the end of the thread, but @GuteFist brought up the idea of me showing off my bionicles i've made and i've spent most of my free time trying to photograph some of the better ones today

i have a small handful at the moment, but i might get some more good shots as the day progresses

first up is a sword guy that i made at the beginning of the summer

i wanted to use the rahkshi's back piece as like a tunic draping down, and the bulk that piece has insists that the legs be kept apart, inadvertently making the Sword Pose

if you've been following me for a while you might remember when i set out to make some color swapped toa mata

well, i managed to make myself a toa of earth kopaka that i'm very proud of, but he's hard to photograph with my current equipment

also i forgot i had a red little guy like bopha and the purple guy here.

also good news, i found a new hand for the purple guy.

i always keep bopha around my work area just to pose and mess around with. he's my favorite bionicle i've made by far, and recently i hooked a car grill piece to his back so he can give my favorite two minifigs a ride