The Building Chronicle: A Critical Consideration of LEGO's "Bionicle" Series - Building Through part 1.2 - 2001

(Okay, so perhaps it's only going to be once a week for this blog ;P)

So we'll jump right in with a consideration of the "good guys" in the beginning of the series. The section of the collection that I'll be focussing on today includes all (I'm pretty sure) of the official models and combiners that represent the villagers, leaders, and heroes of the BIONICLE saga's first year. Of note, I shall be linking to the website BIONICLEsector01, which I consider to be the most comprehensive of the Bionicle wikis online.

BIONICLE (I'm going to stop capitalizing it for the balance of these articles. I know that's the proper way of writing it, but it's a pain in the ass) offers a really interesting post-apocalyptic science fiction story that starts out as a fantasy parsed mechanically. By this, I mean, that the original six Toa who started the story (seen above, left, and below) are the most mechanical-looking off all of the Toa that we encounter through the first 10 years of the series. At this point in Bionicle's history, it is still considered an offshoot of the Technic line, and as such is compatible with pieces from that series. Before Bionicle's release in 2001, LEGO/Technic had experimented with action figure-style sets in the Throwbots and Roboriders series, and the elements that make up Bionicle are fully compatible with those forerunners. Indeed, two of the earliest official combiner models, the Ranama and the Kirikori Nui rely heavily on elements from these earlier series. In the "Prolegomena" to Lego Studies, Mark Wolf describes LEGO as a "mediating substance through which ideas can be expressed" (xxii) in reference to the creative potential that comes from a building material that is infinitely combinable and compatible with every other element in its range. The compatibility of Bionicle elements at this early stage argues for its inclusion in this notion of a mediating substance, or, more simply, a medium.

To return to the idea of fantasy parsed mechanically, the initial mythos of Bionicle is a mystical one. Six prophesied heroes wash ashore on a mysterious island, discover a connection to elemental powers, and to a sacred mission to protect and reawaken "the Great Spirit" Mata Nui. Yet these heroes, and the villagers they protect, and even the beasts that threaten them, are mechanical in nature, not just in the elements that make up the sets, but in the narrative itself. It was this juxtaposition that I found initially so enthralling; a line of technical Lego aligned around a story of spiritual fulfillment, around the three virtues of Unity, Duty, and Destiny. In this opening phase of the tale, there was really no inkling of the post-apocalyptic undercurrent that would eventually eclipse the more spiritual side of the story. This was simply a tale of the fulfillment of a prophecy, one told using machines.

I want to hang on this for a moment. The Bionicle figures are machines, as are all of the models in the Lego Technic line. They're not even simple machines, but semi-complex combinations of axles and gears and levers and wheels. They function through rational principles that have been described through the centuries by physicists. But, at least initially, they embody qualities that fly in the face of the rational: destiny, spirituality, faith and belief. It's a rather beautiful combination, a practical application of the principles of physics and the principles of faith, combined in a toy that is, at its most basic level, an infinitely iterative device. Is this telling us something important about a combination of the rational and the irrational? Can such a combination lead to infinite novelty? In the case of Bionicle, I think the answer is yes.

To conclude with my mechanical meditation, the irony of the line is that as it progresses further and further from fantasy into the science fictional realm, the figures become less and less mechanical. Poseability and articulation are far superior in the 2009 line of figures than in this inaugural one, but the story becomes almost wholly mechanistic and rational. What is fascinating, then, is the combination of the two that emerges in the 2015 reboot (which, actually, may or may not be a reboot proper.)

Let's spend a bit of time, now, on the actual models.

Most of what you see in the above pictures are the standard models to have been released in the initial wave of Bionicle. A trend that continues until at least 2006 is the inclusion in each instruction book of alternate model sets. For the Toa, these alternate models were two beings known as the Toa Kaita, combinations of three each that amalgamated the powers and personalities of the individual heroes. These are relatively well-known combiner models, and also make brief appearances in the canonical stories surrounding this era of the series.

These kaita are, however, the only sets in the 2001 figure wave (as opposed to the creature wave) that include such combination instructions. Both the Turaga (village leaders, the figures with small staffs in the upper pictures) and the early Matoran (the "McTorans" or Tohunga) have combiner models but not published, at least in pamphlet form, instructions.

                                     The McToran combiner models (so named due to their inclusion in Happy Meals from McDonalds) are fairly simple to build, due mainly to the number and nature of parts involved. Each set is simply 7 pieces, and all are fairly large and fit together in only so many ways. Consideration of the pictures on the instructions included with each set is enough to build both versions of the Matoran Kaita and the Matoran Nui.

Instructions for the Turaga combiners require some searching. Though the picture of the Turaga Nui (pictured at right with the Bronze Huna) appears in some official LEGO publications, instructions for the model were never released. The model in the picture was constructed using fan-made instructions, and, for the completists, is also missing Nokama's noble kanohi Rau, which is replaced with a light blue Huna. This is one of the problems with collecting enough to create all of the official combiner models - early sets such as turaga Nokama become more and more difficult to come by. We'll see this again when we get to the Kirikori Nui and its make-up. The Kabaya Sweets promotional Turaga Kaita does have official instructions, packaged with the toys when they were released in Japan, one assumes. Though similar to the Turaga Nui, the Kaita is less-robust a model. Both arms on the Nui are attached to levers on the back, allowing for some stability in those limbs, whereas the Kaita's arms swing free. The Kaita is also quite difficult to balance properly. I've noted before that the aesthetic of the Japanese combiner models is somewhat different from the European or North American combiners, but this one is an exception to the rule. The Kaita really just looks like the Nui after a diet.

One last figure set deserves some attention before we finish.

The Bionicle Power Pack was an early experiment for Bionicle and LEGO in transmedial storytelling. Not only does the package include another Matoran and a mask that, ostensibly, is worn by one of the above Toa Kaita, but the CD included with the package has a map of the island on the liner notes, and includes both an interactive tour of the stone village on Mata Nui and three music tracks ostensibly composed by the Toa themselves. The interactive content, sadly, is not Windows 10 compatible, so I've been unable to install it on my system, but it can be found at the archive of the BioMedia Project here. Hafu, the Matoran who comes with this set receives an upgrade in 2003 as part of the Mask of Light tie-in Matoran, and is representative of a strange choice on LEGO's part to not release Matoran from each village in that year. But we'll look more to that when we get there.

Before we finish for today, then, here's one of the songs from that disc, the track called "The Bionicle Music." Whether this fits with the fantasy/jungle aesthetic of the early series is a good question. In some ways it enhances that strange mixture of the scientific and irrational by providing a soundtrack that one cannot imagine the inhabitants of the island of Mata Nui composing. Enjoy. Next time, we'll have a look at the Rahi of the island, the Toa's first challenge in reawakening the Great Spirit.