Could Bionicle work out as an anime?

[MatthewRC]

Alright, now that LEGO has announced 21311 Voltron, the first ever LEGO set to be based on an anime series originally from Japan, I can imagine LEGO doing an anime adaptation of their properties. My pick would be Bionicle: The Mata-Nui Saga!

Based on the Mata-Nui timeline, Season 1 could cover the 2001 storyline, Season 2 covering 2002, Season 3 with 2003 and onwards. If LEGO ever decides to remake their classic Bionicle sets as a tie-in, I think it'd be pretty interesting to see.

Oh, and believe it or not, the word "Bionicle" can also be translated into Japanese!

バイオニクル - Baionikuru

 

Does anyone think Bionicle could work out as a Japanese anime as long as it stays true to the source material?

[Lyichir]

No, I don't think any form of Bionicle could succeed at all by staying that "true to the source material", mainly because I don't think there's any money in retelling the Bionicle story exactly (let alone in rereleasing the old sets).

That's not to say that a new iteration of Bionicle couldn't work as an anime. Then again, what are you expecting exactly when you use the word "anime"? Because if you're referring to a specific sort of hand-drawn animation, I don't know if that would work simply because the highly detailed character designs might not be conducive to that (at least not without a huge budget). And if you're referring to a more CGI style... well, then the only difference between that and past iterations of Bionicle like the movies and Journey to One would be where the animation took place. Uf you're referring not to an animation style but more generally to just a full-fledged TV series, that might also work—but again, probably not as a retelling (not just because the story and the sets it was based on are both quite dated, but also because it's hard to start a TV series of that sort banking on the chance that it gets picked up for subsequent seasons until the whole story gets told).