Aanchir
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Everything posted by Aanchir
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I'm definitely also disappointed that Lord of Skull Spiders' function doesn't work better, but to be honest I'm not as bothered by his looks as a lot of other people seem to be. I'm just fine with the printed face (wondering if the eyes are fluorescent, though — that'd be the icing on the cake!), and even if the function doesn't grab things too well, it certainly looks great in motion. The shape of his body also doesn't bother me. As far as the lack of posability is concerned, I can see why some people might be disappointed, but to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the set designers made the right call in that regard. A two-legged or four-legged figure with full articulation is one thing — a figure with six or eight fully-articulated legs can be extremely frustrating to pose, especially if the legs get knocked out of position every time you use the integrated function. I don't know if I'll be getting Lord of Skull Spiders, and even if I do he probably won't be a day one purchase. But I do find it a bit regrettable that reactions have been so lukewarm for what is surely one of the most imaginative sets of the year on a structural level. Function-wise, I know it certainly beats anything I could have designed. I look forward to getting more story info on the Lord of Skull Spiders and the Protectors. Something my brother suggested to me is that maybe the golden mask in Lord of Skull Spiders might not even be a real mask, but rather a lure to draw in unsuspecting villagers and steal their masks.
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Something I actually discovered when comparing Gali's new mask to her old mask is that it's more similar to the old one than people give it credit for. From the side, the curve of the forehead is even closer to the original than either version of the Kaukau Nuva. The chin is really the biggest difference from previous versions, I think — but that's also one of the areas where I think the design is most improved!
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Yep, definitely still my favorite of the new sets as well! And my favorite version of Gali to boot!
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Not sure what you mean about the Protector of Earth. He has no back armor and is very different than the Protector of Ice due to the chest-mounted blaster. I guess you meant Stone? Once a ninja, always a ninja. Nah, in all seriousness, I'm just lazy. I'll change it back eventually.
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Water and Jungle definitely do. I don't think Stone does.
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I'm definitely going to have to see a review of Lord of Skull Spiders before I can judge it, because a lot of the complaints I've seen like the lack of articulation are things that seem to make a lot of sense to me. My brother built an eight-legged spider out of Hero Factory parts, and with that much articulation, posing it was a bit of a chore. Not to mention that the function seems like you'd want to avoid having "recoil" on the legs. I'm not prepared to say that the set is as good as the 2001 Rahi, because it seems to me like its competitive play potential is a little bit one-sided, with no built-in failure state. But it seems to offer a very good value for money, and I like its shape, so if the function works smoothly then there's not much more I could ask for. I'm not sure what other sets might be coming in the summer, but it would be very cool if Lord of Skull Spiders were foreshadowing even more creature sets with creative Technic functions.
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You mean for the Toa or the Protectors? On the Toa it looks fine. On some of the Protectors it does look a bit funny, though. I think it looks best on the Protector of Fire, for whom it doesn't stick out quite so far.
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Probably wasn't within the budget. All the other protectors have transparent studs, but then again, all the other protectors also have studs in colors that are already in production for other sets. So adding a new recolor might have meant getting rid of a new recolor in another set. I agree that it's a shame we're not getting 1x1 round plates in Tr. Bright Bluish Violet, but I'm not sure the set needs those quite as badly as some of the other BIONICLE sets need the recolors they actually ended up getting. I mean, I guess ostensibly Lewa and the Protector of Jungle could have used Bright Yellow instead of Flame Yellowish Orange... but it'd be a shame not to get two new Flame Yellowish Orange parts.
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Well, he can steal a Toa's mask, but that's not a fully-fledged game because as far as I'm aware there's no "failure state" for the Lord of Skull Spiders, whereas the 2001 Rahi had masks of their own to knock off.
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Nope. They attach sort of like Kiina's, but with the shoulder joints pointing up instead of to the sides. Brickset gets their parts data directly from The LEGO Group's Customer Service website, so they're not responsible for spelling mistakes in part names or errors in part thumbnails.
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The spacers also come with Lewa Master of Jungle. Protector of Ice is obviously cheaper, but I have a feeling this part could be showing up in a lot of different sets and themes.
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Even LEGO makes mistakes. For instance, the thumbnails for certain Toa Inika parts like Toa Inika Kongu's shoulder armor shows it as transparent. Just a glitch, nothing more. I'm not saying the element doesn't exist, just that the thumbnail is incorrect. In real life it would be identical to the previous version of the part. That's not really an error, just an example of the database being incomplete. The LEGO Customer Service website doesn't list parts in inventories unless they have thumbnails for them on their server. So a lot of sets, especially older ones, will have parts missing from the inventories.
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The Brickset listing is just a glitch in the render, I think. The official product images and every copy of the sets I'm aware of have it in Dark Stone Grey with a colorless rubber insert.
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Tarakava were definitely one of the harder Rahi to wrap your brain around. After all, they didn't look like lizards or even behave much like lizards! Perhaps some of the questions about what they're based on would be answered if we knew where their name came from. The best I could figure is that their towering design and aquatic habitat were based on giant monsters like Godzilla, albeit made much skinnier so the body could function as a handle. Also to help shelter the inhabitants from predators! Even many sea creatures prefer shelter of some kind. That's why octopi lay their eggs in caves, where they can protect them more easily. But the new story isn't necessarily that much more childish than the old one. Both were aimed at kids, after all. The new story is just reducing some of the things about the old story that caused problems for kids even back in generation one. No, BIONICLE certainly didn't fail. It remained successful for a long time, and ended because the LEGO Group realized its success was rapidly running out and didn't want it to be remembered by retailers as a failed franchise. But there are still definitely ways it could have been improved. After all, there were a lot of people who bought the sets but didn't follow the story because it was either too complex or too inaccessible. Making the new story open to more people could help it be even more successful than it was originally, and hold onto that success for even longer. As for the sets, the new BIONICLE sets are more complex from a construction standpoint than characters like them have ever been. Many of the greebly details have been smoothed out for consistency's sake, but I see that as making the designs more polished and less cluttered. Certainly it's not something that makes them childish in any way, because there's nothing inherently more "grown-up" about one aesthetic or the other. The shield piece actually WAS released in white, albeit with printing. That was the FIRST color it appeared in, in the Captain America set.
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With good reason, I'd say. My brother made an actual eight-legged spider with multiple points of articulation in each leg using Hero Factory parts, and posing it turned out to be a real chore. Definitely gave me a new appreciation for all the four-legged and six-legged spiders LEGO has released. I don't have any problem at all with the shaping of Lord of Skull Spiders, but with that said I haven't been able to get a good look at the actual set from all angles. I've reverse-engineered what I could on LDD, but I'm nearly 20 parts short and still can't completely figured out how the function works. Still, from what I've seen it's no less elegant in its construction than the 2001 Rahi.
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This comment makes me wonder what the set would look like if you used the gold mask and swapped all the Bright Red shells for Dark Red ones. After all, the two sizes of Bright Red shells are coincidentally also the only two sizes Dark Red shells are currently available in. Obviously, Bright Red is a better fit for Tahu as a character, but this is just idle curiosity.
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By that logic, is every Technic set or G1 Rahi also "just some random Technic parts with limbs"? Pretty much the set's whole design is built around its function. There's nothing the slightest bit random about it.
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Generally, yeah. That's also something I've tried to explain to other people — that kind of thing is not considered nearly as inappropriate in all cultures as it is in the United States. I really like The Big Bang Theory. It's not something I watch religiously, but I enjoy it and find it funny when my parents have it on. I think the idea that it's "picking on" nerds and it's supposed to make non-nerdy viewers feel like they're better than the characters on the show is a little bit overblown. I find a lot of the jokes funny in part because as a socially awkward nerd, I identify with and relate to the cast, and I'm not above a little bit of self-deprecating humor. There's nothing wrong with laughing at oneself, so why should I feel like I'm being picked on or bullied when a character like me is the butt of a joke? I'd wager I'm hardly the only person who feels this way, because I've encountered plenty of other people who like the show because they consider themselves nerdy and identify with the characters on that level. You can't complain that the show talks down to nerds and then insinuate that actual nerds and intellectuals who enjoy the show are too woefully oblivious to realize when they're the butt of a joke. Besides, in the episodes I've seen, the show's less nerdy characters like Penny are just as often the butt of jokes as its nerdier characters. A lot of the criticisms I've seen of the show seem to think that Penny is supposed to be the "normal" character that the audience relates to. And that's a gross oversimplification. She's not defined by her normalcy, but rather by her mediocrity. She has spent her life bouncing between dead-end jobs and dead-end relationships, and in most situations where the main cast is all together, she's the real oddball among them. The rest of the characters regularly have to dumb things down for her, and you'll hear the same laugh track for every one of her faux pas as for those of Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, or Raj. So how is it that so many viewers seem to think that the show singularly targets only people with nerdy interests with its usual biting wit? The show does better than a lot of sitcoms in actually not only making nerds the main characters (rather than some social pariah the main character is forced to interact with), but showing that there are many kinds of nerd instead of just rolling up as many nerdy stereotypes as it can and piling them all on one character. And it has a lot of good character development, rather than just relying on a consistent status quo like many of the sitcoms I grew up with. I am, of course, surprised it passed review. I would have thought its humor would have been considered far too adult. But I think a lot of the people who think the show is discriminating against people with nerdy interests really need to get it into their heads that nerdy is rapidly becoming the new normal, and the show reflects that. That doesn't mean that any of the characters, no matter what their interests or social status, deserve some kind of special protection from its particular brand of humor. Now, I've heard allegations of other kinds of discrimination (homophobia, sexism, etc). that might deserve a little bit more criticism, because those are discrimination against groups that have genuinely faced decades if not centuries of systematic discrimination. But I have been lucky enough not to encounter that kind of nastiness in any of the episodes I've seen, so hopefully that might mean the show has grown past those kinds of mistakes.
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It's silver.
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Well, three in the first wave and two or three in the second would not be out of the question. So the lavender and red ones might be coming in the future.
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Also, something some people seem to overlook is that we are in fact getting a LOT of new parts already with the new BIONICLE. One of the designers at NYCC said there were about 30 new molds for the BIONICLE reboot. We know of 20 of them: sixteen from the Toa sets, three more from the Protector sets, and the Mask of Creation. The remaining parts, together with the Mask of Creation, will presumably be featured in the five summer sets. Even just going by what we've seen, there have been thirteen sets revealed for BIONICLE 2015 containing 19 new molds. Either way, that's about as many new molds per set as 2001 BIONICLE, which had 25 sets (not counting duplicates) and 36 new molds (37 if you count the Toa Mata canister lid). Obviously, this doesn't necessarily mean a lot for people who think BIONICLE should have just gone back to using parts from 2001–2010 instead of the CCBS. There's no telling how many new molds would have been needed for that, since it depends entirely on how many of those old-school BIONICLE molds are still in usable condition. But I've seen some people with pie-in-the-sky ideas that the LEGO Group could have introduced new parts to give BIONICLE its characteristic level of detail, when we're already getting about as many new molds per set as in 2001.
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I wouldn't be surprised to see graphic novels in the long term, though. The LEGO Ninjago graphic novels have been among the most best-selling kids' graphic novels in the entire industry. So if the BIONICLE theme does turn out to be successful enough I can see the LEGO Group and Papercutz collaborating on new BIONICLE graphic novels. There might also end up being short comics in the LEGO Club Magazines, just as there are for most minifigure-based themes. I don't think those kinds of things are necessarily planned out this far in advance, though. I don't think this is a huge issue, necessarily. When I was a kid, my family had a PC, but it was too slow to run things like the Mata Nui Online Game all that well. That didn't mean it was my only option. I could use the computers at my school (outside of class, of course), my mom's office, or the local library to do things that wouldn't work as well on my home computer. Nowadays, access to the Internet is rapidly becoming a financial necessity in many places. In my area, things like finding a job can be next to impossible without some access to the Internet. If a family doesn't have access to the Internet, not even on a smartphone or at a public library, a toy as expensive as LEGO might not even be within their financial reach. BIONICLE is a franchise that was was born towards the beginning of the age of the Internet, and its online content has always been some of its most important marketing material. Today, far more people have access to the Internet than they did back then, so it makes sense to put even greater emphasis on online content in the new reboot. Keep in mind that the United States has far more public libraries (over sixteen thousand) than it has comic shops (less than three thousand).
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The Brothers Brick has a Flickr album some great high-res images of all the sets. The official website also has great high-res images of the Toa, masks, and weapons on its character pages. Finally, the LEGO Bionicle Facebook page has most of the pictures from the NYCC panel, as well as pictures of all the Toa in both Battle Mode and Adrenalin Mode.
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The shield design can be made a lot more normal-looking if you just flip one of the blades around so it's built like Tahu's lava surfboard. Of course, it'll be an oval shield like Lhikan's rather than a circular shield like the original Kopaka's or Kopaka Nuva's. Personally, I have no problems whatsoever with the shield. It feels very cohesive, and I like the way that like the classic one, it has rotational symmetry rather than reflective symmetry. Also, the fact that it uses the same pieces as Tahu's weapon strikes me as a positive rather than a negative — it shows that the piece was not designed with only one use in mind. Also, I'm not bothered at all by the silver metallic torso shell. It matches the dark stone grey friction joints, upper arms, and gearbox pretty well, not to mention the silver metallic head. A white 2.0 torso shell also fits pretty well, though to me the amount of white it adds is honestly a bit overwhelming.
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I don't think there's anything wrong with his chin. It's not that much different from Tahu Nuva's chin. And I think it suits him perfectly. And Kopaka's chest plate looks nothing like a bra. Heck, Lhikan's chest plate looked more like a bra than Kopaka's does. If you don't like the new building system that's fine. But when your gripes about the new sets are this contrived, it makes it sound like you're afraid of change of any kind.
