Bionicle Good Guy

In my review of Friends' Leo, I stressed the importance of communicating character and story role efficiently and effectively in a toy, since you can't guarantee that everyone will read the supplementary material before or after buying it. This is also true for the Bohrok, but their story isn't about baking and soccer games.

The Bohrok are a hive of powerful, fearless and mysterious machines built long ago, kept in a deep slumber underground. When awoken, they swarm the surface and destroy everything, per their directive to "clean it all" (The Bohrok aren't truly evil, it's just that our heroes count as "all" right now). There's no use appealing to emotions or morals, since the Bohrok have neither. While the story's main protagonists can disarm a few Bohrok at a time, their weapons can't stop the whole swarm.

Aside from a few technicalities, this is a typical "alien invasion" story, so the Bohrok need designs befitting an invading force. They need to instill fear and look unfamiliar, but they should also have an interesting thematic throughline. On top of that, the Bohrok need to look distinct from other monsters in fiction and unmistakably belong to Bionicle. How did the designers solve these dilemmas?

Like many sci-fi and horror creatures, the Bohrok's designs draw from a classic well of inspiration: the arthropods. Basing a design on something so different from humans is a convenient way to instill unfamiliarity and fear (it's partly why more people fear spiders than deer, who have a much higher body count). The Bohrok don't draw from a single creepy crawly, though: they have sturdy, compact bodies reminiscent of beetles, the cast structure of termites (two monarchs, a wealth of soldiers, and diminutive helpers), powers that evoke the roles of eusocial insects in an exaggerated way, a hive similar to a bee's, the ability to curl into a ball like a woodlouse, big eyes and sharp mandibles.

The Bohrok also deviate from their inspirations as much as they borrow: they're bipedal, they have two body segments, and they lack many of the trademark body parts of an arthropod, such as wings, antennae and stingers. Altogether, the Bohrok's designs are hard to pin down - they're not quite animals, but not humanlike either - and that ups their fear factor (their sharp shape language also helps). Their inscrutable faces sell their lack of individual thought and makes it even harder to relate to them.

This may not have been intentional, but one of my favorite details about this character design is how it plays with our tendency to look for eyes first. Since the standard Bohrok silhouette is bipedal, I was conditioned to find the Bohrok's eyes near the top of its head, but this failed me since I just saw their clear head-plates. Those teardrop-shaped parts next to the mandibles are their actual eyes. Even if this misdirect lasted for a few seconds, it left a distinct impression on me.

Nailing the fundamentals is all well and good, but I could have used those earlier paragraphs to describe a lot of monsters. What makes the Bohrok so special? The answers lie in what made Bionicle so special in its early years: the focus on combat and the masks.

You may have noticed that beneath the Bohrok's head-plates lie rubbery, face-like things: those are krana, the brains of the Bohrok and their only piece of organic tissue. This exposed brain serves as both ghastly imagery and a play function: press down on the Bohrok's eyes and the krana jumps out. If it finds its way on a character's head, they become part of the swarm.

Mind control and assimilation are two other classic sci-fi conventions, conveyed beautifully by the krana forcibly replacing the victim's mask, the window into their character. Combined with how they don't quite fit their victims' heads, you know something isn't right when a character is wearing one of these.

Since both the traditional masks and the krana are designed to be knocked off in battle and the Bohrok can attack using their gear functions, the intended story can unfold naturally through play. Children could easily invent stories where a Bohrok emerges and it's too powerful, and uh-oh, one of the heroes has become corrupted! They can pit heroes against heroes, or maybe the villagers find their own way to stop a Bohrok. Sure enough, these possibilities are explored in supplementary material.

It's no easy feat to make a design's inspiration and role clear while also respecting its mystery, but the Bohrok stick the landing. While the tropes they pay homage to are familiar, they put a Bionicle spin on them. They truly earned their status as one of Bionicle's most iconic antagonists.

Author's note: Thanks for reading my second analysis! Going from minidolls to Technic creatures was a weird transition, but I'm glad I chose these bonkle bugs as my first non-minifig, non-minidoll subject. Brushing up on the lore was a ride.

I probably won't analyze another Bionicle character for a while, though, as I want to represent a wide variety of themes on this blog. Still, I appreciate recommendations and feedback.