#nikila

As a little Boxing Day present, I thought i’d share a couple teaser renders from my biggest MOC project yet… Project Cordak.

Over the next year, I plan to design and physically build the 8 members of Lesovikk’s ill-fated team, complete with custom masks, light-up eyes, and maybe even specially made canisters with graphics, instructions, and custom lids. More than any of my previous projects, I want these Toa to feel like they dropped out of a parallel 2007, where Lego released a full wave of Toa Cordak rather than the one special set.

         Then we have Sound; Sound is technically the first secondary element to be made canon, but the second to appear in-story, after Gravity. Its inclusion at all is weird… See, Lego held a Toa Building contest, and part of a participant’s entry included a description of their character’s elemental powers. Just like that, Lego casually opened things up for any fan to decide to introduce any new hypothetical element to the story, without any regards to whether it fit the lore or not; So John Dexter gives us the element of Sound. Because his entry won, Sound is now a canon Toa element, so it’s something that Greg has to work with…

         And, I’d say he did the best job with this secondary element! We have actual appearances of various De-Matoran, we learn how their elemental affiliation affects their lifestyle; We get to see Krakua use his powers in-story (in a manner specific to Sound, that actually requires his element be Sound), Triglax pretends to be a Toa of Sound, etc. It’s weird then that they’re one of two secondary elements whose color scheme is never specified, when others with far fewer appearances get that privilege. Really, Sound’s inclusion at all is weird, because the story team apparently just… Willingly opened themselves to any fan’s suggestion, and thus had to deal with the consequences of that.

         Next is Plasma. Plasma’s inclusion is terrible, or rather nonexistent; Its SOLE appearance in canon is when it’s mentioned that Zaktan killed a Toa of Plasma. But unlike Lariska’s story with a Toa of Gravity, the actual element of this Toa is of no consequence; We hear nothing of the Su-Toa using his element, he’s just a nameless, out-of-context kill. Our introduction to Plasma, and really its only story appearance as a Toa element, is basically a character saying it exists without elaborating whatsoever. Despite this, we got a color scheme for Plasma when Sound and Magnetism don’t have that, and a detail on how that element affects its Matoran… But this is all Word of God, so it doesn’t count.

         Then there’s Magnetism; Introduced via Jovan, an actual Toa, with an actual set presence, specifically as a combiner! He’s an actual character with an actual name and appearance with contributions to the lore… The only problem is that he’s a purely posthumous character, introduced as already dead by the present-day. And he never actually shows up in-person, not even in a proper flashback in the story; Characters remember and allude to him, but that’s it. 

        And predictably, Jovan’s element is of no contribution to the story; It never comes into play nor is Magnetism used. He could’ve been a Toa of Earth and everything would’ve been the same; Magnetism’s introduction seems purely to, I guess, make Jovan a more intriguing character, and thus encourage kids to buy the sets necessary to build him. He has an actual physical depiction, but really, it’d have been just as easy to relegate his powers of Magnetism to the tools he wields, especially since we never see him use those either.

         Plantlife isn’t really any better; It appears briefly in Legacy of Evil, in which Hakann and Vezok ambush and pummel a Bo-Toa to unconsciousness. His color scheme IS identified and connected to his element, and Hakann makes a dark internal joke over it… But that’s it. We never get to see this Toa USE his element, he’s out of commission before the fact; And again, him being a different element wouldn’t have changed the ease at which the Skakdi beat him up. We do get confirmation of another Toa of Plantlife who exists in canon… But posthumously, after Bionicle’s run ended; Greg confirmed one of the Toa Mangai wielded Plantlife, and that’s really it. Like I said, Word of God doesn’t mean much, especially if it happens after Bionicle’s run already ended, after Greg stopped writing the serials.

         Running up is Lightning! It’s also introduced and represented pretty arbitrarily via Nikila, as part of Lesovikk’s flashback/vision in Dreams of Destruction, circa 2007. Nikila’s actual element has no relevance nor do we ever see her use it; She could’ve also been a Toa of Water and her role in the story would be the exact same, save for a single word swap. Now eventually we DO get Chiara, who does use her powers… However, Chiara and her teammates are a weird case; They don’t appear until after Bionicle’s official end, in the post-canon serials. And Chiara’s element was only included because Greg let fans vote from a pre-existing number of elements; So it was solely up to the fans to decide if Lightning would have proper representation or not.

         Given the meta nature and background of Chiara and her teammates’ existence, as well as the reason for their elements, picked by fans from elements already established by Greg, not necessarily planned out to be elaborated upon… And to me, it’s just another weird case of ‘Why does this element exist if it breaks the established lore’. I’ll also apply this to Orde, and Zaria; Speaking of which!

         Iron’s first story mention is also alongside Nikila, and it’s… Even worse. Basically, Lesovikk observes the elements of his old team, and Iron is listed as one of them… That’s it. We learn nothing else about Iron other than that it exists, and its only known character is a Toa who is already dead by this point; We know this character is dead before we even know his element is Iron, a new element. Things get slightly better with the introduction of the Nynrah Ghosts, who… I can’t pinpoint a story source that confirms they’re Fe-Matoran, all I can find is Word of God statements.

         The Nynrah Ghosts ARE a faction with some story relevance, and we do see one appear in the story, encountering Mazeka. Phantom is also revealed to be a former Fe-Matoran, as an extension of his past as a former Nynrah Ghost. Apparently, Iron IS relevant to these characters as an element, as it plays a role in their extreme skill with machinery and other inventions. Granted, Matoran don’t need to be connected to Iron to be great inventors; Nuparu was an Onu-Matoran and still created the Kralhi, Vahki, and Boxors. Again, Iron isn’t used in a way that’d truly necessitate its existence, unlike Sound; There is the character of Zaria, but as I said, he’s a weird example alongside his teammates. We do hear of a Fe-Toa genocide in Zaria’s introduction, but it’s post-canon serials.

         And finally, we have Psionics! Correct me if I’m wrong, but it was first canonized as a Word of God post in 2009, during the Glatorian saga totally unrelated to it; Not a great start. We learn from Greg that Helryx studied Ce-Matoran to figure out the Order’s mental shields; Neat, but I wouldn’t say it justifies Psionics being an actual Toa element, instead of just another power, like the Kanohi Suletu. But we don’t get an actual character of Psionics until 2010, in a canonized fan story No One Gets Left Behind.

         Varian is established as a Toa of Psionics, and this element is even made female! Finally, more girls. But the weird thing is that like with Krakua, it wasn’t really a decision of the story writers, but a fan; NOGLB was canonized as part of a contest to write a story regarding the Toa that the Shadowed One had imprisoned, introduced in Legacy of Evil, way back in 2006. But this unidentified Toa in stasis never has their element specified; It’s open to interpretation. Thus, this Toa only became a Toa of Psionics in 2010, via a fan’s decision; Greg merely canonized the entry based on its effectiveness as a story overall.

         And it is a good story! Varian actually uses her element in a way unique to it; You can’t replicate certain scenes with a different element. Then there’s Orde, whom I’ve already explained with Zaria and Chiara; And then there’s the terrible, sexist reasons behind his gender conflicting with Varian’s, when fans clearly chose Psionics as an element in-part because they wanted more female characters.

         When it comes to discussing the Bionicle story team’s inclusion and handling of the secondary elements, how and why they did it, and their actual plans to justify its inclusion, to make up for the way it kind of broke the lore and established worldbuilding… Most of it is just inexplicable, or entirely up to fans who realized these secondary elements needed to actually be shown, not just needlessly told. From a meta standpoint, it makes sense to include these elements as, well, ELEMENTS; The problem is that we’ve already established the elements beforehand, and how they can thematically combine together into stuff like Protodermis seals.

         Including these secondary elements later, rather than with all of the others at once, messes with the lore and canon; Why don’t the Toa Mata include members of these other elements? Why is Metru Nui missing out on over half of the Matoran elements in existence? Introducing these elements creates a painful absence that otherwise wasn’t there, because now they’re just inexplicably not there when they should’ve been, beforehand.

         So then it boils down to; Well, at least the story can compensate for this mess it made of its worldbuilding, by actually utilizing these secondary elements to great effect! Except it doesn’t. The canon-breaking presence of these elements is never justified via actual story presence and action; I can understand incorporating Lightning or Plantlife as an element because they make sense as elements, but if you don’t USE them as elements, then what’s even the point? Why bother, when you could just as easily relegate them to Mask Powers; Allowing characters to still use these abilities, without breaking the canon and necessitating an entire population that is conspicuously absent?

         Powers that aren’t elements have always been present, since the beginning of 2001; There’s the Kanohi, and then later the Krana. The Bohrok introduce Acid for the Lehvak, which is a cool power but doesn’t need to be made into an element, and also never was. Then we have the Kraata, which are another source of unique powers… And then the Kanoka as an extension of Kanohi, even as we get so many more added! Psionics is introduced as a Kraata and then a Mask power, years before it’s formalized into an element; We even see Kongu, a mainline character, use it as part of his Suletu, present in the official set!

         Varian could’ve easily been written as a Ga-Toa wearing a Suletu, and her scenes with Norik still make sense. Lariska’s target could’ve been written as a Toa wielding a Mask of Gravity; Gravity as a separate power was already introduced via the Bohrok-Kal and even the Kraata, and it’s represented as a mask in the toys later on with Hewkii’s Garai. The Nynrah Ghosts don’t need to be affiliated with Iron, when Nuparu has shown us that elemental affiliation won’t hinder your engineering skills. And Jovan already has a tool that incorporates Magnetism as a power (also introduced earlier with the Bohrok-Kal and Kraata), it didn’t need to be upgraded into an actual element.

         Plasma, Lightning, Plantlife; They have no story presence. You don’t have to worry about compensating for them, because their inclusion has no effect whatsoever; Chiara and that one Toa Mangai don’t count, because that’s posthumous stuff from after Bionicle’s run. They have no bearing on Greg’s actual intended implementation of these new elements, which… Given that this guy openly tries to avoid planning, is kind of an issue.

         Really, the ONLY secondary element with a real presence is Sound; Since we actually see Matoran and Toa show up in the story, and their elemental affiliation actually plays a role. Vultraz incapacitates a village of De-Matoran via sensory overload; Krakua recreates the Bohrok frequency to awaken the swarms. These are all situations that require the element be Sound, that actually make use of its unique traits and attributes; Instead of being totally interchangeable with any other element. And Sound is a really weird matter, because its inclusion at all was entirely the decision of a fan, irrespective of the writers; Though they did choose to canonize it, but keep in mind their decision was influenced by the quality of the MoC itself, abridged from lore.

         Honestly, Sound is the only secondary element that actually justifies and makes use of itself in the story… But given how most of its actual usage happens later down the line, past its introduction, it really makes you wonder; Since Greg and the writers have the liberty to alter details of a canonized entry to make it fit the lore better (iirc), couldn’t they just have made Krakua a Toa wielding a Mask of Sound? It’s not like his mask being a Hau would stop them; It didn’t stop them making it the first canon instance of a Suletu, for example. They could’ve made Krakua a Toa of Earth, with a Mask of Telepathy, and a sword imbued with sonic powers; Sound was already established as a power and even a tool earlier, through Kohrak-Kal.

         In the end, Krakua’s more unique colorization and appearance might’ve played a role, in wanting to maintain an element that sort of matches that… But ultimately, the inclusion of secondary elements is just weird. IMO they cause more problems than solutions, far more issues than they’re actually worth; And you can’t even accept these issues because at least they’re used to good effect, because they don’t get that either!