A few small Bionicle questions

I’ve got a few small(ish) questions about Bionicle, so let’s go

1 are in universe see-through masks always see-through? Do they come in solid colours and vice versa?

2 do Glatorian have noises because their head moulds just have slits, does that mean they look like red skull? (I know that the head mould couldn’t have had a noise so this one is a little bit more of a head canon answer)

3 Does the akakus lenses work for matoran? Because Matoro used them to voom in on Kopaka

4 where does the cord connecting voya nui and Marhi nui come from?

5 what is kini nui? Did it come with the mata nui when it generated?

6 same question but with the telescope on mata nui because the bohrok didn’t remove it
So yeah those were my questions

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  1. I think they are always see through in the case of the great Kaukau, but the Great Rau is most likely in solid variants across the MU.

  2. I think they have slits as nostrils similar to Voldemort or Red Skull because their helmets are flat and have no protrusion for noses.

  3. Yes, I think they do. But the Matoran can’t access the mask power itself.

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  1. The golden kaukau seems to be opaque, so I guess it doesn’t have to be translucent
  2. I don’t know, but @The_Blue_Panda’s answer makes sense to me
  3. I don’t see why they wouldn’t be able to
    (following quotes are all from BS01)
4

The Cord was formed by molten protodermis flowing from Mount Valmai, which cooled and acted as an anchor, securing Mahri Nui on Aqua Magna. It also kept the island of Voya Nui from drifting through the ocean.

5

The Kini-Nui was created and installed by the Great Beings during their construction of the Great Spirit’s planetary exploration system. The main function of its spires is to be sensors for Mata Nui, informing him of surface events while he was observing a planet. Another function is to allow residents of the Matoran Universe safe passage to his exterior if needed, through a passageway covered by the Suva Kaita. Kini-Nui was retracted each time when the Great Spirit left a planet and extended each time when he landed

6

The Great Telescope was deployed by Mata Nui, being Mata Nui’s camouflage system whenever he lands, with its purpose being to track the Red Star. When Mata Nui fell asleep and crashed into Aqua Magna, and formed the island of Mata Nui due to a malfunction, the Telescope was deployed during the process over the Ta-Wahi Beach.

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how does it keep erupting?

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The movies would suggest the Kaukau and Rau are opaque (aside from the eye-slits, obviously :stuck_out_tongue:), for the Kaukau, MNOG corroborates this. I don’t believe there’s a definitive canon answer, but I’d lean towards the theory that they’re not transparent.

I believe I read somewhere that Matoro had a modified Akaku - canonically, most Akaku’s don’t even have a functional scope. He’s not using the mask power or anything - it’s just a built-in function, like what Nuju had on his mask.

The cord was apparently formed from a lava flow from Mount Valmai (post Great Cataclysm) - if you look at some of the maps for the island I’m pretty sure you can see a consistent lava flow. It’s not an eruption - more like a slow leak of lava, or a residual flow, at least from my understanding.

What I’ve never understood is why the island was buoyant until the cord formed, but then sank once it was destroyed.

And the answers for five and six from BS01 (that Atobe_Brick shared) I don’t have anything to elaborate on. No idea if Glatorian have noses or not, sorry. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Yeah I remember that too. I think Greg said it on the Forum.

He said that somewhere; and I seem to remember it being stated that such mods weren’t unusual for ko-matoran.

It was being pulled back into place by the Staff of Artakha.

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I don’t think that the island was ever buoyant. When it sank, it landed on an underwater rock cliff, and was later connected to voya nui via the cord. I guess when voya nui started to move, it crashed into Mahri Nui, and destroyed the city

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I’ve never understood Voya-Nui in any regard.

Was Voya-Nui part of the GSR’s outer shell? That would appear to be the case, but then where did the Matoran there go after it was returned to the robot?

How was Karda-Nui not completely flooded by the ocean of Aqua Magna? There’s a hole the size of Voya-Nui pouring water in for over 1000 years.

How did everyone living on Voya-Nui before it came to the surface survive it ascending through the ocean?

If Voya-Nui wasn’t actually part of the outside of the GSR and was part of the inside, how did it break out of its dome? What was left on the inside, a giant crater? A hole into Karda-Nui? When it got put back, wouldn’t there still be a massive hole in the dome letting water in?

Wouldn’t the inhabitants of the continent living right next to where Voya-Nui used to be see a GIANT COLUMN OF WATER FALLING FROM THE “SKY?”

Nothing about Voya-Nui makes any sense.

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(Quick Clarifier - Voya Nui is a fragment of the Southern Continent, which is inside a dome. So in the Great Cataclysm it busted up through the top of the top of that dome - so your second theory is correct.)

Some helpfully detailed concept art from Faber shows that the original plan was to show that there was, in fact, a giant waterfall falling into Karda Nui (it’s actually the one that Matoro fell through). It slowly filled up, but didn’t flood because:

  1. Karda Nui is massive
  2. The seawater, when it made contact with the water of Karda Nui, underwent a reaction that turned it into light (essentially being a light source for the dome). I can’t recall offhand if this was a reaction to the Protodermis or the Pit Mutagen.

Obviously, we didn’t get to see much of this because by '08, there was no hole for the waterfall anymore. But I believe that canonically there was a giant void where water poured into Karda Nui.

(And yes, by extention, it means that the Southern Continent would have seen this waterfall flowing right past them, an odd little detail that’s not oft-mentioned but canonically has to have happened for everything else to make sense.

I think that the Staff of Artakha (which was used roughly at the time Matoro sacrificed himself) repaired the hole in the dome that Voya-Nui busted through, though I don’t have a specific source to back that up.

tl;dr - Yes, there was a giant column of water falling from the sky, but because of where the story was set we never really got to appreciate that visual. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I always saw it like this: the Staff of Artakha is capable of repairing the entire Matoran Universe. I assume it’s capable of “pull the ejected land back in, then seal the hole.”

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Did it undergo a secondary reaction that caused it to turn back into water afterward? Otherwise, it seems highly unlikely that over the course of 1,000 years, Aqua Magna’s ocean levels wouldn’t have receded to the point of the hole being uncovered by the great ocean, resulting in the waterfall running dry long before Matoro ever got there.

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It still makes no sense to me, the entire GSR, actually.

I went on a crazy soul-searching trip immediately after my first comment looking at pictures of the inside of the robot. Nothing about it makes sense.

Like…

It can’t be this. Karda-Nui is supposed to be underneath the Southern Continent.

And if it’s like this, how did Voya-Nui fit through the outside of the robot?

And if it’s something like this, then I take issue with the name “Karda-Nui” and its description as the “heart” of the robot! Everything about it implies it acts as Mata-Nui’s literal heart, but why is it located where his kidneys would be? It should be beneath the Northern Continent!

Then it doesn’t make any sense at all that the Mask of Life was ejected from the GSR’s chest in every media it was shown. Did it just get sucked up from his back into his chest? Why is there an ejection canon in the chest anyways?

Let alone the question of how in the world, if the GSR fell onto its back, did a piece of an island inside it get ejected into the air and outside of its outer shell and float on the surface above??

Why does nothing in my fantasy robot story make sense??? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Maybe it’s not spheres. This is just speculation but maybe cyclinders? Like an extended gravity wheel which spacecraft would use to have gravity. If that was the case then the Northern continent would have plenty of room to fit inside with Karda Nui underneath and Voya Nui could have been part of the ‘top’ side of the cylinder. And perhaps Voya Nui dragged something with it that semi-plugged the hole?

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Was this ever canonically confirmed?

I have always assumed that this was the case, but I have never been able to find a citable source confirming it.

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If in doubt, go with this one - seeing as Faber drew it. I don’t see the issue with the size of the island - it was comparatively a very small island (orders of magnitude smaller than Mata-Nui), after all.

Not gonna argue with this one. I suspect that this was the original plan and something got messed up, given that it’s literally off-centered like a heart would be.

That said, TLR gives us what (could) be considered a brief glimpse of the Southern Continent in the opening sequence, given where it zooms in, and the actual structure of that part of the robot could be considered an energy source. There’s no reason that the robot’s “heart” has to be where ours would be, although deliberately changing it without reason rind of messes with the otherwise consistent Biology metaphor that the whole franchise is kind of built around, so I agree it’s kind of a misstep.

Why couldn’t it just be teleported there? Makuta literally ejects a bunch of people from the GSR’s brain in Reign of Shadows. The Robot is powerful enough where I don’t think there’s a need for a literal chest canon firing things out of it.

I’m not going to respond to this one because I think it’s more of a physics question, and I’m not the one to be answering that, lol. But it’s worth remembering that the Great Cataclysm was a huge event - there’s a bunch of side consequences that could have been responsible for the effect other than it being the direct result of the fall.

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Haha I’ve always found the universe in a giant robot thing very convoluted and confusing

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I think we all

that would be an interesting canon contest (to find out what the layout is)

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2 of the pictures you posted are just fanart, I don’t know why you’re acting like what they’re depicting is how the islands were placed inside the robot in the canon. It’s just fanart.

And while yes, the whole Voya Nui thing is pretty bizarre and unthinkable, once you accept the fact that an island somehow got ejected into the sky and pierced the GSR’s armor, the rest of it makes perfect sense actually.

Voya Nui got separated from the Southern Continent, pierced through the dome’s ceiling and GSR’s outer shell, and left a hole in both the Southern Continent and its dome, leading to Aqua Magna ocean flooding Karda Nui. There was actually a Giant Waterfall, it even has its own page on BS01 and you can see it in some comics and Mata Nui Saga. Also, nobody said the inhabitants of the Southern Continent didn’t see a giant column of water falling from the sky, we never went there in the story. One could assume they did notice the waterfall (I mean, it’d be pretty hard to miss) but decided to stay away from it after they noticed the water is mutagenic.

And then the island got pulled back by the Staff of Artakha, the hole in the dome was sealed, that’s it.

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