A hypothetical question about Lewa

LEGO BIONICLE
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So, when G2 happened, Lewa became a Toa of Jungle on the grounds that focus groups thought that made more sense for “the green one.” While I think everyone just accepted it with ease that green = Air in G1, Lego seems to hold focus groups to a higher standard these days. Therefore, I have a proposition with which I aim to gauge what this community values about its characters.

Let’s assume G3 happens and uses the original Toa. This, of course, means Lewa is among the characters employed. Of these 2 scenarios, which do you prefer?

A. Lewa continues to be the Toa of Air, but gets a new color scheme (say, cyan and white) in place of his traditional green and lime to fit the element. This would also change the colors used to represent Air among the Matoran, and Bo-Matoran and their respective Toa get to be green now.

B. Lewa’s element, along with that of the Le-Matoran, changes to Plantlife, and the Matoran of Air get new colors.

You may only choose one of these. While it’s not inconceivable that Lego wouldn’t let us have our green cake and eat air too, it’s also plausible that this won’t be the case if G3 occurs. The goal here is to learn what you value when you only get to choose one of these things: do you prefer to keep the integrity of the character’s visual design, or do you think his in-universe powers and fighting style are more important?

  • Option A
  • Option B

0 voters

I have my own opinion, but I shall spoiler it in the hopes that you’ll only vote based on your own opinion rather than being swayed by what I have to say. If you change your mind, I think you can recast your vote by refreshing the page; though I may be wrong about that.

I believe it is more important that a character should keep the powers he has rather than keeping a rather arbitrary paint job, as this is partly a defining aspect of that character. I’m only in favor of changing any of the original Toa’s elements if the existence of that element creates serious logical headaches, i.e. Stone.

Bonus question: say G3 revolves around an entirely new cast of characters, with the OGs being background/long-dead heroes if they’re even mentioned at all. Does your stance on changing the color used to represent Air versus replacing Air as an element change at all, or is your vote still the same?

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2

I’m sorry, but I don’t vote for either of these. Lewa should be kept green, and he should remain a Toa of Air. Changing it to Jungle was one of the weirdest changes they made with G2.

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You don’t get that option in this scenario. If you HAVE to choose, what do you choose, and why? That’s the question I’m asking; whether or not this is a good situation to be in is a different discussion.

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So, a couple of things:

Firstly, the community has basically done this already. When TTV was in the middle of their Brickonicle project, Lewa was a major source of contention. Ultimately, the choice made there was that Lewa should stay the Toa of Air, but they changed the color scheme to green and white. Considering that choice went down decently well with the community, I think it’s pretty safe to assume people would choose that option (the main issue with Brickonicle Lewa was the forced gender diversity anyways).

I think it’s good to have that discussion here anyways, because otherwise this serves no purpose. Here’s why:

There’s a number of issues with this question from a conceptual standpoint. Most notably, there’s very little difference between these questions. You’re only really asking if Lewa should stay a Toa of Air and changing the air colors anyway.

The other issue is that you’ve chosen a really limiting question to ask people that doesn’t really offer much in the way of conversation and kinda ignores the complexity of the issue.

Basically here’s what I’m saying: rather than opening up a dialogue to see what possible, more creative solutions could be thought up to rectify the color/element issue, this question stifles those solutions and puts people’s opinions into boxes because of it. You’re saying with your question, even if you didn’t mean to, that if you pick A you must only care about in-universe powers and if you pick B you must only care about visual design.

I realize that’s probably not your intention, but I really can’t see what sort of useful information or discussion could come from this kind of question. It sort of ignores the very wide and complex range of things that people like about this character. Of course people care about visual design, and people also care about consistency. Asking them which of the two they’d save from a burning building isn’t really much of an interesting question, nor does it help in getting closer to understanding how they feel about them.

If I asked you if you’d rather save one person you care about or another from a burning building, of course you’d be forced to pick one. But that doesn’t exactly mean I’ve discovered that you only care about that one person and not the other.

It also kinda seems like you already have your own answer to this question, so I don’t know why this has to be a poll if it’s not something people have a say in deciding or changing. All it’s going to do is cause people to argue because of the aforementioned generalizations it causes. If you want to have a genuine discussion about how people feel about elements and colors not lining up, maybe change the topic and actually start that dialogue. If you want to share your opinion on it, then share your opinion and don’t put up a poll that will make people want to argue with you or others. Otherwise, I really don’t see what purpose this serves and it seems kind of pointless.

TL;DR: This issue has a lot of interesting discussion potential, but not in the form of a strictly binary poll.

4 Likes
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Remove Lewa and replace him with Voriki.
Problem solved.

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The aim of the thread was to see what people consider the lesser of two evils in a scenario we’re likely to encounter with any future iterations of Bionicle based on things Lego has shown that they prioritize. I was hoping people would talk about why they chose what they chose so that, regardless of what the majority says, I can still have a set of arguments on both sides regarding the matter. The poll exists merely to keep track of who’s saying what. I hoped that the fact that I’m even asking this shows that both in-universe powers and character design matter; this is meant to be a “what do you do in the worst-case scenario” kinda question.

I didn’t want to arrogantly assume my opinion was THE RIGHT OPINION™ and made this thread with the understanding that someone could very well change my mind. Maybe I’m wrong and colors are more important–but I cannot know this until someone presents a compelling argument against my current position.

The lack of actual activity in this thread probably means you’re right. In the interest of actually having a conversation and getting more perspectives on and possible solutions to the various problems with the elemental system, I may create another thread covering the entire thing at a later date where we can all share our own ideas for systems and design elements so that I may try and conglomerate an ideal system from all the different ideas people have; however, I won’t do so now because I don’t want to flood the forum with threads like this, and I wanna take my time in constructing the thread to actually prompt some ideas outta people.

At this point, I’m fine with this thread being closed, seeing as it’s not fulfilling my intended purpose.

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7

I do want to point out that the elemental master of air in Ninjago was also green.

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Ninjago also doesn’t have necessarily strict rules about what color denotes what element, nor does it really have a good elemental system in the first place.

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9

True, but there is definitely at least a semblance of color/element cohesion among the main characters/elements:
The master of fire is consistently red, the master of ice is consistently white, the master of earth is consistently black, Dareth is consistently useless, the master of water usually has some blue. Morro was a main villain, it would make sense for Lego to give him a color to match his element. They went with green for him.

Now was he green because he was air, or green for a different reason? No way to know. But it is possible, so it’s worth mentioning in a discussion of how Lego handles air.

1 Like
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was he green because he was air, or green for a different reason? No way to know.

He was green because that’s what color plants are.

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I was referring to Morro there, not Lewa.

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He was green because that’s what color ghosts are.

The designer was a fan of Lord of the Rings.

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Ghosts are photosynthetic, of course.

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14

Lloyd wasn’t air. He was energy. And Morro, contrary to his desires, was not the green ninja.

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Morro was the master of wind, however. That’s what he’s referring to.

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IIRC, Morro was green because he wanted to be the green ninja. Who is, y’know, green. Though, his element of wind could also be a reference to BIONICLE.

Back on topic, I also don’t see why Air can’t also be green. Jungle doesn’t have to be an element in G3. Also, by changing his colors to light blue, people may also mistake him for a Toa of Water or, if white is mixed in there, a Toa of Ice.

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17

Back on topic, I don’t care what shade of green Lewa G3 would be, we’d get green in one of the seven shades. Base green, yellowish green, sand green, dark green, bright green, lime, olive green. You could make a whole salad of Toa using different shades of green.

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18

I’m not talking blue, I’m talking something closer to the teal seen in early G1. Cyan is as far from blue as orange is from yellow.
Blue:

Cyan:

1 Like
19

Yeah, making Lewa the toa of jungle would be like Gali being the toa of seaweed

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20

and Onua the Toa of potting soil, and Pohatu the Toa of moss and petrified wood, and Tahu the Toa of dead trees, and Kopaka the Toa of frozen trees…

Also allow me to mention BIONICLE and Ninjago aren’t the only IPs that associate air with green.

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