Awesome as many of the Toa’s weapons may be, you have to wonder how effective they’d really be as weapons. I remember when I was a kid, and I was building custom Bionicle figures, I’d slap together a bunch of pieces to make a weapon that I thought looked cool, but when I started playing with it, it didn’t go over so well. The weapon (s) would either be too heavy, or they’d fall apart easily.
In the real world, there are a number of different functions weapons are designed for. Heavier swords and axes are used for chopping, since heavier blades will have more momentum and will therefore hit with bigger impact. The issue with this, however, is that heavier weapons can be harder for a person to lift. In addition, swords always have a center of balance. The ones used for chopping have their center of balance near the tip of the blade, but the ones for dueling have it closer to the hilt.
Many of the Toa’s weapons seem to fall into the latter category-swords that are used for dueling. Tahu Mata’s flame-shaped sword, Jaller Mahri’s blade, Matau Metru’s aero slicers, and Kopaka Mata’s sword are pretty good-sized for dueling swords, and they don’t appear to be that heavy. In fact, the same holds true for a lot of the Toa’s weapons. Lewa Mata’s hatchet/axe, Hewkii Marhi’s spear, and even the Inika’s weapons…they all seem pretty like weapons that could exist in the real world. They’re not overly big or showy, it’s easy to tell where their points of balance are, and even the “chopping” weapons don’t look excruciatingly heavy.
Unfortunately, there are some Toa weapons that don’t seem so practical. First off is Kopaka Nuva.
I like Kopaka as much as the next guy, and his wielding of the double-bladed weapon and shield is really cool. But a double-bladed weapon isn’t quite as versatile as a normal sword. It’s not impossible to wield a double-bladed weapon, but it is easier if you have two hands. I mean, look at Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace and, later, The Clone Wars. Many of his fighting moves involve transferring his lightsaber’s hilt from hand to hand. If Kopaka was wielding both his double-bladed weapon and his shield, then he wouldn’t be able to do this.
Speaking of the Toa Nuva…I do kind of quibble with Tahu’s swords. Some promotional images have him dual-wielding them, others have them joined together in one weapon. But we do know he can join them together to form a lava surfboard.
Say what you will about the Mask Of Light movie, but seeing Tahu surf on lava is freaking awesome…until you read the next paragraph.
If Tahu’s swords are strong and rigid enough to be joined together to be used as a surfboard, then they must be really dense and heavy. I mean, think about it. Could you imagine breaking a surfboard in two and using the two halves as weapons? It would be pretty tough to brandish a half, let alone swing it, with just one arm. Clearly Tahu was pretty strong even without the use of a Pakari.
The only other impractical Toa weapons I can think of off the top of my head are the ones that Nokama and Onewa Metru use.
Both their blades seem pretty thick, but the handles/shafts are rather thin. Onewa’s proto pitons’ shafts seem a little thicker, but still. How do they even support the weight of the blades? And how do they not shatter whenever their users swing their weapons into something?
The world may never know.