Bionicle's 2007 Crab Collab, it was never just a community thing from 2019 on.

Jaller and his Hannah crab be like: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/952210668165283840/4SnTgxRY_400x400.jpg

Ah yes a Toa of Fire underwater. I guess that's why he gave his pet crab a gun...

when you strap a missile silo to a crab

Wait...that's supposed to be a crab? The entire body is just one giant claw, with its eyes right where it hinges! Next you're going to show me a cow that walks out to your table and asks which part of its body you'd like served on a plate.

@PurpleDave said:
"Wait...that's supposed to be a crab? The entire body is just one giant claw, with its eyes right where it hinges! Next you're going to show me a cow that walks out to your table and asks which part of its body you'd like served on a plate."

Why yes :P https://biosector01.com/wiki/Mata_Nui_Cow

I’m ready for my next dose of that sweet Bonkle lore https://bit.ly/2HH7S9a

Wrapping one's head around the concept of Toa living entirely underwater was definitely one of the fun aspects of BIONICLE in late 2007. Even better were the set designs of the Toa, which both encapsulate a less radical structure (regular Toa heads! Actual Kanohi masks...for most!) and provide small innovations that stand these Toa Mahri apart from what came before. In particular, I refer to the cool "breathing tubes" found on Jaller here, the scuba face shield found in Hahli, Matoro, and Nuparu, and even the integration of System pieces into the "air tanks" on Kongu and Nuparu.

Jaller stood out because of his Hahnah crab companion, armed with a Cordak blaster (or "gatling gun"). At this point, BIONICLE launcher development peaked. Easy to fire, easy to store ammo, and not much bigger than the Zamor and squid launchers that preceded it. Yes, I'm sure some knave will chime in to say they could never get the Cordak blaster to work, and let me tell you, something was wrong with how you were using it, not the blaster. Once the red bullets are loaded in the chamber, you hold the weapon with your index and middle fingers and press the red pump button with your thumb in a single, smooth motion. Repeated pumps fire the bullets in rapid-fire mode, peppering your Barraki or little sister or pet cat with rubbery projectiles of doom!

At this point in the story, Jaller had been Jala, dead, a Toa Inika, and now a Toa Mahri. He wore a Kanohi Arthron, the Mask of Sonar, so he was able to find things underwater. He chafed a bit at being mostly second-in-influence to Matoro, the Bearer of the Mask of Life, and as a result, his character feels a little sidelined. It all pays off in the end as the Toa Mahri rush to deliver the Mask of Life into the realm which it is needed.

Mata Nui had just died, and all hope seemed lost. But Matoro didn't want to give up. He decided to press on before the island of Voya Nui sank on top of him and sealed the path to the inner world. Without missing a beat, Jaller offered to buy him some time with the other Toa Mahri against the oncoming armies of the Barraki warlords. It was a titanic battle, one the Toa Mahri were sure to lose. In a last ditch effort to win, Jaller decides to overload his fire powers in a rare, devastating attack called a Nova Blast. It would destroy the Barraki and their armies utterly...along with anything alive in a large radius stretching many miles in any direction. Just as he was ready to detonate the blast, sacrificing himself and the others, Jaller found himself back in Metru Nui, his home, with the other Toa Mahri. After deactivating his Nova Blast charge, he noticed it wasn't all the Toa Mahri...Matoro was missing! But shouts of joy regarding the revival of Mata Nui revealed the sad, sad truth. Matoro wasn't just missing--Matoro was dead, the willing sacrificial lamb to the power of the Mask of Life. In doing so, Mata Nui lived once more. But such was Matoro's will that the Mask of Life granted him one, dying wish: that Jaller and his friends not be slaughtered and forgotten in depths of the dark seas. That they be transported home, and able to breathe air once more. So Jaller accepted in the end that Matoro was the most heroic of them all.

Jaller and the surviving Mahri went on to do other deeds in the name of awakening Mata Nui. While the Toa Nuva fought the Makuta's Brotherhood head-on in the vast realm where the Mask of Life went, Karda Nui, Jaller lead his team around the universe, island hopping and fighting all manner of the Makuta's threats and minions, until he reunited with the Toa Nuva on Metru Nui in celebration of their destiny fulfilled. It was a great day for all Toa and Matoran alike.

Too bad the Makuta still had one trick up his shadowy sleeve...

Bionicle, the new Clikits.

Is Toa Jaller a total baller?

@Zordboy said:
"Bionicle, the new Clikits."

I prefer Clikits—less reading involved just to know what I’m looking at.

The Toa Mahri might actually be my favorite wave of Bionicle Toa sets. Each of them has it's own unqiue design, when previously, all the Toa were basically all the same. On top of that, you also have the unique underwater scuba diving aesthtic, which also makes them stand out when compared to the other Toa waves.
As for Jaller, he might be my personal favorite of the Toa Mahri. I really like his exclsuive red armor parts and his cute Gun Crab companion.

@Darth_Mule said:
"Lots of Bionicle lately.
Probably because half of the sets on the database are Bionicle.;)"

Not quite half xD Although there ARE a lot of them; plus, Bionicle wasn't eligible to be picked for Random Set of the Day for over a year so there's a bigger backlog of them to draw from than many other themes have.

In fact, I just checked. Outside of things like basic bricks, gear and duplo, there are only three themes that significantly surpass Bionicle in sheer number of sets: Star Wars, Town and Technic. So there's that!

As for the set himself... yeah, as a kid, Jaller wasn't my favourite Mahri, but in hindsight I can definitely see where the comments above are coming from; in particular, he didn't have the awkward design features that some of his teammates got stuck with. Add to that, his mask is definitely one of the coolest of the Mahri designs, and his colour scheme of orange and red is simple but distinctive; it nicely recalls Tahu from Bionicle's very first wave, and doesn't rely heavily on the dark grey that was a common feature in Bionicle by that point. Definitely was one of the most effective at achieving that diving-gear look, too ^^

And the crab... the crab was kinda cute. Need I say more? xD

Forget sharks, we have crabs with frikin' laser beams now.

@Lego_Lord_Mayorca said:
"At this point in the story, Jaller had been Jala, dead, a Toa Inika, and now a Toa Mahri. He wore a Kanohi Arthron, the Mask of Sonar, so he was able to find things underwater. He chafed a bit at being mostly second-in-influence to Matoro, the Bearer of the Mask of Life, and as a result, his character feels a little sidelined. It all pays off in the end as the Toa Mahri rush to deliver the Mask of Life into the realm which it is needed.
"

If there was one gripe I have with the Bionicle story is that Jaller kind of has very inconsistent depictions in terms of his character and attitudes. In MNOG the Jala we first met was the Captain of the Guard, a gruff and hard working military man who was stressed from having fought off 1000 years of attacks to his village. Then as the Bohrok saga went on we saw his friendship with Takua form, and Jala finally seemed to start relaxing a bit; perhaps most notably when at the end of the invasion of Ga-Koro he mused "might as well stay just a bit longer" to promptly run off and play with Halhi in the ocean.

So while Jaller was becoming more open and relaxed, I still imagine he had that military man discipline at his core... and then we get Mask of Light. "TAKUAAAAAAAAAAAA" Yeah, the voice acting felt very miscast with "surfer dude" Jaller. Yes I get it, the fire tribe lava surfs including Jaller; but that was a side hobby for a character who prior to that point always felt like a military man. Precise, rarely letting his guard down. In Mask of Light its hard to take him as that, since he's so well... gregarious? Bro-dacius? Yes he certainly maintained his sense of duty often serving as Takua's moral guide in the film, but its hard to take the character in the film seriously due to the voice acting pick. Oh yeah, and then he dies but comes back to life so its fine. :P

The irony is when we next see Jaller as a main character again in 2006, Greg seemed to go right back to the MNOG portrayal since Jaller is once again a dutiful tactician, who managed to strong arm the Turaga into spilling their secrets via organizing a massive city wide strike on the recently resettled Metru-Nui. So really the Mask of Light character is the one off depiction of Jaller in the whole franchise, but that makes it even weirder.

@thelegosensei said:
" @Lego_Lord_Mayorca said:
"I'm sure some knave will chime in to say they could never get the Cordak blaster to work, and let me tell you, something was wrong with how you were using it, not the blaster. Once the red bullets are loaded in the chamber, you hold the weapon with your index and middle fingers and press the red pump button with your thumb in a single, smooth motion. ""

with 5 of those blasters in my house, and none of them firing smoothly, it's more likely that yours were defects if they worked at all. tore apart a broken one once, they really aren't designed to keep the air pressure in there at all. no rubber seals, too many holes, they vastly improved the air pressure with the Mistika guns, but sadly they weren't near as cool as they didn't have that amazing auto-reload. those ones always let off a satisfying POP as you assault your siblings with them lol. I did find that the Cordak blasters work fine submerged in water, ironically. the water is better at pushing the darts out. "

You can't call it a "defect" if I own 10 Cordak blasters that all work fine when I shoot them. Yours, on the other hand, may have become defective after submerging and firing them in water. While yes, the medium allows for some satisfying shots, submersion in water will eventually cause the inner spring to rust, possibly break, and therefore permanently ruin the functionality of the blaster. Water gets caught inside the weapon where the spring is, even if you dry off the outside.

The Mistaka Nynrah Ghost blasters are pretty good, too. I don't rank them quite as high as the Cordaks because you can only fire one shot at a time before reloading. I did appreciate how one has to build the Nynrah Ghost blaster from parts, not just arrive as one piece like the Cordak ones did.

@xboxtravis7992 -
I did read a really interesting post about that on BZPower some months ago... I can't explain it as well as that post did, but the gist was that Mask of Light - and the movies as a whole - were leaning on the concept of the Matoran-Toa-Turaga progression mimicking a human lifestyle, emphasising the Matoran as children, Toa as adults, and Turaga as elders; not as a mistake or because the film-makers didn't understand Bionicle, but as a deliberate change to better carry the themes that they wanted to put across. Jaller simply suffered the most from that precisely because his personality was so clearly defined as a more mature character.

But yes, you're right: for as much as I loved that movie as a kid, I don't deny that it was definitely a weird regression on Jaller's part xD Even weirder when you consider that the movie writers were CLEARLY well-versed in the lore of MNOG, since Takua was a game/animation-only character before that point, and in the movie he references certain things from the game like having flown as the second on a Gukko bird... so at first glance it looks a lot like they did their character research for him, and then completely dropped the ball when it came to Jaller!

Actually, regarding voice at least, I remember seeing in the DVD bonus features that Takua and Jaller's actors were originally cast for each other's roles. But the would-be Takua actor showed up having done all his research, wearing a Bionicle hat, and giving off a very 'serious fan' vibe; while the would-be Jaller arrived looking scruffier and just ready to take whatever came... and the entire crew took one look at them and just unanimously decided they had to switch the casting to better match the first impressions they were both giving.

I have to wonder what it would have sounded like if the original casting had been maintained... I have trouble imagining them with switched voices, honestly. Not sure whether that would have been better or worse!
-

@Squidkid_Belmont -
Re. the Nova Blast, that's right! It was actually a concept coined by the non-canon Bionicle videogame as something exclusive to the Toa Nuva; but it was eventually picked up by canon and tweaked to be an ability that all Toa had: a release of all the elemental energy within them in an explosive blast powerful enough to flatten a city ^^

Source: https://biosector01.com/wiki/Nova_Blast