Random set of the day: Nuju
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8606 Nuju, released in 2004. It's one of 55 Bionicle sets produced that year. It contains 48 pieces, and its retail price was US$8/£5.99.
It's owned by 2885 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
Help me come to life! If you like the set I've chosen for you today, please pledge your support for me on LEGO Ideas so I have a chance of becoming an official LEGO set!
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32 comments on this article
[Bionicle 2: Legends of Metru Nui Quote Goes Here]
It’s a shame that Lego doesn’t use the constraction /CCBS system for its own themes anymore. If they were sold at $10 a figure I think they’d be really popular even today
I had this! The earliest Bionicle I recall recieving. :-)
I used Kopaka's original mask to make R2-D2. I used this guy's to make R5-D4. It's the one instance in all of my Bioniwars MOCs where I pointedly eschewed trying to make it look accurate in favor of going for the joke (honestly, there really wasn't a Technic solution to make them look accurate anyways, and I suspect even System would have been problematic at the time). As I recall, there were a few people who didn't appreciate that very much, but I still stand by my choice. Sometimes I sit by it, depending on the mood, and how long I've been on my feet. I still display them regularly, though, and I haven't changed their designs. They still get a lot of comments.
But back to Nuju! Here you see the first real hints of what will eventually become CCBS. The thighs are a generic dark-bley double-socket with a plain bit of Technic beam in the center, and you'd snap a color-coded shell on the front (but not the back) to complete the look. The shoulder is similar, with the same core element and another color-coded shell with a matching shape on the bottom half. Unlike the Toa Mata and Toa Nuva sets before them, the body structure for the Toa Metru was identical, as I recall, with the exception of weapons and masks. And this is where they started to lose my interest. Casey Jones from TMNT, and Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo (who was regularly borrowed into TMNT under an agreement with Eastman & Laird) are the only two MOCs I can recall building with Metru parts.
Ah, Nuju. My third Toa Metru which I got almost exactly 17 years ago! Kopaka, the Toa Nuva of Ice, was my favorite character, so I hoped Nuju here would continue the tradition. While the set is definitely very imposing (one of the two tallest Toa Metru sets) and lethal looking with those spiked snowshoe weapons (er, "tools"), Nuju the character left a lot to be desired.
In the ancient City of Legends, Metru Nui, there was a neighborhood (or "Metru") of Ko-Matoran dedicated to studying and analyzing the stars. These scholars lived high atop protodermic crystal towers, devoting their lives to their studies. Nuju here was first and foremost among those scholars and was therefore surprised when Toa Lhikan chose to give him a Toa Stone, leading him to the Great Temple of Metru Nui where he was transformed into Toa Nuju. This is where we meet him in the second BIONICLE movie, "Legends of Metru Nui", and frankly, in spite of this auspicious background, Nuju comes off as kind of a hapless nerd. Lots of brain, but no confidence or desire to act on it. However, the movie glosses over the comic story from the first half of 2004, in which the Toa Metru seek the Great Kanoka Disks in order to destroy a deadly, sentient plant called the Morbuzahk from destroying the city. In the comics, Nuju comes off a bit more competently, and so it is puzzling why the movie shows him to be such a downer.
One of the major plot points of the movie revolves around Toa Nuju and the rest of the Toa Metru coming into their own as Toa in a time when a new darkness threatens the city. You'd think this involve them learning to master their elemental powers, but instead, the movie focuses on them learning how to use their Kanohi masks. A fair point, considering they never had functional Kanohi masks as Matoran, but it is still focused heavily on. Nuju, who is imprisoned with Onewa and Whenua by Turaga Dume, discovers his mask is the Great Mask of Telekinesis thanks to some help from a mysterious stranger also in prison with him (the Turaga Lhikan, former Toa that sacrificed his power so that the Toa Metru could have theirs).
With this power, Nuju and the others escape, reunite with the other Toa Metru, and challenge the dark imposter Turaga Dume in his true form, the Makuta, for the survival of the hibernating inhabitants of the city. After several more adventures (see BIONICLE: Web of Shadows), Nuju and the rest arrive with all the Matoran on the island of Mata Nui. Remembering the sacrifice of Toa Lhikan, Nuju and the other Toa sacrifice their power to awaken the sleeping Matoran. As result, they become Turaga, and here at last we see Nuju, who had already been studying the natural world and the speech of bird Rahi, begins to stop speaking in "English" and only in a language of clicks and whistles.
Don't nudge me, or else I'll nuju!
@Lego_Lord_Mayorca:
Wasn't Metru Nui underground? How did they even know about stars, much less study them?
@bananaworld:
I'm reading that as "I'll noojoo!" Of all the languages on this planet, English is the only one that gives you a list of options on the many, many ways you can pronounce vowels. Since the names and terms from Bionicle are clearly not based on English, it stands to reason that all the vowels have only one pronunciation.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Lego_Lord_Mayorca :
Wasn't Metru Nui underground? How did they even know about stars, much less study them?"
I'd say it's some sort of metaphysical thing, but since they are literally within a giant robot, specifically under Mat Nui's face, I don't know. Maybe it's his neurons firing? And how do you go from Metru Nui to Mata Nui or Voya Nui if you just fly/head out to sea when they are not the same sea and in fact made of different materials (Protodermis and Water) and like you said, are on different elevations? Are they popping out Mata Nui's ear where the Protodermis and Ocean meet and then do a 180 or something? It's very weird.
I think I see Superman in his fortress of solitude in the background...
@PurpleDave: "Of all the languages on this planet, English is the only one that gives you a list of options on the many, many ways you can pronounce vowels. Since the names and terms from Bionicle are clearly not based on English, it stands to reason that all the vowels have only one pronunciation." That may be what dictionaries and language guides may say, but in practice other languages (I'm thinking of Spanish) have just as many nuances in pronunciation as English does, they're just not acknowledged in teaching.
@MCLegoboy: That was one of the reasons I started to lose interest in Bionicle in 2004 ... I could never understand where Metru Nui was supposed to be in relation to Mata Nui.
The Toa Metru sure looked neat, but their weapons/tools mostly didn't make sense. Nuju's snowshoes looked pretty good on his feet, but they always looked pretty clumsy in his hands. I wouldn't want to be smacked in the face by a huge spiky snowshoe, but Kopaka's sword and spear made more sense as weapons.
@iwybs:
I don't see how that could be possible. English is the mutt of world languages, borrowing extensively from several completely unrelated languages. Each language that they borrow from has different rules, and many of those carry over into their English adoptions. There are a lot of nonsensical spellings, many of which are regional in nature (UK vs US).
I wish I could find a website that had it posted, but I remember reading a riddle when I was a kid, where someone goes to knock on a teacher's door only to find a sign taped to it. There were only two words printed on the sign, and they looked like complete gibberish. The solution involved figuring out all the alternate pronunciations until you can piece them together to form the words "Gone Fishing". All I can specifically remember is that the "F" in "Fishing" was "GH" as used in the word "laugh". I think the "SH" in "Fishing" involved the "T" from just about any word that ends in "-tion".
And this is after the spelling has been defined. Back a couple hundred years ago, spelling was so poorly defined that Ben Franklin is falsely attributed with saying something to the effect that he had no use for a man who only had one spelling for a word. The only aspect of English that's actually more simple than the two languages I've studied is verb conjugations, because it's all handled with separate words rather than suffixes.
The "stars" seen in the sky of Metru Nui were lightstones, though I suspect they were actually part of a much more dynamic apparatus linked to Mata Nui's consciousness, since the scholars of Ko-Metru could interpret the will and thoughts of Mata Nui from long, long study of these star movements. So the neuron analogy mentioned above was probably apt.
As for geography, Metru Nui, being a city, was considerably smaller than Mata Nui, the island. This is the first thing to keep in mind considering orientation of the city "inside" the head of the Great Spirit robot. Since the island of Mata Nui practically covered the entirety of Mata Nui's "face", Metru Nui lay beneath it in the northern region of the head. It is helpful to think of Mata Nui's giant skull as a single sphere, half-filled with the liquid Sea of Protodermis upon which Metru Nui is anchored. To get to Mata Nui, the Toa Metru flew or sailed to the edge of the sphere, where a crack allowed them to enter the substrata between the face and the skull. At this point, the Mata Nui robot was lying down on Aqua Magna, so the Toa Metru would've had to ascend upwards and over to the lower levels of Mata Nui.
Of course, this wasn't a super well-designed concept, even as far as science-fiction megastructures go, but it doesn't take too many stretches of imagination to decipher how entities from within the head of Mata Nui got out to his face.
In true Nuju fashion, I will go find a bird and ask them to stomp on my keyboard to write out my thoughts. Its how Nuju would want it to be done! :P
Okay in seriousness though, the Toa Metru were an interesting wave for me and while I liked them as a kid, I only completed them (Nuju included) as an adult. In general the increase of articulation with head, ankles and knees now standard on the figure was a big step up from the much more static figures from prior years. The 2004 Lego color change helped give them a new look compared to the original years of Bionicle, darker primary colors, the bley highlights, etc. It felt more sophisticated, and appropriately metropolitan in the new city setting. Nuju and Whenua are the only Toa really not touched by it much, since other than bley their white and black were the same colors used the whole franchise. There is a reason many of the colors of the era like Dark Red or Dark Green are known by Bionicle fans as "Metru Red" or "Metru Green," just as how the flame orange used on Keetongu the next year is still often called "Keet-orange."
I think over time though the colors being on the dark schemes got old. The later years tried to break it up with secondary highlight colors, but it still stuck to dark red, dark blue, dark green and various shades of brown/yellow/orange; but it dragged down the variety of the theme and made things just seem darker in general. The final years tried to bring back more variety by introducing lime green again to figures then later bright reds and azures; but ultimately Hero Factory and Bionicle G2 were both more successful in returning fully to the saturated colors of the original Bionicle and Slizer/Throwbots years. Again the dark colors worked well for the Toa Metru since it fit the metropolitan nature of the city where Matoran also painted their masks with silver highlights and Turaga Dume wore black highlights; as if there was a sense of fashion in this society and the dark colors were in vogue in Metru-Nui when the Toa Metru entered the scene.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Lego_Lord_Mayorca:
Wasn't Metru Nui underground? How did they even know about stars, much less study them?"
The "stars" seen from Metru Nui are not real stars, rather things created by Mata Nui, which is why, when Teridax took over the Great Spirit Robot, he was able to literally rearrange these stars into the shape of his mask of shadows in order to taunt the losing heroes.
Metru build is probably my favourite standard Toa design, more so than the Mata or Inika builds, which is probably why I have so many. I must have bought 3 or 4 Nujus at one stage or another to build several different Toa of Ice.
Not a single system piece in this toy :/
I adore that background. So majestic, stagnant and calming.
@thor96 said:
"Not a single system piece in this toy :/"
It's got a good few technic pins. That's more than can be said for ccbs at least.
Bonkle!
Honestly aside from the cool graphics/artwork I was never a fan.
@PurpleDave said:
"I wish I could find a website that had it posted, but I remember reading a riddle when I was a kid, where someone goes to knock on a teacher's door only to find a sign taped to it. There were only two words printed on the sign, and they looked like complete gibberish. The solution involved figuring out all the alternate pronunciations until you can piece them together to form the words "Gone Fishing". All I can specifically remember is that the "F" in "Fishing" was "GH" as used in the word "laugh". I think the "SH" in "Fishing" involved the "T" from just about any word that ends in "-tion"."
Ghoti = Fish
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti
@PurpleDave said:
"Of all the languages on this planet, English is the only one that gives you a list of options on the many, many ways you can pronounce vowels. Since the names and terms from Bionicle are clearly not based on English, it stands to reason that all the vowels have only one pronunciation."
Let me just quickly enumerate all vowels in the Hungarian language (written forms only, not accounting for pronunciation differences):
A, Á, E, É, I, Í, O, Ó, Ö, O, U, Ú, Ü, U, Y
Yes, they are all separate and individual vowels in daily use (well, Y is mostly pronounced as I and is almost exclusively reserved for historical and foreign names), and some may merge into others in the presence of certain suffixes or in some grammatical cases (e.g. "fire"-"tuz", "to fire"-"tüzel").
As a quick rule of thumb, almost nothing is "the only one" in today's world of incredible diversity.
I always liked how much like a balaclava Nuju's mask looks like, like he's got proper snow gear on
The Toa Metru sets had all some pretty sick looking box art, I think we can all agree on that.
@yuffie said:
" @thor96 said:
"Not a single system piece in this toy :/"
Lego in name only."
Jeez, looking at any Technic set must hurt for you guys. No studs, but it's all "in system" and cross compatible with Lego bricks.
@jol said:
" @thor96 said:
"Not a single system piece in this toy :/"
It's got a good few technic pins. That's more than can be said for ccbs at least."
Maybe it was different in Hero Factory, but almost all my Bionicle G2 and Star Wars CCBS figures have the same if not more pins and Technic axles and gears than this set has. Lord of Skull Spiders in particular would like to have a word about it.
Yes!
Another one of the sets I had a lond time ago...
@xboxtravis7992 said:
"Jeez, looking at any Technic set must hurt for you guys. No studs, but it's all "in system" and cross compatible with Lego bricks."
It's ok, 42117 and 42121 were made for them. Unlike some other people who scoff at the presence of System parts in their Technic sets. There's a LEGO set for everyone!
@LegoSonicBoy said:
" @xboxtravis7992 said:
"Jeez, looking at any Technic set must hurt for you guys. No studs, but it's all "in system" and cross compatible with Lego bricks."
It's ok, 42117 and 42121 were made for them. Unlike some other people who scoff at the presence of System parts in their Technic sets. There's a LEGO set for everyone!"
Hehehe 8549 and 8539 both are also great examples of System studs sneaking into even Bionicle builds. Again, all cross compatible and in system even if their physical look seems different.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Lego_Lord_Mayorca:
Wasn't Metru Nui underground? How did they even know about stars, much less study them?
"
The Domes of the Matoran Universe were lined with millions of ligthstones. During the "day" the lightstones would illuminate at full volume for the illusion of a sun. During the night a small subset would illuminate to create stars and transmit Mata Nui's thoughts. Additional, a tracking system was put into place to illuminate lightstones above all active Toa, known as "Toa Stars."
While it was never explicitly stated in the story, the death of Mata Nui was described as "the universe going dark" and events inside the MU after the Great Cataclysm often have a dark/grey tint to them, suggesting that when Mata Nui was put into a coma the lightstone stars would start permanently extinguishing and the "sun mode" if you will would never activate, leaving the universe in darkness.
Out of all the Toa Metru Nuju's probably got the least lore, but still lore time:
Nuju was once a simple Matoran living in the great city of Metru Nui, within the Knowledge Towers of Ko-Metru. There he studied the stars, and was the most respected and recognized seer of the future on the island.
One day he was approached by a mysterious figure. Toa Lhikan, protector the city. Lhikan gave Nuju a Toa Stone, a map to the Great Temple, and left in a hurry. Nuju traveled to the Great Temple to meet six other Matoran (including Vakama, who gave him his mask's scope attachment.) The Toa Stones reacted to the Suva in the temple's center, and with a flash of light the six Matoran were transformed into powerful Toa heroes!
As a Toa Nuju would often clash with the Toa of Earth Whenua. The Ko-Matoran's love of predicting the future and the Onu-Matoran's love of studying the past put the two at odds. It was only with extensive collaboration and teambuilding the two realized the beauty in all points of time.
After collecting the six Great Disks, defeating the terrible Morbuzahk, and saving the Onu-Metru Archives from flooding the six Toa approached the Colosseum, expecting to be hailed as heroes. Instead, Turaga Dume branded the Toa as traitors and ordered their arrest! Nuju, Onewa, and Whenua were locked away in a Po-Metru prison, and Vakama, Nokama, and Matau had to sneak throughout the great city to rescue them.
While imprisoned Nuju met Lhikan, now a Turaga, who taught him how to access his mask power of Telekinesis. Soon Vakama and co came to the rescue, leading to the events of the Great Cataclysm. To keep things brief, Mata Nui fell into a coma, all the Matoran were trapped in pods and had their memories wiped, Makuta killed Lhikan, the Toa trapped Makuta in a elemental seal, and the Toa escaped Metru Nui, eventually discovering the island paradise of Mata Nui.
The Toa forged a plan, the Great Rescue, to rescue the Matoran and free them from their pods on the island. The plan quickly fell apart. The Toa arrived in Metru Nui to find it coated in strange green webbing and overrun by giant spiders, the Visorak Horde! The Visorak captured the Toa, and used their mutagenetic venom to transform the Toa into the beastly Toa Hordika! The Visorak planned on killing their new toys, but the Hordika were rescued by the Rahaga. The Rahaga were also Toa mutated by the Horde, but not the Visorak, by their sinister viceroy Roodaka.
Roodaka's mutations could not be cured, but Visorak venom could! The Rahaga new of an ancient beast on the island known as Keetongu who was capable to curing the Hordika and makaing them Toa again, and of a powerful Mask of Light the Toa would have to find and take with them to hide on the Mata Nui island.
The Rahaga and Toa set off on quests to recover this artifact and find this Keetongu. Nuju teamed up with Kualus. Kualus taught Nuju the beauty of nature and the complexity of animals. Even though they may seem different than us, every living creature has it's own way of looking at the world, interacting with each other, and interacting with other beings. Nuju took these lessons to heart, and they would forge the person he became as a Turaga.
The Toa eventually did stop the Visorak Horde, found the Mask of Light, accidently freed Makuta, and got cured by Keetongu. Once all the Matoran Pods had been loaded on airships and the trip to Mata Nui had begun, Nuju revealed his newfound life-direction. No longer would he speak Matoran, he would now speak the language of various Rahi. His logic: if they truly cared about what he was saying they'd take the effort to understand it.
Once the Matoran were on Mata Nui, the Toa sacrificed their Toa power to awaken them and transformed into Turaga. The Matoran Pods had wiped all memories of Metru Nui , and the Turaga decided to keep it a secret from their tribes for fear of what Makuta would do if they ventured back down. Nuju became the head of Ko-Koro, and the selfless Matoro became his trusted translator.
Since people seem curious, here's a fanmade map of how Metru Nui was "underground." Everything has been increased in size for better clarity, but it gets the point across
https://www.deviantart.com/llortor/art/Mata-Nui-Side-Profile-Island-Head-619119511
@GSR_MataNui said:
"Since people seem curious, here's a fanmade map of how Metru Nui was "underground." Everything has been increased in size for better clarity, but it gets the point across
https://www.deviantart.com/llortor/art/Mata-Nui-Side-Profile-Island-Head-619119511 "
Mangaia are the sinuses.
Okay seriously I love that image, but the scaling is indeed off. Metru-Nui should be a lot smaller and I think the GSR head would be a lot bigger and more fitting underneath the island. But its still one of the best illustrations of the layout.
@xboxtravis7992 said:
" @LegoSonicBoy said:
" @xboxtravis7992 said:
"Jeez, looking at any Technic set must hurt for you guys. No studs, but it's all "in system" and cross compatible with Lego bricks."
It's ok, 42117 and 42121 were made for them. Unlike some other people who scoff at the presence of System parts in their Technic sets. There's a LEGO set for everyone!"
Hehehe 8549 and 8539 both are also great examples of System studs sneaking into even Bionicle builds. Again, all cross compatible and in system even if their physical look seems different. "
Hell, Pohatu Mata literally comes with a Rock Raiders boulder. I was never sure if it was meant to represent a Kolhii ball or just some random boulder.