>>7791702A large part of bionicle's aesthetic appeal was the functionality. Take the Toa Mata and Metru's gears. You saw force moving through the body, all the way down to the core. But CCBS, on the other hand, is dualistic. With OG bionicle, nearly every part, was part of that character; there wasn't a "naked" version you could see through the plates. There wasn't a ghost in the machine, animating the matter; the gears spun themselves and were on full display doing it, unlike the gearpacks G2 sets have (though I like their friction pieces). There wasn't magic it needed to come from; they looked like people, not action figures. I remember one of the the first shots of MNOG (sorry Greg), with an upside down toa mata body being used as an engine. Like you could stick it in a car, or on a motorcycle, and ride your ribcage around town. We were made out of a bunch of inanimate gears, yet it worked. One gear could spin two, like it was creation-ex-nihilo. Even when there wasn't a gear, like Kopaka's stopper, it looked like a logic gate. It was different from Lewa's loose arm, after all, just as their lowered shoulders were themselves different options from the raised ones the other toa had, all those toggled options making a difference out to the tip of the blade: physical programming. Which is actually all programming, but it's nice to see those catagories clap together.
