"Today I will take my rightful place among the gods."
Sup guys! It's time for the big bad of the Bionicle universe - whenever what alternate timeline or generation of the Bionicle franchise you're going to explore, Makuta is always there plotting his evil schemes. Well, except for one alternate timeline. But that aside - today we're going to look at the Makuta combiner model from Generation 2 Bionicle's final chapter "The Journey to One".
Makuta's combiner model is built from seven (!) Generation 2 Bionicle sets. The seven sets are the Lord of Skull Spiders (#70790), Mask Maker vs. Skull Grinder (#70795), Ikir - Creature of Fire (#71303), Tahu - Uniter of Fire (#71308), Onua - Uniter of Earth (#71309), Umarak the Hunter (#71310) and Umarak the Destroyer (#71316). You'll also need one extra ball joint too. However, even if you have all of these sets, there are no official instructions for this model.
How come? The Makuta combiner model was not intended to be physically released at all (this is why he doesn't have a set number for instance). The original physical model was made for the 3D render to be used in The Journey to One. It was also shown during the Makuta Building Contest and the design seemed to be very well received by the community. Because this combiner model or the instructions for it were not planned to be released, LEGO® released an album of pictures from the original physical model so the fans could at least reverse engineer it. Keep in mind that the Mask of Ultimate Power on all of the official images and the Makuta Building Contest video is a 3D printed prototype, and LEGO® has no plans for mass producing it, so the mask I'm using on Makuta is his former mask (the Mask of Control) he wore before the Mask of Ultimate Power.
However, reverse engineering the images isn't as easy as it may sound. There are a few parts of the model that are relatively not shown as how they are built. And there are actually some continuity issues between several pictures as well (where some parts of the build have been changed or swapped out halfway through). If you would look around various videos and images from fans you'll see that there might be some variations between them - as long as we don't exactly know how the model has been built, your guess is as good as mine. Surprisingly, the combiner model doesn't even use half of the parts that are available from all seven sets.
However, I do know that I've made one mistake in the ankles by using a hybrid 3 axle/pin instead of a 3 regular axle, and this was due to the resolution of the screen I was using to build the model. A similar thing happened to the orientation of the Hordika connector (which is flipped) and using the wrong connector piece for mounting his staff in his hand (which should've been this one). Unfortunately I figured those out after I made the pictures, and you can imagine that I won't reshoot everything just to get a few building mistakes out of it. I'm pretty sure there are some other mistakes I made as well, and I feel very uncomfortable and unconfident about it to be honest. So bear with me, I did my best. As said above: your guess about how certain parts were assembled is as good as mine. I will remain on the lookout for more possible mistakes, I will correct them, but these images will remain like they are.
Back to the model itself, regardless of small nitpicks - the overall presence of Makuta will still remain there. There is a lot to like about it. It uses a significant amount of transparent neon orange from the seven sets, not all though.
Makuta has an interesting anatomy. Proportion wise, he has long arms and his main torso is rather large. His "belly" bulges forward, giving it a strong presence in its overall design. Makuta goes with the "(over)dramatic large torso" design, a play of proportions of the human body. It's something that occasionally occurs in designing characters (how they look), two other examples of character designs where this also is used is Gilgamesh from Final Fantasy and Hoopa Unbound from Pokémon.
By the way, having "lanky" arms isn't really a new thing in Bionicle designs - it's actually very common among both generations.
There's this infamous phrase "If you can scratch your knees without bending, you might be an Inika build" which is about the fact that a lot of Bionicle characters could reach their knees without bending their backs because the arms are usually that long in order to accommodate their tools / vehicles (i.e. Axalara T9). The "Inika build" is a common way how Bionicle figures are assembled between 2006 and 2009, a trend that started with the eponymous Toa Inika themselves.
I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but I kind of see a samurai-inspired theme going on with the entire torso assembly, probably because of the locations where plating occurs and where not. One thing that I absolutely find fantastic about the design is how well the upper torso comes together (using half a Shadow Trap, a Cinderella wheel, a CCBS ribcage and several default CCBS armour pieces surrounding the wheel) and I really like how the wheel piece just grabs your attention by using the concave side to bring depth.
Another thing that I really like about the model is how the legs are built. It makes great use of those Technic beams in trans neon orange! The shoulder armour might be huge, but it does work with the overall theme that the design is going for - and the way how they can move around just gives a nice feel when you adjust their orientation.
There is so much to like about Makuta, that I even often forget that he even has a gearbox to move both arms around just like any of the non-Uniter Toa! Talking about luxury, there aren't that many large models like these to have a feature like that at all.
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| Sidorak, is that you? |
Being a cunning and evil character like Makuta does also mean he comes armed. He has his big staff weapon, which can rotate the large flame tips. His left arm has the obligatory retractable sword-guard, something we haven't really seen since Sidorak. Not only that, Makuta is also protected from nasty back-attacks, with having actual blades on his back to repel and punish those who attack from behind. And well, he has some significant claws, right?
However, after all that drooling of this fantastic combiner model, it's clear to understand why this set isn't really suitable to be released as a toy.
Makuta has a lot of parts which are connected through pins or ball joints but not fully held in place - this gives him a lot of possible and fine motion for the animated show, but it of course hinders the physical model. It's difficult to grab him without accidentally moving or rotating certain parts.
Because Makuta has such a dramatic (but definitely awesome) designed torso, he becomes top heavy. He only has one ball joint for each knee with only one friction connector, which makes him "weak knee'd" - a common issue with several (large) Bionicle/CCBS models where because of lack of friction in the knees, the model wants to topple because the knees cannot handle the weight.
So, as a display piece, this model is definitely one that many Bionicle fans would love to have. And probably a lot of diehard Bionicle fans will get one as well! But you can imagine that this model isn't as sturdy or as playable as you would have with the norm, so having a mass production of this model might not work out that well. How tall is this model, actually?
This is by no means the tallest Makuta set out there, given Ultimate Dume is the tallest Makuta *and* Bionicle set released so far. And if Ultimate Dume will ever be defeated as the tallest Bionicle set, is a question to be answered for another day.
All in all, Makuta Journey to One is one hell of a Bionicle (combiner) model. It does a lot of things right. It looks fantastic, it does the character justice, there's some interesting use of pieces for the building process not found in any other Bionicle sets to date and it has the cookie cutter features of all default Bionicle sets - the mask popping feature and the gearbox.
This "set" will be definitely one of my favorite Bionicle designs to date. It's no Nocturn, it's no Umarak, it's not like Lesovikk, Mazeka or the Axalara T9 - it doesn't have to be and it's not shy to be something else. Is this towering giant worthy of the beloved Warrior/Titan subtheme? It probably is. And this fellow takes his rightful place among my favorite Bionicle sets on my display shelf.
That's it for now - I'll see you guys again next post!
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