Subject: Ahahaha. Go directly to Archive Panic. :D
Author:
Posted on: 2012-08-15 18:00:00 UTC
Oooh boy. Just keep me away from the implausible hobbit/dragon smex so I don't completely lose my sanity...
Ye gods, really? Say hullo to the wiki! Bionicle's a sort of science fantasy in which robots (ish) have elemental powers and kick evil's ass and are awesome, and it starts out simple and then the last couple years was a tangled mess of plot shenanigans. If that doesn't make you decide it's not your cup of tea, start with:
Where it all began. This link goes straight to the External Links section because the rest of the thing is a spoilerrific play-by-play of the game.
Once you've got to the end of that and are WTFing all over the place, go watch these fun animations, and these ones, and read these fun reports. Especially read the reports, they explain a couple things you'd only get otherwise if you read the books.
You'll still lose a few things even then because there are a couple of things the books tell you that the game, animations, and reports only vaguely allude to, but for the 2001-early2003 era at least I think what all I linked to is pretty much enough to fumble through. Oh! And take this, it's dangerous to try to read the Matoran alphabet alone. (It's on Omniglot, how cool is that?)
Now, if you've dug through all that and you didn't decide it was terrible, there's another (MUCH longer because grindy) game called the MNOG II, it's also findable on BIOsector01 and unless you really like running around training for a few days I recommend just reading the walkthrough since it has the same plot information, and the first Bionicle movie is on Youtube. It's called BIONICLE: The Mask of Light, and it is shamelessly cheesy. The next two movies are also on Youtube, "Legends of Metru Nui" and "Web of Shadows", they do a pretty good job of explaining the story at least I think so even though they only vaguely allude to everything mentioned in the 2004-2005 books.
Books. Argh. If you have disposable income and what you've seen interests you, I think they're all findable on Amazon, as are trade paperback versions of the comics though I think a lot of those are available as legitimate PDFs you can look at by checking out the links to them on BIOsector01. The book series go in the order Chronicles, Adventures, Legends. Once you get into the 2006 and onwards storyline, that being what happens in Legends until the gigantically spoilerrific ending of Legends #11 and then it's mostly the 2009 movie "The Legend Reborn" and then the story "Journey's End" (aaaaugh the convolutednessss), you need the books to really understand the story... and the online serials...
Oh look, a saga guide. I'll be over here giving up on trying to show it to you the way I got it and cursing its labyrinthine means of accessing the story for making it incredibly difficult to recruit anyone to the fandom, especially over the internet.