Bionicle and Nostalgia | an Essay

originally published on 24/12/2022

I was tempted to make overbearing use of the song: ‘Beach Chant’, because whenever I listen to it I do not only feel what the song makes me feel, but I also experience a vast plethora of other sensations that are almost indescribable, sensations that I am tempted to gather together and envelop in the term ‘Nostalgia’. But is it truly nostalgia that I feel as I hear the ‘Beach Chant’, or is it something else that only masquerades as nostalgia?

In any case, I decided against using it overbearingly. Not because of artistic vision or mercy for the audience, but for some other reason, one that seemed almost completely unreasonable to me. Seemed, for it was in the past.

See, the ‘Beach Chant’ is only good as a thing one hears once and then experiences it within their mind, repeatedly remembering it, however, due to the nature of the musical piece in question, it winds up having no end and no beginning, but being an endless flow - much like the endless burbling of the sea water splashing upon the beach.

The droning cry rising out of one’s subconscious, returning to their consciousness and sparking within them a boundless number of memories and a well of emotions so vast that it is inexhaustible… I would say that this is what the ‘Beach Chant’ makes me feel. That collection of memories that I mentioned, coupled with the vastness of emotions, is what makes me think of nostalgia. I remember things from my past, things that are so foreign to me that I can not put them into words, things that are not understandable for me, for I have not properly sat down and thought about it, and thus they offer an inexplicable, macabre draw, one that is almost irresistible.

Yet the ‘Beach Chant’ itself is something I can barely listen to for its entirety, as it starts sounding and feeling wrong. Maybe the only reason the ‘Beach Chant’ is such a magnificent piece of media for me is because I have heard it once, long, long ago, and that moment is so distant in my past at this point in time that it has gone beyond history and has passed into obscurity. Maybe upon unearthing it I awakened some dormant memory, gleaning a minuscule tidbit of understanding, but the mystery wound up remaining, perhaps more mysterious than it was before.

Or, perhaps, it is not that. Maybe my fascination with that song just comes from the fact that it is inspired by something that is totally foreign to me. Where I’m from, we don’t have chants that sound like this. We barely have beaches, actually. This kind of song, this kind of cultural creation is incredibly alien, even if it is something found on Earth and made by humans… Maybe that’s what makes it so interesting for me, rather than the forgotten moment that wound up being remembered?

At the same time, though, I can’t stop thinking about it. I keep reaching toward it and craving a second hearing of it, but when I start listening and listen more than I should, I grow disappointed by it… And all that can be applied for more than just the ‘Beach Chant’. In fact, I can say it for Bionicle as a whole, which is the reason the ‘Beach Chant’ even exists.

The ‘Beach Chant’ is a musical piece that originates within the ‘Mata Nui Online Game’, which is a part of the ‘Bionicle’ multi-media franchise. Temporally, it appeared early in the two thousands, which was also when the Bionicle line of toys began its advance into the world of Millennials and the very earliest bearers of the Gen Z torch.

Bionicle, by merit of being a multi-media franchise, was not going to be confined to just toys, as is evidenced by the existence of a thing called ‘Mata Nui Online Game’. A computer game, even in those olden days, had two paths - to have a story, and to thus be an adventure, an experience, or to not have a story and to be more of a means of procrastinating aimlessly, of engaging in recreation.

The ‘Mata Nui Online Game’ chose the former, and it had a story. Not because it happened to be something that had a story, but because Bionicle, itself, was also gifted with a story. In the early stages of any franchise, though, everything is shrouded in mystery, because there is no certainty as to whether or not things will stick, whether or not things will manage to catch on and wind up financially successful.

That urges those dealing with the creation of said thing to make it enticing. They need to instill within it a great potential, one that is to be seen by the investors who will finance it, and then also a great source of interest or curiosity, one that will serve as the bait for the fishing pole used to catch the customer.

And with Bionicle, that was a combination of the appearance of the toys - inspired by a culture that is foreign to an incredible majority of the world’s population - and the story, which was also inspired by that same culture. Now, the inspiration, or rather the manner in which inspiration was drawn, was a subject of controversy, but the important thing is that there was a source. Things that have a solid foundation - and human culture tends to be incredibly solid as a foundation - happen to be very solid in their own right. The story of Bionicle, then, was solid and filled with promise.

It was very vague - somehow - even if it featured incredible amounts of information and clarity. There were so many characters, so many locations, so many things that were known, and yet there was even more that was left unknown. There was a sense of uncertainty woven in the very concept of Bionicle, one that radiated off the pages, be they web or paper, and seeped into the consumer.

The story of Bionicle was a mystery. A mystery that happened to be so great and engaging that it lasted for almost a decade, for the most dedicated fans, and, for others who were not so dedicated - that mystery maybe remains such even to this day. For me, the mystery wound up being a mystery for almost two decades, and in the end it still retained a measure of mystique that urges me to engage in it.

Though the past tense that I’ve used here is important. It WAS such. Maybe it was such for me, as I returned to it, only because I had been exposed to it in the past and had developed memories connected to it. That great longing that I felt whenever I recalled that Bionicles existed - was it Nostalgia, was it just curiosity, or was it something else?

Let’s take a closer look at what I mean by ‘something else’. I was a child when I was first exposed to Bionicle. As a result of that, I associate Bionicle with my childhood, my state of mind as a child and my perception of the world from when I was a child. Naturally, that is all going to be painted in a certain manner - one that is not truly representative of the world.

Maybe things were actually terrible and bad, but due to the fact that I was a child with no understanding of anything, least of all responsibility, and with no experience of anything, again, least of all responsibility, I was left in an unintentional state of indolence. I played around with my toys, some of those being Bionicles, and when I grew too old to actively want to play with toys, I assembled them and situated them wherever they could stand, but be out of the way, as a means of decorating my abode.

Yet that indolence remained. Sure, I went to school, but there was no understanding on my behalf - not a true understanding, either way. There was this distant moment in the future when I would no longer be under the roof provided by my parents, and when I would need to fend for myself, but that was so distant I could not even truly consider it.

I was so incapable of understanding at that point that all I had in my brain was fun and games, as well as dreams. Oh, there were many dreams… But the key thing is that there were no proper plans. There was no preparation for anything. There was no understanding that school actually meant to make me into a human being, rather than teach me a craft that I could ply and feed myself.

Then when I went to university, still naive and lacking understanding, still uncertainly wobbling on my newly obtained, properly human legs. I found out that, actually, things were not as nice as they were. They were not going to happen as they would in my dreams. In fact, they were so dreadful that it was entirely likely that they would not happen at all.

Life, as it is, came and presented itself. And that thing - human life - stood in stark contrast to what childhood was. I’m erecting a wall between those two things - being a child and being human - because they are not the same, and everyone ought to be able to confirm that it is so. Children act in certain ways that are not at all appropriate by any sort of norm, they operate without understanding of their actions or even without conceptual forms in their minds. They behave more like animals.

Humans, well, they do have an understanding. They have conceptual frames that bind them and force them to exist in a common world, rather than one that is not such. For a child, the world is not common, and the process of its commonification is what turns that child into a human. Naturally, there are many children who wind up being adults without truly developing their humanities, but that’s not the topic of this discussion.

So the child lives in an uncommon world, a world that is not the same as the world in which others live. That sensation that people experience whenever they miss their childhood, then, is not nostalgia, as they miss something that never was in the first place. Perhaps they miss that state of ignorance, which could be treated as the only thing that is appropriately referred to as an object of nostalgia and as originating in childhood, but everything else that one might remember - that’s not truly the world as it is.

That is some make-believe reality that has little, if anything at all, in common with the world that the human being finds itself in. As a result of that, it winds up being easy to understand why there is such a great sensation of longing and desire that arises within me whenever I hear the ‘Beach Chant’, or whenever I think about Bionicle.

Those things are parts of a wholly different world, one that does not exist, which gives it something in common with my childhood’s setting - some world that was not factual or real. While it is considered appropriate for one’s parents to shield them from the world’s horrible truths (which are actually humanity’s established conceptions, rather than the world’s unchangeable essence), I can’t help but feel as though that creates something that maybe should not be.

A longing for that security, for that freedom to wander about this fantastical realm that is so unknown and filled with mysterious things one can not even begin to understand… Is that last sentence referring to Bionicle and its story, or does it refer to the world as it was observed by a child? Maybe it refers to both.

Whether or not it does matters not. What is important here is the unknown, the inexplicable nature of the world, the lack of understanding. Both reality and Bionicle present something that is undiscovered for the child that explores them. Both of those things present the child with an opportunity to uncover whatever it is that is shrouded in mystery, which action provides the child with understanding and knowledge… Which tends to be a positive experience.

Thus, the acquisition of knowledge, itself, is a positive experience. And when one looks to the definition of nostalgia, or at least what Wikipedia might tell us, it turns out that it is bound with happy personal associations. Whenever one has positive experiences, one can be considered happy, as long as that individual conceives of those experiences as positive.

So these positive experiences of discovery and the acquisition of knowledge are the source of nostalgia. These things are the reasons why childhood is so wondrous and so beloved by all who have experienced it, and why things that we, humans, have uncovered of our own accord are so cherished. Things that one learns in school have a different ring to them, but the unknown things turned known in the lore of Bionicle happen to be ones that are learned thanks to initiative from the one who learns them.

However, when that thing is learned, when everything about the world is discovered, is that when the world stops being interesting? Is that when a state of nostalgia can be achieved? Perhaps I long for the past moments of my life, filled with uncertainty and curiosity in relation to Bionicle, for now that I know all that there is to know about that tale, I am left empty. There is no new knowledge to be obtained, no excitement for something in the future, only the past that is left to remember and mourn… Or celebrate, depending on my disposition.

Does that disappointment of the future also apply for the real world? As a child, I am filled with hopes and dreams of the future, I tell myself that I will be an astronaut or some other incredible thing, only to then realize that no, I will not be that. The older I grow, the better I come to know the world, the more difficult everything becomes, and the clearer it is that the future is not as full of opportunity as I had once thought it was. In fact, the more one knows of the world’s current affairs, the more dreary the future looks.

There is a phenomenal disappointment, far greater than that which comes from Bionicle, which disappointment is a negative sensation. And whenever one is overwhelmed by negative sensations, one begins to crave positive sensations, which can be found in that person’s past.

So is nostalgia a product of sorrow, exclusively? Maybe not sorrow, but it is definitely a reminder of how dark the future is, and with that reminder comes hopelessness. Whenever I am hopeless, be it consciously, subconsciously or even unconsciously, I, as a human being, am drawn to good things. To the past, as that is when the good things were, as hopelessness takes away the possibility for the existence of goodness in the future.

Thus, there is a nostalgia that can be associated with Bionicle - that which emanates from the simple knowledge that it has come to an end, that there will be no new Bionicle content, that there will be no new toys or stories to be told about that universe. Simultaneously with that, it also features that longing one feels for their childhood, which means that it is all very complicated…

But I find myself thinking that this type of complexity is good.

Either way, it would be good etiquette to end this flow of thoughts right here, as a means of conserving its focus, but I am not going to maintain good etiquette and I’ll spill all over. After all, I am talking about Bionicle, and I’d like to talk about it a little more.

See, it is entirely possible that the disappointment that came with Bionicle is greater than just a disappointment from the future. Perhaps the disappointment is one that can be traced from the moment I was presented with Bionicle to the moment I became disillusioned with the future, to the moment which marked my understanding’s genesis. That would be my life spent expecting the future, but why would I be expecting it - the future - in the first place? Can that be associated with Bionicle, too?

Of course it can. In that multi-media franchise, there is a concept called “The Three Virtues”, which sound very high and mighty, when one does not know what those three terms are, and they wind up being even higher and mightier when one figures out what they actually are. Unity, Duty and Destiny - that’s the trio, and you might be noticing something right off the bat.

Unity is a great virtue and I’m not going to point any fingers at it, as I’ve no ammunition to load into the pistol I’d be unloading at it if I were, but the context is relatively important, so we will start with it. In the context of the Bionicle franchise, the characters - called Matoran - are living robots. Robots are all created, and they are created with a function that they need to fulfill. Thus, when one considers the Matoran as robots, who are created with a certain function that they need to fulfill, one can easily understand what Unity means in that context.

In a factory, where a lot of work is mechanized, there is a semblance of unity between the machines working. They do whatever they are doing in a strange unison, the assembly line moving while the arms work on a part that then gets worked on by another pair of arms and so on and so forth. In essence, the Matoran, being created robots, have a function, and they can fulfill their function via Unity.

Now, if they were just robots, things would be perfectly fine, and there would be no need for these three virtues - among which is Unity - but they are not just robots. One of their creators gave them Free Will, thus kicking everything into action and causing all the troubles that wound up being caused. That’s why the three virtues are even present in the franchise - they are a means of urging the Matoran to fulfill their duties.

After all, having free will means you get to do whatever you want. But when you have the concepts of good and evil, and you’ve got the concept of a virtue - something that is exclusively good - you, as long as you understand what goodness and evil are, are going to strive towards goodness. And the three virtues are very good, so they prompt you to follow them.

You, being a Matoran, will follow the three virtues, and you will strive for Unity - as Free Will puts a big hitch in this one, requiring endless concessions and compromises from everyone involved in that Unity - as you will strive for the other two things.

But Duty and Destiny are a bit harder than Unity. Duty is self explanatory - whatever folks tell you is your Duty, you will do. If you wind up unable to do that, it isn’t your Destiny to do, so you must seek out your Destiny and follow it - as that is your Duty. In essence, those two appear intertwined in a manner quite distinct from the way Unity interacts with them.

Sure, Unity allows for the presentation of Duty, as that is done by someone else, but Destiny has almost nothing to do with Unity, not in the sense that we would associate it with the connection between Unity and Duty. Destiny is some individual thing, something that exists exclusively due to the advent of Free Will, whereas the other two concepts were existent even before Free Will.

Destiny, then, is so tightly bound to Duty that not performing one’s Duty is evil. That is because the Destiny of all Matoran is fabled to be to somehow aid the Great Spirit - which was their initial function, as they are akin to blood cells that circulate throughout the body of ‘the Great Spirit’ and make sure things work as intended. And, of course, without the Great Spirit great calamities will fall upon the Matoran and they will cease to be entirely, one can suspect… And because of Unity, not following one’s Destiny has an incredibly adverse effect on the entirety of the Matoran population, meaning that whoever does not perform their Duties and does not follow their Destiny is evil.

Ostracisation from society or straight up execution can be assumed to follow, but that’s me getting really off track. The important thing here is that the Bionicle franchise presents these three virtues and assigns the greatest value to them. It is through unity that the heroes manage to best the villains in the stories told, and it is through fulfillment of their duties that they follow their destinies, and so on and so forth.

That is a very simple means of explaining the world to a child. Far simpler than, say, a Religion OR what has been uncovered through the scientific method. If a child were to get involved in Bionicles, it would come to the conclusion that the three virtues are actually good overall. In addition to that, it would make sense for that child to crave the emulation of the heroes in Bionicle’s stories, which would mean following the three virtues.

Unity is easy. Duty is manageable… But Destiny is not. One could treat this as a means of brainwashing kids into accepting whatever fates are forced upon them by their parents or society, one could treat it as a means of brainwashing kids into believing that it is their destiny to be an underpaid intern, or an overworked accountant, or a mistreated public service worker. It could be considered such, and I don’t doubt that it is a very real possibility.

Even so, what I’d like to focus on here is the fact that there is no semblance of Destiny in reality. There is no Duty that presents itself to that child, at least not a Duty that winds up being as fulfilling as what is shown in the stories of Bionicle. That great disappointment, at discovering that there was no great Destiny awaiting me, or that the Duty I was supposed to take on was some fanciful construct that does not actually mean anything to me, or that this fabled Unity that supposedly changes everything and solves all problems is not applicable to everyone…

Maybe that is why I wound up hopeless. Maybe that is I why I feel nostalgic when I think of Bionicle - because I once thought that these three virtues were truly virtues, that they had something to do with reality, and that things could be explained away through them… And now I know that it is not so.

Perhaps there is a lot more thinking to be done about Bionicle. Perhaps I ought to do more thinking about it, but I’d say I’ve worked on the topic of Nostalgia in relation to Bionicle quite well, or rather the topic of Nostalgia itself.

Either way, now this is also finished. There is hope in the future that I will come back to do more work on it, but I might not do so, and hopelessness will come over the reader as time passes and Nostalgia might wrap its claws about them… If the read was enjoyable, that is. Let me know if it was!