First things first: an introduction! The LEGO and Bionicle fandoms go far beyond the English-speaking world, as we all know. To try and bridge the gap a bit, "GSR Translates" will be a series of blog entries where I translate (with permission as appropriate) things from the Japanese LEGO and Bionicle fandom.

Today's entry is... this!

This MOC, Silver Blade, was created by Japanese MOCist Moko - you can see their Flickr account here. It's been making the rounds on social media, so I reached out to Moko to ask permission to translate their personal blog entry on the creation of this piece. They agreed, so here we are!

From here on out, this will be a reproduction of Moko's blog entry until you see the italic text again. I've added a few links to clarify references.

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Today's Work: A "Guyver"-esque Bionicle MOC!

The thing about Bionicle is: it doesn't look like LEGO at all!

But it really is LEGO, no two ways about it, so I've made another model with it.

After all, it's not a question of whether or not it looks like LEGO!

"You can have fun with this sort of series and these kinds of parts too!"

...That's what I want people to understand, so lately I've been going out of my way to make these sorts of models.

People go on and on about how specialized parts are useless, or that the plain old square bricks are the best, but I never really got that.

I mean, each style has its own allure and its own challenges when it comes to putting it together.

So I'll use any kind of LEGO.

...Anyway, back to the model.

The last Bionicle model I made was just a warm-up, but this time I really gave it my all.

It was really difficult - I'm all tired out from thinking outside the box so much on this one, haha.

This time, I used Ultraman and Guyver-1 from the manga Bio Booster Armor Guyver as inspiration.

I wanted something that seemed mechanical and yet alive, and with a beautiful, very male body.

I gave the body clear lines to create the impression of muscles - actually, I kind of obsessed over that, so I hope you're satisfied! (laughs)

Actually, I wasn't planning to model it after Guyver or Ultraman at first.

But as soon as I decided on this mask for the forehead, I could see no matter what I did it was going to wind up looking like Guyver, so I just went with it.

I guess in the end there isn't that much Ultraman to him either, but oh well (laughs).

Maybe because of the color, I've also been told he resembles Shadow Moon from Kamen Rider BLACK, but I don't remember ever consciously basing it on him.

Now a closer look! This should let you see the individual parts.

The joints are moveable to a certain extent - enough for these sorts of action poses, anyway, so I think that's plenty.

Just don't ask how he's going to cut things with the sword on his elbow. (laughs)

What's important is that it looks cool!

The blade on the foot moves as well.

He could bring it down onto an opponent to leave a gaping, fatal wound.

Here he is charging forward.

...A bit JoJo, isn't it?

Finally, a good strong roar.

...And that's about everything.

There's still a few small things that could be improved, but really, I'm happy with how this came together.

I already want to try putting together some more models with this build style, but I also kind of want to take a break from Bionicle for the moment (laughs)

I guess that's what happens when you work so hard on something you're not used to. But it was a lot of fun!

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And that wraps up this entry! You can see more of Moko's work on Flickr. If you have a comment or question you'd like me to pass along, leave it below - though they ask if you have a "how did you build this?" question, you keep it fairly specific.

Until next time!

(PS: No, I'm not certain of Moko's gender, so that's why you got so many "they"'s this time around. )