Wairuha is a combiner model, a Toa Kaita in the parlance of the series, constructed from Gali, Lewa, and Kopaka. The original version from 2001 is fairly rudimentary, and shares a build with Akamai, the Kaita of the other three Toa. In 2002, however, with the release of the Toa Nuva, Wairuha's build alters fundamentally, and adds a very cool body model to the MOCer lexicon. I noted in the previous limitation post that I'd always had trouble making MOCs from the very early Bionicle, but with this build, potential has opened up.
Here's Wairuha Nuva:
The body build is one upside down torso attached to two backward facing torsos. As far as I know, this is a unique build to this character, though for the life of me I can't figure out why. It offers so much more poseability (and possibility) than the previous build, or the Akamai Nuva build. The arms are the shortfall of the model, as they're attached to gear systems, and are thus very difficult to pose. The feet, too, are a bit problematic, as they're single axles attached to balls, and tend to fall off. This is not an insurmountable problem though, as my next few builds will attest.
Setting myself up with the instruction manuals, I proceeded to make this model:
I call it Swashbuckler. It's built fairly faithfully to the same design as Wairuha, even down to the foot design that keeps falling off! I adapted the arms somewhat, though, to improve its poseability, adding Glatorian neck pieces to allow for a later wave arm construction. Aside from that, though, he's pretty close to the original instructions. What's cool about these builds is that they've added the poseable head, something which I find adds a lot of character to a model, and which finds its way into the series as a regular feature in the 2004 wave of Toa.
My next build takes a step back in time. I isolated all of the pieces of the original three Toa that make up Wairuha, and decided to see if I could adapt those pieces into a Nuva-style build. Here's the result:
I actually really love this model. There's some real attitude coming from it. I did have to improvise a bit to make up for pieces from the Nuva that were not present in the Mata, but it all came out alright in the end. I should also note that the "official" versions of Wairuha wear Lewa's mask, both Mata and Nuva, but I'm a big fan of the Gali masks, and thought they suited the models more.
Having gotten the hang of this build, I decided to let my imagination run rampant, and see what happened:
This is the Desert Mech. It follows the same body and leg build as Wairuha, but uses the adapted arm build from Swashbuckler. I used axles with stoppers and the ball joints that accompany them for the legs, to stop the feet from falling off. The way that the torsos point backwards allows for a lot of potential for accessorizing, as evidenced here by the cooling unit fans behind the head. What's harder to see in the picture is two Karda Nui-era wings on the back that function as solar panels, fueling the mech as it crosses the desert.
After these builds, I started to wonder what a Wairuha made from another wave might look like. Breaking somewhat from the limitation I had set myself, I sorted out a green, white, and blue Glatorian, and fused them into Wairuha Glatorian. I'm not super-happy with the results, but it had to be done:
And that's my limitation exercise for this time. There's been a few cool builds for bodies that I've come across so far, but this one has certainly made my use of Mata and Nuva era torsos more likely.
Not sure what next time will be. But I can't wait to get there!
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