Tales Of The Masks is such a funny book to me.

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Because if you look at it from the perspective of its framing device? I'm not a fan. The mask hunt conceit worked well in 2001, when the Toa were just starting out, needed to learn to work together, etc. Then repeating that the next year with the Krana felt a bit more forced, but was still sorta acceptable. But doing it a third time with the Nuva masks felt deeply stale, even as a kid, and on top of that felt like it ran counter to the premise of the Nuva Masks being one-of-a-kind upgrades brought about by their transformation. That's not even if you also consider the whole thematic angle of the mask's power extending to those in their vicinity, something something Unity something.

Looking for masks that really shouldn't make sense to exist in the first place, somehow got overlooked when they were searching every nook and cranny in 01, and just felt on some level sisyphean after gaining and then losing the Golden Masks that had all that stuff in one nice package anyway, just never really sat right with me. And now I have an extra layer of frustration from it given how some people point to that as proof of the early years being shallow and kiddie, unlike the later years with their edginess and violence.

But at the same time, when you actually read it, Tales Of The Masks also kind of embodies a lot of what made the early years so great; the fun dynamics among the Toa, the island's many mysteries and more and more signs that the Turaga knew so much more than they were letting on, and just some genuinely sweet moments of development of these initially-simple characters, taking advantage of the breathing room afforded to them by the lower stakes, that the Ignition years just couldn't or didn't make time for.

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Idunno. It's frustrating to me, because I've seen people lately dismissing 01-03 as nothing but shallow collectathons, and honestly it feels like G2 made that same mistake to some extent. And on some level I can understand where they're coming from, because yeah, it did lean on the collection aspect a little too hard at times, to its own detriment at times. (See again, all my complaints about the Nuva masks.)

At the same time, I feel like painting it as just "good guys find masks, fight bad guys, end of story" is just, a painfully reductive and bad-faith reading of those years, when they had so much else going for them.

The worldbuilding wasn't as broad and expansive, but it felt more intimate, with the MNOG games in particular really fleshing out the Matoran culture and day-to-day; while also leaving enough open to the imagination, paired with the pervading sense of mystery and unknowns waiting around every corner, to use that as a launching-off point.

The characters were pretty simple, yeah, but they worked great as part of a dynamic, with distinctive and enjoyable personalities thst could be played off each other to fantastic effect - and still are, given a lot of the posts that circulate the Bonkle corner of tumblr.

And heck, even the supposedly simple "good versus evil" conflict wasn't what it seemed at first glance, with the Rahi being innocent animals under Makuta's control. The Bohrok ultimately turned out to have a good and important purpose, that whole conflict only happening because of the series of catastrophic events that led to the Matoran being displaced to where they weren't supposed to be in the first place. And even Makuta himself was supposed to be more sorely misguided than genuinely evil, until his rework in 2004. (Whereas the later years, if anything, felt a lot more straightforward and shallow about that a lot of the time, even if the presentation was more visceral. Why do the bad guys do the bad things? Because they want power. Why do they want power? Because they're the bad guys.)

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Point is, I feel like Tales Of The Masks is kind of an interesting case study of both some of the best and worst aspects of the early years' writing both evident in full force. For many years I considered it my least favorite of the Chronicles books just because of its framing device, and it was only on revisiting it more recently that I was able to re-evaluate my opinion, and appreciate the genuinely good stories contained within. I just wish certain others would give it that same reconsideration.