The Transformers thread (shows, comics, toys, all things TF)

The Nemesis

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Apr 11, 2005
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Anyone that's read any of my posts around christmas in here the last few years knows that every year I tend to like to put myself in the holiday spirit by watching Transformers stuff. Last year in particular I did a run through of select episodes from assorted series that I had access to with a sort of running commentary on each one posted here on HF. For those that didn't see it, you can find those posts here:

G1 Season 1
G1 Season 2
The Movie
G1 Season 3
The Headmasters (JP)
Super-God Masterforce (JP)
Victory (JP)
Beast Wars
Animated
Prime

For this year I'm debating what to do and how/if I want to cross over that effort onto here. Some options I've considered are:

1) Another annotated watch/rewatch of assorted series. I could either repeat some of the series I did last year, pick a series and stick with it for a while, or find some of the things I haven't watched (the pickings here are a little slimmer since I watched all the good stuff last year. I'd be down to watching things like the terrible Omni Productions english dubs of Headmasters/Masterforce/Victory (which I discussed in the Headmasters recap post linked above), subtitled Beast Wars II (an anime filler series that Japan made to fill space between seasons of them dubbing our Beast Wars CGI show into Japanese), the Zone one-off OVA that was meant to follow Victory in Japan, the Prime Wars machinima series, or the new show on TV right now, Cyberverse.)

2) A somewhat less focused viewing of episodes from which I could talk about an assortment of related topics (favorite characters, underrated characters, ranking series, etc. Basically a bunch of click-bait-y list type things) without actually doing the sorta-MST snarking about episodes.

3) A guided/communal rewatch for anyone on here that has access to one or more series where we could all decide on something to watch on or by certain dates leading up to christmas and be able to talk about it. Trickier because it would rely on multiple posters having access to at least the G1 series and possibly others (Beast Wars would seem ripe for this sort of thing)

I honestly don't know how to proceed. Largely because I'm not entirely sure what the reaction was to my string of recap posts from last year. I got one like on one of the posts and a solid bit of conversation with a comment about the recaps from one other poster. I know this isn't a traffic-heavy thread, and that there's basically 5 or 6 regular HF-ers with any sort of Transformers interest, but even for a small audience, if everyone was annoyed or disinterested in my recap project or anything like that, I'm totally cool with just not putting down whatever thoughts or whatever incarnation of the above-mentioned projects take shape and simply enjoying watching some Transformers for a week or two ahead of the actual holiday. Or maybe I switch it up and watch some other cartoons if nobody else cares. I've been on a spree across the internet finding copies and YTs of random old shows I remember watching growing up and want to see if they're as bad as I remember or hold up at all. I dunno. We'll see.

EDIT: also because I'm totally going to forget to post it, happy early birthday to him, king: Gregg Berger (voice of Grimlock, Skyfire, Long Haul, and some incidental characters). He'll be 68 on December 10.

EDIT 2: Today i found out this was a thing.



What the hell, Japan?
 
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discostu

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Since this thread has been bumped, it let's me ask a question.

I've got two kids that were into the Rescue Bots series and I hear a new spin off series is in the works (Rescue Bot Academy). Does anyone knows when this series is coming out and what the availability in Canada is going to be?

I figure this show isn't the transformers property that people in this thread are into, but hoping people might have some insight on this stuff.
 

Guardian17

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Aug 29, 2010
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Since this thread has been bumped, it let's me ask a question.

I've got two kids that were into the Rescue Bots series and I hear a new spin off series is in the works (Rescue Bot Academy). Does anyone knows when this series is coming out and what the availability in Canada is going to be?

I figure this show isn't the transformers property that people in this thread are into, but hoping people might have some insight on this stuff.


http://news.tfw2005.com/2018/12/05/...-bots-academy-preview-promotional-clip-378273
 

Baby Punisher

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I saw the early screening of Bumblebee tonight. I liked it ALOT. It is amazingly 80's. From the pink bathroom sink to the Casio databank wristwatch with the qwerty keyboard. No detail is left out.

I thought it was better overall than the Bay Films. Travis Davis went with a less is more style and it works. He gets Transformers. The Explosions weren't over the top. The human-robot interactions were meaning full. The relationship between Charlie and Bumblebee is heartfelt and tear-jerking. The Cybertron scenes are short but very relevant to the storyline.

IMO they are testing the waters with the G1 shapes to see if audiences will like them. The theater was sold out, every theater that I searched out by me and randomly across the country to see how tickets were selling were sold out or near sold out at 1 pm today.

I took my 6-year-old Son to see it and he liked it very much.
 
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Guardian17

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I saw the early screening of Bumblebee tonight. I liked it ALOT. It is amazingly 80's. From the pink bathroom sink to the Casio databank wristwatch with the qwerty keyboard. No detail is left out.

I thought it was better overall than the Bay Films. Travis Davis went with a less is more style and it works. He gets Transformers. The Explosions weren't over the top. The human-robot interactions were meaning full. The relationship between Charlie and Bumblebee is heartfelt and tear-jerking. The Cybertron scenes are short but very relevant to the storyline.

IMO they are testing the waters with the G1 shapes to see if audiences will like them. The theater was sold out, every theater that I searched out by me and randomly across the country to see how tickets were selling were sold out or near sold out at 1 pm today.

I took my 6-year-old Son to see it and he liked it very much.

I hope so.

Also, I hope the names of the characters match their G1 counterparts.
 

SJSharksfan39

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I was reading that Bumblebee is actually getting some praise. I've been afraid to see a transformer movie since the one where two mini robots were having sexual intercourse with Megan Fox's legs (or maybe it wasn't as dramatic as that) so seeing positive publicity for Bumblebee kinda surprised me.
 

The Nemesis

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I hope so.

Also, I hope the names of the characters match their G1 counterparts.

From what I've seen, that's an iffy proposition. The very Starscream-y looking Decepticon from the trailer is actually Blitzwing for some reason (even though Starscream is supposed to appear in the film in some capacity). Also two of the primary Decepticon antagonists are original characters with no classic counterparts.

It remains to be seen if the assorted other characters who are supposed to be seen in the film actually look like who they're supposed to look like.

For the record, TFWiki has a cast list consisting of the following:

Autobots
Bumblebee
Optimus Prime
Arcee
Wheeljack
Cliffjumper
Brawn
Ratchet
Ironhide

Decepticons
Shatter
Dropkick
Blitzwing
Shockwave
Soundwave
Starscream

I've upgraded my feelings on this movie from washing my hands of it after The Last Knight to cautiously optimistic. Probably not enough to go back to the theater. But I'll at least give it an early shot on TV or blu-ray or whatever.
 
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Baby Punisher

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From what I've seen, that's an iffy proposition. The very Starscream-y looking Decepticon from the trailer is actually Blitzwing for some reason (even though Starscream is supposed to appear in the film in some capacity). Also two of the primary Decepticon antagonists are original characters with no classic counterparts.

It remains to be seen if the assorted other characters who are supposed to be seen in the film actually look like who they're supposed to look like.

For the record, TFWiki has a cast list consisting of the following:

Autobots
Bumblebee
Optimus Prime
Arcee
Wheeljack
Cliffjumper
Brawn
Ratchet
Ironhide

Decepticons
Shatter
Dropkick
Blitzwing
Shockwave
Soundwave
Starscream

I've upgraded my feelings on this movie from washing my hands of it after The Last Knight to cautiously optimistic. Probably not enough to go back to the theater. But I'll at least give it an early shot on TV or blu-ray or whatever.

I liked Dropkick a lot. He is all over the trailers so it's not a spoiler, But I put in spoilers anyway. . I liked him so much I went out and got the toy. I also noticed that there are lot of toys out there marketed as Transformers being in Bumblebee and they aren't. Which makes me angry. For instance, Barricade was reissued under Bumblebee and given a 1980's Charger look. I ran out and bought the toy and he wasn't in it
 
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The Nemesis

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I liked Dropkick a lot. He is all over the trailers so it's not a spoiler, But I put in spoilers anyway. . I liked him so much I went out and got the toy. I also noticed that there are lot of toys out there marketed as Transformers being in Bumblebee and they aren't. Which makes me angry. For instance, Barricade was reissued under Bumblebee and given a 1980's Charger look. I ran out and bought the toy and he wasn't in it

To your toy comments: That's normal. Every series/movie since basically G1 has tended to have characters and figures beyond just what would appear in the media. Usually because the series/movie would have such a small cast that it would cut into Hasbro's profit margins devalue the marketing if they only sold 4-6 of each of the Autobots and Decepticons for every incarnation.
 
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The Nemesis

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Today I learned that the longest running series in franchise history by total episode count is....

*drumroll*

Transformers: Rescue Bots.

That's right! the series produced for the pre-school audience has more episodes than Beast Wars, Prime, Animated, any of the anime series, and even G1. It put up 4 26-episode seasons over 4 and a half years to finish its run with 106 episodes. G1 only finished with 98 episodes. Even if you want to include that G2 chopped up the movie into episodes to air, that would only be 5 more and bring the total up to 103.

Makes you think. :laugh:
 

Baby Punisher

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I was reading that Bumblebee is actually getting some praise. I've been afraid to see a transformer movie since the one where two mini robots were having sexual intercourse with Megan Fox's legs (or maybe it wasn't as dramatic as that) so seeing positive publicity for Bumblebee kinda surprised me.
LOL don't be scared, they aren't in this one. Go enjoy yourself.
 

The Nemesis

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Although I didn't get any of the feedback I was hoping for (and that it might be a sign that there simply is no interest in my dumb Transformers christmas project and this is all for naught) I have decided to revive my watch & review/MST of Transformers series this year with 12 days of looking at some of the off-beat and unseen parts of the franchise's history, possibly along with bonus content as we go. The advantage is that a lot of this stuff is so offbeat that it exists on Youtube so I can post videos of what I'm watching and make it easier for people to follow along or experience new material they wouldn't otherwise. My tentative schedule* is:

Phase 1: The hilariously bad Omni Productions English dub of the G1 Japanese trilogy
Day 1 (Dec 13): Headmasters
Day 2 (Dec 14): Super-God Masterforce
Day 3 (Dec 15): Victory

Phase 2: The short-form material

Day 4 (Dec 16): Scramble City+, Zone+, RobotMasters+, and Transformers Go! (respectively they are: (1)Japanese filler between G1 seasons 2 and 3, (2) the last piece of G1 material produced on either side of the Pacific, (3) a pair of super-shorts that are nothing but pure, unadulterated fanservice (not the sexy kind), (4) and a short mini-sode filler series that succeeded the second season of Prime in Japan because they never dubbed season 3 of that show)

Phase 3: Anime Insanity

Day 5 (Dec 17): Beast Wars II (a filler anime set between seasons 1 and 2 of Beast Wars that tells a completely different plot with completley different characters)
Day 6 (Dec 18): Car Robots (aka Robots in Disguise 2001. This is the only possible hiccup as I don't have RID in English, only a subbed release of the Japanese original. I'm tracking one down but I can't guarantee I'll have it ready in a week's time.)
Day 7 (Dec 19): Armada (aka Micron Legend), Part I of the "Unicron Trilogy"^
Day 8 (Dec 20) Energon (aka SuperLink), Part II of the "Unicron Trilogy"^
Day 9 (Dec 21): Cybertron (aka Galaxy Force), Part III of the "Unicron Trilogy"^

Phase 4: Recent Western Productions
Day 10 (Dec 22): Robots in Disguise 2015 (the sequel series to Prime)
Day 11 (Dec 23): The Machinima Prime Wars Trilogy (Combiner Wars, Titans Return, Power of the Primes)
Day 12 (Dec 24): Cyberverse (the newest series)

+For these 3 series I have access to a fanmade dub produced by a group called TFCog Productions. For Scramble City and Zone I also have original subtitled Japanese releases. I may try to watch both versions to compare and see what the fan-dubs are like. TFCog also produced a short "Scramble City 2" original animated fan-work that was meant to bridge properly all the way to season 3. I don't know how long it is, but perhaps I'll check that out as well.
^Each series of the Unicron Trilogy I have as the official western English dub and subtitled original Japanese version. I would endeavor to watch a little of each offering to gauge the difference between how the series are handled on each side of the pacific


Each day would be me watching 1-3 episodes of each series and providing running commentary along with a YT of what I'm watching where I can. I may also sprinkle the various days with other thoughts and comments related to the franchise, what I've watched, or just things that come to mind as I'm viewing (my attention span dictating how much I invest in the show vs check out and think about other things). We'll see. I'll also do my best to put as much as I can in spoiler tags so it doesn't just absorb the entire thread in me rambling for 20 pages. :laugh: I'm also going to see if I can use part of tomorrow evening to crank out some basic header graphics and markers and whatnot to go along with this idea.

*Card is subject to change. Basically I reserve the right to bail on a day or series if I find myself running short on time or it's so garbage that I just can't tough it out past 1 episode. Or I get to the point of taking an hour to recap and snark about a single 22 minute show and it's suddenly 3am and I'm still awake and watching Transformers. :laugh:
 
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The Nemesis

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TFRewatch Header.jpg


TFRewatch1-Headmasters.jpg

Remember when everyone rioted after the movie killed all your favorite characters? They'd have to be pretty stupid to try that stunt again, right? Oh.... uhhhh...
Here we begin. Again. For my second year of Transformers recapping, we’re going to be watching the first sequel series the franchise had, as well as the first Japanese-original series that was produced, and the first bit of series of Transformers fiction that was never released in the west in its original run: Transformers: The Headmasters (or, if you want to be pithy, weeby and pedantic: 戦え!超ロボット生命体 :トランスフォーマー ザ★ヘッドマスターズ, romanized as “Tatakae! Cho Robot Seimeitai Toransufoma: Za Heddomasutazu”, or translated as “Fight!! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: The Headmasters”)

Didn’t you already do this series?
Yep. Last year I watched 5 episodes of The Headmasters off of the Shout Factory! Complete series DVD. The difference is that those episodes were done using the original Japanese audio with English subtitles. And if you read my review of those episodes, found here, you’ll notice that I thought they were largely a dry, boring slog to get through. The difference this time, other than choosing to watch just 3 episodes (and only one overlapping episode (the second one)), is that I’m hoping for more entertainment value out of an infamous bit of Transformers history: The English dub produced by Omni productions.

But I thought you said this was never released in the west. Why was there an English dub?
You’re awfully snippy for a fake representation of someone I’m having a one-sided conversation with. But the fact is that Takara (the Japanese half of the franchise’s two-headed cross-pacific parentage) decided the easiest way for them to distribute the series across their Asian market region was to use English as a universal language. This might also explain why this dub particularly took root in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore where there’s a healthy segment of the population that speaks English as a primary or secondary language.

So if they were making an English dub, why not use the English cast?
Money. The Hasbro-led English production was a more expensive production and was made for the western audience that Takara had no interest in courting (nor could they release material in Hasbro’s back yard). With the franchise beginning its quiet death knell and 7- or 8-year hibernation between the end of the G1 series and Beast Wars, the appetite for any more Transformers in the US and Canada was at a low point and meant they wanted nothing to do with Takara’s new baby. So that meant that Takara instead chose to turn to the Hong Kong based Omni studio. Omni was staffed largely by British expats with a history of mostly dubbing b-movie fare like chop-sockey Hong Kong kung-fu movies or Japanese monster movies (including some of the low-points of the Godzilla franchise). As you might guess, they didn’t have any familiarity or history with the Transformers. And it shows.

How?
Omni’s work is incredibly utilitarian. Their “actors”, if you can use that term, have very little talent. The voices they use are ill-fitting (if they even bother trying to give different characters unique or catchy voices, and they generally fail to emote properly when they read their lines. The scripts themselves are technically proficient, but entirely soulless. Even if the language gets a little shonky here and there, it usually does a good enough job of translating the basics of the plot and dialogue. It simply lacks any sort of nuance or natural feeling. The result is that what should be an action-packed series with drama and comedy and lots of personality ends up feeling like it was written in Google translate and read by a text-to-speech program. It’s patently clear that Omni cared nothing about the Transformers franchise and that Takara (and/or Toei animation, the production house for the series) gave them as little aid and input as possible. All of this combines to create what is remembered as one of the worst English dubbed anime series ever. And not just for a Transformers program. For anything.

What about the names? I heard those are a mess.
Hoo yeah. For reasons that never entirely made sense to me, Omni had issues with a lot of the proper nouns in the script. It’s about 50/50 whether or not something gets to keep its proper and correct name. And the things that do get renamed often do so nonsensically, with several Transformer characters getting bizarre normal English human names that clash alongside the ‘proper’ Transformer names.
Here’s an example of what I mean:

Blaster = "Billy"
Metroplex = "Phillip"
Jazz = "Marshall"
Blurr = "Wally"
Spike = "Sparkle"
Rodimus Prime = "Roadimus Prime" (not a full name change, but an awkward pronounciation difference)
The Matrix of Leadership = "The Power Pack"
Energon Cubes = also "Power Packs" for some reason
the planet Cybertron = "Cyberton" (no second "r")
the planet Chaar = "Jollo"
Fortress Maximus' spaceship/battlestation mode = "Starship Bruce"
Raiden (the train combiners) = "Grimlock"
Twincast = "Blaster" (which makes "Billy" even less sensible)
Soundblaster = "New Soundwave"
There are probably more, but I don't have a full list and you get the point already.

Really, I had hoped to make this intro section funnier, but it’s actually hard to break it down historically and critically with a healthy dose of snark. It should get better from here. I promise.

Here we go:

Episode 1: The Four Soldiers from the Sky (actual title: Four Warriors Come Out of the Sky)



*CLICK THE SPOILER TAG FOR MY RUNNING COMMENTARY*
  • I want to try and avoid repeating myself too much from my thoughts last year, and given that the YT I provided in these threads features the Victory opening, I won't comment again on the opening title sequence. Except to say that the level of action by far trumps anything that appears in the actual show, especially the amount of gunplay.
  • For the purposes of this review, I have English subtitles on along with the Omni audio. The subs are more correctly aligned with the original dialogue and will give me a good view of where Omni differed in their interpretation of the Japanese.
  • The most immediate translation thing I'm noticing is that the pronunciation of "Cybertron" isn't even just "Cyberton" without the last 'r' like I noted above. IT's more like "CY-ber-don." at least out of the mouth of Galvatron.
  • Galvatron's voice actually passes for a half-decent attempt to give the character a fitting sound compared to the rest of this cast.
  • The Headmasters are the "Robotic Regiment" apparently. Ok...?
  • Way to ruin a perfectly good ceiling, jerks. There was a door right there. Espeically since I'm pretty sure they're in the Decepticon base from G1 season 3.
  • Iacon is apparently "Cybertron Base" now.
  • "Oh Sparkle!" :laugh: Is Spike also disrespectful to dirt? I expect him now to shout "Join me or die! Can you do any less?" at someone. Which would actually work as a stealth Transformers reference given that in the Marvel comics "Can I do any less?" in response to some great deed/sacrifice by another character was a common choice of phrase for prolific series author Simon Furman.
  • Wreck-Gar is on Cybertron with the Autobots? At least this is something you can blame on Japan and not Omni.
  • "Athenia" is Sidnia or Cygnia or something. Everyone's speech so muffled.
  • :laugh: I know that no character properly approximates their western speech pattern or personality but man, Grimlock just saying "Ok, I'll go find the ones who are trapped!" with so much gusto and sincerity is just.... weeeeeirrrd.......
  • So far no reference to any team names (Terrorcons, Technobots, Headmasters) has been translated.
  • Oooooof, Optimus' voice is... bad. It's so bland and joe-average. The least they could've done is make him sound older and in charge.
  • Hound! Not only is this is a rare instance of a season 1 character getting screentime in this series, but the dub keeps his name right!
  • I almost forgot that the name for Vector Sigma is the "Sigma Computer." It manages to be both awful and still more correct than most changed names given that it really is a computer.
  • Carly is now "Carrie." For once a sensible mistake given the Japanese issue with differentiating "l" and "r" sounds. Her official Japanese spelling is "Kari" (pronounced "kah-RI" though that's neither here nor there) so I can see where Omni's coming from. Chances are this will be the last time I'm able to be so understanding of their alteration choices.
  • Optimus refers to Hot Rod as "Rodimus Prime" (or rather Roadimus Prime). This is of course technically incorrect given that he is Hot Rod right now without the Matrix or the position of leadership (and is especially grievous given that 2 episodes from now we're actually going to see him turn back into Rodimus Prime) but I guess it's too much to ask for Omni to understand that the forms have different names and for them to just assume that he keeps his single name regardless of position (especially when the Japanese name is simply "Rodimus" even in Hot Rod form. I can't wait to see how they handle changing the context of his form when we get to episode 3. I want to say right now for the record that I expect that they'll make some shocked reaction that "now he's turned into Roadimus Prime!" while forgetting that they're using the same name.
  • It's now been about 12-15 minutes of real time and I've only succeeded in watching 5 minutes of show while I stop to write up comments. Not off to an auspicious start! :laugh:
  • Mindwipe has magic. Not a power, not hypnotism. Actual magic. And he chants nonsense syllables to activate it. Fantastic.
  • Hearing the proper G1 transition sound seems so out of place with the rest of this insanity.
  • "How come a robot would feel sleepy?" How indeed, Grimlock.
  • Somehow Kup still manages to sound like a crotchety old samurai type even in this dub. One bit of actual consistency! And then Kup is gone before we get past the first 10 episodes.
  • :biglaugh: Sixshot sounds like the actor is holding his hand over his mouth as he talks. I guess becuase Sixshot has a mouthplate instead of a visible mouth? I'm not sure if I respect their attempt at common sense or not.
  • "I'm the Ninja Consultant for the Decepticons!" And thus a meme was born.
  • "Now you know who I am, look out!" (the real line is "I've introduced myself, now die!"). What a badass, that Sixshot!
  • Daniel is a whiny twerp in any language or version of any language.
  • Meanwhile Wheelie is somehow less annoying for the fact that he has a normal-ish voice and doesn't rhyme. But he has a weird accent. Scottish? Welsh?
  • Remember when Trypticon was a significant and credible threat that required Metroplex to intervene? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Here he gets duped by Wheelie in a gag that would make Wile E Coyote blush.
  • "The robot train is here!" the characters referring to themselves as robots really weirds me out for some reason.
  • Never mind the fact that the "Robot train" is actually 5 bots.
  • One of the Constructicons has the same muffled voices as Sixshot. And also has a mouthplate.
  • Metroplex being "Phillip" might be the best doofy name. Even better than "Wally"
  • The trainbots sound their horn as they ride the Space Bridge stream. Sure. Why not.
  • More fun with random team names. Triple-Changers (Who I couldn't identify) are the "Rescue Team" while the Aerialbots are "Dogfight K-99 team". I'm impressed they went to both so much trouble to rename the groups and so little trouble in terms of not thinking up a better name.
  • Kup keeps his name. Too bad he won't stick around long enough for it to matter.
  • Calry did something! Carly actually did something useful! Even if it's just pointing out a computer alert, it's probably the most useful she'll be in this entire series because this series hates the female characters (at least Arcee hasn't gotten here yet.
  • "Aaah, a monster?" It's a ****ing Predacon. You've seen them before, Daniel. Japanese Daniel < Western Daniel (and it's a low bar to get under)
  • Why is Kup smiling as he recounts refugees fleeing Cybertron during the height of the war? That's kinda sociopathic, man.
  • In last year's recap I made frequent mention of how badly out of character most of the cast was, usually conforming anime cliche's personalities. But Hot Rod actually does act like you'd expect Hot Rod to act. It's refreshing and a grim reminder of how far off course this series is going to go by the end.
  • Jazz' voice is not-terrible too. Better than his normal Japanese voice. It's not really "hip" like Scatman Crothers, but it's got some pep in it.
  • I don't get what's with the colored, flaming rock balls the headmasters are holding as they fight the Dinobots. They're not like any weapon I remember on Transformers.
  • The Autobot headmasters are "The Fearless Warriors." and Chromedome has a muffled voice too.
  • "The War on Cyberton Continues!"
  • And credits. For me at least. You guys watching the YT will get the episode preview that Toei cut out of most modern international releases. Followed by a traditional G1 credits crawl with the original western theme song instrumental and all the Japanese names of the cast and crew painstakingly translated. Even the voice cast who contribute nothing to this dubbed version.
  • So after 1 episode either I've become kind of immune to the dub's awfulness over the years of seeing it and understanding its nature, or it's not nearly as bad as I was making it out to be. Make no mistake, it's very bad, but it's not unwatchable.

Episode 2: The Tale of the Master Star (acutal title: The Mystery of Planet Master)




*CLICK THE SPOILER TAG FOR MY RUNNING COMMENTARY*

  • You guys get a recap on your YT. I'm jumping right in to the episode.
  • That recap though actually does get something right. It is roughly 2011 in the TF timeline given that Season 3 was supposed to happen in 2010 in the Japanese version and Headmasters is a year later.
  • The dub keeps the Japanese tradition of calling out transformations, albeit infrequently. Sometimes the guys shout "Transform!" and sometimes they shout "Head on!" But not always.
  • Worth noting that I watched this episode last year in my Japanese-language viewing. My thoughts will mostly still be relevant since I spent a lot of time talking about the action and not just the Japanese language dialogue.
  • When the hell did Arcee show up?
  • So Hot Rod can handle Galvatron with just a pistol, but he was such a tool during the attack on Autobot City that he basically caused Optimus' death? Maybe he wanted Optimus to die and knew he'd take over as leader all along! Mwahahahahaha! :laugh:
  • The dub makes the Headmaster explanation make zero sense. I guess here's where the dub gets bad.
  • Repeating myself from last year, but the fact that Vector Sigma is guarded by the Guardian Robots from season 2 is a nice bit of contuity.
  • Alpha Trion is Optimus Prime's father?! :laugh: Well, I guess it's sort of correct.
  • **** you Japan, the Matrix doesn't ****ing work that way!
  • Don't ask Daniel for permission, Fort Max. He's more of a pet than an ally.
  • "Why don't we all go along?" Except you, Arcee. 'cause you're a girl.
  • Wheelie has a deeper voice than half the rest of the cast. :laugh:
  • "Danny, I heard that Wheelie can sing very well!" "I can't wait for that!" We're in the middle of a giant battle, Omni. What the hell?
  • I never noticed before that it looks like Blaster ejects 3 cassettes to aid Steeljaw, but it's only Eject and Rewind that appear (and Blaster doesn't have a 3rd human-form cassette-bot.
  • Looking at the map, the "purest energy" on earth exists in.... Brazil, Thailand, the Arctic, and.... Kansas? Huh. The more you know (insert NBC jingle here)
  • What Wally says: "I have a detector system installed on me!" | what Blaster means: "My cassettes can detect it!" Totally the same thing!
  • The Predacons vs Hot Rod/cassettebots fight is actually fairly well animated and choreographed.
  • Jeeeeesus, Razerclaw's speech is so muffled you can barely understand it (mouthplate, y'see)
  • Arcee's dub voice is almost worse than her regular Japanese dialogue/actions. She sounds like a bad Marilyn Monroe impression.
  • Siiiiiiiick juuuuuuuump, Hot Rod!
  • And now, just like last year, I get to watch the giant knock-down, drag-out fight between Soundwave and Blaster. Except it's a giant cop-out and not nearly as cool as it was always played out to be. I remember in the earlier internet days of the fandom where this was a mythical fight talked about as rumor and legend and pointed to as if to pretend that the Japanese series was so much grittier and more mature than the western version. But the battle is surprisingly lame and subdued compared to what happened in the movie (which was the benchmark for Transformer brutality)
  • At least Blaster.. erm, Billy gets in a sweet Macho Man Randy Savage elbow drop.
  • "Darn that Soundwave. Eeeeeeuuuuuaaahhhhh!" and thus aanother meme was born (maybe the most enduring Omni Headmasters one?)
  • "Billy are you OK?" "Not really, find the power pack. Rescue Optimus Prime! Goooooo!!" *dies*. "Billy I promise, I'll get those dirty scum." And thus yet another meme was born.
  • Wow, Steeljaw's voice is reeeally dumb.
  • Hot Rod's flippan dismissal of Blaster's death and leaving of the cassettes to clean up his corpse is hilarious in juxtaposition to the over the top sappy music.
  • Watching the command center (Kup, Blurr, Arcee, Wheelie, Daniel) react to Blaster's death is just as dumb in the dub as it was in the sub.
  • To be continued! Except there's no on-screen prompt that this is a serialized story. that's a little strange since continuation prompts are not a foreign concept in most anime.
  • WHY IS EVERYONE SO ****ING SHINY?!?!?



Episode 3: "The Birth of a New Leader" (actual title: Birth of the Fantastic Double Convoy/Prime)



*CLICK THE SPOILER TAG FOR MY RUNNING COMMENTARY*
  • It's now been an hour and I've watched 2/3 episodes. So all in all that's not awful time for how much I've had to stop to write my thoughts down, plus a break to refill my drink. I think this means that 3 episodes a night should be manageable from here on out. Except day 4 might get weird since I'm covering so much material even if some of it is half-length or shorter.
  • The first real subtitle slip-up happens here as the subs I have translate the episode title as "Behold the Birth of Double Optimus Prime!" even though that makes no sense to have 2 Optimuses (the subs obviously are confused by the fact that the Japanese title mentions "double Convoy" referring to Convoy (optimus) and Rodimus Convoy (dur), and mistakes the use of the word "Convoy" to just mean Optimus. Still, it's technically closer than the Dub title, which does at least have the advantage of being more accurate in intent even if it strays from the direct translation a bit.
  • I feel bad that they made Cyclonus and Scourge into a pair of butt-monkey comic relief jokers when they were two of the more competent Decepticons in the original series.
  • Cyclonus is "Space consultant from Jollo" and doesn't even get to give his name.
  • The Protectobots! Maybe they'll get to do something for once in G1!
  • :laugh: not if the dub has anything to say about it. Magnus' line about "Chromedome's team" is supposed to refer to the Protectobots. Chromedome isn't even there since he's with Hot Rod.
  • Prowl, Ironhide and Tracks join Jazz and Magnus, but don't get to do or say **** becuase they don't have new toys.
  • Wow, Defensor actually gets to fight with Bruticus. He rarely got the opportunity to do anything cool in G1. The fact that I never got all the G1 Protectobots still pisses me off. My Hot Spot figure stands alone with all his Defensor add-on components, unused and under-appreciated... :(
  • Dub line "Maybe they stashed it somewhere no one would ever think of looking." sub line "Maybe it's somewhere obvious to trick the enemy" Translation accuracy!
  • **** you, Dub Japanese Arcee. You're like 20% more terrible than regular Japanese Arcee.
  • Where the hell did all this extra crap leading up to Vector Sigma come from? There never used to be leech monster things guarding the computer.
  • I enjoy that Japan took the time to put the Headmaster toy gimmick of the heads impacting tech spec readouts on the chest of the base bodies into the animation. Except it undercuts their characterization to have Chromedome (Forever illustrated in Japan to be a brash, act-before-thinking hot-head) show the highest "INT" level when his head connects. :laugh:
  • The Conan Energy Center? Does this energy center crush its enemies, see them driven before it, and hear the lamentation of its women? (FWIW the subtitle says the place they're at is just an "Energon mining warehouse")
  • I like seeing the Terrorcons show up a lot more now that I have the Power of the Primes Terrorcon set on my shelf.
  • Speaking of, but fun coincidence the show's Abominus is configured the same way mine is (Rippersnapper as the left arm, Blot as the right, Cutthroat as the left leg, Sinnertwin as the right) I'm not even sure if that's supposed to be the "canon" configuration. Though apparently I shouldn't be doing this as the TF wiki insists that Sinnertwin's PoP figure construction is faulty and causes a lot of stress if it's used as a leg for Abominus. I should probably get to changing that. Too bad, I liked Blot being an arm.
  • I suppose I'm getting off track.
  • Rodimus' computer readout looks like someone actually took the time to copy and paste a bunch of legit computer code and basic programming language into the HUD overlay.
  • Put the **** Matrix in your chest, Hot Rod. It's not like you haven't done it before! :facepalm:
  • Chromedome grabs the Matrix in battle, similar to how Hot Rod caught it when Optimus died. Foreshadowing?
  • Optimus Prime with a sweet Liu Kang flying kick. :laugh:
  • Why is ghost Alpha Trion weakened by the heat of Vector Sigma? He's a goddamn ghost!!!
  • Cyclonus almost sounds like a bad George Takei impression. He just needs to say "OHHHHH MYYYYYY!!!"
  • Cyclonus and Scourge keep their names.
  • Meanwhile Alpha Trion is never referred to by name.
  • "Rodimus Prime, put hte power pack on your head!" No, that's not what he's being asked to do at all, dub Ghost Alpha Trion. He's clearly holding it well above his head.
  • And now Roadimus Prime has turned into the mighty... Roadimus Prime!
  • And the cast reacts with a shocked "Roadimus Prime?!?!?!" as if they haven't been calling him that the entire series so far.
  • In other words: I called it.
  • "Something strange has happened. Now there are two Optimus Primes!" Uhhhhhh........
  • The upgrade to Prime means Rodimus now has some bitchin' karate moves.
  • Optimus' death in this series is super lame. It's probably on the low-end of Optimus Prime deaths. WHich makes me think perhaps as one of my aside/extra lists I should rank and talk about the deaths of Optimus over the course of the franchise.
  • **** death aside, I will at least grant that having him interface with Vector Sigma was a fun bit of continuity given that this is how Alpha Trion sacrificed himself during G1 to help create the Aerialbots. IT makes sense given that Optimus was built by Alpha Trion presumably from some elements of his own design as one of the earliest Cybertronians.
  • Optimus is sure talking a lot given that he's already turned gray (meaning he's dead)
  • Chaar doens't look like Chaar at all.
  • "Roadimus Prime.... For peace, don't give up!" This is fun on 2 levels 1) I'm giving up on the series now because I've hit 3 episodes for the night and want to keep the process moving. and 2) In about 6 or 7 more episodes, Rodimus does give up when Cyberton is destroyed and he totally bails on the battle to "go find a new home" and he never returns in the series, even during the climax. Because his toy wasn't new anymore, you see. :laugh:

well, that's day 1 and the Headmasters. I have to say that the stupidity of the dub wasn't as bad as I remember it being, but was still bad enough to be entertaining and keep me engaged more than I have been in the past with the Japanese language version I watched a year ago. It's also fun to see a lot of the memes that came from this series pop up so soon. If I feel bad, it's that I'm checking out on the series here before it really transitions in the the bad super-Japanese stuff that does away with most of the G1 cast and ideas we're familiar with and focuses mainly on the 4 headmasters.

So join me tomorrow when we move on to the next part of the Japanese G1 trilogy's Omni dub versions: Super-God Masterforce. A series I disliked so much that the dub might actually be an improvement!


For those that want to watch more, the channel I got these YTs from has chosen to put up the first 6 episodes with the Omni dub, though a copyright claim by Hasbro has blocked episode 5 in some countries. I don't know if there are other YTs for the full series out there or if you're out of luck, as only episods off the Australian or UK DVDs of the series included the Omni english track (Hasbro refused to allow its inclusion on the Shout Factory DVDs)

I'll be back tomorrow to continue with the G1 Japanese trilogy: Super-God Masterforce
 
Last edited:

The Nemesis

Semper Tyrannus
Apr 11, 2005
87,934
31,165
Langley, BC
TFRewatch2-SGMF.jpg

We've reached peak child endangerment in a Transformers franchise: The Transformers figure out they can just send the kids into battle on the front lines themselves.

Time for day 2, and the second series in the Japanese G1 trilogy: Transformers - Super-God Masterforce, or 戦え!超ロボット生命体 :トランスフォーマー 超神マスターフォース, romanized as “Tatakae! Cho Robot Seimeitai Toransufoma: Chojin Masutafosu”, and thus sharing the "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers super-title.

I said a lot about this show also last year when I reviewed the Japanese Language version. If you want to review that, you can find that post by following this link.

The basic gist of that series for those not interested in re-reading that or who don't already know is that it is a very loose sequel to Headmasters. Insomuch as there are a few small Headmasters character cameos and references, but 99% of the action and characters featured have little to nothing to do with the old series. Instead the Toei folks decided to basically jettison much of what makes the Transformers the series it is and do something that ends up feeling a lot more like a Power Rangers/Super Sentai series, with a cast of humans who (starting in about episode 5, so we're not getting that far tonight) become the primary fighting force on both sides of the conflict, a mysterious space-born non-Transformer entity called "Devil Z" as the enemy, and a general feeling that this is the point at which Japan decided that alien robots who fought a brutal war was kiddy fare and they needed to make the series more appealing to Japanese youth by turning it into a weird wish-fulfillment series where it's the teen kids who get the power and save the day. Really, go read what I wrote about the series ahead of the episode recaps for a good discussion of what makes this series so odd.

What differs from last year's watch/review is that this time I'm not watching the Japanese version, but the Omni dub English version, with everything that entails. If there's a positive this time, it's that from what I understand Omni didn't just make up a bunch of names like they did with Headmasters (Billy, Wally, Marshall, etc). But what they did was just as bad: Characters are generally referred to by their Hasbro/English language names even if the character in Masterforce is distinct from their western equivalent. This isn't likely to be a huge issue in the recap episodes for tonight since we don't get to the characters where it gets really screwy, but eventually it becomes confusing as Headmaster Jr character Minerva is dubbed as "Nightbeat" (even though Nightbeat has a different color scheme and is not a girl) and more confusingly, Godmaster Ginrai is referred to as "Optimus Prime" even though the character is absolutely totally 100% not Optimus Prime at all (he just looks exactly like Optimus because Japan didn't think this was completely unnecessarily confusing for some reason.)

With that said, onto the episodes and recaps!


EPISODE 1: Rise Up!! Pretenders


*RUNNING COMMENTARY*
  • Guh. I forgot how doofy the title sequence is for this series. We're off to a flying start with some Japanese lounge singer singing over the brutal fight scenes in the background.
  • You guys might want to have that water looked at. I don't think it's supposed to glow that way.
  • Curiously even though this is an English dub, the sea captain still sings in, I guess, Japanese?
  • Dude, that woman is definitely dead. And yet her husband/boyfriend/whatever just keeps filming even as she plummets over the side of the ship
  • The character intro title cards are a little bit useless when there's no translation for them. I don't ****ing read moonspeak.
  • And here's the first instance of characters getting their western names. "Siren" is supposd to be "Shuta" Because his last name is "Go" which in Japanese means his name order is "Go Shuta", and explains his totally stealthy headmaster body name, GoShooter.
  • The characters keep referring to "Hook" and I was getting confused. It took me a few tries to realize that they mean "Hawk" as in "Metalhawk"
  • Pro: The character voices are somewhat improved. Con: the dialogue synching is bad. Like Speed Racer bad. "OhwowlookatthisevilplotbythedecepticonsHAHa!"
  • "Siren" has a hell of a deep voice for a kid who looks like he's about 8? 10?
  • "I came from a planet called Autobot." No! ****ing hell, no! You had the name correct (mostly) last series, why **** it up now?
  • "I'm an extraterrestrial being which is a transformation of a robot." The Engrish is strong with this one.
  • The pretenders (spoilers. Hawk and his crew are the Japanese versions of the G1 Pretenders figure characters) have lived on Earth since the stone age? First off, that's like several million years after the Ark crashed on Earth, so what the hell were you doing before then? And Second, so you've been here since the stone age and presumably through the 80s to the year 2000-whatever it is (this is a sequel of Headmasters, remember, so it's at least 2011) What the hell were you doing during the time that Optimus and the ark crew woke up? Why the hell weren't you reinforcing Autobot City when your goddamn leader died? What the hell? (I know the real answer is that Japan really didn't have much of an understanding of what happened during the movie becuase it didn't release until after this series wrapped up in 1989. But I don't care)
  • Skullgrin is absolutely the guy that voiced Galvatron in Headmasters.
  • Why does a squid monster shriek like a bird?
  • If I'm going to note how much this show resembles a Sentai/Power Rangers show, I'm going to get some mileage out of it.
  • Zeo Ranger 1: Metalhawk!
  • So, like, nobody cares that Shuta, a kid who's easily less than 16 rides a motorcycle with no helmet? Man, no wonder the Autobots didn't feel bad about weaponinzing the kids as Headmaster Jrs. Society didn't care about them either.
  • Holy unnecessary dolphin jump!
  • Zeo Ranger 3: Landmine!
  • Let's also all pause for a moment to ponder the mechanics :)laugh:) of Landmine, a 20-foot tall robot who only looks like a human for some reason, dating a human woman. I guess we shouldn't expect much else from the country that gave us Transformers: Kiss Players (DO NOT click that link if you value your sanity. Or are at work. Or have family in the room. Or think your computer might be monitored by the FBI)
  • Rewinding briefly, I just realized that the dub omitted some of the background info/lines about the ship attack in the opening. Specifically that it took place off the coast of Canada. So Omni Masterforce doesn't want Canada to exist in their Transformers universe. At least not yet, because according to the TF wiki article on Canada (and its very liberal use of the "eh" joke. We get it, everyone thinks we say "eh" like a comma.) two of the eventual Godmaster characters are found/recruited in Canada. Somewhere vaguely in Canada because Japan likely cares not for provincial distinctions.
  • You're a ****ig Squid, Tentakil. Stop cawing like a crow. Also your name's not Tentakil here. It's.... oh, wait. It actually is Tentakil. Carry on.
  • Geez, some animator for this show didn't know his anime cliches. You're not supposed to use the pastel-colored freeze frame until the end of the episode.
  • Strangely, the commercial bumpers didn't have their audio scrubbed properly. If you listen, you can hear the Japanese call of "Masterforce!" in the background as the English voice is layered over top of it (I'm using the same video as the YT linked above, so unlike Headmasters everything I notice/reference can be viewed in that youtube version if you watch along with the commentary)
  • You're the worst power ranger ever, Hawk.
  • Especially now that you bring a sword to a gun fight.
  • With some crazy wild west sounding music.
  • Seriously, it still sounds like everyone says "Hook." I keep expecting the Constructicons to jump out.
  • "Cause you're gonna diiiieeee." *Welcome to the Jungle* starts playing :sarcasm:
  • The colors on this show are really muddy. It's hard to tell the characters apart with so many of them are rendered in all dark grays/magentas/blues.
  • The theme music has started playing. Anime 101 has taught me that means it's about time for the good guys to triumph in this climactic battle. Except for that one episode of Bleach way back in the day where the power-up music started and then cut right off dead when the bad guy stopped the big offensive with no trouble. That was one of hte few cool things Bleach ever did.
  • Hey look, it only took an entire series passing by for me to hear more G1 sound effects finally (in the form of the laser shooting effects sounding like generic G1 guns.
  • Hawk sounds like William Shatner. British William Shatner.
  • "I'm sure one day you'll be a fine soldier" to Shuta..erm, Siren. Nothing says responsible adults like indoctrinating kids into warfare when they're young.
  • That's some midi trumpet sound they got going over this dramatic final set of shots.
  • Landmine's human mode looks super creepy. He should probably transform into a white windowless van.
  • And Cloudburst looks like dollar store Wolverine.
  • No credit sequence for this youtube cut

EPISODE 2: Terror! The Decpticons Manhunt


*RUNNING COMMENTARY*
  • And no title sequence for this second video. It's a toss-up whether or not any of the YT videos have extraneous parts.
  • Omni episode title: The Hunt for the Living Dead!
  • Man I wish they had translated the location markers on scene transitions.
  • The Decepticon Destruction team is made up of zombies. This Omni title is more accurate than I expected.
  • Zeo Ranger 3: Landmine! (again)
  • Why does Landmine's pretender shell form have glasses on?
  • Did someone just say "What the hell's going on?"?
  • Ok, seriously, is his name actually Hook in the dub?
  • So the Decepticons were buried in important landmarky areas of the EArth and were resurrected? Should they have done a better job establishing this is a flashback?
  • Also the deepest part of the Atlantic has like some kind of temple of Atlantis sunken in it? Ooookey-dokey.
  • And now we meet the true big bad of this series: Evil Zordon! I mean... Devil Z. a glowy ball of energy in a clam shell that doesn't look weirdly sexual and tentacly at all. Nope. Not at all.
  • So they're going to arrive in Tahiti soon? Does Tahiti usually have traditional Chinese Junks patrolling its waters?
  • And they're research ships?
  • Hawk, can I go with you? "No, it's too dangerous". Please, it's my duty. "Oh. Ok then."
  • What is going on with the music? It went way out of tone there.
  • Is.. is that Ma-Ti from Captain Planet?
  • This is what Japan thinks islanders are like?
  • Dammit, TFwiki made a Ma-Ti joke on their page for this character. I feel less original now.
  • "Goddammit! It's the Autobots again!" :laugh: I feel like shaking my finger and chiding the show for its language.
  • "What is that funny thing?" So our hypothetical weird islander near "Tahiti" don't know what planes are? Oh, Japan...
  • "Siren you stay here and do nothing until I come back" Because that always works
  • Now the two kids are wrestling? I feel like I shouldn't be watching this show anymore.
  • the native prince kid's name is.... Hosehead. Wow. I can almost understand "Siren", but why did nobody notice this?
  • That settles it. Hawk is being called "Hook."
  • After re-watching episode 1, I was almost thinking this series wasn't as bad as I made it out to be last year. Now I'm 13 minutes into this episode and I feel confident saying that it's in fact worse than I remember it being.
  • The look of the generic natives makes me uncomfortable. Like in the way that all those anime series kept using blackface designs into the 70s and 80s without understanding how offensive they are.
  • Hawk gets a new "Transformation" sequence as he emerges from his pretender shell. It'd be cool if it wasn't so weird.
  • Maybe the music issues are because these YT videos were ripped from video tape? It sounds like the tape slowing down and that causes the pitch drop in the music.
  • "He's not just a friend"... Seriously, I can't be the only person who finds this all unbearably creepy.
  • So Siren's dad is now dead. Meaning that by anime law Hawk and the Transformers can simply claim guardianship of him. Because they're clearly the most suitable people to take care of a young kid and won't do something foolish like suit him up in robot armor and send him to fight his battles in a sense of grief-stricken rage over what they've taken away from him. Nope. Of course they couldn't be that dumb.
  • Wait, he's not dead? A giant **** beam fell on him!
  • Oh, it's even worse than I suspected. Siren's dad entrusts his son to hte alien robots. And basically encourages him to fight.
  • It's so Japaneeeeese with all the silent, grim mourning.
  • They have to be strong and brave to face up to teh deadly challenges ahead. Even if they're like 12.
  • Also now Hosehead (*snicker*) gives Siren a soccer ball? As a symbolic gesture

EPISODE 3: Kidnapping!? The Targeted Jumbo Jet


*RUNNING COMMENTARY*
  • London. "The city of fog? That has to be made up... Wait, it's true? Huh. The show is educational!
  • English title: "The Case of the Missing Plane!" At least it doesn't sound as immediately phony as last episode (even if that turned out to be true"
  • So Hosehead and Siren are playing a game of... hunting each other in the jungle and winning by holding a knife to the other's throat? Hardcore.
  • A 12-year-old kid constructed a giant fully functional tree house by himself with no tools? even that very manufactured-looking table? Huh.
  • I'm beginning to hate this show a lot. If I hadn't promised to try and last 3 episodes apiece, I would be tapping out right now.
  • Zeo Rang... Ok, I'll stop now. It's not funny anymore.
  • No, Hawk. Stop taking children into dangerous combat zones!
  • According to TFWiki, Siren (or at least Shuta Go) is supposed to be 13. THIRTEEN! And this is what they're letting him do? Never mind the helmetless motorcycle riding.
  • And now it's Minerva, the final Headmaster Jr. But this being a Japanese series of the 80s, like Arcee and Carly before her, she's reduced to a weak, flittery ninny.
  • And this being the Omni dub, she gets an awful high-pitched voice.
  • And by "Minerva" I mean "Nightbeat" Because that's obviously a solid name for a young lady. Not that they reveal her name yet, but I'm waiting for it.
  • Ok, I just sort of blanked out there for a few minutes.
  • "All my friends call me Nightbeat. So you can call me that too!" There it is. Ugh.
  • That one commercial bumper actually uses the classic G1 transformation sound. It showing up there made me realize how rarely it feels like these anime series actually make a point of using that sound even though it's the iconic Transformers sound effect.
  • "That's why you look so different from us" says the very obviously dark-skinned kid who looks nothing like the Japanese characters. Because yeah, a blond girl is sooo different than both of them...
  • Fun fact: Minerva is actually the first ever female Transformer character to get a toy. Even though Arcee debuted well before her, the G1 Arcee figure never got past the design stages and wouldn't see any sort of proper release for the character until one of the 2000s anime series (Energon, I think?)
  • Ok, I'm going to admit I have no idea what's going on anymore.
  • "They haven't heard the last of the Decepticons." Yes. Yes they have. Because I'm done with this nonsense.

For those that want to keep watching, that YT channel has the entire Omni dub run of Masterforce on it, along with the full run of tomorrow's series: Victory. If you actually choose to watch the full run of Masterforce, you're made of sterner stuff than I, because there's no way I could handle this insanity anymore.

So that's it for tonight. Tomorrow we wrap up the G1 trilogy with Victory, after which point everything I review and re-watch will be brand new and not covered last year.

As a final note, the character appearing in my graphic header for this show is one of the major Decepticons, Overlord. He doesn't appear in the episodes I watched. But he did have a toy made for the Titans Return line. I picked one up on clearance in spite of having no idea who the character was and was pleasantly surprised. It's actually really cool.
 

The Nemesis

Semper Tyrannus
Apr 11, 2005
87,934
31,165
Langley, BC
TFRewatch3-Victory.jpg

"By your powers combined, I am Gundamus Prime!"
*NOTE:* Please excuse the constant typo/corrections on the name of the Autobot leader (Star Sabe r). HF has a filter in place because of the Buffalo team name that automatically fixes the "er" spelling to "re" and causes some shonkiness with capitalization.

It's day 3, the quarterpole of my rewatch and thus time for the 3rd and final piece of the Japanese G1 trilogy: Victory (I'm going to spare writing out the actual kanji/katakana and romanization. That joke is played out. For now.). As I said in last year's subtitled rewatch, unlike Super-God Masterforce, which seemed to go out of its way to not be a Transformers series in spirit, what with the human Headmasters Jr and the very Gundam/Sentai setup its heroes and villains ran on, Victory seems to have chosen to go back and hew a lot closer to franchise standard with a set of heroes who are all Autobots fighting a war against a batch of bad guys who are all Decepticons. There's no humans piloting transformer bodies, evil energy nebulas, or long-winded parables about how kids should cast off the shackles of childhood on the alter of sacrifice and responsibility in order to contribute to society and do their part in shouldering the burden of suffering and misfortune through which they attain karmic rewards.

However, in keeping with Japanese tradition, the series is still fairly immature, targeted at younger kids and thus is full of a lot of silly comedy and pratfalls and elements that undercut the nature of the story they're trying to tell.

Last year I watched the first two of the 3 episodes I'll be reviewing tonight, but honestly I don't remember 90% of the material except that I ultimately thought this series was the least bad of the 3 Japanese continuations. So strap in and let's see where this leads.

Episode 1: Warrior of the Universe! Star Saber (actual title: "The Brave Hero of the Universe! Star Saber")


Running Commentary
  • This opening seems familiar if you were watching the Headmasters YTs, right? Well, this is the series it actually belongs to. Except this time instead of the badly cut in english "Transformers" over the "V" symbol as a title card, it has the real Victory title card in Japanese.
  • I can only barely make out parts of it, but they actually put katakana (basically a Japanese phoenetic alphabet) for the lyrics to the theme song at hte bottom of hte screen. Including noting how, in Japanese, you would pronounce the letter "V" when the lyric is just the singer shouting "V! V! Victory!" It sounds weird because Japanese doesn't have a distinct sound in its phonemes for the letter. Best they can do is a sort of hybrid b/v sound. This is why there used to be total weeaboos back in the day who insisted that the Dragon Ball Z character was named "Bejiita" and would throw hissy fits if you said otherwise.
  • No that's not a Gundam. That's the Autobot leader, Star Saber. I swear he's not actually a Gundam. I don't think
  • Ok, so we go from dramatic title sequence to chibi super deformed characters for the bumpers. See what I mean about the seriousness of the show being undercut?
  • It's the old west! With robots! And it's called "irontown" I think.
  • Why is there an old west town populated by robots? And why does it have a church?
  • and I think the lone walking stranger making his pruposeful trek through the street is Star Saber. He doesn't always look like a Gundam. But when he does, he's probably gonna kick your ass.
  • Man, him drawing that sword is soooooooo shonen.
  • I think that katakana caption is supposed to say "Star Saber"
  • "After Death Sanras was driven out of the Earth by Optimus Prime..." Ok, there's 3 things wrong with that sentence. #1) It's Deathsaurus (more on that in a minute), #2) He never actually fought Optimus Prime. #3) He even actually only appeared in fiction as of a special that aired at the end of Masterforce (not part of the dub and not available on the Shout Factory DVDs, because why would we want to tie up all the loose threads from the plot?), so there's never been time for him to have had an already-known fight with any Autobot, let alone the one who's been dead for most of the previous 4 years of Transformers fiction.
  • So... Death Sanras. I'll actually cut Omni some slack here. Dude didn't even have a proper romanized name until 3 years ago (I don't mean in the fictional timeline. I mean quite literally until a fan convention in 2015) and while most people (ultimately correctly) assumed that the name was supposed to be "Deathsaurus", the guesses in lieu of a canon answer were all over the map, like "Death Sanras", "Death Czarus", "Dessaras", or (as I joked last year) "Super Happy Engrish Fun Man". Hilariously, in spite of the actual ****ing godfather of the entire goddamn franchise (the man who designed many of the early toys that became prominent G1 characters when they were collected under the Transformers umbrella and who has been an integral part of Takara since) explicitly telling everyone that it's supposed to be "Deathsaurus", various lines' marketing writers still can't seem to get the name consistent and it continues to be borked up to this day.
  • Now that I've stopped the show for like 10 minutes to rant about this stuff, let's continue :laugh:
  • Man, these new scene transition sigil scenes look cheap. In stark contrast to the actually pretty decent animation in the rest of the show.
  • Of note, Victory was the beginning of the end for Transformers in Japan at this time. The animation budget for this series was stretched so thin that a full quarter of the series' episodes are clip shows.
  • Oh look, it's the Dino Force. An awesome idea for a decepticon villain team that is ruined by them being doofy comedy bad guys
  • "Optimus Prime, slow down" No! No! That's ****ing not Optimus Prime. That's God Ginrai. A character from Super God Masterfoce that just happens to look exactly like Optimus prime. and is actually a human being inside that robot body. Because making a brand new and not at all derivative character look exactly like the singularly iconic character of your entire franchise wasn't at all a stupid and confusing move. Was it, Japan?
  • "Fixit" is a fun screw-up. The character's Japanese name is "Holi". In the english subbed version, the character is referred to by his western name: "Stakeout" as he is a Micromaster (the little tiny Transformers that were among the last things released in the west before the franchise went dormant until Beast Wars) and a member of that line's Autobot Rescue Patrol set of 4 Micromasters. Fixit was a member of the same group, but was an ambulance. I actually have a Stakeout/Holi and Fixit figure. The only one I'm missing is the fire engine one, Red Hot, because I'm pretty sure that like 6 year old me took it to a restaurant and lost it. And eBay ends up being a giant rip when you have to spend like $40 with shipping to get 1/4 of a set that sold for like $12 in 1992
  • These character intro scenes would be a lot more interesting if the dub actually gave us the names of these characters instead of just staying silent
  • Thankfully by this point there aren't going to be many instances of characters being given wrong names (Optimus Prime and Fixit aside) simply because the vast majority of characters in this series don't have western equivalent characters/figures to draw from. Most of Victory's toys were exclusive to Japan.
  • And right as I say that, one of the Dino Force members gets addressed as "Icepick" (the Dino Force toys were based on a set of "Pretenders Monsters" that were released in the west, only Japan replaced the soft plastic mystery-creature pretender shell with a dino shaped one, even though it meant that the robots inside the Dino Force shells had alternate modes of weird random monster types instead of something dinosaur-y. It's for this reason that in the Victory anime, the Dinoforce never trandform. They're either in their shells or out in robot mode.
  • "Why are you using that old-fashioned gun?" Only in Japan could you chastise someone for using a gun and think it's better that they replace it with a huge axe.
  • This series continues the ongoing trend of Japanese transformers to tone down the amount of gunplay and replacing it with characters showing true Samurai spirit and using swords and other melee weapons.
  • Braver sounds like a dumb made-up name, but the character's actual Japanese name is indeed Braver.
  • They needed that inset graphic of Star Saber's robot mode to remind us that the jet is him? Even though we already saw him transform?
  • Duocons (singular robots who turn into two vehicles) are a cool concept that should be done more often. IF only because it creates interesting figures (Power of the Primes' Battletrap duocon is awesome. As is the Titans Return giant leader Overlord (himself a character originally from Super-God Masterforce)
  • Super long stock transformation sequence? That's how you save money on animation, kids.
  • So if Star Saber goes right to his ultra-combined super mode, what's the point of his baseline mode? Except that the double transformation kills extra time and allows for more stock footage.
  • Meet Deathsaurus.. er Death Sanras, this series' Megatron equivalent.
  • "Death Sanras, I can't fight you." *bails* :laugh: you sound like a tool, Star Saber.
  • Fun fact: Goryu, the Dinoforce member referred to as "icepick" (the T-Rex one) was voiced in Japanese by Daisuke Gori, an iconic Japanese voice actor who was the original voice of Dragonball Z's Mr. Satan (Hercule)
  • Deathsaurus has a mace and a bow. But not a gun? Ok, sure.
  • That's some crazy swordsmanship to deflect a physical arrow back at its shooter.
  • More budget-saving animation: Why have the characters actually duel when they can simply lock weapons and stare intensely at one another in a battle of wills?
  • I still can't get over the ridiculousness of Star Saber sheathing his sword
  • Meekon? His name is Jean Minakaze
  • "The Earth is so pretty." *snicker* Laaaame!
  • No matter what, the Autobots must protect the Earth from disaster? Don't you guys have, like, I dunno, your own planet? or did Rodimus Prime just bail on that like he bailed on leadership of the Autobots several times over?


Episode 2:The Birth of a Monster! (actual title: "Sneak Attack! Dinoking")


Running Commentary
  • Ok, what the hell? I feel like we missed something here. The battle just starts right off the bat.
  • I'm getting proven more wrong about my dub name change comment. "Monstructor" is supposed to be "Dinoking". As I explained for Episode 1, the Dino Force were repurposed figures from the Pretenders Monsters line. Monstructor was that team's combiner form.
  • Wait, now we're doing a recap after the title card? So what the hell was bit before the title card? I have a feeling the dub wouldn't have helped here. Was it a preview of this episode? That'd be dumb.
  • In this series it's supposed to be 2025. but they're playing a game that probably looked dated in the late 80s when this show was made.
  • :laugh: "Bashtaser" is actually named "Dashtacker" (he's a duocon formed from component bots "Dash" and "Tacker". Not sure how they ended up bridging that gap.
  • The more I see the Dinoforce, the harder it is to reconcile their intimidating look and potential with their outright comedy silliness as ineffectual minions.
  • The off-brand scene transitions bother me. What was wrong with the traditional G1 transitions? They lasted into Headmasters.
  • No characters with mouthplates have their faces move when they speak in this show. It makes dubbing easier, but it looks lazy (budget cutting strikes again!)
  • Stock footage transformations!
  • So this dub is cheap and lazy and takes shortcuts with awful voices and no effort, but they took the time to make an echo effect for internal thoughts.
  • Death Sanras is again the same dub voice as Galvatron in Headmasters and Skullgrin in Super-God Masterforce.
  • Nobody has a gun, everyone has metal weapons...
  • The fact that the Dinoforce can send their dino shells to attack separately from their robots (which are currently combined as Dinoking, by which I mean Monstructor) is a cool trick.
  • "Oh no. Monstructor seems to be beating them." Star Saber sounds positively unconcerned.
  • That launch bay footage for Star Saber looks like a stock sequence in the making.
  • An actual gun! Well, a rocket launcher. And predictably it's useless. SHould've brought a spear or a sword or perhaps some kind of glaive instead.
  • I'm 16 minutes into the episode and I swear at least 7 of those minutes have been assorted stock sequences
  • "Oh no, I didn't know Star Saber had another powerful weapon like that!" Uhhh, you had to have seen it. This is the intermediary step before he turns to his combined super mode.
  • Huh, that flashlight thing paid off. Who'd have thunk it? :sarcasm:
  • That shuttle bot is staying in place as he uses his shuttle rockets to blow away the dinoforce without moving? Suck on that Newton's laws of motion.
  • Stock super mode transformation sequence with theme music.
  • I feel like someone should call child protective services to audit this kid being kept by a bunch of millennia-old robots who clearly don't have the same understanding of morality and mortality that we do.
  • So I guess in the end that bit at the episode's start was a flash-forward. Could've used a heads up there.

Episode 3: Leozack Attacks! (actual title: "Attack! Leozack")


Running Commentary
  • We begin with I guess another flash-forward. Which makes it super confusing because who the hell is that girl and what is Meekon doing at a school and other assorted nonsense questions.
  • So he waited to dive into the water before changing from jet mode to a robot? sure.
  • It's not discussed in the dub, but Leozack is the leader of a sub-line called the breastforce. teeheehee.
  • So we continue the long tradition of the Transformers failing to play earth sports. Even though a giant robot with a volleyball could kill a human.
  • "According to my data, school is very boring." way to be positive, Fixit.
  • Meanwhile the young kid is the voice of reason who wants to go to school. This feels like an intentional bit of moralizing.
  • What's with the bell tower and the surroundings? Is this a school in the swiss alps?
  • Ok, judging by the faux German sign out front, it is.
  • So the kid arrives to school being carried by a giant robot jet fighter. Welp, that's gonna get him stuffed into lockers for the rest of the semester.
  • Ok, he wasn't carried by the giant jet. He was in the police car. The driver's seat of the police car. Because that's better.
  • :laugh: "Mr. Saber."
  • Exposition relevant to the war being told to a nun. Sure. why not.
  • :laugh: Star Saber is surprisingly non-plussed about the fact that they've tended to a kid for the last several years in the middle of a war.
  • So they send Meekon to school and he just hangs out on the wall instead of sitting at a desk?
  • The date on teh board is Thursday March 15. Joke's on them. If this really is taking place in 2025, March 15th is on a Saturday. In fact, because 2024 is a leap year, March 15th skips being a Thursday over the next 7 years. This year's March 15 was on Thursday though.
  • Meekon is a dick of a student.
  • "It seems Meekon is having fun at school." Yep. He'll probably be suspended by the end of the day if he keeps disrupting class.
  • Welp, ****. Looks lke the school is toast. (cue up Alice Cooper's "School's Out")
  • Why use futuristic laser guns when you can have a good old fashioned fist-fight?
  • Meanwhile instead of fleeing the rapidly crumbling school, the kids just stand at a blown-out window to watch the fight? Dumb kids
  • Leozack has a segmented staff? That's pretty Japanese...
  • And now the kids are on the roof? Jesus, they're pretty dumb.
  • And now the kids are bullying Meekon because the Decepticons are attacking? :laugh: Kids are dicks. Maybe they deserve to be blown up in the attack?
  • "Meekon, can you protect the children?" Yes, Star Saber. If he has confidence, a 10 year old kid (or however old he is) will be able to protect his classmates against giantic multi-story tall dinosaur robots.
  • How dare they call the Dinoforce clowns! I'll have you know they're clods or morons!
  • A 3-bot combiner? That's kinda cool.
  • Those girls seem smitten with Meekon. If they weren't so young, it might cause this show to seriously shift genres, if you know what I mean ;)
  • Look at that anime-esque rising sun background as Star Saber unleashes his final attack. That's how you know he's a shonen hero.
  • And the closing music is the same western town music as the beginning episode? That's both prescient given that I'm stopping the rewatch here (because it bookends) and weird considering we're in like the alps or whatever.
  • You just know Fixit is going to roll over on a curve and kill like half those kids.

And we're out. I still feel like Victory has some potential more than the other Japanese series. I'll probably go back to the subbed version to watch it though.

Tomorrow is the major odd night in my rewatch as I'll be reviewing a quartet of non-series:
1) Zone, the G1 Japanese finale one-off
2) Scramble City, the interquel single episode that Japan made to bridge season 2 of G1 to season 3 given their lack of The Movie in Japan for another couple years
3) RobotMasters, a pair of 6-minute shorts that are just a bunch of popular characters from across multiple parts of the franchise in one giant battle
4) Go! a sequel series to Transformers Prime

I haven't decided exactly what I'll watch given that I have subs and fandubs of the first 2 items, plus a fanmade sequel short to Scramble City. If I have time maybe I'll put in extra review work comparing versions of the same thing. Or I'll just watch the subtitled versions of things where I have them
 

The Nemesis

Semper Tyrannus
Apr 11, 2005
87,934
31,165
Langley, BC
TFRewatch4a-Zone.jpg


The upside of lasting only 1 episode as Autobot leader: there's not enough time to get killed off!
It's day 4, and that means I'm doing something different and covering a bunch of smaller items that aren't really series (still all from Japan though). This also marks the first time I'm covering something I didn't discuss last year (which will be the case from here on out)

**NOTE: HF only allows up to 4 embedded YT videos per post, so after the start of the Scramble City material, all YT links are instead shown just as links instead of as playable-in-post videos. Apologies***

First up is the conclusion to the original Japanese G1 run of shows: Zone.

Released in 1990, Zone's fate was the logical continuation of what had been evident in the west for a couple years and what was clearly becoming clear after Victory in Japan: The Transformers brand appeared to have run its course. 1990 was the last year that the original "Transformers" imprint saw any toys released in the US in the form of the much-reviled "Action Masters" (aka Transformers that didn't transform.) While Europe and Canada saw a few more exclusive lines released from 1990-92 (when the series was briefly revived as part of "Generation 2" in the US), it wouldn't be until around 1996 that Hasbro really stepped back into the game and put out a completely new and reinvigorated line: Beast Wars. Meanwhile in Japan the waning support that Victory received (its slashed budget evident in the huge number of clip shows and heavy reliance on stock footage) only continued as Zone went from a rumored 5-episoe straight-to-video run down to 2 presumed episodes, and then cancelled right after the first (and only) part would be released. Similar to the west, this was the short-term demise of the franchise as Japan wouldn't get back into the game until they began importing and dubbing Beast Wars in the mid 90s, shortly after its North American relaunch.

The basic plot of Zone is quite sparse (Which is unsurprising given that they only had 22 minutes to work with): Violen Jiger (Don't think I won't be talking about that name during the commentary section) recruits a number of familiar and powerful Decepticons to serve as his generals in a plot to destroy the Autobots and conquer the universe. That's really all there is, as we barely have enough time to watch the initial attack in his plan and a brief showdown between the factions. There was a manga and a series of story segments in a Japanese magazine that repeated the same basic plot and fleshed out some of the holes, but for the most part, the franchise's cancellation left a lot of what happened unresolved.

For this portion of the re-watch, because I have extra time to do it today, I'm actually going to watch Zone twice.

First up will be a fanmade subtitled version using Japanese audio. This subbed version was created by Karyuudo Translations, a group who mostly concerns themselves with Transformers releases that never made it to the west, such as this, Scramble City, Beast Wars II and, presumably next year, Beast Wars Neo. I've seen some of their release notes and discussion of translating the series and it shows that they care about the franchise and endeavor to do a good job of balancing things in a way that makes sense to fans without becoming too west-centric (like Shout Factory's subs did when they used awkward English names and inserted modern western terms like the assorted Cybertronian curse words) without being too weeby (like I expect to see when I get to reviewing some of the work covered by TV-Nihon).

Second I'll be re-watching the episode in a fanmade dub by a group calling thimselves TFCog Prouctions. They've recruited a batch of fan voice actors to dub multiple Japanese pieces of fiction including this, Scramble City, RobotMasters, and portions of several series (as I write this their website hasn't updated in a year and they've dubbed 25 of 31 episodes of Victory, 11 episodes of Beast Wars Neo, and about 4 episodes of Beast Wars II. And I can't find any sort of news on the net to discuss whether or not they're still working on the project or if the radio silence means they've raised a white flag.) It'll be interesting to see if this group of amateur fans can do a better job than the often-questionable work of Omni.



*running commentary*
  • Right off the top these subs are going to be interesting because they appear to keep Japanese naming conventions. The Autobots are called the "Cybertrons" and the Decepticons the "Destrons". Good to know that's how it's going to be.
  • Second line "a new Destron emperor named Violen Jiger and his Nine Great Demon Generals appear." So even though they didn't know this series was tanking right out of the gate, they still use an info-dump at the beginning to skip through all the origin story for the new guys? Boo.
  • Alright, let's get it out of the way now: Violen Jiger. The subs are correct and this is the officially accepted romanized version of the guys' name. The confusion around his name has generally been more fun and goofy than it was with Deathsaurus simply because there wasn't a sensible, "obvious" answer. And at various times (and with various degrees of seriousness) people have suggested the following alternatives: Violin Juggler, Violent Chigger, Bio Ranger Iga, and of course, Valium Chugger.
  • Planet Fiminia with the double rings setup. I'm never sure if that's a reasonable astrological phenomenon or just fun-time sci-fi BS. But this is a show about a war between sentient robot species, so I suppose I'm thinking too hard about it.
  • The animation for this is smooth so far, but as we go further into the Japanese series, it looks more and more anime-esque. Headmasters was, visually speaking, indistinguishable from western G1 for the most part. Meanwhile this show just gives you a shot of the wind rustling through an alien grassland and it's unmistakably late 80s/early 90s anime. It feels like I'm watching Gundam Wing or something.
  • And here's our protagonist kid. And a... flying rabbit thing?
  • Also we now have Decepticons with capes and helms and gold bracers and ****.
  • Wait. That's Star Saber. I thought we were supposed to be doing new characters.
  • And now Star Saber's dead. Man, that was quick/weak.
  • And then the Micromaster characters blubber and cry. Literally. Way to ruin an otherwise reasonably dramatic moment
  • I feel like these theme songs are getting worse as we go on
  • Also now we have a blue haired kid wearing Saint Saiya armor and a girl who looks like Japanese Dora the Explorer. And this weird space rabbit.
  • So... are we not explaining the Nine Great Demon Generals?
  • Oh. There we go. One of them is Overlord, one of the lead bad guys in Super-God Masterforce
  • Violen Jiger is clearly not meant to be an actual Transformer. He looks like some sort of lovecraft monster.
  • So... it's called "zone" because Violen Jiger wants to destroy the universe and build a "Destron Zone" whatever that is? I guess it's not the worst way to name something. And no more weird than a lot of other crazy engrish that's come out of Japan.
  • Violin Jiger has 3 heads like some sort of skeletal mutant Quintesson? Ok
  • 76 days later... 76? That's random.
  • And now there's a Planet Zone too? Japan... Guys... seriously, you can't just slap the word "Zone' onto stuff and pretned it makes sense.
  • I'll at least give that Planet Zone and the Zone Base looks pretty cool and detailed.
  • Oh great, the rabbit thing talks. Jesus :facepalm:
  • So the Transformers identify their species as "Super robot lifeform Transformers" huh
  • And they use the Defcon system.
  • :laugh: Zone base is made up of the Micromaster building playsets. I have several of those That's great.
  • Also now I can see that these "Great generals" are combiner teams. The two attacking are clearly Predaking and Menasor underneath the cape and armor and melee weapons)
  • Oh no! They stole the macguffin!
  • It's called an Energizer-Z. K. At least it's not "Energizer-Zone"
  • This show is moving at a breakneck pace
  • Other General: BlackZarak (Japanese variation of Scorponok)
  • Oh look, another show where the Transformers are cool bringing a young kid on a dangerous battle mission. At least the western shows now usually make at least a little bit of a fuss over them objecting to kids tagging along.
  • Wait, Star Saber isn't dead? He survived a planet exploding? Damn.
  • Dai Atlas' face design is distracting. It's like he's supposed to have a goatee piece around his mouth but it's colored white like everything else
  • The Micromaster characters all sound like kids. Because that's not annoying.
  • And now Trypticon is one of the generals?
  • And here's Japanese Dora the Explorer getting rescued..
  • So the blue-haired kid's name is Kain
  • And Dora's name is Akira. Except that my limited understanding of Japanese says that in using the "boku" version of "I" to refer to one's self (in the introduction "I'm Akira") is usually something boys do. And Akira is usually a male name. Wait. so....
  • It's a guy?!?!?
  • Clearly the most expensive parts of the episode are the transformation sequences since they can be used repeatedly.
  • Yeah, Autobots. Your stupid guns won't work. Use your swords and fight like real men... er, robots.
  • Devastator is one of the generals too. And he's got a giant drill arm.
  • How convenient that Dai-Atlas also has a giant drill-tank mode.
  • So there's giant crystals in the earth called "Zodiac" that's a massive energy sorce or something? Are these related to the Ruby Crystals of Burma (aka the strongest energy source on the planet)? :laugh:
  • Another general: King Poseidon (aka Piranacon in the west, the forgotten combiner team) How many is that now? 6 or 7 I think? Abominus is probably one of the others just to fit the last major 'con combiner team in. Can't think of what the others would be.
  • Wait, is Devastator dead all of a sudden? He burrows into the side of a cave wall, then gets blown back out by a lava flow and we see his arm sticking up from the lava with the metal "skin" melting away to reveal his wires and internal mechanisms. Sure looks like he's dead. But if Star Saber survived a planetary explosion, this should be nothing.
  • Now this Zodiac thing, which was crystal before, looks like a literal, actual heart with a big glowy red spot. Seriously, what the hell is going on?
  • And there's the slapstick comedy moment to undercut a bunch of mostly dramatic bits.
  • Oh no!.... that guy! I don't even know what the name of the one who took the blast is. Or if he's supposed to be dead or mortally wounded or whatever.
  • So Dai-Atlas holds up the Zodiac heart thing and it just... absorbs Trypticon's laser blast/wave/whatever mouth gun. I need to stop and check if my water bottle is laced with LSD.
  • And the zodiac thing now explode into a miniature galaxy. which pulses light and does... something.
  • stock footage!
  • and the guy who got shot is suddenly OK and not bearing a giant gaping hole in his chest. All so that he can combine with Dai-Atlas
  • "Zone Mode Attack!" Stop sticking "zone" in every name!
  • Clearly this is the "****'s going down" moment as the theme song is playing.
  • And Dai-Atlas' super attack is ... a giant Z-shaped bomerang sword thing called the "zone cutter"... :facepalm:
  • The use of said Zone cutter evokes the standby samurai movie trope where he slices at Predaking, you see nothing and we wait patiently until a cut line appears and it turns out Predaking was perfectly bisected as his halves drift apart.
  • Also Predaking appears to have a biological brain in the middle of his head. The ****?
  • And now he's dead. Remmeber, Predaking was the ultimate combiner team in G1. And he went down like a punk to 1 attack in episode 1
  • Akira, the kid, knows about what Zodiac is (it's the primal building blocks of the universe). Because of course he does.
  • And he still looks like a little girl.
  • Unlike Meekon from Victory, there's no indication that Akira's parents are dead. But the Autobots just kidnap him and take him back to their planet. Pretty sure there are laws against that, guys.
  • Star Saber is just giving up his leadership role to Dai Atlas because Dai Atlas won one fight. That's weak. It would've been better if he just died.
  • Not going to really talk about the credit sequence. It's standard anime fare.Except seriously they're fumbling this apparent friendship between Kain and Akira because instead of making them look like 8-10 year olds on friendly terms it looks a lot more... ummm... let's go with "serious".
  • If this is how the Transformers series dies in Japan, it's a pretty disappointing way to go. The action (when it was happening) was pretty good, but wow did hte plot make no sense and was there ever a lot of junky portions.
  • I just looked up the Nine Great Demon Generals. The ones I missed above were Abominus (which I expected) and Bruticus (which I should've known but I had a brain-freeze on). Also according to TFWiki, BlackZarak/Skorponok was supposed to be very much dead before this story. Huh.




*running commentary II*
  • I'm not going to repeat observational stuff from the content of the episode again. That'd just be pointless. Most of what you'll see will be discussion of the acting/line choice and where they may have changed elements of the plot or narrative in the process of dubbing.
  • I can't tell what this narrator voice is supposed to be. Is it a terrible recreation of Vic Caroli? Becuase if it is, it 's terrible.
  • So the dub chooses not to translate the on-screen name captions. Dumb, guys. Real dumb.
  • They've also added some sound effects. Not bad ones, but it's noticeably different.
  • 4 voices in and we have 1 good one (Kain) 2 bad ones (narrator, Holi) and one netural one (Star Saber)
  • wow, the micromasters crying was badly done. It was clearly the same 2 second sob sound looped multiple times.
  • No dub for the theme song, no subs either.
  • I wasn't going to comment on story/plot stuff here, but that rabbit thing is the Jar-Jar Binks of Transformers
  • Violen Jiger's voice is so over-processed that I can't understand it.
  • So they read out the title card, but not any of the other captions? Christ guys, this is pretty sloppy
  • ****, rabbit thing even has a Jar-Jar sounding voice.
  • The sound balance is really off. Some of the voices are so quiet that you can't hear them under sound effects.
  • One pro for this dub: it's using the traditional transforming sound effect. I don't understand why Japan hates that effect so much. It actually uses a fair number of "classic" sound effects which helps make this feel more Transformers-y than the Japanese original.
  • Menasor's voice actually kind of sounds like Frank Welker's Skywarp voice.
  • I can't decide if this dub makes Omni look good or bad. It's hard to tell.
  • Dai-Atlas' voice us blaaaaaand. And the other guy with Dai-Atlas (Sonic Bomber) is even worse. The recording sounds crappy too.
  • Akira's dub voice totally sounds like the guy who dubs Gohan in Dragonball Z Abridged. :laugh: (it's not, I looked it up. But the one line I've heard so far is awkwardly similar)
  • And now the dub guys are adding monologue narration over quiet scenes as Dai-Atlas holds up the Zodiac heart thing...
  • On the whole, yeah that was for sure amateur hour. It makes me OK with not watching the TFCog dub of Scramble City. I applaud fans who make efforts like this, but it certainly shows the gap between professional and fan-made work, but even total beginner pieces like this and polished/well-made fanworks like DBZ Abridged.


TFRewatch4b-ScrambleCity.jpg


"This totally makes up for not getting the movie. I mean, it's all worth it just to see Chip and Carly in the same scene, right? Right?"

The second part of today's rewatch sends us back in time to the middle of the G1 cartoon. In 1986 Transformers: The Movie was releasing and transitioning the franchise from the early days into the new wave of characters like Hot Rod and Ultra Magnus. Except in Japan. For reasons never made all that clear, Japan didn't receive The Movie for another 3 years (during or shortly after the run of Victory). But in spite of this, Japan went ahead and dubbed G1 season 3 in 1986/87 even though the plot would make zero sense with the introduction of all the new characters, timeskip, and changes to the status quo. In order to help deal with this issue, Japan produced a number of story recaps of movie elements for publication in various magazines, and this special animation to explain some of the elements. Specifically, Scramble City helps detail the construction of Autobot City (spoilers: it's Metroplex) as well as introduces a toy element for the various season 2 G1 non-Devastator combiner teams (Superion, Menasor, Bruticus, Defensor): The somewhat universal nature of the limb bots means that they can swapped and mixed and matched with each other and with the bots off any similar combiner.

Like with Zone, I have both a Karyuudo fansub version and a TFCog fan-dub version. But rather than watch both (and get myself up to 4 episodes worth of content already) I'm just going to watch the subbed version in full, then watch TFCog's first original production: a fan-made "Scramble City 2" that runs about 6 minutes.



*running commentary*
  • So this video opens up with the season 2 western title sequence except with a lady singing a J-pop song over it
  • A j-pop song that includes "everyone's heart has a mysterious mind" as a lyric where "mysterious mind" is in English.
  • It makes me wonder if this is the actual theme song for the series proper in Japan. (EDIT: I went and checked. It is.)
  • There are credits over the title sequence too, half of which are in English for some reason, including crediting character designer Frolo Dery (by which I mean "Floro Dery". If you have the time, read some of the stuff about him on TFWiki. He seems like a total nut job. and kind of a dick.
  • "Reach out and touch the destiny of the universe that is twinkling".... what?
  • Oh. right. I forgot that weirdly while Japan chose to name the Autobot faction as the "Cybertrons", they avoided the awkwardness of them being the same name as the planet by changing the homeworld's name to "Seibertron." Yeah, that's weird.
  • And the opening of this special is... identical to the opening of the series pilot? With the same music cues and sound effects?
  • This is just entirely a sped-up version of the pilot. Are they intending to recap the entire run of the series up to the point of the movie? So is the new material in this special going to be like 5 minutes long by the time they're done? The special only clocks in at 23 minutes.
  • If nothing else, I'm feeling reinvigorated by the fact that they're using music and sounds that I'm familiar with instead of all the new stuff the other series have been using. On the other hand, it makes me almost wish i had just chosen to watch G1 instead.
  • This is so much the pilot that it even keeps the pilot episode's "FOUR MILLION YEARS LATER" transition title in English.
  • The amount of electronic processing on the characters' voices is refreshing given how little of it existed in the Japanese versions of the later series.
  • "Their regeneration is possible by combining themselves with machines full of energy"... what?
  • Starscream's Japanese voice sucks.
  • "The Cybertrons (Autobots) counterattack!" as the visuals transition from the oil rig attack at the end of the first part of the pilot to... "The Master Builders" a season 2 episode where Grapple and Hoist inadvertently help the Constructicons build a giant energy collector for Megatron based on Grapple's designs. I love how this special basically just pretends that these events are connected.
  • And now, 7 minutes in, the "Scramble City: Mobilization" title card shows up. That was a pointlessly long amount of recap filler. So now they barely have 15 minutes to try and explain how the hell we got from the end of season 2 to the movie and beyond since Japan doens't have the movie yet when this came out
  • "Project Scramble City is underway to stop the Destrons from gaining more power. It's a base meant to give birth to more warriors stronger than Devastator." but a) How do they build more warriors without Vector Sigma to give them life? I thought trying that was why the Dinobots are so stupid. and b) How does this account for the fact that Bruticus/Abominus/Menasor are also Scramble City style combiner teams? Did you ever think of that, Japan? Did you?
  • at 8 minutes in, who the hell is that welding? I don't recognize that character model at all.
  • Ok, according to TF wiki it's Blades, the helicopter member of the Protectobots. Given how little the Protectobots appear in the series that'd explain why he doens't look familiar.
  • But wait, how can Blades be here if Scramble City is supposed to make new combiners like Defensor?
  • seconds after Blades appears, it's an epic, historical moment: This brief 2 second shot is the ONLY TIME IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF G1 ANYWHERE that Chip Chase (the kid in the wheelchair) appears in the same episode/scene as Carly. And look at that off-model Carly!
  • This also I guess counts as the final chronological appearance of Sparkplug, who never shows up in the movie or season 3 (his last appearance was a glorified cameo in "Cosmic Rust")
  • I love that Ravage and Laserbeak are renamed "jaguar" and "condor" respectively. Japan loves its stupidly-on-the-nose-in-English names. But Ratbat keeps his English name.
  • Uh, this has a bit of a Blaster/Soundwave fight. Or at least a fight between their cassettes. That's still more they mostly got in the rest of the series. Until they killed each other in Headmasters.
  • Also Steeljaw can fly? By pimping his legs like he's running
  • Soundwave's distorted/vocoded voice in Japanese is profoundly disappointing. Profoundly.
  • Even in Japanese the Constructicons (or "Buildron team") uses he Phase One/Two designation for their transformation to Devastator.
  • So Ultra Magnus is here overseeing the construction of Scramble City but with zero explanation of how he got here. So basically it's no better than him just showing up in the movie.
  • "Comprised of state-of-the-art Jets, the Airbot squadron (aka Aerialbots) are a new Cybertron troop. What? No they aren't. They've been around half a season. They had a whole episode devoted to their creation. A two-part episode. You got to watch that episode, Japan.
  • The stunticons are supposed to destroy Scramble City "along with that secret factory". But I thought they were the same thing?
  • So all the incidental stuff like music and sound effects and whatnot is the same, but Japan chose not to use the flipping sigil scene transitions? Instead the logo appears on screen, the music cue plays, and then in a flash it changes from one symbol to the other.
  • This is being animated by Toei, who did most of the season 1 and 2 animation for the show, but somehow the transformation sequences for the various characters seem sloppy and slow.
  • "SCRAMBLE POWER FULL THROTTLE!" you tell 'em Optimus Prime.
  • Ok, the gimmick of Scramble Power is the idea that any of hte limb-bots can be any limb. But there's no justification for why you'd want this. What would make, for example, Air Raid better as an arm vs a leg? Or as a left arm vs right arm?
  • I joke about the animation, but it is mostly pretty good.
  • "TRANSFORM! POWER FORMATION!" so Superion and Menasor swap which bots are their arms and legs and this vaguely helps... somehow.
  • And then we switch to "Attack form" which jumbles the Aerialbots up somehow (I can't keep track of who's who) except they screw up and Menasor fires (I think) Wildrider off from his arm like a rocket and he then becomes Superion's leg, which immobilizes him. It's kind of over-complicated, but a cool idea.
  • Ultra Magnus can't launch Scramble City becuase they aren't done with "checks". So basically he's such a stickler that he has to do a frivolous safety check even if it gets his comrades killed.
  • Now we clearly see that Scramble City is Metroplex as it's deployed
  • I have some reservations about the cell layering as Scramble City mobilizes. It's supposed to be emerging from the top of a mountain plateau, but then rolls under a ring of rocks that shouldn't beh igher.
  • Metroplex is "Metroflex" in Japan?
  • Also yeargh, that character model is baaaad.
  • But now, in spite of the Decepticons never using it, they have a new ultimate weapons: Trypticon! (or Dinosaurer in Japanese)
  • Trypticon's roar is that of famous Japanese movie monster Baragon.
  • Trypticon heads for the coast line to engage Metroplex and the Autobots. "A new battle is about to begin!" fade to black, special over. And they apparently had no interest in following up on this. as there was never any additional material produced by Toei/Takara. Dick move to leave it on a cliffhanger.
  • and we end with some more lounge-y J-pop over a mixture of schees from other episodes of the series.

This was actually pretty good. The scramble mode combiner fight was kind of awkward and difficult to parse, and the idea would never work in the long haul where it would just get too complicated, but I applaud the original idea and animation. And it makes me feel a bit better about Japan's handling of The Transformers when they have a better framework to play within.

  • Not off to a great start. We're starting with some really flash-animated looking nonsense of a logo and basic animation to show the cast. And evne though they clearly just copy/paste the Scramble City logo, the Transformer Logo appears to have been manually reconstructed out of a font set, becuase it looks super cheap like a bad knockoff.
  • Also this credit sequence takes up 36 seconds of a production that runs 3:46 in total length. I know I shouldn't make fun of a totally fan-animated project because one-man animation work is super difficult and time consuming, but you'd think that you might save some of your run time on more important features. also maybe leave the cast list for the end where the franchise has always had it.
  • OH MY GOD IS THIS ANIMATION BAD! It's like lazy flash animation with static backgrounds. Every character is also just shot from the waist up to save on difficult animating elements.
  • I will hand it to the cast though, in spite of being the same amateurs who provided the earlier Zone dub, some of it is already better. That Megatron is actually incredibly close to the real Frank Welker voice.
  • "It's Metroplex. And this is where I draw the line..." Wow.... (and not in a good way)
  • Trypticon's voice, however, is awful. It sounds like a cross between Brad Garret's actual Trypticon voice and someone filtering an impression of that through Donald Duck. His model is also awful, with a very bird-like head shape
  • Optimus, Starscream, and Soundwave also have solid voices.
  • Wow, this is really badly animated. it's like TFCog has to either have good animation with **** voice acting or good acting with **** animation.
  • Jazz doesn't sound bad.
  • Blaster, on the other hand, sounds like he fled from the scene of Shaft. And Ultra Magnus can't act.
  • Hot Rod is pretty good. Arcee is less so... and she sucks at acting too.
  • and now it's over at 3:10 of the video file. So on a 3:46 video, over a minute and 10 seconds is credits and barely 2 minutes is actual (bad) animation.
  • I think the intent of this plot was to explain why things were the way they were in the movie (why Metroplex can't transform, where Hot Rod and Arcee and the others were, etc.) but there just wasn't enough going on to really make sense of it all.
  • I will at least give them credit for some very nice soundalikes in the cast. But that's really about all this thing has going for it.
  • Ok, this was animated by a guy from Quebec. Still doesn't make me think any more of its shoddiness.
  • So he's ending on a starfield behind the credits, and yet can't manage to make it look half decent. Not great considering this credits sequence reads more like a resume/demo reel.
  • Omega Supreme is listed in the cast list in spite of me not once seeing him in the short.

By the way, you gotta love that clunky Ultra Magnus box art from his G1 toy, yeah?

TFRewatch4c-RobotMasters.jpg


The Transformers equivalent of Super Smash Bros. And it makes just about as much sense too.

In short, RobotMasters was a 2004 release thin-storied excuse to sell toys. I mean more than normal for the Transformers. Simultaneously told in a pair of short 6-minute animations and a quartet of different manga projects, it's basically an excuse to gather together a bunch of popular characters from 20 years of Transformers productions and have them fight. I can't explain much more about the plot than that.

RobotMasters doesn't appear to exist in a fan-subbed version, so everything I've got here comes from TFCog's fan-dub.

Episode 1: Fight! The Group of the Strongest Commanders!"

*running commentary*
  • Oooh, **** custom animation ahead of the beginning of the episode. Way to go, TFCog
  • I think that first voice is supposed to be Beast Wars Megatron? It's... not wholly awful.
  • The animation itself is like 5-10 years better than Beast Wars, but the low-budget version that ends up maybe looking worse.
  • So I think this is a cast list of who's in this episode, character-wise?
    • Beast Megatron
    • Starscream (presumably G1)
    • Gigant Bomb (Who the hell?)
    • Smoke Sniper (double who the hell?)
    • Wing Stun (triple who the hell?)
    • G1 Convoy (I like that they specify "G1" at hte beginning)
    • Beast Convoy (Optimus Primal
    • Star Saver (By which I suppose they mean Star Saber)
    • Victory Leo (Star Saber's combining buddy that makes Gundamus Prime.. er, I mean Victory Saber)
  • According to TFWiki, Gigant Bomb and Smoke Sniper are redecos of G2 toy characters Dreadwing and Smokescreen, a stealth bomber & fighter jet duo (which are actually really cool. That was one of the last toys I got as a kid). Wingstun appears to have been a redeco of a Thundercracker/Skywarp figure created for a super obscure aborted G1 relaunch in the wake of the success of Beast Wars. So for a series that's supposed to showcase a sort of greatest hits set of characters, we get 3 super obscure Decepticons. Alright.
  • Is this Starscream's voice? It's bad until he shouts.
  • Star Saber's voice is a bad actor again.
  • Man, the animation is really crappy. I take back what I said about it looking improved over Beast Wars. It looks even cheaper.
  • Every time a character transforms they get a symbol-backed vanity plate screen
  • :laugh: alright, Victory Saber being able to shoot his gun as it falls to the earth and hit Starscream in the back is pretty fun
  • Optimus Prime sounds like a stoner
  • Holy balls, the awful texture on that BW Megs t-rex skin.
  • Ye gods, the more the animation focuses on character model details, the worse it looks.
  • Also Gigant Bomb flies even in his "Tank" mode. Sure, why not.
  • Gigant Bomb also kind of sounds like Duke Devlin from Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged.
  • After some half-decent soundalikes so far (tone and acting notwithstanding) Optimus Primal sounds terrible.
  • But he and G1 Prime have a totally Shonen combo attack: Double Optimus Tornado.
  • The added 'til all are one!' line sounds like a total ad-lib by the dub guys.
  • also at least one of them doesn't have his mic settings right. There's some peaking and a lot of breath pops. Gotta invest in one of those foamy diffuser disc things if you're going to do proper voice work, guys.
  • The 7:29 listed running time ends at 6:10, leaving a full minute and 10 seconds of credits and whatnot.
  • Wow the entire credit sequence is just for the dub guys. And a horribly composited "RobotMasters FV2 coming soon" plate at the end.

Episode 2: The Lio Convoy Typhoon Enters

*running commentary*
  • So this episode starts with a sort of motion comic bit? That's actually kinda cool. I don't know if that's something TFCog did or is actually part of the original Japanese.
  • It's funny to see BW Megatron and Optimus Primal portrayed as badasses given that Beast Wars in Japan was turned into a complete nonsense madcap comedy dub.
  • And now we transition to.. a stop motion toy commercial for the RobotMasters toyline? Ok...
  • This time TFCog is putting their credits up front of the episode. Can't say I approve, but whatever. It's minor.
  • BW Megs has a laser breath weapon in beast mode? That's new.
  • It's so dark that you can't really see what's happening
  • Oh great, now Primal has a southern accent.
  • And a big King Kong homage as he scales the Tokyo Tower.
  • At least the badly animated action is a lot more interesting this time around. There's some cool team-up attacks.
  • So "Reverse Convoy" is actually "Rebirth Megatron" and looks like the G2 Megatron toy. Ok, I feel like I'm missing something here.
  • And so to save on complicated animation, the ultimate attack is to turn into a giant pillar/vortex of energy that can just move around in a line.
  • So the battle ends as abruptly as it begins and the Decpticons vow "We will return!"
  • Spoilers: They don't return.
  • There's apparently "more Decepticons" out there. But we never see any of this because this is where the animation ends.
  • And a ham-fisted shoe-horining in of Optimus' "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" mottow. This feelsl ike it's where the dubbers decided to take liberties, and it ends up backfiring on them.
  • Over a minute and a half at the end of this is credits and cast credit show-off sequences made by the dub guys.
  • So Victory Saber is made up of 2 bots and their voice is done by layering both characters' voices over one another (think the fusion characters in DBZ) but the actors couldn't be bothered to make sure their lines synced up right. spectacular.

That was somehow disappointing even though I had no expectations. It was a cool idea executed poorly. In fact, if not for the fact that I knew it was a Japanese produced bit of material, I wouldn't have been surprised to find out that the entire pair of shorts was a fan-made effort)

TFRewatch4d-Go.jpg


"Nani?! Ore wa arigato desu! Henshin daijobu, nan desu ka?"

We get it, you're from space-Japan!

Last, but only maybe least, is Triple Combination: Transformers Go!

In 2013 and 2014, Japan had decided to stop dubbing Transformers Prime after its second season. In its stead they made their own sequel to resolve the cliffhanger-y ending that they bailed on by producing a set of 6 short half-episodes featuring new characters and a new plot and made this just about the most Japanese thing you could possibly imagine, featuring basically no returning characters from Prime and mostly a super-Japanese batch of very Japanese new Autobots and Deceptic... er... Predacons

In spite of what my header graphic says (it also says "4c" when it's supposed to be "4d"), these aren't dubbed. Instead it's a set of subtitled episodes released by a group called TV-Nihon. Mostly concerned with the source series for the west's Power Rangers franchise (Super Sentai), TV-Nihon is infamous for their incredibly lax and weeby approach to translation, which includes but is not limited to questionable tonal choices, awkward noun renderings, an outright refusal to translate some words on the basis of preserving "flavor" even if serviceable translations exist, and copious amounts of translator notes to explain things rather than translate them, to the point that they sometimes even tell people to go and watch or read other pieces of fiction to understand a term rather than providing context themselves. I have no idea if they will keep these things up in this Go! translation, but we're going to find out. The series ran for 6 episodes, split 3/3 between a pair of distinct halves, but I'm just going to watch 2/3rds of the first half and call that sufficient.


Episode 1: Triple Combination! Swordbot - Samurai!

*running commentary*
  • I'm not even a full 2 seconds into the video and the things people say about TV-Nihon are already showing themselves as the subtitle at the bottom says "Sanjou Gattai! Swordbot - Samurai" and then announces at the top that "Sanjou" is how one announces themselves, except this has the kanji for the word "ride" in it. But what does 'gattai' mean? This appears to be TV-Nihon overcomplicating things for the sake of playing emperors of the weeaboos. And because of this, I'm now like 20 minutes behind where I intended to be in terms of reviewing this stuff. I expected to be done by 11:30 and it's already 11:20 and I have still the two full episodes to go (albeit with them being 20 minutes combined)
  • The animation at least looks really cool and colorful. I'll grant them that. It looks appropriate to something done in the 2010s
  • So this Japanese kid throws a rock down a crater and hits a Transformer in a mountain somwhere in Japan... Did they not pay attention that Prime took place in ****ing Nevada?
  • And now it work up... what is that? Evil Dinobots?
  • I see this series is continuing the proud Japanese tradition starting in Energon/Cybertron of CG Transformers over traditionally animated backgrounds and humans.
  • Only Optimus doesn't look like he's CG
  • So the helpful subtitle sign says that wherever they are (a kendo club) is "instructor for the Tatewaki-ryuu" But what the hell does "ryuu" mean? Tatewak is clealry a name given the character introduced before hand. And I know that sometimes ryuu means dragon, but this has no context. **** you TV-Nihon. We're not all literate in anime fan Japanese. Translate so we can understand the god damn material, not just so that you can think you're keeping "flavor" bits. I swear to god, if this series at any point has someone say "baka" (idiot) and they choose not to translate it, I'm stopping. I'm not even joking. I will stop if that happens becuase I'm not putting up with these weeby shenanigans.
  • So it's one of those shows. Where the hardass grandfather attacks his grandson because he was happy to get a compliment, with the assertion that he shouldn't let his guard down. Like child-abuse type stuff
  • Ok, these transformers are CGI.
  • I guess these evil decepticons/predacons/whatever are supposed to look like demons? That's sorta cool.
  • Also unlike Prime's generally stylized CG look, this more replicates the cel-shaded look of Robots in Disguise (2015). It's actually kind of nice. And will surely make me hate it more when I get to watching the Unicron trilogy of shows and I have to put up with their janky CGI/cel animation combo and the crappy, rudimentary CG character models.
  • "The more I run, the more the city gets destroyed!" so he runs into a park.
  • Awesome. The transformers talk without moving their mouths. Way to cheap out, guys.
  • So the disc thing the kid is keeping from the Predacons glows and zaps him with energy and now he just... manifests Autobots out of nowhere? The ****?
  • LOOK HOW JAPANESE I AM
  • Yep, none of the transformers move their lips when they talk. So why even give them lips?
  • "Come forth, dark Jaki!" (T/N note: Jaki = evil spirits) THEN WHY NOT JUST WRITE THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE, DAMMIT?!?!?
  • It's hard to really discuss the characters since they're all so Japanese and have Japanese names and no relation to anything we've seen before.
  • "It's time SANJOU GATTAI!" What the hell does that mean? Seriously, explain yourselves.
  • The team has a cool mechanic where they combine the 3 into one body, but the order and form that join in results in a different combiner form with different skills and attacks. That's kind of neat.
  • As is the fact that they so quickly shuffle forms instead of just hitting one and staying that way.
  • The action is very stylish
  • And now we're back in time for some reason? Seriously What the hell kind of drugs is this on?
  • They also keep referencing the "Legendiscs" that the bots are trying to find, but haven't explained what those are or what any of this means.
  • And now we're not back in time? it was just a hallucination/illusion or something.
  • The **** TV-Nihon. You choose not to weebify "Cybertron" (the planet) into "Seibatron" to differentiate it from "Cybertron" (the autobot faction), but you do choose to have the characters introduce themselvs as "Super robot lifeform Transformers" instead of just "transformers"? I seriously don't get it.
  • At the end of the episode, Inari, the lead kid, gets a call from a friend namde Tobio or Torio or whatever and he has 3 autobots with him too. This is actually where the 4th-6th episodes of this series come in, as they follow the "ninja swordbot team" counterpoint to this episode's samurai swordbot team.

Episode 2: Pursue! The Legendiscs!

*running commentary*
  • :laugh: so right at the start the episode opens up with the Autobots remodeling Inari's house so that they have a huge underground bunker. Somehow. None of this is explained.
  • Optimus Prime is actually called Optimus Prime. Not "Convoy"
  • I'm getting the sense that perhaps we were supposed to watch the episodes in alternating order (ie this should've been the ninja swordbot team premiere episode)
  • Oh ****, that purple butterfly is evil. Because, y'know, it's purple.
  • I see this series uses Back to the Future time travel rules. good to know.
  • :laugh: the legendisc works best in front of Akibahara (aka the geek capital of Japan) Of course it does.
  • And, as required by time travel fiction law 205.2(b)(iii), we can't go into the past for more than 30 seconds without bumping into someone famous. In this case, Miyomoto Musashi.
  • So the autobots aren't referring to themselves as Cybertrons and they can use "Cybertron" for the planet becuase the Autobots are actually calling themselves "Autobots" here. I didn't know Japan ever made that changeover.
  • In spite of episode 1 and the title of this episode making "legendisc" one word, the subtitles repeatedly split it into two (legend disc) :dunno:
  • HAVE I MENTIONED THIS SHOW IS VERY JAPANESE LATELY?!?!? :laugh:
  • Siiiiick juuuuuuumps!!!
  • and siiiiick stooooooock foooootage!!!!
  • So somewhere between last episode and now TV-Nihon has given up on translating cultural artifiacts and untranslated terms? They simply don't re-translate any of the "jaki" terms anymore? I guess they figure I watched episode 1, I should know what that all means now.
  • And once again the autobots mention "we are touched by your heart" before they combine. Is this like some sort of requirement? They have to have someone clap their hands and believe if they want to merge?
  • Aww the honorable autobot samurai are all sad they can't stay in teh warring states period and die with honor instead of being sent back to the slothful present day with all its weak and spineless coward who lack the will of hte warrior. :laugh:
  • And that's that.

In the end, the action of this series is pretty cool, but it is so very Japanese that it feels less like a Transformers show and more like just robot samurais. At least it's short enough that watching the other 4 episodes after this is a manageable <1 hour endeavor instead of like 2.5 hours.


Whew, this was a bit of work. But now we move on from the crazy Japan-only material here to... more crazy Japan-only material as tomorrow's Day 5 coverage will be Beast Wars II. A sequel-numbered series that's actually an interquel and not a proper sequel.
 

The Nemesis

Semper Tyrannus
Apr 11, 2005
87,934
31,165
Langley, BC
TFRewatch5-BWII.jpg

An Optimus incarnation turns into Aslan. Never before has a greater Jesus metaphor been personified on screen.
Today for day 5 we're finishing the last of the Japan-exclusive portion of my re-watch (or is it just a watch considering I've never seen this before?) with the second most recent complete series that Japan ever produced: Beast Wars II.

Japan has a weirdly checkered history with Beast Wars. They chose to adapt the series with a Japanese language dub about 1 year after it debuted on western TV, but having already decided that the Transformers franchise should skew much younger than it did in North America, they simply went all-out and turned it into a screwball comedy dub. Personalities were changed, characters were given silly verbal tics and exaggerated modes of speech (Tigatron was rendered as a parody of a ronin, with an antiquated accent and excessively formal manner of speaking. Blackarachnia would constantly hiss "tsshha" at the end of her sentences or whenever she fired her weapon. Scorponok would do the same, but yell "orya"). Other characters were given stupid running gags (Rattrap would constantly smell what the audience was having for dinner given that the cartoon aired at 6:30pm, Megatron began as a boorish slob but morphed into an almost schizophrenic weirdo, mixing a gravelly, intimidating voice with fits of screaming wussiness and cowardly excuses for why he was losing fights or retreating). Given the way that many anime fans loudly grouse about how western distributors alter shows when they dub them, it's kind of fun to see the shoe on the other foot.

After the first season's 26 episodes were exhausted, Japan had a problem. Being a year behind the western release, they knew that season 2 was a short run of 13 episodes and would be insufficient for their needs. This, combined with the necessary lead time to translate and adapt the scripts for their dub led to an idea for some filler. Namely this show and its as-yet-untranslated follow-up (Beast Wars Neo).

Beast Wars II would debut on April Fool's day 1998 (an ominous beginning :laugh:) and run for 43 episodes between then and the end of January 1999. Neo took over shortly thereafter and ran through to September of 1999 at which point dubbing on both of the last 2 seasons of Beast Wars was completed and they could combine the show and air it as a single sequel series called Beast Wars Metals.

Just to make sure people don't get too comfortable, Beast Wars II stars an entirely new cast of characters, with entirely new motivations, an entirely new and completely disconnected-from-BW-proper plot, and almost feels like it goes out of its way not to give you anything that might confuse young kids by linking the shows to one another.

But the confusing part? For a show designed to fill the gap between seasons of an existing continuity, Beast Wars II apparently makes zero effort to fit itself into the parent series' chronology. According to TF wiki, by series end it's evident that it takes place far in the future of what occurs in Beast Wars (apparently Japanese Beast Wars itself does away with the time travel aspect of the series and just sets itself in the future from G1 without sending the crews back to prehistoric Earth, making things even more confusing) And of course to make things more complicated, multiple adaptations of the material (specials, manga, different manga, and even promotional sausages. Yes, that's actually a thing that happened.) gladly just **** right off with whatever precedent the series might have set and do their own thing with their own timeline. So ultimately this is a filler series that doesn't actually fill any holes in.

The version we're watching is a fan-subbed release by Karyuudo fansubs, responsible for the subbed versions of Zone and Scramble City that I've already watched. Hopefully they don't indulge in the same blatant weebiness that TV-Nihon did, because I could use a break from that for a couple of series (I'll be back to TV-Nihon for the subs of Energon and Cybertron)

Unfortunately, this is the last series for which I can reliably link you to youtubes of what I'm watching until we get to the Prime Wars Trilogy (which is made available online by Hasbro and Machinima themselves)

So let's just strap in and see what results.

EPISODE 1: The New Forces Arrive!


*running commentary*
  • So instead of lounge-singer J-pop, we get soft J-Rock with strangely romantic lyrics for a series about giant animal robots beating the **** out of each other. And gratuitous english (even the song name is gratuitous English. "Get my future". I'll grant that it's at least a halfway catchy ditty.
  • The guy in the fighter jet/ship thing beats his chest like a gorilla as he confirms orders and takes off. Weeeeeird. And we're not even 5 minutes in.
  • We're also introduced to this series' Prime: Lio Convoy. Yes, Lio with an "i" and not "Leo Convoy" He's basically Optimus Prime with lion kibble.
  • The fighting here relates to a planet called Gaea, which totally isn't future Earth, guys, even though that doens't make a lick of sense. Just pretend you never heard me say this because spoilers.
  • And now there's a whole whack of Predacons (or Destrons, which might mean they're Decepticons). The leader, "Galvatron" looks an awful lot like the dragon-mode BW Megatron.
  • Silly comedy bit even in the middle of the evil monologuing as one of the underlings refers to Galvatron as his older brother ("nii-chan!") and gets conked on the head for his outburst.
  • For a Beast Wars series, all these baddies look like they have traditional military vehicle type alt modes. I don't get it.
  • And now we cut to the moon, which is obviously Earth's moon, and join... a robot girl in a weird getup and with a very human looking face and a robot rabbit thing.
  • The robot rabbit thing, apparently called "Moon" has an annoying verbal tic of ending all its sentences with the word "moon". In English. That's totally interesting and not at all going to become aggravating within a few episodes, moon. No, it's cool and catchy and so kawaii, moon.
  • Also Moon is voiced by Junko Takeuchi, best known now as the voice of Naruto from, well, Naruto. Also Medabee back in the old Medabots anime from the late 90s that was actually a lot more fun than it had any right to be (once it was dubbed into English by a Canadian crew from Nelvana animation)
  • They're talking about something called "Angolmois Energy". Which is a thing that they reference assuredly even though it's not been explained or identified ever before.
  • Jesus, Moon gets a head-on shot at the camera and now I'm ready to declare that if that thing from Zone was the Jar-Jar Binks of transformers, Moon is those dumb little gerbil things from The Last Jedi. If they talked. With a dumb verbal tick, moon.
  • It's taken me half an hour to cover 5 minutes with minimal breaking for other things. Looks like it's going to be one of those nights. And here I was hoping to be done before 11pm.
  • Thank god the girl bot just bonked Moon on the head with a hammer to shut it up.
  • "Cybertron Space Station" which totally doesn't look like a giant pyramid shaped asteroid with windows in it.
  • More robots weightlifting (Which happened in Headmasters). Why?
  • Yeah, it's getting sillier now.
  • And now we have a drunk Maximal? It's the same one that was flying the spacecraft to open the episode. He's even shown with red cheeks the way anime usually portray drunkards.
  • Alright, if this is more serious than Beast Wars, I weep for what Japan did to that show, because this is doofy.
  • It even had a literal "womp womp" muted trumpet music cue. Like a bad infomercial. Or a parody.
  • In Beast Wars the crew adopted beast forms to deal with energon buildup. Here the first bot to land freaks out about the atmosphere causing rust.
  • He's also obsessed with finding a beast form to scan that looks cool. Only to get undone by having a Tasmanian Devil leap on his chest and interrupt his scanner, preventing him from getting the eagle.
  • Oh, I get it. He's basically the Cheetor of the group. If Cheetor was a twit instead of just being over-eager.
  • This series looks to have done away with characters shouting "Transform!" when they transform. Instead it's replaced by them shouting "henshin!" which means..... "transform." genius.
  • Diver, who scans a frog, can pop his robot mode head out of his beast mode mouth on a tongue-like appendage. That seems... wholly useless except for gags.
  • And now they're freaking out over being attacked by a squid, even though one of their comrades obviously had a squid-shaped head. and shock! it turns out to be Scuba.
  • Our other team members are an ox of some sort (the weightlifter bot) and a mandrill (the drunk). I see we're going for the whole 'motley crew of misfits' angle again like main Beast Wars.
  • The frog guy is still just randomly shooting his robot head out of his frog mouth for comedy punchlines. It's HILARIOUS. I guess. In Japan.
  • Bighorn, the ox bot, gets a transformation sequence a lot like Optimus Primal. That's kind of neat that they went to the trouble of making dynamic transformations instead of just fudging it
  • Ok, the "Destrons" are clearly Predacons, as evidenced by the giant Predacon hornet head logo on their ship. Which begs the question of why they then have so many mechanical alt modes, and why thay're still called "Destrons" by the dialogue.
  • Galvatron has teeth. Literal human teeth.
  • I'm confused by the constant references to Lio Convoy not being there even though he was talking to Apache (the drunk mandrill bot) in the opening. He vanished somewhere in between that prologue and the episode proper?
  • Oh look, here he is as a white lion. Shock. Way to be a total mary sue character, bro.
  • All the characters seem to have weird elemental weapons or something. Only the goofy Tasmania Kid has a proper gun.
  • Dramatic lion face!
  • Also the not-Convoy lion doesn't talk or identify itself. I guess we're doing a Tigatron type story where he's stuck with his brain imprinted into animal behaviors?
  • And the episode ends with a multiple-minute recap of who the characters are. Nooooope. Ain't nobody got time to listen to this. Onward to the next episode!

EPISODE 2: White Lion, Run!


*running commentary*
  • Skipping the j-rock/pop intro. Except before that I notice that one of the opening lyrics is "Just One Nation, an ID engraved on my heart" (the capitalization is theirs, not mine)..... what?
  • As Convoy transforms from lion to robot mode, the very organic-looking lion head turns into a metallic robot shell to be his shoulder kibble. That's a weird design choice, though maybe I guess purely organic looking beast kibble might look kind of gruesome?
  • Convoy was literally saved by the white lion he got his beast form from. as in it picked him up and carried him out of danger. The **** is going on?
  • So Lio Convoy is going to thank the lion for saving him by giving it a steak. And everyone laughs. Becuase it totally wasn't like they were just in imminent danger or anything.
  • And what the hell is Angolmois Energy? They keep talking like we should know what that is.
  • "This computer used to belong to the living organisms who used to live on this planet." Redunant department of redundancy department, dude.
  • Galvatron declares that he's going to scan the most powerful thing on this planet and then transformer into the most powerful thing in the universe. I.... don't think it works that way.
  • But the supercomputer they find does show Galvatron powerful things, allowing him to turn into a dragon. And a tank. Sure. Because Dragons were totally real things that existed.
  • And now Galvatron's little brother, Megastorm, is basically the Starscream of this show. He simperingly defers to his "nii-chan" to his face, but the moment Glavatron collapses, he smiles and declares himself in command.
  • So the Predacon vehicle troops do transform with the command "Transform!" instead of "henshin!". This is so confusing.
  • This series is setting us up for the dramatic clash we've always wanted to see. Lions and gorillas vs tanks and jets!
  • The commercial bumpers for this show are disappointing. They may not be dumb super-deformed chibi shorts, but it's just Lio Convoy's shoulder and side profile dramatically fading into view.
  • I don't understand the point of Artemis (the girl bot) and Moon. They appear to solely be here for comic bits away from the actual action happening.
  • Ok, in spite of this being Japanese, two of the predacons I recognize as similar characters to Gigant Bomb and Smoke Sniper from RobotMasters: they're the versions of the G2 stealth bomber/jet combo Dreadwing and Smokescreen.
  • So the narrator says that Megastorm is basically a monster and that Galvatron, presumed god-emperor of all creation, actually keeps him in line and not as a homicidal maniac. That's odd. Why would Glavatron not want a psychopath on his troops?
  • Oh dear god, the Smokescreen equivalent of the previous jet duo is Starscream.
  • And the other two jets are Dirge and Thrust, a pair of G1 names who are here referred to as "the comedy duo. Canonical G1 Dirge is basically the downer to end all downers, constantly morose and glum about everything. While Thrust is a vicious, loudmouth, bullying lunatic. But here they're hilarious comedy bros!
  • The Predacons killed the real lion that Lio Convoy took his form from. Those *******s!
  • Tasmania kid actually tried putting out a forest fire by peeing on it. I..... guuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh :facepalm:
  • Megastorm totally doesn't look like G2 Megatron with the tank alt mode. Nope. I guess all the Predacons from this series are based off G2 toys?
  • Lio Convoy's gonna kick their ass for hurting animals. And then he went on to found PETA.
  • So we end on a shot of the Maximal cast super-imposed over the background of the valley they just saved. It's like they all died in that valley and this is the memorial. Maybe that's the ultimate twist of this show? It's all in Lio Convoy's head as he lays dying under a burning tree, wishing he could've been a bigger hero? Nah, that's far too gloomy of a twist for a show that just made a pee joke 3 minutes ago.

EPISODE 3: Bighorn's Rage



*running commentary*
  • This is going to be a short commentary because I'm beginning to bore of this show and don't want to stop the playback
  • The animation models and coloring of this episode looks radically different. Like it got handed off to another studio. TF wiki says that's not the case.
  • So Ramhorn has rage issues and he needs to vent or he'll go insane or something. That's exactly a trade you want on a good guy.
  • And now he gets referred to like he's part of a biker gang. Becuase I guess transformer biker gangs are a thing? Do they turn into their own bikes? Does half the gang turn into bikes for the other half? Would they switch off in that scenario?
  • Oh my god, there are people on a YT video of the BWII theme song that actually say they think this is a much better show than Beast Wars original. Mostly becuase "uuugh, I can't look at the CGI, it's so ugggggszzzzzz blah!!!", but also because they think this show has better characters and a more interesting plot. These people make me physically angry. Never mind that this show is ridiculous nonsense, Beast Wars is possibly the best storytelling in the Transformers catalogue.
  • Seriously, the animation looks a lot less 80s and a lot more cleaned up and colorful in this episode.
  • Tasmania Kid spends a lot of time standing upright in his beast mode. Tasmanian Devils weren't bipedal. I know Rattrap did the same thing, but this looks weirder.
  • "I came to find a Cybertron, but all I found was a moo-cow" Sick burn not-Starscream.
  • Starscream and BB come to a full stop in the air with screeching break noises. Ok, sure.
  • Also there's a lot of the Japanese noise for noticing things have vanished or changed. A sort of "mwa mwa mwa mwa mwa" noise. It's weird.
  • I really don't understand the point of Artemis and Moon. All they do is explain what's happening, Moon shouts "moon!" a lot, then Artemis whacks Moon with a hammer. I guess it's filler?
  • All of a sudden the subtitles have started using the spoken factions (Cybertron and Destron) instead of the equivalent faction names (Maximal and Predacon). I have no idea why.
  • Megastorm is a dick. and I guess Galvatron is going to be out of it for a while?
  • Also some serious animation-saving by having Diver (the frog-bot) always talk with half his head submerged so you don't have to see his mouth.
  • And then he lets himself get discovered because you can clearly see his bright green robot head against the gray rocks. genius.
  • Diver has a grandfather? I guess if Megastorm is a "little brother" sure, why not?
  • Bighorn is playing the "he loves me/he loves me not" fortune telling thing with a flower, only saying "I can/I can't" after every petal. Sure, I guess.
  • And now he literally throws himself into reverse and runs backwards so he can return to Tasmania Kid and get directions to where he has to back up Diver.
  • Stock footage everywhere!
  • Diver's special ability is to spit bubbles from guns that emerge from his back. Said bubbles can trap him and Tasmania Kid in them even though that would make them really useless. Sure. Why not.
  • After a whole episode of Bighorn getting chastised for charging into battle without thinking and just trying to solve all his problems with brute force, he ends up beating Megastorm by.. charging into battle and using brute force.
  • Bighorn launches a rocket from his mouth when someone pulls his tail. What the actual ****?
  • Lio Convoy laughs at the end of hte episode. He's clearly not a real Prime.
  • The end of the episode has Lio Convoy detailing the special abilities of his Maximal/Cybertron team. Except he doesn't. Mostly he talks about things his team members might have and then dodges explaining them. So what's the point of this segment at all?

Well, that was weird. And silly. Join me tomorrow for more silliness (but with unfortunately less follow-along youtubes) as I hit the 21st century of Transformers productions with Robots in Disguise and its Japanese equivalent: Car Robots
 
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The Nemesis

Semper Tyrannus
Apr 11, 2005
87,934
31,165
Langley, BC
TFRewatch6-RID-CR.jpg

TFWiki.net called it the "George Lazenby of major Transformers iterations."
I'm just going to admit that I can't top that.


We're halfway home, and at this point we transition into a lengthy stretch of modern anime series that saw releases on both sides of the pacific.

In 2000 Japan quietly rolled out Car Robots after wrapping up with Beast Wars Metals (see yesterday's recap of BW II for more on that). As was standard at the time in Japan for many long-runner franchises, Car Robots was presented as a fresh start, with no necessary continuity ties to anything that had come before it. At the same time in the west, Hasbro had decided that they were interested in going back to the Transformers well yet again, but had no series produced on their own and recognized that it would take time for them to get any new projects off the ground. As a result, they chose to fill the gap by grabbing this series from Japan and dubbing it into English via a working arrangement with Saban Entertainment (best known for being the company that brought the Power Rangers franchise to the west). This made it the very first series to cross the Pacific in the other direction instead of Japan importing western-led works like the G1 series or Beast Wars. The dub cast is a mixture of relatively known early 2000s anime industry voice actors, a couple of higher end names (notably Steve Blum has a role here. He'd later return to the Transformers as Prime/RiD2015 Starscream) and one returnee from the cast of the original Transformers (Michael McConnohie, who was the G1 voice of Tracks and Cosmos plays a few roles in this show)

Ironically, this led to some oddities in the west, as fans were not used to the idea of a total continuity reboot/disconnect. Beast Wars might have been its own story, but it clearly and explicitly took place in the future of some sort of G1 continuity (which was has been up for debate. BW intentionally played fast and loose with its G1 references, pulling from both the cartoon and Marvel comic versions of events.) Robots in Disguise was intentionally incongruous with any variation of G1 history even if it did at times reference very G1-like concepts. Eventually subsequent Transformers series being continuity reboots helped to solidify the franchise's ability to handle the multiverse of different stories and settled the concept of rebooted stories in the minds of fans, but it's fun to know this is more or less where it started.

Since then, this little series has had a little bit of divergent history on either side of the ocean. In the west, the series has basically never been any more than the stopgap it was presented as. Hasbro has largely washed its hands of the series. Generally regarded as silly, goofy, and too lighthearted compared to what western fans are used to, Hasbro rarely, if ever, makes intentional references to this series and its stories in particular. Similarly, they have yet to license an official western DVD release for the series, in spite of essentially every other series that has made it to North American shores having some sort of home media release or at least on-demand access through Netflix or Hasbro themselves. Meanwhile, Japan went in the opposite direction. Instead of largely shunning the series, they even went so far as to integrate it into their massive web of connected continuities by trying to claim it that it was connected to G1 through the cartoon all along. Realistically speaking this doesn't have a lot of bearing on the series itself since the inclusion is retroactive, but it's funny to see that Japan has spent time embracing Car Robots after its release while the west prefers to pretend that Robots in Disguise doesn't exist.

For this watch I'm going to do something a little bit different: since I have access to both English dub and Japanese subtitled episodes, I'm going to watch episode 1 in English, Episode 2 in Japanese, and then decide which version to watch Episode 3 in based on what I either like more or find more comedy potential in recapping. According to TFWiki, there are differences in the two versions, but on the whole the English scripts are relatively close to the Japanese ones, mostly with differences coming in the form of cultural jokes and untranslateable puns, along with a few elements of western Transformers window dressing (the stylized scene transitions, for example), so it's probably going to mostly come down to whether I like the dub cast and delivery at all.

EPISODE 1 (Robots in Disguise): Battle Protocol!



  • Ok, right out of the gate, this theme/title sequence is laughable. It uses the familiar "Transformers! Robots in disguise" tagline, but then the second verse isn't "more than meets the eye." It's "Change before your eyes." It also sounds like it was sung through one of those dollar store voice changer things .
  • Anime comedy pratfall less than 2 minutes in! Promising!
  • And so we're having a report from "The first annual international scientific symposium." which includes a parade featuring scantily clad performers right out of a Brazilian Carnivale performance.
  • Megatron appears as.... a giant hand? That's some alt mode.
  • Also oddly this series chooses to have the bad guy faction be the Predacons instead of the Decepticons.
  • In the first "I know that voice" is Koji's dad, Kirk Thornton. He's done, well a ton of stuff over the last 20 years.
  • Oh my god, suck it up. kid. It's like Daniel from Headmasters.
  • Optimus may not be Peter Cullen or even Garry Chalk), but the voice isn't that bad.
  • Ok, the 3D sigil flash scene transitions are kinda cool.
  • Optimus being a fire engine is a reasonably sensible different alt mode if he's not going to be a semi.
  • Optimus's response to being told he can't drive over the ocean to get from Japan to wherever Koji's dad is is.... "anything is possible." Instead of sensibly explaining that he has a way to get there that's not driving (spoilers: it's a space bridge).
  • Elements of the animation are pretty rudimentary, but some of the backgrounds are nice and detailed.
  • Man, that's one blatantly CGI space bridge interior.
  • Megatron is like a weird knockoff of Beast Wars Megs.
  • He also has razor sharp cheekbones and full, pouty lips.
  • And he transforms to multiple modes using the "Terrorize!" command. I guess he's a triple changer or something (robot, dragon, hand... thing?) Ok. TF wiki says he has 6 forms (robot, jet, bat, roadster, 2-headed dragon, and hand...thing. I guess the thing I thought was a dragon was the bat mode)
  • Ok, Optimus is absolutely an Autobot, not a Maximal. So we're doing a mish-mash of factions.
  • Actually, the longer Optimus talks, the more his voice is kind of odd. It sounds like he's constantly straining.
  • Lots of shonen attack-calling (Blast blaze! Bright laser! Fist punch! Ok, maybe not that last one)
  • And now the villain lackeys start squabbling among each other instead of fighting. Hilarious!
  • So the Autobot base has a hologram AI mission control girl. That actually looks like a young girl. Huh
  • And she gives clunky exposition to name which autobots she's summoning for the big fight. Useful!
  • Also Brawn doesn't get to keep his name. Presumably for trademark reasons, now he's X-Brawn.
  • X-Brawn's introduction is that he apparently has been masquerading as some random woman's SUV. And so now that he has to fly off into battle, he simply opens the sun roof and fires her out of the car in an ejector seat. That's totally inconspicuous. What's more, TFWiki says this woman is going to somehow be a recurring character.
  • Sideswipe might have also been unavailable as this autobot sports car is Sideburn.
  • The only one who keeps his name is Prowl. But hte downside? He's voiced by (I swear I'm not making this up) a guy named "Wankus". No, seriously. He was a radio DJ and after RiD he somehow ended up doing stuff in for the porn industry. He also looks like the sleazy cousin of tv celebrity chef Guy Fieri.
  • Even though the good guys are Autobots and traditionally western autobots don't have voice-activated transformations, here they copy the Japanese tendency to shout "Transform!"
  • Predacons do all appear to be animal-based, so I suppose the name fits. They also revert to their alt modes by shouting "beast mode!"
  • Good job, Koji. You distracted Megatron by shouting at him and calling him a bully and "a big loser". So this Megatron probably isn't high on the ranking of intelligent/cool Megatrons.
  • Oh no, Megatron kidnapped Koji's dad! That dastard
  • The end of the battle scene has the 3 Predacon goons getting fired off into the sky like (from what I remember way back at the time) the Pokemon anime with "looks like Team Rocket's blasting off again!" Anime is weird.
  • Dramatic broken glasses shot. That's how you know this is serious.
    Optimus' episode-ending speech seems less about reassuring Koji that they'll get his dad back and more about reminding him that the Autobots are actually good and not like the Predacons. It's almost a little self-serving.

EPISODE 2 (Car Robots): High Speed Battle! Gelshark!


  • Yaaaayyy, nonsensical j-pop... Nonsensical j-pop apparently written for and about this series itself. It's even called "Car Robots" (or "Kaaah roboto!")
  • Also the very Japanese (look at all this **** that never happens in the series proper) opening movie features Koji clutching and protecting the Autobots' AI mission control girl (which TFwiki says is called "T-AI" and pronounced "tie"
  • The episode starts off with a truck on a freeway being stalked by a shark predacon
  • Dear god, Koji's japanese voice makes him sound like he's 5.
  • Also apparently his name is "Yuki" here.
  • Wow, instead of stock footage transformation for Optimus.. er "Fire Convoy" it's like a small bit of transformation animation is cropped into the background like a bad greenscreen effect. The transformation isn't even good as it clearly just sort of leaves a portion of the fire engine back end and latter sitting on the ground as Convoy transforms in front of it. And then that piece vanishes when the camera angle changes. It's like if Optimus' trailer sat around after he transformed, except instead of the trailer, it was the back of his cab.
  • T-AI is just called "Ai". It makes me wonder why the T was added in the first place since RiD is clearly meant to not hide its Japaneseness, Ai is a perfectly serviceable girls' name, and it retains the A.I. reference.
  • Koji..er Yuki's dad is referred to as "Doctor Onishi". So they kept the kid's last name but changed his Japanese given name for a different Japanese given name? Huh?
  • While I'm on the topic of name changes, it's not even that the show was consistent in its Japanese/not-Japaneseness. The girl from episode 1 that was ejected out of X-Brawn? In the dub her name is Kelly (but it's never spoken on screen.) But in Car Robots it's Junko (I don't know if it's said on screen or not. Though I suspect it probably is if only by way of her likely referring to herself in the 3rd person in that way that Japan insists is "cute" or endearing)
  • Ok, Ai introduces herself as "tactical computer Ai" so maybe that's where the "T" in "T-AI came from"
  • That's some lazy corner-cutting design on the computer monitors.
  • Sideburn is now specifically hitting on a car. One that's not an Autobot, just an inanimate car. That's creepy.
  • Speaking of the car he's hitting on, it apperas to be driven by Kelly/Junko, hte woman who was shot out of X-Brawn in the last episode. Here she brushes off the fact that Sideburn is hitting on her car in spite of the fact that she should know something about what's going on with talking cars already.
  • Sideburn in this verison is "Speed Breaker"
  • and Prowl is "Mach Alert"
  • I guess X-Brawn's gag is climbing stairs in vehicle mode. Except here he likes it as he climbs Tokyo Tower while in the dub episode 1 he complains about climbing hte office building stairs.
  • So the Predacons/Decepticons are called the "Destrongers" here. Ok...
  • Also Megatron is "Gigatron." That's at least kind of cool.
  • And now after his big monologue about taking over the world, his lackeys bring him... hundreds of cans of energy drinks to keep his spirits up. Uuuugh.
  • And now the shark from the opening sequence appears. He's the eponymous "Gel Shark" except it's pronounced with a soft "G" instead of a hard one (ie it's a g like in "great" not like the actual word "gel" with a j sound)
  • the plot of the episode has something to do with finding bombs hidden in cars. Powerful bombs that could level significant areas. The Destronger lackeys make sure to comment on how they can understand why they'd use such a device, but can't figure why humans would want something that could kill so many of them. Political commentary in a Transformers series!
  • And now here's Kelly/Junko getting the very bomb-laden sports car the Destrongers are looking for. But if she just lost her SUV last episode, how does she afford this?
  • commercial bumpers here are stiff CGI models of Optimus... sorry, Fire Convoy and Gigatron transforming. They're quite rudimentary and look like htey would be stiff by Beast Wars standards
  • The animation looks a lot worse in this episode than in the the first one. Lots of bad perspective work and flat layering with minimal detials.
  • And now Sideburn... gah. Speed Breaker. I'm geting stuck on these name changes. Anyway he's now hitting on Junko's new car. Different than hte one from earlier in the episode. This is really really weird.
  • Argh, the perspective work as the two autobots transform is really weak.
  • and now we get traditional anime "dynamic backgrounds" as the characters fight. You know the things. a swishing column of gradiant light moving in one direction as the action goes on in front of it.
  • Apparently the slightest vibration could set off the bomb in the car, but they were OK with chasing Junko down the freeway as she drove away from them, even though that should, by all rights, set off the bomb too.
  • And now Gel Shark bites the back end of the car to get the bomb in his mough. What about its sensitivity
  • Speed Burner goes to catch the falling Junko as she tumbles from her dismantled car after Gel Shark gets the bomb. Except of course, his concern is actually for the car, and he whines as it falls apart and simply leaves Junko to get splattered on the pavement, forcing Mach Alert to leap in behind him and catch her. Comedy!
  • Apparently the appropriate way to shout "Got it!" in Japanese if you catch/obtain something is "GETTO!" Somehow I doubt that's accurate to the langue itself.
  • Ok, geez, I underestimated the bomb. It's strong enough to nuke the whole city. But they just left it to be driven around the highway by a crazy woman speeding around in an import sports car.
  • And speaking of, now Junko's had 3 different vehicles in the span of 2 episodes. Is she supposed to be rich? I mean, it's not like insurance from losing X-brawn would cover her buying an expensive and explicitly-mentioned import car.
  • X-Brawn (actually named Wild Ride here) is swinging around the city like Spider-Man using his wing. This show is on drugs.
  • And now is the part where the robots are so dense as to not understand what they're supposed to do, instead being inspired on how to deal with the bomb by the ravings of a young kid who's never been around a bomb before.
  • I guess in a nod to the difference between the robot transformation sequences of past series (or at least G1 vs the Beast series) the Cybertrons transform by shouting "Transform!" as is standard back to G1 while the beastly Destrongers transform by shouting "Henshin!" like in Beast Wars II. Note that as I pointed out there, "Henshin!" means... Transform.
  • Optimus has a "super mode" where he changes his robot body into a bigger and bulkier one
  • And uses his fire engine ladder and water cannons like a giant bazooka.
  • It's called hte "Blizzard storm" and it shoots ice particles at the speed of sound. Okay...
  • Meanwhile Wild Ride is supposed to "use the southpaw to throw the bomb in to the air as far as you can." The "southpaw" however isn't some fancy gun. It's just him throwing it with his left hand. Sure. Why not.
  • and the bomb goes off in space with Gel Shark right there. So of course he's probably dead. Oh, no, he's not. He'll be back soon enough.
  • For the second time this episode Yuki tries to hug Ai and falls through her intangible body
  • Oh look. "Soon enough" for Gel Shark was like 3 minutes. And now he's... reading a book? Also his robot mode kind of looks like G1 Thunderwing.
  • Generic j-pop ending theme!
  • The last shot of the credits is Ai crying... for some reason.

EPISODE 3 (Car Robots): Unite! Bullet Train Robo!


  • Went with the Japanese version for the watch for potential comedy value. It's not like the dub was particularly good anyway.
  • Didn't mention last time but hte credit sequence is 1:30 long. In an episode that only clocks in at about 1:40 longer than the dub episodes (just over 23 minutes vs the dubs being about 21:30). Given that the dub opening is probably about 30 seconds, it almost makes it seem like the dub episodes somehow add a few precious minutes of content. And that's not accounting for differences in end credit length and the fact that like most anime, the subbed episodes have a post-credits next-episode preview clip.
  • Destronger "Gas Skunk" is apparently a total keener.
  • Wait, aren't they supposed to be in Japan? Why is there a very European looking castle on a cliffside next to an elevated train track?
  • Optimus is cool with Yuki going on a train ride with strange men who claim to be friends of his father. Responsible!
  • Also Yuki's mom hasn't been seen since the very beginning of Episode 1. She also basically had no lines.
  • Ok, Ai now confirmed that the trains attacked are in Japan. WHY DOES JAPAN HAVE A MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN CASTLE?!?!?!
  • This bullet train is screaming pink. Sure?
  • Man, the incidental/background character models in the train are really rough. They stand out against Yuki like a sore thumb.
  • So now instead of finding the train attack culprits, all the Autobots simply follow along with Yuki on the bullet train to protect him specifically. **** every other train in Japan, I guess.
  • The Destrongers are trying to play off their being around the train bridge by pretending they're helping to work on it? Are we supposed to expect that was a serious attempt? I guess it only adds to their comedy ineffectual villain nature.
  • The humans at the train station actually know who Fire Convoy is and aren't weirded out taht a giant robot commandeered their video displays to tell them to stop the train.
  • So now Ai summons "team Shinkansen" the train-bots from their apparent 'day jobs' as regular commuter trains. How did they think it was a good idea for them to blend in by actually getting involved with human affairs? Because the station conductor is clearly weirded out by a train just up and leaving on its own
  • Even more, the one train bot can travel down the freeway by mainfesting his own rails on the street. Somehow.
  • Oh look, here's Junko again. I guess she's the running gag every episode, getting somehow involved in every battle along the way and getting nearly injured or her car smashed.
  • The train bots "team shinkansen" have some amazing names: J-seven, J-four, and J-five.
  • Also one of them clearly sounds like a girl even though I don't think he's supposed to be. Chances are he's just supposed to be a kid or something.
  • Yep, tell the kid to run to the front of the train and talk to the conductor. Becuase kids should just be able to get in there.
  • The train bots are kind of idiots, I think. And I don't mean that I just find their characters dumb. I mean that I think the intention is that they're supposed to be a little bit stupid.
  • YELLING NAMES WHILE SHOOTING!
  • including "Convoy Gun" and Gel Shark having "Maser Storm" even though "maser" is usually from the Godzilla movies and in spite of being a "storm", it's just a single beam.
  • "I'm not in the mood to use our special technique so suddenly." Jesus, Japan, why did you have to make it sound so dirty?
  • Their special technique is to link up as a single train with the bullet train car with the humans on it in between them and do a controlled brake? How is that special?
  • Gel Shark's character model in robot mode is weird. The inside of his mouth is white like his teeth, so it always looks like he's gritting his teeth when I think he's supposed to have an open mouth. And one of hes eyes has vertical lines in it while hte other is clear.
  • Fire Convoy, Bankai! Suuuuupppaa Fiyah Convoy!. I guess this is going to be a once-per-episode thing
  • And of course we have to do the standby "runaway train gets stopped inches before it careens off a broken bridge into a ravine" trope. Because of course.
  • the subtitles have chosen to render "henshin" as "metamorphosize" even though I don't think htat's a real word.
  • The train bots with all their J-#" names have bland attack names that are just "E# weapon"
  • Wow their combiner mode is fugly. And it's called "JRX" That's the kind of name some stupid american marketing execs would come up with.
  • I should've made a drinking game out of the number of times someone in an episode says "nani?!" (an incredulous "what?!?!")
  • J-Dash! J-Punch! J-Laser Rifle. J-Lazy Attack names!
  • and so Gigatron goes down like a punk, thereby apparently negating any danger he posed to the Cybertrons and rendering the rest of the series useless. It's like they wanted me to stop here :sarcasm:

Robots in Disguise in English is the hardest series to track down. It's never seen a North American DVD release, only getting a complete set in the UK. In spite of Hasbro's seeming reluctance to do anything with the series, they continue to block many YT uploads of episodes on copyright grounds. I had to source multiple channels to try and just find the first 3 episodes in English so that I could upload share whichever ones I used.

Once again it's Karyuudo Fansubs who provide a complete run of all 41 episodes of Car Robots on a single YT playlist as well as with more information from their website.

This was another odd experience. Honestly, it's hard to watch a lot of the Japanese series knowing that they're intentionally aimed at younger kids with a sillier script and more goofy pratfall comedy and nonsense.

Which is maybe why it's not reassuring that I'm in for 3 more days of this, as tomorrow I start the first part of the Unicron Trilogy with Transformers: Armada and its Japanese equivalent: Micron Legend.
 
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The Nemesis

Semper Tyrannus
Apr 11, 2005
87,934
31,165
Langley, BC
TFRewatch7-Armada-ML.jpg

Gotta catch 'em all! Pokécons!
*NOTE* Unfortunately, I don't have Youtube videos to post of today's episodes to pair with the commentaries. I likely won't have any videos for the next couple days of anime reviews. Sorry about that**
Officially beginning the back half of this 12 days of Transformers we begin the first in the 3-part Unicron trilogy of anime series: Transformers Armada (or Transformers: Micron Legend in Japan). Unlike Car Robots, which was basically a last-minute panic import by Hasbro to fill the schedule, the 2002-premiering Armada was designed from the get-go for distribution on both sides of the Pacific. In fact it was the very first series to be co-developed in the US and Japan (G1 was animated by multiple studios including chiefly by Japanese animation giant Toei, but the series was wholly crafted in the west with the character treatments and plot framework put out with the toyline (co-authored by Marvel comics and writer Bob Budiansky) and simply recursively imported back to Japan with a translated dub. In fact, the series actually premiered in the west, with the Japanese version not hitting the airwaves for another 6 months (more in that in a bit). Though over the course of airing the series, various hiatuses and scheduling quirks caused each market to over take the other from time to time.

It also yet again formed a continuity reboot, ignoring both G1 and its spawned history as well as the recently aired RiD/CR. And unlike that series, fans were apparently more receptive to the idea of the series not being linked to anything previous.

Though there isn't any concrete proof, there's long been speculation that the rushed production and airing in the west before Japan was at the insistence of Cartoon Network, who demanded that the series have a minimum number of finished episodes ready to go before they bought the airing rights, and wanted the series ready to air as soon as possible and tie in to the launch of the toy line led to production being blitzed through and various quality control checks went ignored and unheeded. The finished product that aired has become infamous for its clunky dub scripts, repeated dialogue flubs and misidentifications, flagrant coloration errors, and terrible character models and off-model designs.

As a result, Armada has usually occupied a spot at the bottom of the barrel in the ranking of animated series popularity, to the extent that by late in its run it would be consigned to airing in Cartoon Network's early morning "death slot" as it finished up. However, it has also gained some support simply because given the bare-bones commitment Hasbro showed to Robots in Disguise, this tended to serve as the 'gateway drug' for new Transformers fans in the 21st century (and because honestly the toys weren't half bad). The only thing that usually saves it from being the WORST. TRANSFORMERS. EVER has tended to be the existence of its follow-ups. But we'll get to those in due time (I'm not doing a good job on selling myself on the merits of watching the next 2 days of episodes, am I? :laugh:)

But are those criticisms warranted? I vaguely remember watching some of these episodes when they aired at a time when I was in my "too cool for transformers" phase as a teenager. So now through a different eye can I find some value in this franchise? Or am I going to be tearing my hair out? Let's see how it goes.


As with Robots in Disguise/Car Robots, I'll be watching episode 1 in English, episode 2 in Japanese, then making a call on which version I'd rather watch for episode 3.

EPSIODE 1 (Armada): First Encounter
  • The Transformers are "digital mechanical beings"? What?
  • The intro is kind of nice to catch people up, but it's also full of complete nonsense-sounding gibberish, trumped up self-important puffed descriptions, and awkward phrasing. So we're like 30 seconds in and already I can see the scripting issues that were discussed.
  • Elements of the visual design are nice, but the backgrounds almost seem incongruous with the foreground components (things like ships and characters)
  • Thinking about it, starting the pilot episode with basically 3 minutes of recapping exposition dump is a pretty awful sign.
  • "Hi, my name's Rad!" ... I hate him already.
  • Dear god, Rad's not going to be the narrator for the whole series, is he?
  • In a weird inversion of usual cartoon casting issues, Alexis sounds far too young for her apparent age. Rad (ugh, typing that name out is already grating) says he's in 7th grade. Which would make him, realistically, 12/13. Alexis sounds like she's about 8. I know Tabitha St. Germain has more range than this.
  • Browsing the cast list for this episode, it's pretty clear they used the large pool of voice actors who live/work in and around Vancouver to fill out the roles. Half the cast of Beast Wars is present (including Garry Chalk and David Kaye once again taking on the Optimus/Megatron roles. Plus work from Scott McNeil (Waspinator/Rattrap/Dinobot/Silverbolt), Doug Parker (Terrorsaur), Don Brown (Scorponok), and Colin Murdoch (Quickstrike). Other recognizable names include Brian Drummond (aka the guy that voiced the version of Vegeta that delivered the meme-tastic "It's over 9,000!" line), Paul Dobson (grown up Enzo Matrix in the last 2 seasons of ReBoot), and a whole whack of "I know that voice" type performers like Kirby Morrow, Tabitha St. Germain, Andrew Francis, Matt Hill, Paul Dobson's brothers Brian and Michael, and well, just about everyone else in the cast. Seriously, if you watched any Canadian made animation or any imported anime in the early 2000s, you probably know most of this cast.
  • Oh great, school bully tropes. This is what I want in a Transformers series...
  • Also that teacher is totally also Tabitah St Germain.
  • Poor Matt Hill. He's a fun voice actor, but he really only has the one voice. Except this time he gets to use a horrific latino accent.
  • we're at 6:22 in and I already hate all the human characters. I can't decide if that's normal or not for a Transformers series.
  • Oh double great, school bully crappy comedy tropes. This is what I want in a Transformers show, but more so...
  • So far they've managed to avoid most of the syncing and dialogue issues that I expect in bad anime dubbing by the fact that most of the dialogue takes place with the speaker off-screen or facing away from the camera.
  • If Carlos were trying to sound any more latino, he'd be calling Rad "ese" or "homes" or something.
  • Dear god, what is with these commercial bumpers?!?!? It's like someone took a background of the Autobot symbol, overlaid a basic character model, then went to town with the photoshop filters. My eyes, it burns.
  • I just realized that I didn't get a title sequence. I don't know if that's a quirk of the videos I'm watching or if the pilot episode simply didn't have it. For what it's worth, the bumpers use a over-synthed version of the G1 theme song, so that's points in the show's favor?
  • Welp, Rad touched the glowy green piece of whatever that was and now he's getting vaporized. That's too bad.
  • Aww balls, he's not dead, just holding a strange... disc thing. With the Minicon emblem on it.
  • If you didn't know anything about the series or my "Pokecons" reference at the outset, a big quirk of this series is the existence of "Mini-cons", tiny little quasi-sentient Transformers who can link up to main Transformers and give them powers or turn into weapons or something. Collecting them was a big part of this series' plot because they were supposed to be a tipping point in the war based on the power they could provide either faction. Basically it added a very Pokemon-esque angle since Pokemon was all the rage at the time.
  • A bunch of these Transformers appearing on Cybertron are very clearly modeled on G1 characters. Hound in particular was noticeable, but others looked a lot like the Technobots.
  • I'm literally 3/4s of the way through the episode and aside from incidental scenes of the war during the exposition recap and the reaction shots on Cybertron of the receipt of the Mini-con signal, there hasn't been a single Transformer to appear yet.
  • The first actual Transformer that's part of the cast appears on screen at 16:00. It's Megatron. Yes, it took until there's like 5 minutes left in the episode for an honest to god important Transformer to appear. And he hasn't even ****ing talked yet.
  • Oh no, Rad's mini-con emblazoned plate thing is glowing again. Either it's going to finally explode or summon Sailor Moon.
  • That's right, I forgot. Mini-cons don't talk. Instead they beep with a sound halfway in between generic computer "doing things" noises from the 90s and the non-annoying sounds of a dial-up modem.
  • Yes, 3 kids are going to pile onto a robot that turns into a bike. Sure.
  • Megatron kind of looks like Galactus with his giant purple horns.
  • Kudos to David Kaye for making sure his Armada Megs sounds sorta like Beast Wars Megs, but not a 100% rip-off. It's got the same undertones, but is missing that sort of "cultured Bond villain" tone. Yeeeessssss...... :D
  • Optimus Prime shows up at 19:38, says one line, and 10 seconds later the episode is over. Way to go, guys. This is how you attract viewers to your show, with 16 minutes of humans being dumb and then less than 4 minutes of what everyone's actually come to see.
  • And right away the end credits give away that Optimus Prime has a super mode transformation. Dudes, spoilers!

EPISODE 2 (Micron Legend): 擬態 (Mimicry: Metamorphosis)

  • Right off the top, I need to address something: the odd title. It's basically a Japanese language quirk. Due to the way the written language is structured, different kanji (the ornate characters you see when you think of Japanese. Or Chinese for that matter since they share a lot of similarities) can have different meanings and pronunciations. To remedy this, Japanese has little extra marks you can put over the kanji called "Furigana" that provide a pronunciation guide and, as a result, usually also a meaning guide. It also allows for a fair amount of poetic license and inventiveness, to the extent that names for things made out of kanji can be intentionally implanted with specific meanings, or you can get all sorts of puns, gags, subtext, and alternate messages out of nouns that you name based on both the kanji used and the furigana that twist the pronunciation/meaning. For this episode, the title is given kanji (擬態) which, on their own, spell out "gitai" or "mimicry" however the furigana (へんしん) present over said kanji indicate that the character is supposed to be read as "henshin" which, if you've paid attention to this point in my discussion of the Japanese series, you'd have seen means "transform" or "metamorphosis" and has usually been used as the transformation code word when the Maximals/Predacons are involved. I probably explained some of this wrong since I don't speak any more Japanese than the average nerd who grew up on anime and video games and I'm not a languages professor, but hey, at least I can say that these recaps have been mildly educational now and not just pop culture fluff! :laugh: It goes without saying that most if not all subsequent episodes of Micron Legend use this sort of double-meaning titling. As does a lot of Japanese fiction, really.
  • Strangely, the title given in the episode's file is "Metamorphosing Disguise". I'm not sure if that's like a triple-layered poetic meaning thing or just a quirk of the fact that translating between Japanese and English is messy business.
  • I just realized in starting up this video (it's a work by Karyuudo Fansubs, who did the Beast Wars II, Zone, and Scramble City sub releases) that the video files contain both the Japanese language track and the English one, along with multiple sets of subtitles that preserve the Japanese vs English names and whatnot. I can't get my video player to swap the subtitle tracks, so maybe I just didn't get all the files though. As far as I know, very little was changed in the production of this series in terms of cuts and alterations to the episodes in translation. Dialogue and narration change, sure, but there apparently aren't any cuts or additions to the visuals. So there's no reason that the two audio tracks can't exist side by side. That's kind of neat.
  • After the basic recap narration, we get the title sequence. Super j-pop nonsense about the Transformers themselves. It's about what you'd expect out of early 00s anime. It also contains that same sort of message you'd expect out of this kind of anime, mostly about growing up and being an adult and working for the betterment of everyone even if it hurts because that's what's important for kids to know.
  • Alexis' name in Japanese is "Alexa". It's mildly refreshing that the names are kind of close and it doesn't turn out that her name is really Hanako or something.
  • Transformers are all just appearing out of colored CGI blobs in the sky. Almost like the time travel ball thing from the Terminator movies, with less lightning.
  • Maybe I just missed out on this because of the English dub, but Alexa immediately refers to the Minicon (or Micron in Japanese) that's with the kids as "Wheelie" even though he was never given a name the first time around.
  • man, the Autobot Logo shown on one of the bots' shoulders in a close up is super jaggy and aliased.
  • And so after being pinned down, Megatron and the other Decepticons just...vanish? The ****?
  • I'll give that after some of the awkwardness of Car Robots, the animation and character models this time around are very nicely detailed and shaded.
  • Oh, before I forget again, Carlos is still named Carlos. I guess they can't really dance around the fact that his character design clearly marks him as being of a different ethnicity to the others.
  • I can't tell if this is supposed to be Starscream, but his voice is too deep. And not even in the good Steve Blum in Prime sort of way. Looks like Starscream though.
  • Alexa's Japanese voice is deeper than her English one. That's amazing considering I've rarely heard that happen in other dubs. Japan loves high-pitched girl voices.
  • Hell, her voice is deeper than Carlos' (unsurprisingly, Carlos is voiced by a woman in Japanese.)
  • Still haven't heard what Rad's name is.
  • Ooh, speak of the devil. There it is. It's still Rad. Unless these subs are wonky.
  • This actually raises questions of why Alexis' name changed as it migrated across hte pacific when her 2 friends didn't.
  • According to TFWiki, "Rad" isn't just some dopey made-up cartoon kid name. It's supposed to be short for "Bradley"
  • Right at the start of the episode, when the audio was still set to English for me, Rad started the recap narration with a line of "I want to tell you about Traaansformers!" It sounds like that would get annoying quickly if it recapped every episode.
  • And according to TFwiki again, it does start every episode and indeed does get very annoying.
  • The wiki also says that Rad often says "wicked sweet" as an exclamation. So that means he's from Boston? Does he know any guys named Paulie and Smitty? :sarcasm:
  • Alright, back on track with the episode in Japanese. For once I think this might turn out to be the less fun alternative, which means get ready for Episode 3 in English.
  • According to the wiki, the only other kid whose name changes between the releases is the fat bully, who's "Jim" in Japan but "Fred" in English.
  • I never knew a character named Wheelie could actually be made 100,000% less annoying simply by removing his voice and replacing it with computer beeps.
  • So now the kids are on a ship that's underground and full of little Minicon disc things. I guess this harkens back to the expo-dump of the pilot where the Minicons were loaded onto a ship and shot away from Cybertron to keep them out of the war, crashing onto Earth.
  • Calros and Alexa both say they can understand what the new minicon they've each been introduced to is saying... while neither of them are talking.
  • I realize it must seem weird that I'm mixing the Japanese names like Alexa with English terms like Minicon or Optimus Prime. I usually try to stay true to whatever language I'm watching, but for some reason I'm slipping a lot here.
  • So those freaky photoshop filter commercial bumpers aren't new for the western release. They're in the Japanese one too, just with the "Micron Legend" logo laid over top.
  • So Wheelie, Rad's micron, turns into a bike like his. Grindor (Carlos') becomes a skateboard like he has, and Sureshock (Alexa's) scans her razor scooter and turns into... a moped? I didn't think it was supposed to wokr that way.
  • Megatron unlocks a Micron for himself, named Barrel, which he apparently had with him in the past before the Microns were exiled. That's less fun than in the English version where he's given the name "Leader-1", better known as the head good guy of the much reviled "Go-Bots" franchise (which Hasbro purchased and tends to use to make fun of relative to the Transformers whenever they can. :laugh:)
  • According to TFWiki, Wheelie isn't named Wheelie in English. He becomes "High Wire" presumably to not give a full-fledged Transformer name to one of the little pokemon types. That's a little sad. I liked the snark of downgrading Wheelie.
  • Also now before I forget again, the Japanese episodes, in addition to their multi-layered title meanings, also super-title each one with the word "Evolution ##" (eg this is Evolution 02). I don't really see the point except that Japan thinks English sounds cool the way we tend to think Japanese sounds cool.
  • Barrel is kind of an asshole, firing a chest laser indiscriminately at the various Decepticons just to please Megatron.
  • Megatron suddenly has very full lips.
  • Optimus scans his alt mode to be a long-nose (ie normal) semi instad of a cab-over (square or flat-fronted) semi like G1. Boooooo.
  • So Alexa wants to be president of... something.
  • Side note, but while Rad and Carlos both have full names listed on TFWiki (Bradley "Rad" White, and Carlos Lopez respectively), Alexa/Alexis doens't in most of her character profiles. She apparently only got one in supplementary/background materials. And it's a very Vietnamese sounding surname (Thi Dang) in spite of the fact that she doesn't look asian in the slightest. Allegedly her surname is a tribute to the daughter of one of the localization staff members who is Vietnamese
  • Notably, none of the transformers are shouting "Transform" or "Henshin" when they change, nor is there extensive stock footage all the time. It's a little disconcerting.
  • Convoy's truck mode comes with guns in this incarnation. That's pretty cool.
  • Plus he drives over a Decepticon whose name I don't know and leaves tire treadmarks on him. That's... silly.
  • I spoke too soon. Optimus does shout "Transform!". As do the other ones after.
  • Hey, it's one of the characters from this series that I do recognize. Hot Shot. Who's basically this show's Bumblebee
  • As the Destrons bear down on the humans and microns, Convoy merges with his trailer and transforms to his Super Mode. It's actually a cool look.
  • And that's the end of this episode.
  • Japanese credits start with a kickass guitar solo.
  • ... and then get less awesome.
  • There's also an episode preview at the end of the credits, which is Japanese standard. It's largely Alexa jabbering about what happened and not understanding everything. It's common in a lot of anime to have the previews be less-than-serious and do a questionable job at best of telling you what's in the next episode.

Yeah, after watching each, I think I'm going with English for episode 3. More trainwreck potential.

EPISODE 3 (Armada): Base
  • bypassing the intro, we get Rad recapping what happened last time, by showing a line and scene that assuredly didn't happen last time as super mode Optimus never actually spoke to Megatron.
  • Side note, I have professed my like of Super Mode Optimus in part because it was one of the first toys I bought as a collector of Transformers stuff rather than as a kid who wanted to play with them. I only have 2 Armada figures (Op and Red Alert) and I rarely bought other Japanese-series stuff, but Optimus was a cool idea. The super mode transformation is actually half automated as you can split Optimus' base robot legs (which form the super mode arms) and it sends an IR signal to the trailer that causes an automated motor to flip the trailer out of its deployed base mode and into the legs mode for the super combination. I just don't keep it on my shelf right now becuase a) I don't have room aside from the Prime Wars trilogy stuff I have out and b) all the crevices in the trailer are a total ***** to dust.
  • Just for the sake of seeing what's happening, I'm watching hte Micron episode file with the english language track but the subs on. So far most of Optimus and Megatron's speeches to one another are vastly different from one language to the other.
  • Aside from the traditional hand-painted animation, there's a fair bit of CGI polishing added which is really cool. Megatron's canon causes a CG ripple effect in the beam's wake.
  • Somehow Megatron just sort of fell over as he was firing? Ok...
  • Ok, Starscream has a slightly more Starscream-y voice in English. That's nice.
  • He also gets picked up by the head by Optimus and tossed aside like a punk. That's kind of funny.
  • Ok, there's some of those off-model moments. Megs looked awful there for a minute.
  • Japanese subtitles Rad: "Damn that guy." That either makes Rad the tamest actual teenager in existence in terms of profanity or the most profane young network TV teen ever.
  • Cyclonus is voiced by Scorponok. It's the same voice. Which makes sense since Cyclonus appears to be Megs' chief suck-up here just like Scorponok was for Beast Wars Megs.
  • Listening to David Kaye just kinda makes me sad I'm not watching Beast Wars instead.
  • And now in the middle of the episode we're going to kill time with another recap of what just happened 2 episodes ago and last episode.
  • More Cybertron flashbacks with a bot that I think kinda looks like miscolored Sideswip from the back.
  • Ok, either TFwiki was wrong and it's Carlos who says "wicked cool" or they both do.
  • It turns out Red Alert and Hot Shot have different, still TF relevant: Ratchet and Hot Rod.
  • It's actually funny reading the subtitles that much of the dialogue occurs in both episodes, just at different times.
  • :laugh: Hot Shot and Optimus are fist-bumping. That's so lame.
  • in English only Rad is able to understand the Minicon language. In Japanese each human can understand the specific Minicon they're partnered with.
  • Rad, Carlos, and Alexa are awfuly smug about beating the two bully kids in a 3-on-2 basketball game.
  • It just occurred to me: If these 3 are supposed to be 12/13, how is Alexa driving a moped? Pretty sure that even in Japan you need at least a basic drivers license to operate one (though not necessarily a motorcycle license)
  • Decepticon Demolishor is named Ironhide in Japan. Rare that you see a character name jump factions.
  • Oh, there's Rad saying 'wicked sweet'.
  • and another faction-jumping name, just this time in English as the Japanese "Cyberhawk" made to help the kids was renamed into "Laserbeak"
  • And that's that. This story is actually really serialized.

For those that are interested, check out Karyuudo fansubs for more on their Micron Legend dub project, which apparently also comes with the English track. Chances are I won't be this lucky with TV-Nihon's fandubs of SuperLink and Galaxy Force, likely because all that english would impose on their weeby "perfection"

On the whole, this actually was slightly better than I expected. There's too much of the kids and the silly pokemon-esque minicon thing, but it's not unforgivably terrible.

We'll see if this trend continues tomorrow with Unicron Trilogy episode 2: Energon and its Japanese counterpart - SuperLink.

EDIT: Also as a small aside because I don't want to break my string of uninterrupted recap posts for as long as nobody else is (which I'm not discouraging. If anyone wants to post, don't let me stop you.)

I noticed today in a local Wal-Mart flyer that War for Cybertron: Seige toys have apparently released for sale. I'm going to do some last minute shopping before christmas tomorrow probably so I'll see if anything is out on the shelves or if they all vanish ahead of Christmas like the PoP ones did last year. There's a lot out of wave 1 that I want (another Optimus Prime aside) but I'm at least hoping for Cog to team with my Fortress Maximus.
 
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The Nemesis

Semper Tyrannus
Apr 11, 2005
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When a show cops to its own boring, uninteresting nature you know you're in trouble.

*As with Armada, I don't have videos of the series in either its sub or dub formats as Hasbro has chosen to block it unlicensed distribution in North America. Sorry about that.*
5 days remain as we plug on with the second part of the Unicron Trilogy (though there's some fun shenanigans relating to that statement that I'll discuss tomorrow with Cybertron) and the second-to-last Japanese entry in this project

Hooo boy, this one's gonna be fun... :sarcasm:

Released in 2004-2005 as part of the franchise's 20th anniversary (boy, did associating this series with that milestone backfire on them big time), Energon carried with it all the hope that it could turn around the rough start that Armada had in re-establishing the franchise on both sides of the pacific. It did this by setting itself 10 years after Armada's story finished and chronicling the continuing fight between the Autobots and Decepticons. This was the series that would right the ship.

And then it didn't.

In fact, if you go to tfwiki.net, you'll find that Energon's page devotes literally more of its space to mapping out the assorted criticisms and faults of the series than it does to anything else, including a plot rundown and character list. That's... nuts. And just about the worst red flag possible.

In spite of being set after Armada, most of what went on was disconnected from the previous series, with much of the prior cast being shuffled aside in favor of brand new characters (to sell more toys). The minicons are mostly brushed aside never to be seen again and the human characters appear in glorified cameos rather than actually having any importance to the plot. Lots of this is down to the fact that the toyline had a new gimmick: many of the bots were able to transform into a half-torso mode that could be combine with any other half-torso bot to form a "power-linked" new bot with extra abilities and whatnot. Because this only required two similar transformers and no little guys to attach, it meant that minicons were essentially dead and there was no reason to advertise them in the series. I'm not really cracking on this so much simply because this is a fact of life for a toyline-driven series like The Transformers, but it does show how hard it can be to carry strong continuity in related sequel series when the plot has to, in large part, be driven by the gimmickry.


But maybe it's not that bad. Maybe? I expected Armada to break me but it was actually a marginal improvement over Robots in Disguise. Let's see how this goes.

Like with Armada, I'm watching Energon episode 1, Super Link episode 2, and then deciding between the dub and sub tracks when I watch episode 3.


EPISODE 1 (Energon): Cybertron City
  • Positive right off the bat: it's the classic theme song, updated. Though it seems to lack the whole "Autobots wage their battle to defeat the evil forces of the Decipticons" verse, but hey, it's the classic theme. I can't hold that against them.
  • Negative right off the bat: I forgot that this is one of those shows: In a move that can only be described as unnecessary ridiculousness, all the Transformer characters are rendered in rudimentary CGI while the backgrounds, human characters, props, etc are all done up in traditional cel animation. It's jarring and awkward and will probably lead to me making fun of a lot of things as we go.
  • Opening narration: It's allegedly been 20 years since the end of Armada, not 10 like TFwiki said. According to the same wiki, this was an error for the DVD release of the series. Apparently the English cast made a second dub after the one that aired on TV that was designed to stick somewhat closer to the Japanese script and make a little more sense. If this is it making more sense, I'd have hated to see the original TV dub.
  • Man, Garry Chalk is selling the hell out of this narration.
  • I don't know who these human characters are that I haven't even seen yet over this dramatic visual of an Autobot base rising out of the ocean, but holy balls I hate them already.
  • Ok, "it's that kid, Kicker." 1) Your name is Kicker and that makes me hate you 2) Even if your name wasn't 'Kicker' you seem like a tool.
  • I'm sure it got explained at some point, but Hot Shot has a brand new model here that ditches his helmet and visor head look with something that looks a lot more like Prowl or Bluestreak's G1 head.
  • What the hell? Kicker turns Super Saiyan around energon? That.... seems like nonsense even for a Transformers series
  • Wow, these CGI models are awful. Also they integratepoorly into the background.
  • That's right, the major villain in this series is a Quintesson. It's cool that they have a callback to G1, but a lot of this looks like flaming CGI garbage.
  • Oh jesus, Rad's in this. And he's an adult. Even though he still gets called "Rad" in spite of the fact that he should be like 30.
  • Yeah, this dub is bad.
  • Rad works with a "Doc" guy who's Kicker's dad. You are the worst kind of people, naming your kid "Kicker"
  • Oh dear god, Kicker had a toy. And not a "pack in a little mini figure with a bigger bot." You actually had to buy a Kicker figure on its own.
  • Seriously, these bots look like ass. And they have a ton of motion blur when they move to cover their clunkiness. Also it seems like the black outline around the models doesn't scale. So bots shown in the background from far away have muddy, thick borders.
  • Matt Hill voices apparently prominent new Autobot Ironhide while also showing up in cameo as Carlos. Making it blatantly obvious that he has one solitary voice he uses for everything (more or less his regular speaking voice), just with and without his sketchy latino accent.
  • Jetfire is obviously Scott McNeil using his Duo Maxwell (from Gundam Wing) voice. Except unlike in Armada, he's no longer Australian for some reason. (fun fact: McNeil was born in Australia but lived mostly in Canada and doesn't normally have an Aussie accent.)
  • Actually it's not just the CGI bots that have a lot of motion blur. Even simple pans seem kind of blurry. I don't know if it's the video transfer in the episodes I'm watching or something inherent in the creation of the series (possibly the result of having to handle the integrated CGI. It honestly makes the series hard on my eyes as they constantly try to re-focus.
  • Kicker's freudian excuse for being an asshole? He hates Transformers for some unexplained reason and as a result of throwing a tantrum when he was brought to Cybertron by his dad he fell into a pit and was imbued by the planet itself with the ability to find energon. He still comes off as an unlikable dick.
  • The worst part about the CGI transformers (other than all the other things I mentioned so far)? They have zero facial expression. Everything is just blank, unmoving eyes and little mouth movement besides open/closed.
  • Kicker's bike is Rad's Minicon bike from Armada (High Wire/Wheelie. Strangely he's rendered in cel animation instead of as a CGI piece like other transformers.
  • I haven't mentioned so far yet, but the Autobots and Decepticons have a truce in this series, and "Cybertron City" the aquatic base on which Kicker lives is staffed by both factions, including Hot Shot and Demolishor from Armada. I don't remember if this persists through the series and they fight an all new batch of evil 'cons headed by the Alpha Quintesson, or if the Decepticons break the truce
  • At one point in the attack Kicker's sister screams "Where's my brother?" and then his mom says "Where's kicker?" except it's in the exact same voice. It turns out both characters are voiced by the same actress (Nicole Oliver, a relatively well-known Vancouver voice actor) but I can't figure out if Oliver just mistakenly used the same voice for both characters or the animators borked it and gave the mom her daughter's line
  • Inferno keeps his robot head out when he's in vehicle mode (like Scourge did in G1). It looks as doofy as you'd expect
  • The "Powerlinx" gimmick looks really dumb since hte bots don't merge into a new bot, it's just like the torso bot (in this case Hot Shot) wearing a different set of pants
  • Optimus' Super Mode in this series is a gestalt mode with a bunch of smaller (presumably non-sentient) vehicle components. It's kin of cool.
  • **** you, Kicker. You're not "Creating a diversion for Optimus" you're just being a tool.
  • So Kicker's dad sent a "gift" for Kicker to earth with Optimus. It's a power suit sort of thing. Because yeah, this asshat really needs power or whatever.
  • Ironhide shaking his fist looks stupid because his hand doesn't have flow and momentum, it just vibrates (likely a limitation of the garbage CGI)
  • The earth itself is rendered in CGI as the final shot of hte episode pans out. It looks... alright. Better than the Transformers themselves.
  • Thank Primus this part of the nightmare is over.
  • This is going to be a long night if all the episodes look like this.

EPISODE 2 (Super Link): Shine! Energon Stars!
  • I guess in the wake of the whole "an episode of Pokemon caused kids to have seizures" thing, this Japanese episode begins with an admonishment by Optimus Pri- ...er, Convoy (gotta get used to switching my character names back to Japan mode) telling kids to watch in a well lit room and not sit close to the TV.
  • This opening J-Pop song is on all the drugs.
  • I think it's also trying to have Kicker come off as less of a dick. And without him opening his mouth, it kind of works.
  • It's also strongly implying a romantic thing between him and a girl who never appeared in episode one, but I'm betting is the "Misha" who was heard speaking at the start of the episode, telling Kicker not to be a complete knob.
  • Our first character shown in this episode is another Armada call-back, Alexa/Alexis. She seems to be some sort of government official.
  • Kicker's sister (Sally) says she's a PR rep.
  • Given the pronunciation of Japanese, "Kicker" seems like a bad name to choose in hindsight.
  • So Japanese Kicker is slightly less of a twit, but is subject to comedy pratfalls? Huh.
  • Oh, shut the **** up, Kicker...
  • In fairness, he has a point here: In spite of the looming threat of whatever the hell the enemy is coming to earth for the Transformers an their energon, the human governments basically decide to tell the Transformers to **** off and deal with their own stuff, forcing the humans working on Cybertron City to evacuate and leaving the Transformers to fight the battle on their own. That's pretty cold considering they largely saved the planet.
  • So far in their limited appearances, Alexa, Carlos, and Rad are all far less annoying than they were in the previous series. And even then watching Kicker for 20 minutes makes me want them back.
  • Japanese name change alert: Ironhide is now called "Roadbuster." thereby removing a G1 reference.
  • Ok, here's the first appearance of the girl from the title sequence, Misha. Yeah, there's totally something going on there. But knowing the way Kicker is so far, she must either have the patience of a saint or serious clinginess issues. Because there's no way any sane girl would like a complete selfish doof like him.
  • All of the Autobot bases in Japanese get really bland, self-descriptive names. Cybertron City is called "Ocean City" instead, plus there's Jungle City, Desert City, and Lunar City. So you guys can give yourselves all sorts of crazy names, but can't think of anything better to name your bases?
  • Inferno gets to keep being Inferno.
  • Jetfire actually gets an upgrade going to Japanese: regaining his G1 cartoon name - Skyfire.
  • Kicker just accosts Skyfire and demands to be taken to space. Can Skyfire just eject him into hte void and leave him there to suffocate in the bleak, unending coldness? Somehow though I feel like it would be too kind a death for him.
  • The JP commercial bumpers each feature a still of a character's CGI model shouting "Transformers: Super Link!" followed by some self-referential statement. Like Road Buster (Ironhide) saying "I should get more respect"
  • Aww. One of the bots says "stop using that phrase." For a moment I had brief hope I thought maybe it would be followed by "I don't think it means what you think it means."
  • There's this mystery 3rd faction that keeps showing up called Omnicons. Maybe if I had watched all of Armada I'd know what they are, bu for now it's just confusing. From what I can tell they have Autobot insignia on them, so I don't know what the difference is.
  • I won't be seeing it, but while there's just a bland battle scene going on on screen (seriously, this is boring. and lazily animated), I wanted to note a cool fact: This series gave us the very first dedicated figure for Arcee. In 2001 Hasbro re-painted a Transmetal 2 Blackarachnia figure from the Beast Wars line to be Arcee for one of their weird fiction spin-off stories, but Energon features an actual Arcee among its cast list and she got a toy. It's also the originator of the idea that Arcee would sometimes have a motorbike as an alt mode instead of a futuristic sports car.
  • HOOOOOLLLLYYYYY BAAAALLLLLLS the walk cycle animation for the transformers are awful. It's obvious now why episode 1 largely avoided showing the transformers walking or moving with their whole body in frame. Because watching Road Buster walk from a pure side view was super rough. He didn't walk so much as he flailed his legs in a somewhat circular motion while he coasted forward.
  • Some of painted backgrounds look really cool. It makes it a shame that they get wasted on these chunk, clunky, blurry CGI transformers. Something animated by hand in line with the better painted work seen would have actually made for a cool show.
  • "Stop Road Buster! Don't touch that!" and what's he do? Go "eh?" and immediately grab hold of it right afterwards. No surprise it blwos up in his hand. Dumbass. You and Kicker deserve each other.
  • Road Buster's "I'm terribly sorry" apology for his ****-up makes me think he plans on committing seppuku.
  • Fianlly Optimus nuts up and tells Kicker off for being an angry emo dickbag.
  • Wait, the moon blew up? When did I miss that?
  • I think Japanese Alpha Quintesson is supposed to be super creepy, but instead he comes off like a b-movie villain.
  • Oh god, those thick lines on Scorponok.
  • Thank Primus this part of the nightmare is over.

You know what? I'm watching in Japanese. Kicker is slightly less annoying when I can't understand every simpering, whingey, self-entitled word out of his mouth.

EPISODE 3 (Super Link): MegaZarak's Trap!
  • I'm watching in Japanese, but I had to check something on the english side first: The title contains a spelling error. Yes, in a one-word title. The proper spelling of Scorponok is just like that. 3 "o"s and no "i"s. How you **** this up, dubbers?
  • According to TFWiki, the English voice of Kicker (Brad Swaile, most notable as Light Yagami from Death Note) hates Kicker too.
  • Ok, on with the actual episode now.
  • Alpha Q has a "present" for MegaZarak. Which he presents by positioning a bright glowy light in front of Zarak's crotch. Do you guys need a minute? And some privacy?
  • So Tidal Wave was Shockwave in Japan. This is an understandable and welcome dub name change, because naming a bot Shockwave when he doesn't have Shockwave's iconic blinky red single eye face and is seemingly the Decepticons' dumb muscle is pretty blasphemous. Next thing you know there'll be a Grimlock who's well-mannered and super-intelligent. Oh... yeah.... those times....
  • :laugh: Inferno (I think it's Inferno. I haven't memorized which characters are which yet) faces Convoy to deliver a report, then turns back around to his workstation by simply rotating in place without moving at all. Because animation limitations.
  • Ok, Hot Shot is still Hot Shot in the Japanese. He was Hot Rod in Armada. Strange.
  • It's not happening here because the Japanese has it right and calls her Misha all the time, but apparently in the dub they couldn't keep her name straight and went through Myka, Meeka, Mihsha, and the correct Misha at random.
  • Apparently the deserts in Egypt have rocky areas with bottomless crevices in them.
  • I was wrong. Japanese Kicker is still a bell-end.
  • So now in Energon the Minicon vehicles just sit in a closet so Kicker can rid them whenever he feels like. What happened to all that talk in Energon that they were workers, not slaves, and would be treated with respect after the war?
  • "Man that guy is so unlikeable" You got that right, Road Buster
  • Convoy: "I have no problem with having more weapons". So this is where Michael Bay got his bloodthirsty Prime idea from?
  • You know, they never actually explain how Kicker just knows the evil robots (I still don't know who they are. Except as Alpha Q's forces) are headed for Desert City/Misha's location. He just says "you wouldn't understand" when the Autobots call him on it.
  • Ok, TV-Nihon is one of those subbers. Ones that make the profanity out to be worse than it is because they feel it adds value to have characters on a kids show drop s-bombs. (FWIW "kuso" does literally mean excrement, but it's treated as a fairly soft curse, more along the lines of "crap" or a fairly gentle "damn"
  • I just noticed that Japanese pronounces "energon" with a hard "g" (ener-gone vs the western ener-jon). Huh, that's weird.
  • Also it's a little funny to have the title of the series be "super-link" given the well-known difficulty that Japanese has with "L" sounds. "Suuuuupaaahhhhh-rrrrrrrrrink" Points for trilling the "r" in "link" though.
  • Oops, Hot Shot's gonna bite it.
  • So after Highwire was a cel-animated bike in the pilot, here the minicon ATV Kicker is riding is CGI.
  • Convoy is called "Grand Convoy" in his normal mode. I would've figured that'd be saved for his combiner super mode.
  • "nani!" (what?). There's been a lotof that in the two episodes I've watched in Japanese so far.
  • New drinking game: take a drink any time Shockwave says "shock" (note: You'd probably be dead by this point in the episode. He literally just repeats "shock. shock. shock. shock. shock. whenever he's doing anything but speaking to others.)
  • Hot Shot's not dead. "somehow."
  • Man, close-ups of the bots when there has to be other CGI elements in frame does them no favors. Whether it's exposing the simplicty of the models and inability to emote or causing their black outlines to noticeably thicken and muck up their appearances, it exposes how ungainly this CGI/cel animation mix is a sin against nature.
  • Ooooh! More ultra-weeby non-translation stupidity. Whatever Autobot this is (I honestly don't know) tells a group of others "Follow me" to escape from the fight. Even though English requires no differentiation for that phrase to refer to a singular person or a plurality of people, the subs choose to subtitle it as "follow me-tachi" and add a translator's note that says "-tachi = makes plural. Means "...and company". So 1) You left a term untranslated when there's a perfectly serviceable way to make that phrase make sense in English (ie get rid of the "tachi" since "follow me" is totally correct English for giving an order to a group of people) 2) You slow down the audience's absorption of the scene for little reason other than because you wanted to show off with your unnecessary translator's note. 3) You have little if any reason to do 1) and 2) except that you want to show off or believe that understanding and not needing to translate "-tachi" is some sort of weeaboo gatekeeper term that shows the "correct" way for anime fans to translate and understand the language. This isn't just bad translation. it's actively damaging translation because your mistakes are not ones of inexperience or difficulty in grasping the concept of what you're translating. They're in willfully and with selfish intent neglecting the very duty of what you're supposed to be doing and in the process providing an end product that is both a poor representation of translation work and actually probably made more difficult to grasp for its audience because of the hijacking and confusing mishmash of terms.
  • I still swear to god if "baka" shows up untranslated in a subtitle, I'm stopping playback right there and ending the review for the night. The same goes if it happens in Galaxy Force tomorrow.
  • Alright, now that I've hijacked this review for a full paragraph just to rail about my views on shoddy fan translation, we now resume our regularly scheduled brain-melting anime slog. Don't worry, there's only about 4ish minutes left before it's over for the night.
  • I haven't talked too much about the music, but it's mostly unimpressive or bland. This 'intense situation' music though, with its sour notes, is kind of junky.
  • The episode's almost over. Better pad it out with some transformation stock footage.
  • Welp, Road Buster's dead. Or maybe it's Roadbuster. Suddenly it's being spelled in the subs as a single word.
  • For as much as I carp about how awful the transformers look, Scorponok actually looks... OK-ish? Maybe it's because of his gigantic proportions and the fact that by being the biggest bot in the scene he doesn't have to deal with the janky scaling issues everyone else does.
  • Wow, explosions in this show suck. They're clearly an extra CG-ish effect overlaid on the traditional animation and CGI bots. It makes them look out of place and almost like green-screened b-movie special effects.
  • So this series' gimmick, the "powerlinx" ability, requires a "spark of combination". Only Convoy has to choose to bestow that ability on his troops through them earning it in battle. In other words, some weird bushido code BS stands in the way of Convoy making sure his troops have the best possible chance to win by allowing any of them to use the Powerlinx ability to combine with anyone else.
  • Maybe the purest example of TV-Nihon's weeaboo-to-the-extreme nature: They double-translate opening/ending credits music with both an English translation and a Japanese transliteration (ie the words are still in Japanese, but written out phonetically in the English alphabet so an English speaker can read them). The english translation at the bottom of the screen is squashed up against the original kanji lyrics of the episode, and are rendered in a thin and awkward to read font that doesn't stand crisply against the background. Meanwhile the transliterated lyrics are at the top of the screen in a vibrant and bold Transformers font that pops easily on the screen and they took the time to add a scrolling color code thing like a karaoke machine for people to try and sing along, I guess? In other words, they prioritized not the translation that english speakers want, but the one that's for niche anime fans who are likely the people that pepper their speech with Japanese terms because they think it's cool.
  • Positive to that though: It's the credits, so I'm finished for tonight.
  • Thank Primus that this whole nightmare is over.

Man, that was super rough. It's hard watching this garbage CGI animation they gave the Transformers. But it's OK because... wait, what? I have to watch another series of this abomination of an art style tomorrow?

:cry:

So, I guess tomorrow we slog through one more run of this nonsense with the finale to the Unicron Trilogy: Transformers Cybertron (aka Galaxy Force).


*****NON-CARTOON REVIEW STUFF RELATING TO THE NEW TOY LINE*****

Also as a follow-up to yesterday's comment about War for Cybertron Seige toys being out: They are. My local Wal-Mart had everything of wave 1 on its shelves up to the deluxe class figures.

3 "Battle Master" figures that turn into small weapons to be used by bigger bots. They also feature small translucent "special effects" type pieces that attach to the battle master to look like muzzle flash, weapons fire, or impact sparks, or can be attached to peg points on larger figures to replicate booster rocket wash or blasts from weapon strikes.

3 pairs of Micromaster figures that change from mini robot into mini vehicle and can also combine together to form a weapon for larger figures to wield. These are cool as they are based on old Micromasters from the early 90s. I have the two bots from the "Battle Patrol" pair as original Micromasters.

4 Deluxe Class figures (ie the figures the size of ones from PoP that could turn into limbs for combiners. So Jazz, the non Grimlock and Slash Dinobots, etc.), 3 Autobots and 1 Decepticon. One of the Autobots (Cog) is also a "weaponizer" figure, who can be disassembled and become a small armory's worth of guns and weapons that can be attached to one or more other figures. The 4 characters are Cog (a bot that was originally a pack-in with G1 Fortress Maximus. And this wave's Weaponizer), Sideswipe, Hound, and Skytread (a Duocon. ie a bot that separates into two vehicles.

2 Voyager class figures (roughly the size of the PoP 'torso bots' that became Combiner cores like Grimlock, Hun-gurr, Elita-1, etc): Optimus Prime and Megatron. Downside here is that WFC Megs is sized 1 class below the PoP primes (Optimus, Rodimus, Primal). Also while WFC Optimus has a cool axe melee weapon to go along with his blaster, his vehicle mode is a little wonky as it is like halfway between being his traditional earth truck and some sort of Cybertronian truck. I have no plans on getting this one. But hell yes Megatron. Also Op has no trailer. Boo.

It appears that the Leader Class figures (Shockwave and Ultra Magnus) and the Titan Class Omega Supreme are not out yet.

FWIW, Hound, Sideswipe and Megatron look absolutely awesome. Time will tell if the battlemaster/micromaster gimmick works out or is a disappointment like PoP's Prime Masters (for whom it's still a huge kick in the teeth that 3 of them were never widely available and who to this day I have trouble putting in my bigger figures becuase the prime master often don't sit securely into the Prime Armor pieces. Never mind the disappointment that there was so little chance for direct figure interaction.
 

The Nemesis

Semper Tyrannus
Apr 11, 2005
87,934
31,165
Langley, BC
TFRewatch9-GF-Cybertron.jpg

Look into the eyes of yon god, Primus, and ye shalt know a dispair of sub-standard animation and facial expressions!
It's finally time to bring a merciful end to the Unicron trilogy of anime with the final installment: Cybertron (aka Galaxy Force) Once again, there are no youtube videos of this series that are readily available and watchable in North America. So we're going to have to do without.

This series was, like Energon/SuperLink before it, produced for both markets in concert and ultimately aired in close proximity to each other over 2005 and 2006. It has a... complicated history though as Japan wrote it as if it was intended to be a separate continuity from Micron Legend/SuperLink while the west always intended it to be the last piece of a trilogy of works. The result is that the western attempts to add continuity nods and familiarity come off kind of awkwardly in the face of visuals that would seem to indicate no connections or altered personalities for the continuing characters. This was then made even wonkier as Japan would choose to retroactively declare the series to be in canon with its predecessor series as it was in the west, meaning the whole push to keep things separate was all for naught.

That said, in spite of maybe/probably being a sequel series in the eyes of the major transformers lore-keepers, it still manages to have some issues with its status as a continuation in that it features basically none of the previous series major characters except in revisions that prevent them from really feeling like proper evolutions of their previous characters. But at least it means I don't need to see that little ****, Kicker again. Also general reaction seems to be that they got their act together in scripting this show into English, so although there are still significant spots of filling dead air with "uh" and "what?" type nonsense non-conversation, at least it's supposed to be a more coherent plot.

I'm not sure what else to talk about with this series since it doesn't have the trainwreck of a birth that Armada and Energon had. I'm at least glad that the fact that I didn't watch the entirety of the two previous series won't be held against me here since it doesn't really carry on all that much.

Except that yes, the face in the graphic header is actually supposed to be a representation of Primus. That is the face of the Transformers' actual, literal creator god. complete with the doofy smile and blank, dead eyes.

As with both previous anime series, episode 1 will be in English (Cybertron), episode 2 in Japanese (Galaxy Force) and then episode 3 will be my choice when I get there.

Episode 1 (Cybertron): Fallen
  • If Garry Chalk tried his best to sell the hell out of the opening monologue for Energon, here he's just cranked the ham setting up to 14 and is content to over-act every single word. Said monologue also basically tells us everything we need to know about the series plot: the Autobots and Decepticons must find 4 "Cyber Planet Keys" to stop... something bad from happening... because.
  • It also begins by giving a Brady Bunch title sequence like intro to the members of Team Prime (Aka the main characters). That's lazy.
  • Also part of Prime's team is Vector Prime. First of all it's weird to have two Primes on a team, second, most Transformers fiction would later establish Vector Prime as being the equivalent of something between a minor god (think the greek/egyptian/norse pantheons relative to capital-G Judeo-Christian-esque creator god Primus) and a saint. Hell, by Power of the Primes Vector Prime is basically the defender of space and time. Being on a combat team under Autobot command, even if it's the command of Robot Jesus Prime, seems like slumming it a little bit.
  • ...what the hell is this title sequence? It's like caught between being William Shatner's spoken word album and... William Shatner doing bad Vanilla Ice hip-hop.
  • Right away the CGI models do look a lot better. They're smoother and react to lighting and lack the chunky black outlines.
  • Jetfire has a mysterious Aussie accent. Sure.
  • Michael Dobson's Starscream voice is really coming along nicely.
  • Ok, I spoke too soon about the character models. They look nice if they don't move, but the animation is stiff, there's no facial expressions, and the effects are badly layered in.
  • Jesus, lens flares. This series brought to you by J.J. Abrams
  • So there's Vector Prime, wielding a sword, opening a portal or something, and speaking in ye olde english accent. For some reason.
  • I'm thinking that it's just the video transfer of what I'm watching, but even the cel animation is chunky and stiff.
  • And our introduction to the humans is Cody, the rad bro motocross dude who's all into sick moves and stuff, and Lori, his (I guess) girlfriend who seems like a total shrew for no good reason.
  • And then they find a crashed Autobot (Landmine, I think) that Vector Prime saved by shoving into a portal. So this is where he ended up. In Colorado.
  • Cybertron is supposed to be a desolate wasteland, and the effect for this is a lazy rust cloud overlay on the whole screen that looks awful and just makes the visiauls muddy and awkard.
  • Scattershot has... I guess a southern accent?
  • and Red Alert has... some other kind of accent? I get that G1 used all sorts of accents and speech patterns as characterization shorthand, but something about these seem off.
  • Coloring error: Optimus' mouth is silver in one of the shots of his speech while it's blue the rest of the time. And then it's back to blue and then back to silver again. Not the greatest start.
  • So much stock footage for transformations.
  • So Jetfire travelled to earth at some point to bring back vehicle data for the other Autobots to scan and adopt as alt modes? Why not just let them get there an find their own modes?
  • Optimus takes a fire engine as his alt mode. A fire engine with GIGANTIC CANNONS on the side. As the son of a firefighter, I must've missed the truck with the cannons.
  • Wait, what the hell is going on? Landmine crashes on earth and acts like nobody's ever been there before because it was during the middle of the battle with the Decepticons. But then Landmine himself is telling the story of the Autobots adopting earth modes and boarding the space bridge to earth. But that can't have happened before because this is supposed to be happening at hte same time and.... the ****?
  • Ok, part of this issue is that this was supposed to be 2 episodes which the west crunched down into a single one to be the pilot. They would restore the cuts as a "lost" episode at the end of the series.
  • Vector Prime (with bad English accent and everything) is totally Rhinox from Beast Wars. :laugh:
  • Landmine is also Paul Dobson, aka grown-up Matrix from ReBoot.
  • Thundercracker now has a Texas (?) accent?
  • I feel like this needs to be said: This series was made in 2005. It's been 10 years since Beast Wars aired and CGI animation has improved by leaps and bounds in that time. And yet Beast Wars managed highly expressive characters in their show, including fantastic facial animating and a broad range of emotive behaviors even for odd face designs like Tarantulas and Rattrap. And here we are with this show and it's like every Transformer's face is made of shiny plastic and the mouth only moves open and closed and nothing else. Hell, ReBoot had better expressiveness than this and it was the very first fully CGI cartoon series ever made. The terribleness of the animation quality for the characters who are supposed to be the stars of the show cannot be overstated.
  • Thundercracker's missile explosions are cel animation. But the rest of the time they're CG explosions?
  • Optimus Prime's fire engine mode can fly. The ****?
  • And more so, the humans recognize who he is without being told? **** the heck?"
  • Overhaul has... ogre fangs?
  • Welp, the kids are somehow "part of this" now? They found Landmine and then didn't get involved in the battle? They're very much not part of this.
  • This is Megatron? What the hell did David Kaye do to his voice?
  • And how the hell did Optimus get back to Cybertron if he was just on Earth?
  • Seriously, this whole mess is nonsense.
  • You know those fight bits in Dragonball Z? Or basically every anime series where the two fighters close in on each other with a dashing punch and their fists meet? This episode has been on for about 16 minutes and I've seen that same thing like 4 times.
  • For once, some quality animation out of the CG as Megatron looks in the reflectiveness of Prime's chest windows to see Scattershot sneaking up on him. That seems far too clever for this series.
  • Megatron is stronger than Vector Prime. Who, I can't stress enough, is the literal physical embodiment of the god of time and space.
  • Vector Prime has Minicons. Get with the time, Vector Prime. Those are two toylines ago.
  • The Minicons talk now. Except that only the one of them talks.
  • So Lori's shirt has a picture of the "Omega Lock" except she says it's a picture from an album cover that the band cribbed from "a symbol from Atlantis or something." So Atlantis is for sure a thing in Transformers Unicron Trilogy universe? Sure, why not.
  • And that's the end of the episode. It's like it just stops mid-stream and cuts to the credits. They could've done a better job ending the story thread at that point to make it feel like a better stopping point.


Episode 2 (Galaxy Force): Protect the Secret Base
  • I feel like I'm missing something on the beginning of this episode. Like there was supposed to be a "last time on Galaxy Force" narration. Beacuse it just opens with a random ADD smattering of scenes from the pilot.
  • And then... j-pop!
  • Since this is once again a TV-Nihon release, we get a karaoke track on the top with the romanized lyrics. This time they're rendered in one of the many free Transformers-inspired fonts on the internet (Convoy, I think?) and showing that they cared a lot more about the weeb singalong than they did giving the actual English lyrics at the bottom of the screen.
  • Not much to say about the rest of this opening. It's j-pop
  • except that unlike Karyuudo, TV-Nihon isn't translating the actual production credits. instead they just lay their own credits underneath in English.
  • Also they chose not to translate the Japanese lyric "Transformer" in the song. They just let the katakana show on screen and I guess expect that we should recognize what that word is?
  • Clearly this video is pulled not from the JP DVD release, but TV recordings. it has the clock in the top left of the screen that's omnipresent on Japanese TV. I guess that means this originally aired at 8am?
  • I'm srating to think something's wrong. The given title for this episode on the title card is "encounter with the Transformers". Hell, did I accidentally get the back half of the pilot episode instead of the second unique episode of the series? If it turns out to be the case, I'm not gonna continue watching this one, I'll just do the next episode in Japanese and move on.
  • So far this doesn't seem familiar.
  • So some of the Japanese names are really different. Jetfire is "Dreadshot" and Hot Shot and Scattershot are "Jackshot and Excillon." I also guess "Guardshell" is Landmine?
  • Now we're at Coby swiping stuff from his garage? That'd be to free Landmine?
  • Yep, they're pulling Landmine out of the hole. That makes this a repeat of the second part of the pilot.
  • but wait, that means the episode I thought was episode 3 in Japanese is actually Episode 2. So let's switch to that
  • *a few minutes of video player fiddling later....*
  • So this video file (also a TV rip) starts up with a smattering of nonsensical scenes without context like the last one. Except htese aren't familiar at all. Are they random previews of the next episode? That's weird.
  • The Japanese title sequence includes a visual of Lori angrily chewing out Coby in the first episode. That seems like a bad character moment to establish as iconic, and a bad sign that Lori's whole characterization might just be as a whiny hag and nothing more. Is htat progress from the G1 trilogy's female characters all being simpering emotional wrecks? I can't tell.
  • Title card: "Protect the secret base!" Alright, so I'm right this time.
  • Scattershot's HUD shows a bunch of Japanese, but TV-Nihon isn't interested in translating that for us.
  • Japan pronounces "energy" with a soft "g" just like they do with energon. Weird. It's not like Japanese lacks the hard "g" sound (aka a "j" sound.
  • And now all the Cybertrons are whipped in the face of Lori's complaining. Yep. Her whole thing is going to be badgering and screaming at people. Awesome..... :facepalm:
  • Megatron's base is on a giant flaming hell planet? That's kind of cool.
  • All the CGI blocks being used to build the Autobot Base look awful
  • Coby's little brother is super annoying.
  • Base-building montage!
  • Coby's brother (whose name I don't know) says "waah, sugoi!" (wow, cool!) so often that I'm shocked TV-Nihon didn't decide that they could skip translating it because we should all totally know those words already (yes, I'm aware of the irony of saying that when I just demonstrated I know those words)
  • Megatron is repeatedly being called "Master Megatron" I guess that's his new name?
  • :laugh: Optimus can't even put his hand on Vector Prime's shoulder reassuringly without it gaudily clipping through Vector's armor.
  • Why do i get the feeling that this overly complicated and drawn out "roll out" scene of Optimus & co setting up so they can depart the base is exactly the kind of thing that ends up as stock footage to pad out several minutes of later episodes so they have to do less fresh animation?
  • 2 episodes in and I've seen Vector Prime's stock footage transformation sequence 3 times.
  • Also the background on those stock sequences is super distracting.
  • Sooo much stock transformation sequences...
  • Optimus' Japanese name here is Galaxy Convoy. This continues a trend of Convoy having a different name prefix in basically every series.
  • Even with the limited number of phonemes in JApanese, they still don't have enough mouth movements on the animation models to do proper lip sync. It's like watching a bad kung fu movie dub, except it's not a dub and they're speaking the film's native languages.
  • With 3 of the 4 segments of the base completely covered in the Autobots' stealth paint, Backpack (Scattershot) pronounces the job to be "95% complete. Larn your percentages bro.
  • Secondarily: your name is "backpack" :laugh:
  • TV-Nihon doesn't translate "-tachi" this time around, just like with Super Link, but this time doesn't even provide a translator's note definition. That's either laziness or more assumption of how much Japanese the Audience should know (For those who don't want to go back to the Energon/SuperLink review, "-tachi" is a way of making statemnets plural when appended a noun. It literally mans something like "...and company")
  • Wait. So the ending was Vector Pime giving some sort of power that he has to the other Cybertrons, but no real explanation? And like the previous episode, it just ends almost as if there's supposed to be more material? Werid.
  • More J-Pop for the closing credits. It's like a sappy ballad. And TV-Nihon seems to have no idea how capitalization works a they randomly do and don't capitalize many of the words in the lyrics.

Thanks to my collection screw-up, I have no choice but to do episode 3 in English.

Episode 3 (Cybertron): Hidden
  • So that Brady Bunch intro from the pilot is the actual lead-in to the title sequence, not a special thing for the pilot.
  • This intro still sucks. I mean, it'd be cool if it was just the sweet guitar riff verison of the song, but the lyrics wreck it.
  • Where did this submarine Autobot come from?
  • Apparently they came from nowhere. TFWiki credits them as "two unnamed submarine Autobots" Why would you have characters that
  • So Coby is teaching the Autobots to blend in. That's actually a cool concept that doesn't get used enough.
  • and then it goes to hell when he tries to pretend that he built the Autobots' cars when other people show up.
  • There's a transformer who turns into a traffic light.
  • The black hole that is apparently consuming Cybertron is now consuming the universe. But we live in the universe!
  • Thundercracker's cockpit blinks when he talks in vehicle mode. That seems like the kind of thing you wouldn't want if you're supposed to be in disguise.
  • :laugh: they use stock footage of Thundercracker firing his missiles. Twice in the same scene!
  • three times!
  • Jetfire refuses to transform to fight off Thundercracker in order to not tip off his nature to the human pilots in the area. But Optimus transforms and prepares to launch into battle with no second thoughts.
  • Jetfire unlocks a "cyber key power" which is completely new and not really discussed except in that bit at the end of last episode. All it seems to do is give him a glowy aura and make his shots hit harder.
  • So far through 3 episodes, the entire Decepticon force is just Megatron, Starscream, and Thundercracker. And no one else. Not exactly a great army for conquest of the universe.
  • Ugh, this animation makes fight sequences look like ass.
  • Aside, but checking on TFwiki, Vector Prime's toy looked like it wold've been awesome.
  • Starscream confidently believes he's beaten Optimus in one shot, which is a totally Starscream thing to do.
  • Optimus unlocks cyber key power and it does... nothing but make his guns shoot bigger lasers.
  • There's a camera cut to avoid showing the impact point of Megatron punching Optimus. Sweet CGI models you gusys have got going on here.
  • :laugh: Megatron just stoicly drifts back through the fiery vortex he creates to wherever his base is. Because animation is for losers.
  • Oh man, a guy in a suit cloaked in shadows. That's not ominous.
  • He's chewing out one of hte pilots who was in the middle of the fight in the previous scene and tells him basically the "you saw nothing" line to keep things under wraps. He also hints that he knows more than he's letting on. Except that the Transformers had apparently never been to earth before the start of this series (even though it's supposed to maybe be a sequel to Energon).
  • Also the Pilot asks "so what was that thing" And gets a long rambling explanation from the MIB guy to say he's not supposed to talk about it. His response? "I understand. But what was that thing, anyway?" And again the MIB guy repeats the "you saw nohting and you'll say nothing" style speech (not repeats outright, just gives another version of it. The pilto's response to this second telling? "I understand. But what was that thing, anyway?" in exactly the same tone and cadence. In other words, they re-used exactly the same recorded line of dialogue twice in the same scene as part of him asking that question 3 times in said scene. And I thought the endless stock footage was peak laziness.
  • Man, that MIB guy is so shadowy that from a distance he appears as nothing more than a gray shadow with black outlines. That's super shadowy.
  • The minicon guy scans Coby's brother and projects a holomatter avatar of him into the driver's seat of Scattershot's vehicle mode as a means of fooling humans into thinking the autobots have drivers. Not out of the ordinary for a Transformers series. What is out of the ordinary is that the avatar very obviously looks like a hologram, with scanlines and everything. That shouldn't fool anyone, but I guess humans are stupid so it's OK.
  • Clearly Japanese, Lori's review of traffic laws shows a traffic light with red, yellow, and blue lights on it. Yes. Japanese traffic lights are more blue than green when it comes to the "go" light. There's a long and irrelevant story behind why.
  • Another sudden ending means yay, this nonsense is over.

That's it, I'm finished with the Unicron trilogy and actually also now finished with Japanese series entirely for this rewatch. Tomorrow we begin the last quarter of the project by returning stateside with the somewhat confusingly named Robots in Disguise (2015) as we wind down the rewatch with the most recent series produced.
 

Bryanbryoil

Pray For Ukraine
Sep 13, 2004
85,950
34,069
I didn't see a thread for Bumblebee but it was actually a good movie. We went with a lot of kids as it was a birthday party and they all loved it.
 
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