Hoo boy! This'll be a fun thread! Lots to talk about and get geeky.
*cracks knuckles*Gauntlet101010 wrote:This series just can't be bothered with it's legacy characters. Everyone is either reduced to cartoonish buffoons or bland carboard. Optimus Prime is here to do absolutely nothing and then die in vain because Cybertron is destroyed shortly after. You'd think that would bother the TFs. You'd think. But it's never mentioned. In fact they have a base on Athenia.
To underscore the lack of care Rodimus, Kup, and Blur fly off to search for a new home for the Autobots. No, not in Skylynx or a shuttle. No, they fly like Superman! Arcee ... the less said about Arcee the better.
Yeah. Takara evidently cared more about advertising the new 1987 toy characters at the expense of really doing anything with the old guard.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:The Monsterbots were in all of one episode.
Two, actually. The Beastformers episode and the episode with the girl Papika.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Mars is destroyed! MARS! And, despite it being played up the episode prior, it never gets referenced afterwards.
It actually is brought up again in the final episode, but every single English subtitled release of the episode (as of this typing) has completely overlooked part of the Japanese dialogue where Fortress says that the Autobots are going to rebuild Mars after they depart from Earth.
That reminds me, which subbed release of these shows are you watching? The Headmasters, Masterforce, and Victory each had had three different subtitled versions: the unofficial fansubs made by TV-Nihon, the official UK DVD subtitles by Metrodome (which were also used for the Australian DVDs released by Madman), and the official US DVD subtitles by Shout! Factory (which are the worst ones to watch because those subs were rewritten by Hasbro to be inaccurate and unfaithful to what the Japanese dialogue was actually saying).
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Masterforce. I think it's best to just pretend it's in it's own little continuity when watching it.
Despite there being an Autobot City (maybe three depending on how you count) nobody seems to remember the Autobots. Chromedome makes a cameo, but that's about it.
Yeah, it's basically presented as like a soft reboot that wants to have its cake and eat it too, being written as a standalone series but also wanting to be part of the preexisting greater JG1 continuity. Like, in Ginrai's second episode, Hawk, Diver, and Lander have to show him old newspaper clippings of Decepticon attacks from decades ago in order to explain to him who and what the Decepticons even are. Huh?
That said, however, it would, years later, be confirmed that Masterforce is set in the year 2020, nine years after The Headmasters and five years before Victory.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:The proper Decepticons are monsters most of the time who initially use zombies (of all things) while the Autobots pretend to be human and talk about going on dates. And then there are the proper humans who all get more attention.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Did you know the Firecons are in this show? As disposable fodder in a couple episodes? Such a waste! And, speaking of waste, Pirranacon is a real paper tiger. Ginrai literally tears through the Seacons every episode and hands the guy his ass. I thought this show was supposed to sell us toys! Where is the menace? They could have has 7 unique characters, but we barely get ONE in Turtler. And he mostly just growls angrily as he flees. Geez. They wasted Doubledealer too. Are they unable to plan these things out?
There's definitely some heavy Tokusatsu influence going on with this show, with those Destroid zombies, the Seacons, and the Sparkdash all taking inspiration from the various foot-soldier enemy grunts of Super Sentai and the like, while the main Decepticons serve as both the generals and "monsters-of-the-week" to the main "great ruler" boss of the villains, a common hierarchy of tokusatsu villain factions.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Victory is where I think they remembered they had to sell toys. It's a pity there's not much to work with here. Late era G1 ... Victory Saber and Deathsaurus are great, but you don't have that variety of product any more. I never liked Micromasters to start with (may be why the UT just didn't grab me).
By this point, the Japanese G1 toyline was getting smaller. Unlike the US toyline, there were no Micromasters sold in the 1989 portion of the Japanese toyline, despite some of them featuring in Victory. All of them would be held off from release in Japan until the following year in 1990, and all but one Micromaster team would be sold as Autobots instead of a more even split between both factions. So Victory didn't have a lot of toy characters to work with for that year, hence the smaller cast.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Victory was pretty good, as children's shows go. But, like Masterforce and Headmasters, it doesn't get inventive. We do get one episode where the base egts infiltrated and where the Deceticons try to use bugs to kill Star Saber. That's good. But it's all "steal energy, steal energy, steal energy!" Remember when Megatron decided to make New York into a new Cybertron because he didn't think he could get back to Cybertron? Or when the Autobots brainwashed Devestator to be an Autobot?
So, all in all, JG1 (minus Zone) has an increase in quality in terms of storytelling and animation. But it never got truly inventive. I wish it has asked some questions of itself.
Like it would have been good to know how much Ginrai identified himself with the human Ginrai. Have the human make a guest star in one episode maybe? Masterforce ends abruptly so we never know exactly how much the human minds are echoed into their former Transtectors. The Decepticon ones turn on their humans pretty quickly.
Sadly, this lack of depth and insightfulness seems to be a result of a certain mindset in Japan when it comes to anime about robots. To the Japanese, if it's a show where the robots are alive and characters in their own right, the show is for younger audiences and don't need to be too deep or complex. But if it's a show where the robots are non-living and operate through human pilots who are the show's characters instead of the robots (like with most Gundam series), then it's a show for older audiences and can be more mature and thought-provoking.
This is also partially related to why the Japanese dubs of Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Animated, and Prime all cranked up the wackiness to the eleven with adlibbing, fourth-wall breaks, and pop culture references, instead of staying faithful to the English dialogue of the source material.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:I want to get to the UT. I feel like I missed out. I plan to watch it subbed (all of the Japanese stuff, so I'll miss out on Haiku Skybite).
Sky Byte isn't in the Unicron Trilogy.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Masterforce is good too, but be prepared for a very weird take on TFs.
Masterforce is my favorite of the three.
Victory was kinda boring to me until Liokaiser's introduction. Then it got good in its latter half.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Zone
WTF was this? Honestly, what was this???
Basically, the single episode of Zone was a short story set during the first-third of the larger Zone storyline, which was primarily told in the form of 12 story pages published in TV Magazine. The episode is set between the third and fourth story page (though, it wasn't released until three months after), with Victory Saber still leading the Autobots in the first three chapters, which served as a lead-up to the passing of the torch to Dai Atlas. So the episode isn't the proper beginning of the story.
The episode was also adapted from a single manga chapter, but with a few narrative differences between the two. As far as the cartoon continuity is concerned, the episode is the version of relevance.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:One day a alien being decided he wants to take over the universe, but the new Decepticon toys are all too lame to use (or maybe not made yet?) so he raids his older bro's old toy box in the basement and breaks out all his best toys. And then, because he's a very amateur customizer, slaps some new armor on them to make them "cooler". In the process he gets glue everywhere and they no longer transform.
This is where problems from the 1990 toyline came into play. While the US would get a line full of Action Masters and more Micromasters filling out the Autobot and Decepticon ranks, Japan would get a line full of
just Micromasters, the three Powered Masters, and Metrotitan. And out of all of those, only Metrotitan and a single Micromaster team were Decepticons, meaning the rest of the line was made up of entirely Autobots.
And because the sole two Decepticon releases of this year weren't released until later in the year, the early Zone story pages and the episode had ZERO villain toys to make use of, and so had to make up Violengiguar as the series Big Bad and pull from previous Decepticon heavy hitters of years past to serve as his generals. It was a case of the toyline having no new villains available to use for the fiction of the time.
Eventually, Metrotitan and the one Decepticon Micromaster team would see release and be featured in the story pages, but they came too late to make it into the episode (and the same was true of the third Autobot Powered Master, Roadfire, who also wasn't in the episode).
Gauntlet101010 wrote:I thought Black Zarak was dead!
He was. The name of this group of Decepticon generals is the "Nine Great Demon Generals", with the "demon" part implying that Violengiguar resurrected all of the ones that died previously. Black Zarak's official title in this group is "Evil Spirit General", further denoting his previously-dead nature.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Why bother with an eyepatch?
Because he be pirate-themed, matey! He has a mighty hook for a right hand, too, arrgh!
![Image](https://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/0/06/ZarakZone1.jpg)
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Devestator finds the Zodiac energy deep within the Earth that was always there (don't question it!).
I don't. Because the larger Zone storyline established that every planet has its own Zodiac piece. Zodiac is basically the power of the cosmos itself, able to create entire celestial bodies.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Did he know where it was because he nearly drilled to the center of the planet that one time? That's what went through my mind when I watched this.
I always just figured he was told where to find it by Violengiguar.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:But I also know there's nothing more coming. And also there's not really any new Decepticons.
By this point, the JG1 manga and story pages pretty much became the primary JG1 fiction, in lieu of any further animated works. The Zone episode was a direct-to-video OVA in the vein of Scramble City, rather than a proper televised program. So Return of Convoy and Operation Combination are kinda shared by both the JG1 cartoon continuity and the separate JG1 manga continuity.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:But why are the Insectrons another good guy force? Didn't the production team get look at the Predacon symbol? It's right there!
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Edit:
How are the Jointrons Maximals!? They have Insectrons as a third "neutral" faction. This is a show actively fighting against the changes Beast Wars introduced to the franchise, I think. They certainly didn't go with the flow.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:[b]So this whole era was defined by Maximals VS Predacons. There was a bunch of new toys. New faction symbols. Not only does the show say "naw" to all that, but it make some changes that are bizarre.
The Predacon symbol is in the show. Not prominently, but it's there. And it's a bug head. But all the bugs? Neutral good guys or, later, the fun loving, goofy Tripredacus! There's only ONE actual bug on the Destron team! Weird choice.
Answering these three together: Basically, Takara wanted all of the organic beast toys in this series to be good guys, while the bad guys are all either vehicles, mechanical beasts, or cyborg beasts. The main theme of Beast Wars Second is "Beasts vs. Machines", with the Predacons constantly building fortresses and industrial facilities to exploit Planet Gaia of its energy, and the Maximals trying to stop them and preserve the planet's natural beauty. So all 'bots with organic beast modes, no matter what critter they are (mammal, insect, or reptile) are on the side of justice in Beast Wars Second.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Looking it up on the wiki shows it to be set on a post apocalyptic Earth set thousands of years after Beast Machines. Minor spoilers for on on BWII, I guess.
So far ... I guess it could fit. I mean they make no mention of the Maximal Elders or the Tripredacus Council and I don't expect them to. Also no mention of the Maximals and Predacons being, at least technically, at peace. HOWEVER, I also know Beast Wars was butchered in translation. I don't know if any of that survived.
I already know Lio Convoy meets Optimus Primal. Viewing it I think the show's intention is that it's supposed to fit, being another team comprised of another set of Maximals fighting another set of Predacons.
The relationship between JBW and the two American Beast Era cartoons is... complicated, to say the least.
In a nutshell, Second and Neo were originally
supposed to be set concurrently with Beast Wars (with the common fan perception of the time being that they both took place before Beast Machines), but as both Second and Neo progressed, a number of glaring contradictions arose between them and both Beast Wars and Beast Machines, especially when Seasons 2-3 of the former and all of the latter finally got dubbed in Japanese. Namely, Beast Wars was said to take place "three centuries" into the future, while BWII was stated to take place "several tens of thousands of years" in the future.
When Takara finally started to take a good hard look at their massive JG1 continuity and tried to organize it all during the 2000s, they made the executive decision to lean
into the contradictions and take them at face value, requiring Beast Wars Second and Neo to actually take place
eons into the future long
after Beast Machines instead of right before it.
There's much more to this story than that, and I'm currently still trying to gather all the necessary information that I need in order to properly tell the full story of this continuity conundrum on TFWiki, but that's the simplified version of it.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Galvatron is one of my faves and it's interesting to see how he evolved from his G1 self. Because there are some traits that carry over. Namely that he's super powerful compared to other Decepticons and that he easily presents a threat to both sides when he gets out of control, especially early on. The best chaarcetr moment he has is waking up from an several-episodes-long-sleep and getting drunk on too-strong oil - attacking everyone in his path. I felt this was very true to TFs and the Galvatron name. But he isn't insane like G1, nor as happy.
Of course, he also isn't the same person as his G1 namesake. He's a different character.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:The best character is Starscream. He's given the most to do out of everyone. It was actually really great seeing his backstabbing nature screw over the cons more than anything else.
I liked Starscream, and I also liked Scuba. Being this super-competent guy among a team of misfits who just goes with the flow and is a little introverted. It was kinda funny how he acted like this guy who tended to stick to the background but also got things done when no one else could. And he wasn't arrogant about it either. He kinda reminded me a bit of Animated Prowl, only not as fleshed out.
And I loved the evolving father-son dynamic between Lio Convoy and Lio Junior, gradually going from a father who never knew he had a son and couldn't risk his military career to actually be a father, to a dad gradually learning how to be a dad and ultimately becoming proud of his son and proud to acknowledge him as his son. It kinda made Lio Convoy one of the more "human" Transformer good guy leaders in that sense, and gave him a much-needed character flaw to overcome.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Odder still are the inclusion of ancient molds here. Why are the G2 mold here as main bad guys? What is with the Seacons being here? Tripticon!? I get that Japan didn't get some of these molds before, but geez. It really fights against the entire brand refresh when the main bad guys are all G1-2 holdovers. They really are more Decepticons than Predacons (and the faction names do not change here either).
Beast Wars Second was designed to be a filler line. Takara only made four new molds for the toyline (Lio Convoy, Galvatron, Moon, and the Tako Tank), while the rest were all recycled from preexisting lines. And since Takara wanted only the good guys to have organic beast modes, they needed to pull from G1, G2, and Machine Wars to have molds with mechanical altmodes for the bad guys, to go with the aforementioned "Beasts vs. Machines" theme of the line.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:And, while Beast Wars had this whole post-G1 narrative about peace between Autobot and Decepticon where Maximals rules, BWII has none of that. It feels like the whole war never ended and this is just the latest chapter.
This is another reason both Second and Neo were placed after Beast Machines instead of before it. The Japanese dub of Beast Wars kept all references to the Maximals and Predacons being at peace with each other that were given in the original English version, so with the two being in direct conflict with each other in Second and Neo, those two shows had to be moved away from that peacetime to a different, post-peace, renewed wartime era.