Alden Bates' Weblog

As previously mentioned, I've been watching the Generation 1 Transformers cartoons which Japan produced after the American series wrapped. Lately I finally got around to watching Transformers: Victory, the last of these.

Representing the Autobots are Star Saber and his team of Brainmasters. There's an obligatory human kid named Jean whom Star Saber has legally adopted, and his annoying Wheelie-esque Autobot friend Holi.

On the Decepticon side are the improbably-named Deathsaurus and his Breastforce (they have chest plates which turn into animals). They're "aided" by the Dinoforce who are mostly around as comic relief.

It's... not really a deep series. The Decepticons turn up somewhere, cause trouble, and are fought off by the Autobots. It's only towards the end of the series that things begin to get interesting. It's perhaps telling that at least a dozen of the original episodes were clips episodes (The Madman release doesn't include them).

Something that is included on the DVD set is the one and only episode of Transformers: Zone, which barely has time to introduce a bunch of new characters, including new Autobot leader Dai Atlas, before there's an extended fight scene and it ends. I have to wonder why they bothered. Oh, yeah.

Also among the stuff I've watched recently: the 2002 series Transformers: Armada. TV2 either didn't play the whole series or I missed the end of it, as I hadn't previously seen the last nine episodes or so. Most of Armada is taken up with relatively self-contained episodes concerning the search for Mini-Cons, smaller Transformers which link with the larger ones to give them extra power. The last dozen or so are taken up with one long storyline, which sets the scene for the later series Transformers: Energon, which is more or less one epic 51 episode storyline.

Despite the obvious problems they seemed to have translating the show from Japanese (there are very few occasions where Mini-Cons are referred to by the correct names, for instance, and often the dialogue doesn't quite match the visuals) there are some pretty good character arcs and it was entertaining most of the time. It's interesting to see the difference in story telling that some 13 years made.

A while back I wrote about a fan-designed Police Box Transformer. I was unaware at the time that there was actually a canonical (in Transformers canon anyway) Doctor Who related Transformer. In a 1989 UK comic drawn by Lee Sullivan (who's not unknown in Doctor Who circles, having drawn Abslom Daak strips for DWM), one of the ruling Decepticon triumvirate, Octus, is quite clearly meant to transform into a Dalek.

Sadly Octus has never had a toy, but considering we've recently had the Transformers toyline cross-over with Marvel's Avengers, Star Wars, and Mickey Mouse of all things, I think it's time for Hasbro and the BBC to strike up a deal and bring us a toy version.

Although I'm not entirely sure how the transformation would work!

Another wave of Robot Heroes has turned up, so it's time to play guess the Doctor Who title!

Can you guess the Doctor Who story title represented in this picture?

Edit: The answer was "The Unicorn and the Wasp", as represented here by Unicron and Waspinator (Not to scale).

Recently I've been catching up on the Transformers series which were created in Japan after the original 80s cartoon was canceled. Evidently the toys were still selling well enough there for Takara to commission further series.

The first of these is The Headmasters, which follows directly on from season 3 of the US toon (ignoring the three-episode season 4). As such, it brings back many of the characters from season 3 and introducing alternate versions of characters who were introduced in season 4.

While the Headmasters in the US version involve existing Transformers combining with smaller humans (or at least Nebulons, who are humanoid), in the Japanese version the heads are small robots who combine with large non-sentient robot bodies called Transtectors. They're pretty much the focus of the series, with many of the older characters barely appearing.

The second is Super-God Masterforce, which doesn't have any characters returning from the original series (although there are a couple of links to Headmasters). SGM introduces the concepts of Pretenders and Godmasters, the latter being the Japanese version of Powermasters. Like the Headmasters, the concept is switched around so that Godmasters are humans who combine with large non-sentient robot bodies. In fact, most of the characters in SGM are humans rather than robots, including their leader Ginrai (who's currently the featured article on the Transformers Wiki). And it all takes place on Earth, while The Headmasters was more spacey.

The DVDs for both series include a very dodgy English dub done in Malay. One episode in The Headmasters starts out by announcing that Mars is the fourth largest planet in the solar system and over 50% larger than Earth. I stuck to the Japanese soundtrack with subtitles, and I usually hate reading subtitles.

And now that I've watched those, there's still Transformers: Victory!

One amusing thing I noted was that both series had a trio of Decepticons who seemed to exist solely for the purposes of comedy relief. In Headmasters it was the three Decepticon Headmasters: Mindwipe, Weirdwolf and Skullcruncher. In SGM it was the three Decepticon Pretenders: Blood, Dauros and Gilmer. Similarly the Robots in Disguise cartoon (translated from the Japanese series Car Robots) had Slapper, Gas Skunk and Dark Scream. I'll be interested to see if Victory includes any comedy relief..!

Via indefatigable42:

File under "Things that make you go... what?!"

Shortly before the live-action Transformers movie came out on DVD here, this advert appeared in The Groove Guide:

As you can see from the website advertised (warning: automatically playing music!) Video Ezy appear to be the ones responsible...

Spotted on alt.toys.transformers:
JAG Animation: meet Chronobot, Saucer, and Stardrive
Chronobot costume

Regarding the Saucer design on the second page, I'm not entirely sure they've accounted for the entire bulk of the saucer section of the Enterprise-D in that design. Larger scans of the artwork would be nice...

Because apparently posting one crappy photo of some toys got me to first position on Google for the search phrase Transformers robot heroes. And because I'm bored.

Primus being the closest thing the TFs have to a god. I hope I don't have to explain the rest of it. :)

If, for some reason, you have actually found this post while looking for Transformers slash, you could always try here (seriously).

I'm entirely too addicted to collecting Robot Heroes. What's the use of growing up if you're not allowed to play with toys any more?

Behind you! Oh, never mind.

Yesterday I went to see...

Unfortunately I ended up sitting next to the obligatory guy who shouted "WHOA!" and "OH MY GOD!" whenever anything vaguely impressive happened, so it mostly served to remind me why I don't go to the movies much. But I did enjoy it. Spoilers follow:

Continue reading "Transformers"

Because I refuse to grow up and therefore still like Transformers, stumbling on this webcomic filled my heart with joy:

Lil Formers Because giant robots are inherently funny! Don't believe me? How about after seeing the morning after? Or perhaps now? (poor poor Megatron) Though this public service announcement is my favourite so far....

Just when I thought I'd seen every wacky Transformers concept, the Japanese prove me wrong.

BEHOLD! TRANSFORMERS KISS PLAYERS!

(Yes, that site is in Japanese, here's a page with a flash demo of Optimus)

Back in the old days, we had Powermasters, where you had to link a smaller robot to the larger robot to make him transform. This is a similar concept in that Optimus can only transform when he receives a kiss from the anime girl he's supplied with. (I have no idea if there's some sort of mechanical functionality here, and I don't think I want to know).

Here Optimus snuggles up with his human friend Melissa. Optimus, you dawg.

Optimus also has a hot pink sword which transforms into a surfboard for Melissa to ride.

See also today's Shortpacked.

That's going to make one crazy tie-in cartoon.

I've installed quite a few custom characters on Unreal Tournament since getting it. Being a bit of a Transformers buff, when I saw someone had created Optimus and Megatron characters, I immediately downloaded them.

Copy of Unreal Tournament: $40
Downloading Transformers character from the internet: free
Seeing Optimus Prime doing victory pelvis thrusts for the first time?

PRICELESS.