Transformers General Discussion thread

The place to discuss anything relating to anime or manga.
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Chris
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

Mu La Flaga wrote:So for those who may be around, what are opinions on Prime?
I haven't seen it much, like part of 1 episode, the CG could have been better.


And the designs could be better, instead of using Bay's movie designs.
The first 5 episodes of Prime were majorly rushed, with the CG of the first episode being the one to suffer most. The CG improves quite a bit from that point on. And the designs aren't just from the Bay movies, they're really a hybrid of the movies and Animated. Personally, I like Prime's designs much more than the movies. It's nice to be actually able to identify individual Decepticons besides Megatron and Starscream.
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JEFFPIATT
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

prime is the first all CG animated series since mainframe did the beast era shows. having so many unique characters is expensive so they brought back Vehicon'sto fill the cannon fodder ranks. there closest relative g1 wise is the Sweeps. beast wars got around the limitations by only makeing an select group of the toys in to cast members. according to Hasbro prime is in the same timeline as war for cybertron. http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Aligned_continuity_family
as for info is use TFwiki.net where they take the franchise "seriously"
Spoiler
well sometimes not.
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Transformers_%28cartoon%29
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kayone73
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

2NA Fish wrote:On Headmasters, it was a difficult situation because they suddenly lost all their American scriptwriters, but they wanted to keep the feel the same. The Japanese scriptwriters were trying to write in the American cartoon style and it didn't work out as well as everyone was hoping, despite some great ideas. American comic and cartoon writers are very good at squeezing plots into these frantic little sequences due to a very pragmatic approach to writing, but you could see the Japanese writers were struggling to get the same effect. It wasn't until some of the later anime that Japanese learnt to pick up the pacing well.

MasterForce worked because the producers allowed the staff to go in a more traditional Japanese direction, but it's like the 00 of the series. If you look at other anime around the same time, they've basically tried to rip off everything they could, mashing it together in this wonderful silly world. Funny how amongst the Autobots, you could see obvious designs ripped off City Hunter, that jungle boy style manga, Captain Tsubasa, Wolverine and GI Joe/Mobile Armoured Strike Kommand style characters. Minerva's design was a typical 60's shoujo manga lead and the Powermasters were so much like that typical Getter Robo Super Robot style team it wasn't even funny, it was hilarious. On Decepticon side, you had the VERY fantasy style designs for the leaders, and the Darkwing brothers having such typical Yaoi manga designs for the period. The whole humans in armour thing was of course popularised by Saint Seiya, and Japanese love their sea monsters... Finally, somewhere in that mess we had robots too.

By the time we got to Victory, the American flavour of Transformers was lost completely, which was a pity. That's why we got the super long transformation sequences. Pragmatic American writers would never have allowed that. Victory and Zone were Transformers in name but basically Yusha series. While I love the Yusha series as much as Transformers, it was a bittersweet way for G1 to go.
Nice insights, and I agree, by the time Victory rolled around, it was practically a Yuusha series but I think that was to be expected as the series became increasingly japanese in style. I think that's why Masterforce had the most engaging presentation to me and took a pace that was much less rushed and short attn span than Headmasters or Victory. Still it made no sense to make Ginrai the leader of the autobots, except for the fact he inhabited an Convoy lookalike body.
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Mu La Flaga
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

Chris wrote:
Mu La Flaga wrote:So for those who may be around, what are opinions on Prime?
I haven't seen it much, like part of 1 episode, the CG could have been better.


And the designs could be better, instead of using Bay's movie designs.
The first 5 episodes of Prime were majorly rushed, with the CG of the first episode being the one to suffer most. The CG improves quite a bit from that point on. And the designs aren't just from the Bay movies, they're really a hybrid of the movies and Animated. Personally, I like Prime's designs much more than the movies. It's nice to be actually able to identify individual Decepticons besides Megatron and Starscream.
I think I caught one episode of it once.

And well I meant that more in reference to Prime then anyone else.
Bumblbee still has non-normal speaking voice deal.

The thing to me is.
HOW does a semi truck with flames as decals look normal for a trucker anyway?

To me it stands out more then driving an old truck model like say the model Optimus Prime is.

Just saying on that though.

In comparisson RID Scourge, all black, very normal colours for trucks :P
Not that I see any evil looking fuel tankers roaming around.
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Mu La Flaga
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

So bumping up this thread for a small overdue revival.
I want to ask the fellow Transformer fans here besides myself obviously.

What are some of your fav toys from any of the lines you might own?
Just say why you like them also.

Curious to hear some thoughts on older toys maybe also you once had but they broke or something.
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

^
Probably the G1 and Headmasters. The main reason being that that's what I grew up on and had a few of them in my youth. My favorite was that import variant of Jetfire (1985) that looked so much like Rick Hunter's Valkyrie Veritech Fighter.

I don't care much for the movies or the mecha designs but War for Cybertron has rekindled my love for Transformers again. I look forward to Fall of Cybertron next year when it's released around this time of year. Hopefully, it's released at the end of the semester to keep my grades from taking a devastating blow. LOLz
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Mu La Flaga
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

RX-93v2_Hi-Nu wrote:^
Probably the G1 and Headmasters. The main reason being that that's what I grew up on and had a few of them in my youth. My favorite was that import variant of Jetfire (1985) that looked so much like Rick Hunter's Valkyrie Veritech Fighter.

I don't care much for the movies or the mecha designs but War for Cybertron has rekindled my love for Transformers again. I look forward to Fall of Cybertron next year when it's released around this time of year. Hopefully, it's released at the end of the semester to keep my grades from taking a devastating blow. LOLz
Um I asked about the toylines, so none of those other lines beyond G1 or Headmasters caught your attention?
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

I never really owned that many Transformers, but when I was young, I really liked Hubcap, because my favourite colour was yellow, and it was a gift from my grandmother.

Then I got the triple changers and those became my favourites. Broadside and Blitzwing. Blitzwing was badass and German, making him double badass. Broadside was pretty cool despite transforming into a brick, but his plane mode sucked majorly though.

I also quite liked Topspin(I had a knockoff and didn't even know it was a Transformer at first) because the comic made him grow on me.(and I didn't have any other members of the Wreckers)

One of my last Transformers toys was Landcross, which was my present from a Japan trip. Lots of fun because each of the 6 bots can be combined with any of the others, giving you a huge amount of room to play around with..

Toys I wanted that I never got hold of were Soundwave, Sixshot, Ultra Magnus, Slugslinger and Flywheels.
By the time I found an Ultra Magnus rerelease it was like $100 and I passed on it.
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Mu La Flaga
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

Sixshot I still need to get one day.
Him along with Trypticon and Scorponok for G1 related ones.
I have a fair few from some lines, Beast Machines I never touched due to the weird colours and designs though.
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

Mu La Flaga wrote:Something that bugged me or made me wonder recently.
In Beast Wars and all that, how the heck could the Japanese mistake Air Razor as a male instead of a female Maximal?
They didn't 'innocently mistake' her gender. They outright changed it out of fear that a female toy wouldn't sell. So, obviously, the better choice was to make her a homosexual male instead... I guess. (Other female-designed characters would become male for similar reasons, such as Skywarp, Archaidis, Strika, and so on.)

The manga got it right, though.
It's something which still baffles me, Black Arachnia was plain obvious though.
They would have made her male too, if they thought they could get away with it.
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

it's japan's view on gender roles they kept Black Arachnia female because Mainframe chose to make her well clearly an "women" after takeing the cgi model team to an "Club" for "inspiration".
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Black_Arachnia.
when arcee went in to headmasters she was reduced to being the Autobot office lady. Blackarachnia became an bi-poler and more prone to begging for mercy.
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

Takara's problem is that really, they want EVERY Transformer to be Optimus Prime so they all sell well, so they push the writers to make all the robots have that cookie cutter Optimus Prime personality. As we know, just like Bandai thinking their models would sell better if ALL of them were Gundams, that didn't work.

This got worse during Victory and Zone, and was worst during the middle Brave series with Might Gaine. The writers were so fed up with Takara during production of Might Gaine that they wrote the sponsor in as the final villain. After that series, the robots started getting more personality back as Takara realised every robot having similar personalities was boring.
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

Mu La Flaga wrote:So bumping up this thread for a small overdue revival.
I want to ask the fellow Transformer fans here besides myself obviously.

What are some of your fav toys from any of the lines you might own?
Just say why you like them also.

Curious to hear some thoughts on older toys maybe also you once had but they broke or something.
Plenty, I broke my G1 Optimus Prime, Megatron, Devestator, and Thundercracker, and my folks almost never bought me a Transformer again! When I moved to Taiwan, I did have Great Shot (looks much cooler than Sixshot!), Landcross, and Sixliner, they survived longer (I still have Sixliner with me).

What are you hoping to hear? About the quality of the toys? One thing for sure, is for modern release, JP toys have better paint jobs than NA ones (for most part), but they cost almost twice than NA ones - believe me when I went to Japan, their TF's were at least 50% more than US retail price.
How much better is being a Creepy Bishonen compared to an AEUG slapping boy?

If Ginrai, the Japanese truck driver living in America, can be the leader of Cybertron Forces, then what can a pizza delivery boy be?

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Mu La Flaga
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

skyknight wrote:
Mu La Flaga wrote:So bumping up this thread for a small overdue revival.
I want to ask the fellow Transformer fans here besides myself obviously.

What are some of your fav toys from any of the lines you might own?
Just say why you like them also.

Curious to hear some thoughts on older toys maybe also you once had but they broke or something.
Plenty, I broke my G1 Optimus Prime, Megatron, Devestator, and Thundercracker, and my folks almost never bought me a Transformer again! When I moved to Taiwan, I did have Great Shot (looks much cooler than Sixshot!), Landcross, and Sixliner, they survived longer (I still have Sixliner with me).

What are you hoping to hear? About the quality of the toys? One thing for sure, is for modern release, JP toys have better paint jobs than NA ones (for most part), but they cost almost twice than NA ones - believe me when I went to Japan, their TF's were at least 50% more than US retail price.
New or old either way stories about them are good.

I have one that came to mind.
Poor G1 Scourge, I tried to float him in a pool but his diecast metal and weight would not allow it even though he was a hovercraft :P

I really should get myself an encore Devestator.

And any of the lines you can think of, just discuss them.

I also have a mostly complete Combaticons G1 set nice condition.
Mostly redone stickers ect.
Just missing Blast Off's Shuttle mode cannons.

I would say my fav lines of all have to be.

G1, Beast Wars and Robots in Disguise/Car Robots.
There are lots of reasons why.

RID had a few standouts and I own most of the toys from the line with some small exceptions.
Beast Machines put me off mostly, even the re-releases of old Beast Wars molds in new colours, as tempting as some of them were.

Scourge and Sky Byte are brilliant examples of toys improved so much by better colour schemes.
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

The Encore toys are retooled and restored from what ever molds takara-tomy could recover and they do add tamograph detail to replace some of the stickers. the major advantage is the fact that japans toy laws are "optional" so the toys are mostly exactly like there original issue. When Hasbro does an reissue they have to retool the molds to meet or exceed current toy laws so the smokestacks get shorter to better keep them on.
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/For_safety_reasons
Hasbro aims all of there toys for child use takara will put out toys aimed at the adult collectors willing to pay to get an toy they destroyed as a child.
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

Yeah, the safety regulations suck sometimes for us old farts. Having a few children of my own though, I'm still glad for them. My Optimus Prime's smokestacks broke off like everyone else's, and they'd be small enough for my son or daughter to swallow and choke on.

RID was a great toyline. Some nice new models, and repaints that were actually cool. Also, a choice of either BW or G1 style designs to keep everybody happy. Such a shame Armada didn't keep that dual design thing going.
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

2NA Fish wrote:Yeah, the safety regulations suck sometimes for us old farts. Having a few children of my own though, I'm still glad for them. My Optimus Prime's smokestacks broke off like everyone else's, and they'd be small enough for my son or daughter to swallow and choke on.

RID was a great toyline. Some nice new models, and repaints that were actually cool. Also, a choice of either BW or G1 style designs to keep everybody happy. Such a shame Armada didn't keep that dual design thing going.
Well Armada went off that new direction with the new Gimmick of Powerlinking with Minicons.
WHich as we know by Energon got replaced by Powerlinking/combining between 2 Autobots as the new gimmick.
Then later we had Cybertron with keys and all that stuff.

That was what I sort of disliked about those 3 entries.
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

armada reverted to brick formers because people complained about the origami shellformers in RID the new mold autobots were built like the takara sourced beast wars toys basically being an ball jointed robot figure folded inside an plastic shell resembling an alt-mode. for the unicron lines they adopted gimmicks to get modern kids better play value. mini-cons were an re-imagining of the "master" toylines and the toys played like g1 toys energon had the combining and energon star features cybertron used the keys as an mini-con substitute insert an key to activate an feature that line even retooled older armada molds to use the key to activate the old minicon feature or included an key molded with an mini con plug on it.
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

Brick formers I'm all down with. The thing I didn't like were the pseudo futuristic designs. One of the most fun parts of Transformers has always been "Wow! I saw that car on the way to school yesterday." Ah well, it's hard to please everyone.

Also, I don't agree with Takara's approach of having most of the new line with the same gimmick. Sure, give us a group of new robots with a cool new gimmick, but also have the unique ones like Sixshot and Soundwave, and don't push those to the side and base your story entirely around those new gimmicks. Pretenders were new in Masterforce, but there were plenty of other cool things so we didn't have PRETENDAAAA shoved down our throats every 2 seconds.

Must say though, style aside, they've had some great designers working on the toys. The gimmicks they put on the newer toys, like having storage space for extra parts and the funky ways you have to pull and twist them to transform, are nothing short of ingenius.
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Re: Transformers General Discussion thread

the concept of having every part store some where on the mold was an G2 new mold innovation that kenner carried over to beast wars. takara seemed to lose interest and recycled the transformers molds in to the brave line. there orignal molds for the beast wars era and car robots used shellformer designs basically stuffing an microman type figure in to an animal/car type shell. the Car robots/RID toylines were made up of mostly recycled beast wars and G1 molds. the US line did so well that hasbro had to put in to production every functional mold they had to fill the line.
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