Sean Akizuki's Fantasy Critic

Transformers like any franchise -- is subject to wear and tear. That may explain why Hasbro allowed Toei Animation the liberty to adapt Transformers for the Japanese audience. Was it to avoid toys from going to waste or what? The Pretenders concept never made it into the G1 cartoon after Season 4. The events of "Rebirth" were utterly ignored by Transformers Headmasters -- a series that tried to connect with G1but ended up better off non-canon. Killing off Optimus Prime a SECOND TIME was just uncalled for. Eventually, Rodimus Prime left midseason and was replaced by Fortress Maximus. G1 Galvatron was replaced by the more competent G1 Scorponok. It also introduced a concept that would befit for Star Saber. Star Saber merging with V-Star is a blatant reference to Fortress Maximus combining with his ship Maximus. Fortress Maximus wielded the Master Sword in the Japanese continuity. Masterforce was a Japanese-exclusive and events happened in Japan. Heck, Minerva who's suppose...

Transformers characters have varying heights. For example, it can be noticed that Optimus Prime is much taller than his other comrades such as Bumblebee. Meanwhile, the Decepticons were more or less close to each other's heights -- except for some of Soundwave's miniature robots like Laserbeak. It was normal to have one character taller than the other. However, there's one thing worth noting in Transformers: Victory . Unusually, Deathsaurus was made as TALL AS A COMBINER!   Who can remember this scene from the G1 American cartoon? I wonder if the Japanese side overlooked Megatron's height vs. that of a combiner. G1 Starscream once used Bruticus to try and get Megatron to relinquish leadership. The Combiners are obviously bigger than the tallest non-combiner characters. Megatron was easily grabbed. I remember one scene in Transformers: Headmasters where G1 Galvatron got seized by an Autobot combiner. Why was Deathsaurus purposely made THAT TALL compared to his predecesso...

Beast Wars was a show I originally didn't like. However, it was all part of the same continuity as Hasbro would have. I didn't understand the concept of contracts and adaptations as a 12 year old. I used to think that Beast Wars was merely having the OG cast become the cast. I heard that was the plan BUT that was THANKFULLY changed. The Maximals and Predacons are successors to the OG factions of the Autobots and Decepticons. I wonder why Hasbro decided to create two new factions. What's funnier is that Predacon was also the name of a Decepticon sub-group. There was some element of familiarity needed. Which was probably why the leader was called OPTIMUS PRIMAL and we have Beast Wars Megatron. I always find it confusing whenever fiction decides to pass a title -- such as how Tekken passed the King mantle to another person in Tekken 3  or how the Robin mantle got passed from Dick Grayson to Tim Drake. Dick became Nightwing after some time. It was good to name the new Optimus P...

There's always the problem of milking the franchise, right? Apparently, Transformers started to stale in America so it was time to try something new. The comics created the Pretenders and the Powermasters -- two concepts that were integrated into the Japanese-only Transformers: Masterforce Anime series sometime in 1988. At that time, Super Sentai had been established and trying to mix the formula of Transformers with Super Sentai may have been the aim. I wonder if Toei planned to make it live but instead chose the animation route? Either way, it was time to bring back Optimus Prime -- OR NOT! The concept of Powermaster Optimus Prime was from the comics. An alien humanoid known as Hi-Q would bring back Optimus Prime. An alien from Nebulon named Hi-Q became the partner to rebuild Optimus Prime. Hi-Q was the obvious professor-type character. Given Optimus Prime's role as a senior commander -- I believe it's fitting that Hi-Q would be the perfect partner. However, the concept w...

Transformers have gone some through multiple changes. The great toy massacre in Transformers: The Movie was just one phase. Eventually, the Headmasters were introduced in the canceled Season 4. That's the problem with most American shows -- the tendency to milk the franchise until it's dry. New gimmicks were needed to keep the Transformers toyline alive. The Pretenders toyline came. Ironically, the Pretender gimmick was never put in a new season based on the American Transformers  continuity!  Scorponok was the maker of the Pretender technology -- within the Marvel Comics continuity. However, it's said that the UK comics had retconned that idea. Some forms would be that familiar and be carried over into the Japanese-only continuity. It's possible Hasbro didn't want the concepts to be wasted so Toei Animation and Takara (the toy makers) to do the Japanese-only continuity. Hasbro usually chose to ignore it as non-canon to their side. Beast Wars made ZERO mention of th...

Cartoon villains are defined by some form of stupidity -- even the leader! I wrote about G.I. Joe's toxic partnership between the COBRA Commander and Destro . Now, it's time to discuss Hasbro's other show  The Transformers . Starscream became the Trope Namer for The Starscream. It's because Starscream was infamous for his directly challenging Megatron. If Cobra Commander had Destro then Megatron had Starscream. Destro never made his treachery secret and neither did Starscream. This makes me ask, "Why would Megatron ever tolerate Starscream for TWO SEASONS STRAIGHT?"  One needs to take a look at how Destro and Starscream operate. Basically, Megatron needs Starscream as much as Cobra Commander needs Destro. Starscream has high intelligence and is a weapons specialist -- like Destro. Starscream is also the Air Commander -- something Megatron also needs. Without Starscream -- Megatron probably wouldn't have the resources to cook up typical Saturday morning vil...

I personally enjoyed Kaiju No Kami's reviews and his weird sense of humor. I may like Turboranger but I admire how he wasn't all too afraid to give his blunt opinions on how bad he thought it was. I guess he still felt Carranger was way too interesting with its parody. IMHO, I think I can now agree with fans who think Carranger shifted into Turbo too many times and ran over Turboranger , Power Rangers Turbo , and Go-Onger . The video of his berating Hasbro over the recent Power Rangers thing (which I dislike) reminds me that Hasbro had some screw-ups from my childhood too. These two shows are G.I. Joe and Transformers . How Transformers was handled during the 1980s could be one.... I love to compare Optimus Prime's death to Burai's death from Zyuranger . Granted, both Toei (as an animation provider) and Hasbro had a history together SO I guess it's not too coincidental when a late 1980s movie killed a beloved character before Zyuranger came in 1992. I rewatched the...

IGN Sea Beast Wars was definitely a 1990s revival of the Transformers franchise by Hasbro. There was the toy line and there was the television. The toys don't always match up with the television series such as G1 Megatron was released as a TANK when the 1980s series made him a handgun. Later, G1! Megatron's tank mode was used in future series such as Transformers Armada . Apparently, Hasbro makes the toys first before any series was made. I mean, try to think of the initial prototype of Beast Wars had the following... Transformers Wiki The original toyline (as planned) had Optimus Primal as a bat (which is funny) and BW! Megatron is a crocodile. However, all that was changed in the TV series proper and later toys when Optimus Primal was a gorilla and BW! Megatron became a tyrannosaurus - an animal more befitting the Beast Wars . The toyline was born with a TV series. However, you may notice that a couple of toys NEVER made it into the original TV series at all. There were toy c...

It's no doubt that Optimus Prime happens to be one of my favorite Transformers characters though I can relate more to Hotrod/Rodimus Prime instead. So, what's the deal with me mindblown that Ginrai wasn't Optimus Prime? Back then, I watched that really sh*tty Takara Transformers trilogy dub. Who can remember calling Deszaras as Dezandras? A huge error in the dubbing by Omni Dub Productions in Hong Kong was calling Ginrai as Optimus Prime. So, it turns out that Optimus Prime had a backup body AND fused with a human named Ginrai. Hence, Ginrai looks like Optimus Prime but with some subtle differences to the late, great Autobot leader. Mindblown? Well, I would dare say yes. I haven't watched the Takara Transformers series in the original audio (which was no surprise had Toei's involvement too) so I just bought the sh*tty Omni Dub hook, line, and sinker. What was totally wrecking was when I got into the Transformers Wiki and found out that Ginrai isn't Optimus P...

Whether you like it or not but Beast Wars may be an entirely different group of characters but it's still part of the Generation 1 (G1) Continuity . How the Maximals and Predacons are supposedly descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons isn't explained. Robot biology anyone? What was certain is that Beast Wars Megatron simply took the name after the original Megatron. I wasn't ready to accept the new era of Transformers until I realized it was all part of the same universe. Why Hasbro decided to make Beast Wars part of the G1 Continuity rather than its own continuity kind of bothers me. But I'd like to give some praises to a series that actually deserved its praise. Trying to actually have a different set that managed to differ even more from its predecessor While Beast Wars is indeed part of the G1 Continuity but takes place sometime later (though they landed on a primitive Earth which may have disrupted the G1 timeline - go figure). I really love how the cha...

Nobody can deny that Transformers and its sequel series Beast Wars (which takes place 300 years after the original ended but they got stranded on pre-historic Earth) are both successes. But for every successful franchise -- there's the tendency for a black sheep or flak to appear. Do you remember how the highly successful Kamen Rider Black got succeeded by the failure that's Kamen Rider Black RX? Beast Wars was succeeded by Beast Machines which really didn't last after 26 episodes. Beast Wars had 52 episodes which proved it was a success. Beast Machines tried to ride on the success of Hasbro's Beast Wars but only resulted in how Black RX ended -- a failure! I may not be a fan of Transformers Season 3 but at least Season 3 had some development you can enjoy. I know I've hated (to a certain extent) how Galvatron went all the way from a scary, cunning leader from the movie to a greater idiot than Starscream ever was. However, Galvatron's insanity made him more i...

Transformers is a series dear to a lot of 80s to 90s children. Having been born in the 1990s meant I've watched a lot of them. There were Transformers Season 1 and Season 2 followed up by the controversial Season 3. So what are these  Transformers Season 3 Transformers Season 3 was a continuation of the movie. It's a rather daring departure. Remember when the death of Optimus Prime caused children to cry? I admit I cried THAT HARD when I saw Transformers: The Movie on Philippine television when I was only a child. It was a really, really hard thing to take. But I was told that heroes die and it was a war. It's a very realistic scene though there's also the controversial and perhaps rather UNFAIR   hatred for Hotrod -- not especially when he became Rodimus Prime! Rodimus' doubts as a leader are because he didn't want to become one. Yet he had plenty of interesting character development.  IMHO, I thought that Transformers Season 3 had some intere...

I was a fan of Transformers as a kid. I remembered watching Season 1, Season 2, The Movie, and then there came Season 3. Who can remember the five-part mini-series called the Five Faces of Darkness? The animation was no longer vibrant, it was what you'd call the mistake that many animated series commit later with inferior artwork. Yet, there was an interesting exposition with the mini-series which still made it an interesting watch. But, I'd like to share the whole nightmare fuel associated with the series. I always found the Quintessons (who had become the titular villains for this five-part arc) to be pretty scary. There were the Sharkticons and the brutal culture of the Quintessons. The mock trials in the movie were enough to make me cringe. What makes it interesting was that the Quintessons were overthrown out of Cybertron by the first Transformers. They were, in fact, responsible, for the rise of the Transformers race to start with. Talk about the similarity of Cobra-L...

As a 90s child -- I remembered there were two similar cartoons namely Go-Bots (which I was shocked came first) and then there was Transformers (which was inspired by the Go-Bots). Transformers became more popular than its inspiration or in my case -- I prefer Transformers over to Go-Bots. The two were competing in the 80s but by the time I saw the show -- it turned out that Hasbro already acquired Transformers' rival Go-Bots from its original owner Tonka in 1991. Which reminds me that Hasbro is the company behind Transformers, Beast Wars (which is part of G1 Continuity) and they also had Go-Bots. So a bit of research will tell you that the Challenge of the Go-Bots cartoon (by Hanna Barbera) aired at the same year with the Transformers cartoon. But we know which show had better animation, music and characters. Go-Bots started off as toyline and so did Transformers. My issue with Go-Bots is the lack of personality and bland designs that Hanna-Barbera had. I mean think of this...

This was during the late 90s and we know Transformers was pretty much a late 80s thing. Hasbro had its rather ambitious remodeling of Transformers but not exactly a reboot. It's pretty much trying to cover up what could have happened generations later after previous Generation-1 Continuity series which covered the first three seasons of Hasbro's Transformers. What always got me to my mind how I thought "Transformers jumped the shark." or how I usually preferred the old school Transformers for its civilian involvement. So what's going on? Instead of Autobots and Deceptions -- you've got Maximals and Predacons. Okay, don't confuse the Predacons here to the Deception sub-group that was introduced after Transformers: The Movie. The whole situation has the Maximals and Predacons were sent to the time of the dinosaurs -- so where did Cobra-La enter in eventually? Hmmm Hasbro has a lot of explaining to do! The series obviously look from elements from its own ...

This was among the many scenes that I thought really made me cry as a child. One of the many deaths that I could remember was the death of Mika Koizumi (dubbed as Casey) in Bioman. The other was the death of Optimus Prime in the Generation 1 Continuity. Sometimes, I just think to myself how this scene was probably one of the saddest scenes -- yet it also taught an important lesson to children about the casualties of war and that even the greatest hero can die in battle! One of the best scenes ever in the movie is the duel to the death with Megatron. I also think about the scene why I had a love/hate relationship with Hot Rod or Rodimus Prime. Some people want to blame Hot Rod for the death of Rodimus Prime. Yet, there's one detail we fail to see -- it's a desperate battle and it's not easy to think properly in a desperate moment. Megatron was trying to grab the gun and Optimus Prime had no idea about it. Hot Rod stepped in and tried to prevent it but to no avail. He co...