Is this out officially? I've only ever seen bootleg copies. I would like to pick up a set but if there's official ones coming out I would rather wait. Just curious about it really. Are either of these shows worth watching?

In regards to Cybertron- I've never watched it, don't even know when it comes on. How was it? What's the basic story? I'm a huge huge HUGE fan of Beast Wars and am just trying to experience some other facets of the Transformers world.

-Matt

 

Cybertron was tolerable that was about it.

 

http://www.tv.com/show/28033/episode_guide.html&printable=1


Hope this helps about Cybertron.

 

I think the only official DVD sets that have been released are in Japanese.

So all the other sets would be fansubs, as I don't even think there were any HK boots made.

 

Cybertron > Energon > eating a floater in the toliet > Armada

 

Armada was better than Energon. Especially the final 13 episodes. At least Armada didn't drag out out every bloody battle for like ten episodes...

 

At least long battles were better than the quest to find minicons and hear about Fred's blood sugar.

 

I never seen bootlegs of these shows?

 

Check Chinese malls or dvd shops, they should carry them. I've seen Superlink and Micron Legend here in Canada. I haven't seen Beast Wars 2 or Neo though, and haven't checked for Cybertron. Should try Galaxy Force though, I can still grab it off the complete torrent from TV Nihon if you want.

 

Do they have english and Japanese(with English subtitles)?

 

Beast Wars Second and Neo have never had any DVD releases to the best of my knowledge. I've heard of some good quality VHS sets out there, but no DVDs. The shows were extremely unpopular in Japan, so odds are they won't be seeing DVD releases any time soon.
Cybertron I think is only getting scattered DVDs with odd episodes like Energon before it.

I'd question the quality of any dual audio set. Several scenes in Armada were redrawn for Micron Legend, and the same happened in a couple of places in Energon - most notably in the episode where the Autobots built the first Energon Tower. The redrawing would affect the timing of one of the audio tracks, I'd imagine - so they'd be out of synch.

 

They're definitely the Japanese version, they probably only have english subtitiles for the Japanese storyline. As mentioned by Sol, the audio would make it too difficult, also they're probably unofficial so there's probably bad translations.

 

Interesting. I had no idea BW2 & NEO were unpopular in Japan. Was it just the show, figures or a combination of the two?

 

The figures were cool especially Lio Convoy, but did you ever watch the shows? I am sorry but they were crap.
Just as an example from Beast Wars 2-
"A fire, oh no!" - Some maximal I forget who
(forest goes on fire)
"We have to put it out!"- Some Maximal I forget who again
"I can't pee anymore" - Tazmanian Kid peeing on fire

 

I have some of the figures like Lio Convoy, the Penguin, Horse, Snake, etc.(names escape me at the moment) but no I never saw the episodes with the exception of a download or two without subtitles. Anyway, thanks for the heads up.

 

Are you kidding? That's hilarious! (And no worse the Rhinox farting and knocking the Preds into the next county!)

 

His example was actually one of the rare HIGH POINTS of BWII. 99% of their attempts at humor were derived from hackneyed anime cliches. "Look! His head gets mad when he yells! Omg! Lio Junior got surprised and he fell over! Wow! Whenever they argue they turn into little midgets with giant heads and run around in circles! This is comedy GENIUS!!"

People talk about how bad Armada is, but BWII is in a league of its own in regards to total crap.

BWNeo was a step upward and actually wasn't that bad. It certainly picked up toward the end when the Blentrons arrived and resurrected Unicron.

 

Wow I'm sorry to hear that BW2/Neo sucked. They held such promise for me. I'll still probably give them a shot. I just hope they aren't like energon or armada.

-Matt

 

Takara pretty much seemed to be under the impression thatfor BW to succeed in Japan, they needed to throw in every possible anime cliche in the universe. Except panty shots since there are no skirt wearing tfs.

I should note that despite Takara's mangling of the US Beast Wars series (where they attempted to make the series as funny as possible, including turning Megatron into a coward that shrieked like a woman), it was still fairly popular (future Takara illustrator and designer Hirofumi Ichikawa was very, very indignant about the changes Takara made, though).

So WHY did they make two appalling BW animes that resemble nothing like the US series?



And that, my friends, is why Takara almost went bankrupt in 2000, and why they had to merge with an arch-enemy in 2006. They don't know how to run their own business.

You must have not seen any episode beyond the first season then. A common complaint from people that haven't seen much (or any) of the second season is the quest to find minicons, which was more or less abandoned when the arcing storyline got into gear.

Energon is terrible. It wasted good characterisations (Demolishor, Armada Starscream) and turned turn them into either japanese bad comic relief characters (reformatted Demolishor) or characterless yes men (Energon Starscream). Potential was there, but flushed down the toilet.

 

I'm a Hasbro supporter all the way, only thing Takara brings for me is the Masterpieces. I can only hope Heroes will be much better.