The way I'd read it was that Hasbro asked IDW to have some sort of event to reboot their continuity, and IDW turned to Shane McCarthy who made AHM. I could be wrong about Hasbro asking them to do it, but either way it sucked and managed to make a story featuring Decepticons ruling Earth shitty.

 

Yeah, I don't remember reading that ever being the case. IDW just wanted to boost sales as they had been going down, and Chris Ryall asked McCarthy for a pitch. It also didn't reboot continuity so as much as just ignore a bunch of it. It's never been said to have come out of a request from Hasbro; the only thing they wanted was some Universe figure designs in the book.

 

Wasn't AHM largely McCarthy's beast? And a lot of it flew in the face of the plot ideas and world-building Furman did.

Oh yeah, another thing that rattles me with current IDW is the one writer on...Windblade?...going on a childish Twitter rant against Furman.

 

Either way, the other two events were certainly Hasbro's babies, and all three ended up doing some damage to an otherwise well-built universe. The best lesson to be learned from AHM was to not have Shane McCarthy write anything, though it seems IDW has not learned that lesson yet as they stole Drift back from Roberts who had done so much work to redeem the one-dimensional character.

 

And then AoE turned Drift into a ridiculous, one-dimensional samurai stereotype, so the circle is complete.

 

And Shane hates the AOE version of Drift, even though let's be honest, whenever he writes Drift he's a ridiculous, one-dinensional, anime fanboy sterotype. Personally, I don't want him to write a TF comic again. It was nice to see Gigatron and Hellbat in Empire of Stone, but the rest of that comic was one big non event. Leave Drift to Roberts, or just leave him alone.

 

You know you've really screwed up when you create your own character and fans want to take that character away from you and give it to another writer.

 

I think that McCarthy is a solid widescreen writer... as long as he's not writing about Drift. Whenever he handles the character he can't help but write him as a derivative "lone-wolf who wants to redeem himself" archetype.

Having said though, McCarthy's Drift is still much better than AoE's Drift since at least McCarthy's version is not borderline racist.

 

Maybe it's bad that I found AoE Drift amusing for exactly that reason  

 

I still find it ironic that Shane has the nerve to call out on how AOE Drift was done when under his writing IDW Drift manages to be even more of a sterotype in comparison. If anything AOE Drift has more in common character wise with IDW Drift when under Robert's writing.

To be honest I don't see how AOE Drift is racist exactly. Aside from his strong Samurai armour motiff along with the haiku and sensei lines,AOE Drift never once acted in a sterotypical Samurai manner.

 

Uhm... You may want to re-read this and think again "why". Really... You're already mentioning three stereotypes while trying to say how it was not stereotypical.

It was tumblr.

And she wasn't ranting, just gave an answer to question asked by a poster.

Ranting started when Furman threw a hissy fit in return.

 

I meant accusing Furman of being "TEH SEXIST!!!!!!!!" for how he wrote Arcee in Spotlight. Even though IDW continuity under Furman established that Transformers were an agendered race, and his concept was exploring what'd happen if gender was artificially forced onto one.

 

Why does everyone think that Drift was a Japanese character they decided to make a Samurai? In what universe does that make sense? This is a franchise about warring robots. He was almost certainly conceived as a Samurai and they added in Japanese because, on Earth, only Japanese were Samurai.

 

Then why are you still here? What are you actually thinking will be done by literally wasting everybody's time - especially yours - by coming to a website about this franchise and constantly whining about how bad it's gotten? You think it's just going to improve because you are engaging in annoying everybody on this site - again - without contributing to discussion?

I've been wondering these things, too, for the past year, essentially.

Don't forget the ex-Decepticon angle! AOE Drift was that, too, though only if you read the bio on the toy packages!

And in retrospect it's idiotic to be lambasting him about a comic written years ago that nobody really cares about anymore.

 

I'm aware of that. I was only pointing out that with the exception from all of three elements on him, he didn't really get into the sterotypical samurai act throughout the movie like most people have accused him of being.

 

What about his gold (yellow) face when most of the other autobots have silver faces? This might be an unfortunate coincidence, however this is the same movie series that had Skids and Mudflap.

 

A lone warrior swordsman who has some samurai elements in his design = ends being space Japanese even when it makes no sense for alien robots.

That's stereotypical.

Not like I care about Drift. Dull character and to me he could be even painted neon pink with emerald green accents.

 

Even as far back as TF1, Jazz "sounded" black and sort of acted "street/hip", but that wasn't as in-your-face, people really harped on racial stereotypes starting with the Twins in ROTF. Hence why they never showed up again.

Back to the topic, a lot of people called Drift a lame Gary Stu fanfic insert character because he's a loner, a former bad guy who joined the good guys but still has a "darkness" and doesn't like to talk about his tortured past, oh and he uses SWORDS! And his greatest weapon is a legendary sword that draws on his life force! And also samurai motif because Japan r kewl.

It's easy to see why people immediately dismissed him. It didn't help that he came about during the obnoxious fanwank maxi-story that was AHM. Actually, the only thing I liked about AHM was the neat promo images that drew on old Communist propaganda art.

 

It makes no less sense than space American, which if Drift was while looking like a Samurai, then people would've accused Bay of whitewashing.

 

It's meant to reference a samurai's mask being gold which there are actually samurai masks that are in fact coloured gold in history, so if anything that's keeping with the theme of him being a walking samurai armour being.

This is the same franchise that has some robots having a Brooklyn accent like the TFA Constructicons,German like Animated Blitzwing,African American like Jazz or even Russian like Strika and BW Ravage which was going on even before the movies came to be so how is having a Transformer having a Japanese accent any more strange and odd? Besides wouldn't people find it more problematic if AOE Drift was voiced by someone who wasn't of Japanese descent doing an accent?