TakaraTomy Transformers Legends online manga epilogue

Discussion in 'Transformers News and Rumors' started by SHIELD Agent 47, Jun 7, 2019.

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  1. PoweredConvoy

    PoweredConvoy Randy

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    Yeah, you can see references to it in Legends.
     
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  2. Digger

    Digger Banned

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    Yeah I only own the Chromia chapter. I’d really like to find them in full and in English.
     
  3. GizmoTron

    GizmoTron Roobaticon Commander

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    Yeeeeeah, but no.

    I personally have no issue with cheesecake fembots, but it's not just feminine features on a robot here. The stuff like the occasional ass and robo-vagina shots did kind of cross a line (not to mention that for a Transformers comic there sure were a lot of under-aged looking human girls appearing in the nude). It's not a mystery why a lot of the comic pages couldn't be posted on TFW or had to be pulled down by the mods, and it just can't all be written off as critics being whiny prudes.

    Frankly, Sakamoto is very talented, and the best chapters were ones that focused on Transformers being Transformers and the overarching story making connections with Japanese G1 and G2 continuity, but I think pigeonholing himself with the over-reliance on pervy humor did more harm than good, as it will keep his work from ever receiving the recognition it probably deserves.
     
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  4. Markdelg

    Markdelg Spin Road fan

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    It didn’t do any harm at all, because

    a. Non-Japanese persons were not the target audience, and

    b. Sakamoto didn’t produce these comics to get any kind of recognition or to have them be some type of serious literature. They’re pack-in and online advertisements meant to sell toys.
     
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  5. Fafnir72

    Fafnir72 XYxInfinity

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    It is JP canon.
     
  6. Fafnir72

    Fafnir72 XYxInfinity

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    In the Legends verse, Xiao Xiao is years older from her KP days. Minerva on the other hand, post MF, so older. As for their appearance to be underaged, well, that's just the JP style. The cheesecake parts(iirc, Octane and Starscream arc) was a nod to their stereotyped JP AV/Idol industry which the West will never ever digest. In other words, cultural. The critics, will always howl. We after all a thriving offended/outrage industry.
     
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  7. Snubnose

    Snubnose Active Member

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    There are some here: Tets' Toys and Shenanigans
     
  8. Nemisispath

    Nemisispath Needs a new username

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    I got a few of the pack-ins myself. Big Powered, God Ginrai, Chromia, Arcee, Windblade (T30), Blackarachnia, Shockwave, and Black Convoy (TR). Keep them all in a sleeve in the bookcase by my desk. I too share your desire for a fully translated and bundled collection of the full Legends run.
     
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  9. Digger

    Digger Banned

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    Maybe they could publish some big volume collections and sell them at some cons. I wouldn’t mind that.
     
  10. PoweredConvoy

    PoweredConvoy Randy

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    Creedence of the Allspark has collected both the online and scanned comics (most of which were scanned by me) into one convenient link. :) 

    MEGA
     
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  11. Fenrys

    Fenrys Formerly Tigatron2002

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    now hopefully someone downloads it and translates all of it
     
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  12. GizmoTron

    GizmoTron Roobaticon Commander

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    And that's all well and fine, but I still think he's more talented than that and even in Japan will get more recognition for it once he leaves that style behind.


    And how old is Marissa's daughter Sue again?

    The point is you can write it off as the girls not actually being children, or real people, or as cultural and Japan being Japan, and that the acceptance of it makes us all more evolved or something than the critics... All of that doesn't change that it's still creepy, especially in a comic that's supposed to be about Transformers, and a lot of people who see it are going to be weirded out by it.
     
  13. Fafnir72

    Fafnir72 XYxInfinity

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    What about Sue? It was great that Sakamoto gave her MF bracelets. Like Gatchaman/Sentai where she wasn't no helpless grrl at all but became a TM and kicked Destron booty!

    From what I see, well you're looking for something to be outraged at when there is none.
     
  14. Markdelg

    Markdelg Spin Road fan

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    Oh, I’m not arguing that. Even if Sakamoto’s art wasn’t something that I liked (and it is), his devotion and knowledge of the Japanese G1 timeline is simply impressive. Although I will say that some of his retconning by the end was starting to get a little annoying (for example, BW II established that once future humans realized that angolmois energy was Unicron’s life force, they evacuated the planet and created Artemis and Moon to crash the real Moon on Earth if Unicron ever returned. Now it’s retconned that Chip Chase and Atari Hitotonari built Artemis and Moon. I’m not a huge fan of small universe syndrome.)

    Again, you are not the target audience (I’m assuming you’re not Japanese.) And honestly, actual people who abuse young people are far more creepy than some anime.
     
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  15. Flash1087

    Flash1087 Maybe in an Alternate Dimension

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    It is always very hard for me to not straight up start a band called Car Robots and never explain why. This is a close second, although less fitting for the stuff I play. :lol 

    Absolutely adorable to see all the throwbacks to other series and franchises, I'm thrilled to see the wrap-ups on so many weird little Japanese TF universe fragments.

    I feel bad for asking and I'm sorry if maybe I overlooked it, but is there an easy place to get translations or at least English summaries of these comics?
     
  16. Digger

    Digger Banned

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    Well that’s nice at least. Thank you.
    Yeah hopefully.
     
  17. Nemisispath

    Nemisispath Needs a new username

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    TFWiki has summaries of at least some of the Legends comics.
     
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  18. GizmoTron

    GizmoTron Roobaticon Commander

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    I'm not myself outraged at all, but that doesn't mean I can't understand why naked Sue straddling a large TF gun would make some people uncomfortable, either.

    Again I tried to explain that even if you dismiss it, there are in fact elements of these comics that will affect some reader's sensibilities, and it's not a symptom of some outrage culture to be aware of it and just to make note of those elements. (Blind ignorance after all can be just as bad in these geek circles and equal in false outrage).


    Some things I like about retcons like these, some things I don't. I'm still not completely on the "Car Robots totally is the same universe and had all this wild stuff happening on Earth in 2000 which just goes unmentioned in G1 for reasons" train, or any other new fiction made to fill in gaps in the timeline (which I suppose is common in manga/anime but still), but comics like these help alleviate some of continuity mess by strengthening some of the loose threads in Takara's "everything is one universe" timeline, especially in regards to their G2. Some things don't always have to connect perfectly, but if you're going to connect them, it's nice that Sakamoto attempted to fill in the blanks as best as he could while still working in the new Legends toys as part of all of that timeline as well.


    No, I'm not Japanese. But I am a Transformers fan, so I am somewhat always, at least in part, the target audience for any Transformers fiction. Maybe that is part of this comic's problem: with all the lore and continuity nods was this really for the nearly 40 year old fans of the series, or strictly for a certain subset of the Japanese crowd that will find that style of humor hilarious (that will hopefully empty their wallets in response to such things)?

    Anyway, yes, actual abuse is obviously far worse, and anime/manga gets enough flak for it already even when often they haven't done anything wrong. But that defacto creepiness of the real thing is all the more reason to explain why it's understandable that this kind of humor can send mixed signals that tend to raise an eyebrow or two.
     
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  19. Jalaguy

    Jalaguy has no known physical weaknesses

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    How about this for you, then - Japanese artist Kei Zama has mentioned on Twitter that she didn't like how Legends has treated female characters.

    The "cultural differences/not for you" argument about skeevy stuff in Japanese Transformers media always annoys me because it implies that Japanese fans are a uniform group of people who all have the exact same tastes.

    Sakamoto is writing for a specific target audience, yes, but that audience isn't "all Japanese Transformers fans", it's "a creepy subset of male Japanese Transformers fans".
     
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  20. Markdelg

    Markdelg Spin Road fan

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    Yes, I'd have to agree with you about Car Robots. If you really scrutinize it, it doesn't really work as a shoehorned-in retcon with the G1 cartoon. But then again, all of these cartoons were just kids' shows that were never meant to be scrutinized with such a fine-toothed comb. So it is what it is, and Car Robots is G1 :) 

    It's all good. Everyone's going to have an opinion about something (see below). The thing about these mangas are that they make up such an incredibly small percentage of the TF fiction, so much so that most of the even hardcore TF fans might not even know it exists. So to me it's not worth making a stink over.

    That's great. She's entitled to her opinion.

    I never said all Japanese persons have the same tastes. I said that the Legends manga was targeted for a Japanese audience, by which I meant that they are a society (much like many other non-American societies) that on the whole simply don't get offended by such minutiae as some depictions of women in a comic advertisement meant just to sell toys.

    And yet he's backed by a major Japanese company. So what does that say about 'subsets?'
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2019
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