Breastforce? Gah, what a bunch of boobs. I bet they nipple and dime their way through the series.

 

If it helps (and I'm not really sure if it does), I learned from the couple of episodes that have the sub-faction name in the title that Shout renamed them to...


...


...


...


*drumroll*


...


Chestforce.

 


And for anyone (which is probably no one) who wondered why I had to check all my episode files for correct names, when I ripped the Shout DVDs I discovered something weird: Each disc of the Shout collection has a weird setup where every episode is included on the disc twice, identical in length and composition, so it's not like there's a second run where the titles and credits are missing for a seamless viewing experience if you select "play all". So, for example Disc 1 has 9 episodes and 17 identifiable "tracks" on it that are structured like this

Track 1: intro/menu stuff
Track 2: episode 1
Track 3: also episode 1
Track 4: episode 2
Track 5: episode 2 again
...

and so forth.

But a couple of times across the entire series, the episodes aren't placed in the correct order in the numerical track listings. The first time it happens is actually right where I stopped my example above. Track 6 is actually episode 4 of the series (Unite!! Multiforce), as is Track 7. And then Tracks 8 and 9 are episode 3 (Attack! Leozack). Disc 2 gets even weirder as its order of episodes goes 10, 11, 14, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18.

None of this seems to impact the play order on the DVDs when you use them in a player. Everything there plays in the correct order. It's just a matter of the file structure on the discs themselves for some reason.

I know Masterforce did this same thing as I had to correct my episode order a couple of times through the re-watch. It's actually how I found the error in the first place as I didn't do this check before I named all the episode files, only discovering it when I clicked on episode, say, 18 to play and it was actually episode 19. I presume Headmasters does the same thing but since I watched from a set of Metrodome rips I have I can't say for sure. I haven't ripped my Shout set off their DVDs yet.

It's going to be interesting to see if this same thing happens with Beast Machines and Animated since those DVDs are also Shout (My Beast Wars ones are the Rhino sets. In hindsight I regret paying through the nose for volume 3 and then finding out that Shout put out a complete series re-issue less than a year later for like half the price I paid for each season on average   Just to compound things I also lost the boxes for Rhino volumes 1 and 2 when my basement flooded a few years ago, taking with it a box full of cardboard DVD slip-cases that I had set aside when I transferred most of my discs to 'standard' plastic DVD cases in order to save space on my shelf. The two BW boxes were among them, while S3 was saved because it happened to be right at the top of the box and floated on the dead carcasses of its brethren. Thankfully one of the other things I didn't lose was my Matrix of Leadership G1 Shout box because I had kept it upstairs on my bookshelf as a display piece. But almost everything else I had down there was wrecked. At least it was just the boxes and no discs in them.)

 

I guess it's slightly better? Maybe?

Other renames that the Shout dub will make include:
-Braver becomes Lightspeed (the name of his Motorvator counterpart.)

-Laster becomes Flame (the name of his Motorvator counterpart.)

-Blacker becomes Gripper, the name of his Motorvator counterpart (usually). In "A Deadly Battle", the subtitles call him Blacker, even though in most if not all the other episodes they call him Gripper.

-Holi becomes Stakeout, the name of his American Micromaster counterpart. (This one is particularly amusing because you can very clearly tell that they're addressing him as "Holi" and not "Stakeout" in the dialogue.)

-Boater becomes Seawatch, the name of his American Micromaster counterpart.

-Pīpō becomes Fixit, the name of his American Micromaster counterpart.

-Fire becomes Red Hot, the name of his American Micromaster counterpart.

Basically, with the exceptions of Blue Bacchus and Black Shadow (the Japanese redecos of Crossblades and Thunderwing, respectively) and the Dinoforce (the Japanese redecos of the Pretender monsters with different outer shells) , if the character has a toy that was released in the west, the Shout dub will call them by that toy's Western name.

 

I was just about to do a runner of "_____force" names, but I think I'm going to save that for the series recaps themselves.  

Yeah, that's been their MO for the whole of Shout's subs for the JPG1 trilogy for the most part. Except for Ranger for some reason. They called him "Joyride" a few times but while Roadking and Lightfoot were both almost always subbed as Slapdash and Getaway, Ranger remains as "Ranger" in probably 90% of his mentions.

And the Autobot Headmaster Jrs too. Except for the Omni dub, for some reason, which sees no issue in calling Shuta, Cab, and Minerva as Siren, Hosehead, and Nightbeat respectively. Also "I'm Optimus Prime. I'm American."

 

 

The inconsistencies make the whole name thing kind of confusing in the Shout dub. They use the American names for some characters, like the Pretenders, all the non-female Headmaster Jrs, some of the Godmasters, and the Brainmasters, but then don't use them for Minerva, the rest of the Godmasters, the Dinoforce, or Black Shadow. Is there a particular reason they don't use the English names for all the toys released in the English-speaking world? (Minerva is the most explicable one, considering that Nighbeat is the name of a male character and Minerva is obviously female, bu the rest are a bit of a mystery, especially since Shuta is no more Siren than Ginari is Optimus Prime.)

 

I got the sense that the writers for the Shout subs were instructed to be as "accessible" to the western fandom as they could, and include as many references that western TF fans would 'get' as they could. So we ended up with all the flips to western names where the were different and a whole whack of TF-isms that were introduced way after these series were originally aired. Stuff like changing references to hell to be about "the pit", heart/life references to mention sparks, and most generic curse words switched to "scrap" and its derivations.

But it doesn't explain why they choose not to switch some characters but not others. I understand not changing Ginrai to Optimus Prime because that would just be WAY more confusing, but you can't even say that they kept the names of human characters but not for Cybertronians since for the Masterforce cast it was:

Shuta, Cab, and Minerva = kept their own names (instead of Siren, Hosehead, and Nightbeat respectively)
Decpeticon Headmaster Jrs = given their English names (Fangry, Horri-Bull, Squeezeplay)
Ginrai = kept his own name (because jesus everyone's heads would've exploded if he called himself Optimus Prime)
Ranger = mostly kept his own name (instead of Joyride)
Lightfoot and Road King = given their English names (Getaway and Slapdash)
Metalhawk/Hawk = kept his own name but he was a Japan exclusive toy
The other autobot pretenders = given their English names (Diver to Waverider, Lander to Landmine, Phoenix to Cloudburst)
The Decepticon pretenders = given their English names (Blood to Bomb-Burst, Gilmer to Submarauder, Dauros to Skullgrin)
Buster and Hydra = kept their own names (instead of Dreadwind and Darkwing respectively)
Giga and Mega and, by extension, Overlord = kept their own names but they were a Japan exclusive toy
BlackZarak = kept his own name but, again, a Japan-exclusive toy
Grand Maximus = Kept his own name but the subs had a hell of a time keeping up with the proper terminology to differentiate his different forms. Also was a Japan exclusive toy as a recolor of Fort Max.

If there's a logic or rationale behind how those decisions were made, I don't get it. The Decepticon Godmasters keep their names, but most of the Autobot ones don't. The Autobot Headmaster Jrs keep their names, but the Decpeticon ones don't. None of the Pretenders keep their names except Hawk and him seemingly only because there's nothing else to call him as a western equivalent.

Headmasters was a bit better because those characters and toys mostly originated with the Hasbro side of things and Japan would've chosen to just keep them for the most part (with a few small finicky differences like the short-form names for just the headmasters' mini forms. Or the different modes of Fort Max or Scorponok/Zarak/MegaZarak/whatever.)

 

I've been going with the Metrodome subs, which seem a lot more consistent- Headmasters used the English-speaking names for the characters carried over from the Sunbow series; Optimus Prime, Blaster (not Billy!) etc, but "Fortress" not "Cerebros" and "Scorponok and MegaZarak", not "Zarak and Scorponok", respectively. For Masterforce, despite the odd glitch of hypercorrection (referring to Hawk's home planet of 'Autobot'), it went with the Japanese names throughout, on the grounds that Hydra, Buster, Road King, etc etc are distinctly different characters.

 

I just can't get into some of the older Japanese anime. They were too silly and catered way too much to the very young children (and I like anime for the most part). Take for example TF: Victory. That whole dinosaur floating in space getting left behind just to do that tongue 'n' cheek gag for the lulz? I immediately stopped watching the show. Masterforce didn't go as silly, but still had those moments throughout the series. Completely turned me off.

 

I think I mentioned this before, at least in the Headmasters discussion, but part of the reason for that is because Transformers is viewed as a children's franchise in Japan. Well, obviously it technically is here too, but more so over there. At least in the sense that it's aimed at an even younger audience than here.

In fact I'm pretty sure I've read that they find the very idea of "intelligent, living alien robots" something of a childish concept and part of the reason that Masterforce is perhaps the most mature of the series (or at least more mature than Headmasters. I think I've been told that Victory is a bit sillier than it though not necessarily full-on campy ridiculousness) is because they identify the concept of the various kids and teens that become the Headmasters and Godmasters being the primary fighting force and lead factor in driving the story as a more suitably "mature" story option.it essentially would've been created for the audience that finished Headmasters and was now older.

It also apparently shows in how the Japanese dubs of the most serious and/or mature storied western series like Beast Wars or Prime are turned into extremely goofy screwy comedy shows where characters chatter endlessly with repetitive verbal tics, constantly break the fourth wall, and turn even the most dour moments into opportunities for gags and jokes.

 

That's always interesting AND incredibly annoying!

 

I wish I could remember where I read that. Because the longer I continue to repeat it the more and more unsure I get of how much of it is true and how much of it I'm creating out of thin air based on some half-remembered other discussion on a topic that's only vaguely related.

I know that the part about the screwy comedy dubs is true for certain. All you have to do there is go look at the "Japanese Release" sections for each of the series on TFWiki that were dubbed from the original western releases: Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Animated, Prime, and RiD2015.

For each one it's plainly pointed out that the series became a screwball comedy show with all the characters turned into aggressively over-the-top caricatures or stereotypes or saddled with extremely in-your-face jokey personality tics. No matter how serious the show may be at any point, that's pretty much all stripped away in service of the tone of the dub, seemingly mostly at the behest of the dub's primary producer, Yoshizaku Iwanami. The only show to slightly escape this was apparently RiD15, which was handled by a different producer who kept much of the tone that Iwanami had set since it was the primary way that Transformers had become known to be in Japan, but wasn't quite as aggressive about it.

I want to save some of this conversation for those later series, but the dubs are all pointed out to have the same sorts of screwiness, ranging from 4th wall breaking gags to characters having tics or mantras or whatever that they repeat over and over and over again whenever they do anything to some outright offensive material at times (apparently Nightscream in Beast Machines is given an extremely camp gay persona based on the act of a popular Japanese comedian of the time, reducing him to the kind of mincing, flaming stereotype that you would've expected out of a show produced decades prior and not in 2004 when Beast Machines finally made it to Japan. It apparently gets bad enough that at one point as a joke a jilted Blackarachnia hurls a slur at Nightscream and Silverbolt because she feels like her former flame is ignoring her (doing away with the fact that the original focus was on Silverbolt having a deep moral crisis)

They also slashed minutes out of each episode of several series in order to fit in standard anime opening/closing sequences that could accommodate a long portion of a licensed jPop song and to add extra little toyetic sequences featuring people shilling the series' toys or whatever. In Animated they somewhat cleverly made the "Otoboto" family (get it? Autobot?) who would play with the toys and talk about them. In Prime it was the jPop girls group that sang the series' end credits song doing much the same thing.

In short it's kind of like a reverse version of all the terrible stuff that people usually attributed to the worst of anime dubbing done in the west. The jarring tonal shifts to appeal to a different market or audience group. The galling "disrespect" for the source material. And the general feeling that they don't "get" what made the franchise popular in the first place and are instead trying to push something completely different which fails to achieve the same end goal.


As for the part about alien robots being seen as childish, that's the part I'm less certain about where I picked it up. I feel like I did read somewhere that the reason the Transformers skews younger in Japan than it does in the west (like if we presume that most series in the west are going for that 8-12 age range then Japanese TF is more like 5-7) is because culturally Japan views sentient robot aliens as a very fantasy-style sci-fi aspect, much preferring series where human characters take the central role in the plot and if there are robot-style powers or battles then they are portrayed as an outgrowth of Japan's love for Sentai or Mecha type action (explaining the popularity of Super Sentai/Power Rangers/Ultraman/etc type shows and Gundam anime and its various knockoffs and derivatives) and seeing shows that carry that aspect as being more able to tell a serious, mature story.

I believe from there I eventually made a point of comparing that it seems as if it's almost the reverse of the west. Here we look at the Transformers as aliens bringing their war to our planet as a somewhat more serious plot. Sure living robots is weird, but aliens as a concept are weird so who are we to say that such beings are without merit (even without getting into the mess of what sort of origin any fan might want the Transformers to have. ie Quintessons/Primus/spontaneous evolution/etc). Whereas we look at a "teens and preteens save the day because they get to pilot giant robots" as a sort of audience wish-fulfillment fantasy. Not necessarily the giant robots because everyone loves that, but the immense focus that such series put on the fact that the journey of their young characters is almost like a metaphor for growing up, with the kids casting off their childishness and becoming serious, determined, hardened adults through combat while recognizing that the value of their experience is in suffering the hardships of war for the benefit of other people who are protected/saved by it (a very Japanese type moral given the collectivist nature of Japanese society and one that is much more explicitly discussed if you read the lyrics to the opening themes of Headmasters and Masterforce. Both songs spend a ton of time going on about the noble sacrifice of going through the hell of war because it will benefit other people who aren't our cast. And I'm not saying this to make a value judgement on the validity of that moral. Just that it seems to be the way things are presented)

It's one of the reasons I somewhat scoff (but not @Scoff, because he's cool  ) at discussion topics like "we need a new TF Anime because Japan respects cartoons and will tell the story right and make it dark and gritty and mature!" Because they always make me chuckle and want to ask "have you seen the shows that Japan puts out? Have you seen what they did to the darker and more mature shows they imported from the west? I'm not sure you can guarantee that Japan will do a more "mature" and "respectful" job of delivering the mature TF series that part of the audience wants. Because 1) Japan has just as spotty of a record as the west when it comes to giving people the kind of Transformers show that they say they want (and nostalgia blinds us to the fact that the series we liked as kids, be it G1 for the 80s-mid 90s kids or the UT for the late 90s-00s kids, were not quite as super-duper serious and grippingly mature as we might want to remember them being) and 2) Above all else Transformers is a brand designed chiefly to market toys to children. Not to adult collectors and fans like a lot of us. We're the outliers who consume whatever the brand gives us and occasionally gets thrown a bone (hi there wallet-destroying crowdfunded Unicron!), so if we don't get "it's like Game of Thrones but with giant alien robots" we'll probably still watch. But the kids who are there to consume the show and make their parents buy them the toys for their birthday or christmas or good report cards or whatever are not going to want to or be able to watch such a show. And then there goes the franchise's primary audience.


Phew... This post just sort of kept on going. Sorry about that  

On topic to this project: Today/tonight I'll have my 5 likes/dislkes from Masterforce (I only have to write up one or two more points in it). Then this coming week is going to be partially my second and last "week off" between shows and an opportunity to finally finish the Masterforce manga and discuss it. If all goes well I'm hoping that I'll be starting Victory the week of the 28th. So expect that thread towards the end of this coming week just so I can get it primed and set up.

And one final thing that I've been meaning to discuss but didn't want to pop into another thread: I've seen a lot of talk in the last few days about people referencing 'blue text' when they're unsure about if someone is making a joke or not. I've been here for like a year and while I don't dive into every single thread it's not something I've seen discussed before. Is it forum etiquette for TFW to write your posts in blue if you're intending them in a tongue-in-cheek or joking manner? I'm used to either using a laughing smiley or the general sense that what I've written is so obviously a joke that it can't be taken any other way. Or on the hockey board I frequent we have a dedicated "sarcasm" smiley in the shape of a face with a finger on its lips almost like a 'shush' motion (which might not be the best thing since basically everyone uses it whenever they make an attempt at a joke or a cutting remark regardless of how much sarcasm is actually involved).

Jeez, if blue text for jokes is standard fare, then basically everything I've ever written should probably be blue to some extent.  

 

From what I gathered, blue text means sarcasm. I've only been here for a few months so there might be more to it than that.

EDIT: Oh, and I've been lurking for the past few episodes, good stuff! I can't wait for Victory!

 

Huh. That's what I figured too. It's going to be difficult to remind myself to do that, especially given that my posts usually lean heavily towards being irreverent and non-serious most of the time.

And glad to have you aboard. The more the merrier.

 

It's time for the last piece of the Masterforce wrap-up:

5 Things Super-God Masterforce did Well/Poorly

As I did for Headmasters I've picked 5 aspects of the show that I felt were done well and 5 I think the series dropped the ball on (well..... 6. I cheated. But my thread, my rules  ) and I'll expand on those thoughts at relative length as a means of dissecting the series on the whole on a structural/technical level.

THINGS THE SERIES DID WELL

1) Coherent, series-long story

With Headmasters I noted that while it was admirable for them to try and tell a serialized story across the whole run of episodes, they failed at times with tons of filler episodes and slow, meandering plots that never felt like they had enough meat on their bones to sustain the number of episodes they had to span.

Masterforce, in spite of running for more episodes, never feels like it drags as much. Almost everything the series does pushes some aspect of the story towards its next major checkpoint or to that final showdown. There's no "Galvatron dies and then comes back and dicks around for 10-15 episodes just so we can stall until Scorponok's endgame is ready to go." plot that takes up space. I'm not left with the feeling that this series should've been cut in half to tell a more streamlined story (which is impressive when you consider that this series is longer than Headmasters was). While I might not love every part of the story Masterforce delivered, I appreciated that every part of Masterforce did deliver some story and the distractions were small and brief for the most part.



2) More likeable characters and/or characters with more personality

I liked to joke about Headmasters that it was impossible to give brief character synopses for most of its cast without resorting to the words "jerk", "villain", or "professional" to describe them. Most of its characters had precious little time spent getting to know them and even less time spent building up any sort of understanding of what made them tick. Chromedome was a hot-blooded, rash youth, but most of that materialized through him being an asshole to pretty much everyone, sulking and pouting when he wasn't respected like he felt he should be. And that was basically the high point of Autobot personalities. Fortress was the at-times unsure leader, paralyzed by his need to really evaluate each decision to the point that he sometimes failed to take the reins and be the commanding presence his position neeeded, but unfortunately that often faded to the background while he just dryly sat there, staying out of combat until the last minute when Fort Max was needed to tilt the playing field in the Autobots' direction. The other Headmasters? They were mostly just... there. Brainstorm especially never got anything to do any sort of indication of who he was or what he was about. He was simply the 4th member of that unit under Fortress, ceding most of the focus to Chromedome and occasionally to Hardhead as Chromedome II or Highbrow as allegedly the science guy, but one who doesn't do a damn thing of note except for an offhand reference to making some light-gun tech for Daniel (and then upgrading that tech to a real laser gun in a stunning display of poor guardianship of a minor) and bailing on what was supposed to be his big moment to shine in decoding the data about Scorponok's weak point (so that Chromedome could do it, of course).

Masterforce, for the most part, doesn't really have that same issue to the same extent. Most of the characters are given at least a cursory amount of characterization, or a least a major personality hook to define them the way that a lot of G1 characters got. The Headmaster Jrs across both factions are pretty well laid out for us. As are most of the Godmasters and the Decepticon leadership. The only characters who don't get a ton of time devoted to giving us a base personality to work with are the Decepticon pretenders (who, after their initial usefulness, mostly exist just to be the comedy mooks of the Decepticon army) and Phoenix, for whom I assume there simply wasn't time to give him a spotlight before the Godmasters started showing up and displacing the Autobot Pretenders in terms of focus.

But more than just having characters with real personality, there are actually likeable characters too. The Headmaster Jrs of both teams end up interesting (albeit sometimes sabotaged by Shuta and Cab's need to be immature and selfish jerks. So much so that between their behavior here and comparisons to Daniel and Wheelie in Headmasters, I'm left to ponder if this is just a standard Japanese trope for the portrayal of youths and how they're supposed to interact on "friendly" terms. As if we're supposed to find their assholish behavior endearing), Most of the Autobot Pretenders (besides Phoenix becuase we literally know nothing of value about him) get some quirks that make them fun to watch until they become superfluous to the story. Giga and Mega are great characters and make for great villains, as I'll touch on shortly. This is a much better cast than what we were handed in Headmasters, and I believe that it's a big part of why I was never frustrated with this show the way I was with its predecessor.



3) Giga and Mega: Interesting villains

It's generally a pretty straightforward role to be the Decepticon leader. You have to be evil. You have to be grandiose. You have to have plans of world domination or total destruction of the Autobots. And you generally have to have no respect for anyone that would get in your way on the path to achieving your goals. It also usually helps of you're crazy or scheming too.

But that's what makes Giga and Mega different. We know from relatively early on that they aren't the true lead villains and aren't the commanders of the Decepticon when Devil Z is present, but for the most part until Devil Z starts giving out direct orders, and especially until Devil Z steps out onto the battlefield and really takes over himself (and I'll be touching on that in a bit), they are the ones who handle most of the heavy leadership burden in terms of giving orders and dealing with the troops.

And the difference in them shows and makes things interesting. They care about the troops under their command, especially Mega. They want to win for the Decepticon cause, but early on begin to show reservations about the lengths to which Devil Z is willing to go and the goals he wants to pursue. They recognize and dislike the way that Devil Z thinks of using the Decepticons under its command and dread seeing what becomes of the likes of Buster and Hydra as they become enthralled by that same ethos that Devil Z has and submit themselves to be turned permanently into full-bodied robots. And it all culminates in their horror over Devil Z's plan to exterminate humanity for something that is, on the surface, meant to be a pragmatic solution to the threat of Chokon power, but under the surface looks an awful lot like a petulant energy being throwing a tantrum because some stupid flesh-bags beat him at his own game.

It all makes for a really interesting story arc as the major villains never quite reform or repent, but still come around enough to find that their particular brand of evil has its limits. They aren't a full-on Beast Wars Dinobot situation, but I'm thankful for that because "cool villain redeems themselves and sees the light, turning into a sort of blood knight type borderline anti-hero" is way too easy to mess up if you don't get it note perfect every step of the way. And because I like the idea that their story is one of stepping back off the edge of the abyss and going only as far as the meager amount of goodwill they've built up will let them. They pay back Ginrai's kindness and atone for not stopping Devil Z sooner, but they didn't exactly repent for all the terrible things they did otherwise, so simply allowing them to transition all the way to being "saved" and converting to the Autobots (or at least a fully faction-neutral state) would probably be too far fetched.

Giga and Mega represent one of the most complex leadership dynamics we see in the Decepticons across all the various shows in the Transformers Multiverse. Their inclusion in the show and focus especially in the later half of its run was one of the high points that Masterforce had to offer.


4) A global cast

A minor thing, to be sure, but I'm impressed by the relatively global nature of the cast in this show. For show originally set in Japan and by a Japanese studio and for a Japanese audience, the primary casts includes humans from the US (Ginrai, essentially is treated as American even though he is supposedly Japanese born and only lives in America. Still the fact that he does live in America explicitly so that he could escape what he felt was the oppressively collectivist nature of Japanese society, and that this is not portrayed with scathing criticism is a surprisingly adult way to handle such a plot thread), Canada (Ranger and the British-Canadian Lightfoot), Britain (Road King and again, Lightfoot sort of), Germany (Buster and Hydra), China (Cancer) and the fictional country of Monte Port (Minerva). It's a surprisingly worldly cast before we even get to the space robots or consider the origins of Giga and Mega, which are never made clear, or Wilder and Bullhorn (the former I suspect is supposed to be American given his back story and the latter... who knows.)

Ultimately it means very little as the differing nationalities rarely ever come into play in any meaningful way, but it does also allow the show to hop around from Japan to China to the US to Canada a few times and actually have a reason to be there beyond just "there's something happening in this part of the world and maybe it involves the Decepticons and we have to stop it!" from other parts of the franchise.



5) Less filler

This is somewhat relating to item #1, but the fact that Masterforce told a better and more coherent serialized story over its entire run had the added benefit of not really creating a place for any sort of extended filler like the "Galvatron isn't really dead" arc from Headmasters. In short it was nice to know that most episodes had some goal to accomplish in filling in part of the story and taking us towards the end and that I never felt at any point that I was frustrated to have to watch a batch of episodes knowing that they were going to fail to lead anywhere interesting or useful.


THINGS THE SERIES DID POORLY

1) Sixknight: worst character ever

I made repeated Poochie jokes thoughout the episodes that Sixknight appeared in. When you lay out what he is, it's not hard to see why.

He's a poor copy of Sixshot, except with his edgy "cool, brooding, dark bad guy" aspects cranked up to 11. We're introduced to him smugly looking down on humans with contempt as he mows through a bunch of military forces. Then he joins the Decepticons becasue reasons and loudly screams to anyone who will listen that he's interested in a good, honorable, fulfilling fight against a strong opponent. Only when he gets one with Ginrai and gets his ass handed to him, he starts petulantly whinging about how he couldn't have lost to a stupid pathetic human. And we're supposed to like this guy eventually? Granted he shows up and saves the Headmaster Jrs, but he still acts like a smug jerk. And he never really gets any sort of lasting epiphany to change his worldview. He simply decides that because Ginrai is strong he wants to be an Autobot now. And then he dies.

anti-hero who switches sides to the good guy? check.

brooding, edgelord personality? check.

shows up to save people while playing it off like he's too cool to show that he cares? check.

super-cool set of 6 different modes to show off how amazing he is, even getting a bunch of "Sixknight is so amazing" comments from others? check

ultimately meaningless sacrifice which is "for honor" but really just makes him look dumb? check.

It's the bad fanfiction OC mary-sue checklist and he its most of the boxes except for "tragic backstory" (that we know of) and "too pure for this world".

Sixshot worked reasonably well (given the awful constraints of that show) because he was portrayed as a mercenary. His being a Decepticon was, more or less, work that he was bound to (if you count his early appearance ransoming cities for energy as the writers working out the kinks in his character) and not something he agreed with on a personal level. He was a guy doing a job and when the Decepticon power struggle granted him a shot to get out, he did. And he bonded with Daniel to show that he wasn't all that bad a guy.

Sixknight, on the other hand, is a self-absorbed jerk with no sense of empathy. He shows up and fights people for his own amusement. He sides with the Decepticons and then the Autobots for little more than self-serving intersts in terms of who can get him what he wants. He never shows a real bond with anyone and his personality never evoles past "look how cool I am. I'm so edgy you might cut yourself on me!" and then he dies in a meaningless sacrifice and is forgotten just as quickly.

And none of it matters. At all. His only purposes is to show up and sell his toy, which he does a bad job of doing because he sucks so much. And everything about him screams "a bunch of people in the writers' room made a really bad attempt at crafting a character they thought would replicate Sixshot's cool aura, but they botched it so bad that it would almost make a good satire of that character type if you weren't convinced they were playing it absolutely dead-on straight the whole way.

There is nothing redeeming about Sixknight. He was a crap character that barely showed up, barely made an impact, died a pointless death, never felt like a real character, and could've been excised from this entire series without changing a single thing about how it all unfolded. He is, without a doubt, my pick for the worst Transformer character I can recall watching in a Transformers series so far. Will he hold onto that crown once I get through all the later series? Time will tell. But for now he's looking pretty secure in his spot.


2) Ginrai the glory-hog -or- the marginalization of everyone else.

Transformers is at its best as an ensemble show. Whether it's because they have a lot of toys to sell of different characters or simply because there is a collection of different personalities that work better as a group or a rotating set of temporary leads instead of one character carrying the load. Whatever the reason, even though an Optimus Prime or Bumblebee type tends to take something of the lead, the better shows are built around a wider cast where everyone gets their moments.

But Masterforce isn't like those other shows. It put all its eggs in the basket of a single character: Ginrai.

I'm not going to spend this section bagging on the fact that Ginrai looks like Optimus or any of the stuff around that. The closest I'll come is acknowledging that the fact that he did look like Optimus and was based on the Powermaster Optimus toy, which was likely one of the centerpieces of the line at that time, is probably as good an excuse as any for why he was the central character of the series. But this is not about the meta-reasoning for his placement in the cast. Instead it's for the issues that it caused.

From the moment he shows up, Ginrai suddenly becomes the singular driving force on the Autobot side. Every story ends up revolving around him. Every mission requires him to be at the forefront. As the new Godmasters are recruited he ends up more important since he is essentially the "prime" Godmaster (pun definitely intended). And when the Autobots' current level of power proves insufficient to beat the new soldiers that the Decepticons roll out through the series, it's Ginrai that always gets the power-ups to make him bigger, badder, and better so he can combat those dangerous adversaries himself.

It gets so Ginrai-centric that he's even made leader of the Autobots early in the show. This is troublesome for two major reasons: First, it's so obvious that this is a bad idea that Ginrai himself argues he's not suited for command. But he gets overruled as the Pretenders congratulate themselves for putting a valiant and super-cool human in charge of of the troops and all the Headmaster Juniors swoon over how neat and heroic Ginrai is now that he's also in charge. And second, Ginrai has been a Transformer for all of maybe a couple weeks at this point in the story and he displaces Hawk as leader when Hawk had been in charge of the faction for literally thousands of years. And who's seen a ton of combat against the Decepticons.

It's basically like if instead of dying in battle and getting replaced by "chosen one" Rodimus Prime, if Optimus had decided during the mid 80s portion of G1 in season 2 that he was just going to retire so he could kick back in the Ark and drink Energon all day and put Spike in charge. Only instead of the character acting rationally and recognizing how stupid that would be, everyone was crazy or drunk or malicious and cheered him on.

This all combines to have the absolutely awful effect of putting Ginrai at the center of everything that happens. There's almost no problem that doesn't get solved by him. No fight that doesn't get won by him. No instance where he isn't the one driving the plot forward and giving the Autobots orders to carry out. Nothing happens in this series without passing Ginrai first. And that means that by series end, basically nobody else matters. The Headmaster Jrs become glorified cheerleaders, the Pretenders are so irrelevant that they barely even show up at all except for Hawk, who's just there to demonstrate how weak his gang is in comparison to super special awesome God Ginrai. Even the other godmasters get big splashy important introductions and then are almost entirely relegated to being foot soldiers in Ginrai's army with no other importance than to deal with low-level Decepticons and get out of the way while he does the big work.

So by series end, all I'm left to do is wonder why I should even care about the other characters? They're window dressing and props for Ginrai to use in order to further his blatant shilling to the audience. Every opportunity to do something cool with someone else ends badly as they have their glory stolen by Ginrai for no other reason than "he's the hero and he has to be the one do do ALL the heroic things".

This is made worse by the fact that for little to no explained reason Ginrai goes from being a staunchly 'selfish' character who is only concerned about his own safety and freedom to being the biggest drum-banger for the Autobot cause and the need to do big, flashy, heroic things to save everyone else who can't save themselves. To the point that he even gets angry when it's suggested that he can't do something on his own or that other characters should put their lives on the line instead of him.

He's not quite to Chromedome levels of self-absorbed hero-complex dickery, but he makes a good hard run at it. Though at least Chromedome had the restraint of being part of the Headmasters hierarchy with Fortress in charge instead of being handed the reins at the soonest possible juncture upon joining the Autobots.


3) The disappointing payoffs of intriguing characters (Clouder/Devil Z) -or- bad long term planning in general

I gave Masterforce a ton of praise above for having more characters that I could actually care about instead of a faceless raft of nobodies who exist to be generically good or evil.

The downside to that is while Masterforce gives us these intriguing characters, it still has some Headmasters running through it in so far as it ends up failing to do anything particularly useful with many of them.

While I could go on about most of the Autobot Godmasters or the Pretenders, I do want to specifically focus on who I believe are the two biggest wasted opportunities in the series: Clouder and Devil Z.

Devil Z offers intrigue and mystery as the shadowy leader of the Decepticons in this series about whom we know nothing except that he spends the first portion of the series pulling strings from behind the scenes like a puppetmaster and works towards some shadowy extra secret agenda that he never really tells anyone else about. It's built up slowly through the early portions of the series, with him appearing without speaking for a while, then issuing simple orders for a while and not really spilling his whole plan most of the time. It all looks pretty good.

And then he body-jacks BlackZarak and it all goes to hell. His plan is pretty much revealed to be "kill everyone and take over" in the most straightforward way (and increasingly straightforward ways as the arc progresses and his earlier steps keep getting stopped) and all the mystique he built up vanishes as he becomes a bland, forgettable "LOOK AT HOW EVIL I AM!!" villain who stops just short of growing a handlebar mustache to twirl and drinking a goblet of brandy that he clutches with a claw-like hand. It's disappointing how quickly everything evaporates in our faces and is forgotten about and there's no payoff to any of the teasing and building that was done for most of the series.

Meanwhile Clouder is a late-comer to the party, the last Godmaster to arrive on the scene and debuting with about 10 episodes to go before the finale. And he sets up a really potentially interesting angle: by virtue of his unique master bracelets and transtector he is able to appear as both an Autobot and Decepticon. So first he picks his side, choosing the Decepticons because he thinks they'll give him the freedom to do what he wants and because they're cooler. And we're all set for him to be a double-agent, infiltrating the Autobots at Devil Z and Overlord's behest and undermining them from within while feeding secrets and classified data out to give the 'cons a tactical advantage. This could be a great thing to set in place and get a dramatic reveal close to the end where it shakes the Autobots to the core and forces them to adapt.

But instead they blow his cover within 1 episode of his debut. All the foundation they lay goes nowhere because they simply can't be patient enough to get the most out of the angle. He's discovered, captured, gets left for dead, and switches sides all in the span of two episodes and then when you think he might prove useful now as a turncoat on the Autobot side with inner knowledge of the Decepticons, he's not only redundant since Cancer is there too, but he also is mostly ushered out of the way of the plot and does nothing of value for the rest of the series.

These two are representative of an ongoing problem for the show: While it has a story that is consistently built through the whole series on a macro level, smaller individual plot threads never seem to get as much drama or intrigue as they could've if they were handled more deftly. Instead everything is shunted aside so that we can get MORE GINRAI. Because that's what everyone wants. Devil Z and Clouder are the mos prominent examples, but it's not something that's exclusive to them.




4) STILL pulling new powers out of characters' asses to solve every problem.

I complained a lot in Headmasters that whenever the gang was presented with a new problem to solve, they just made up a new power unique to their Headmaster physiology that let them work around it or, worse yet, changed the rules on an existing power to allow them to do whatever the situation called for.

Masterforce continues that tradition with the special fun new caveat of Chokon power, which is basically super space magic. The incredibly malleable nature of Chokon powers (or Devil powers) makes it a little less egregious than Headmasters just naming boring regular attacks "Master ____" and letting it beat everyone, but it's still frustrating.

Ginrai in particular is guilty of this as he displays a ton of random abilities as the series progresses. He uses his chokon abilities in a variety of different ways, gets a pair of upgrade super modes, graduates to a big super finisher in the form of his "Fire Guts" attack, uses that Fire Guts attack at least 2 or 3 times where it behaves radically differently each time, and then by the end of the series has to pull out a "Super Final Fire Guts" attack from nowhere to finish off Devil Z. Special super attacks and finishing moves and unique powers work best when they're consistent and allow the audience to set expectations. Have a character with a power that is established and then when he gets into trouble the audience can go "oh yeah, he's able to get out of it with X" or "that's right, she can do Y, so it makes sense here". Make the Fire Guts attack Ginrai's trump card and then when he uses it you know the fight is over. Except for the time where you want the shock value in which case you can have the baddie shrug it off like nothing and Ginrai now has to scramble to come up with something else to beat this strong foe. And from there you create a path to him having to discover an even stronger attack to replace it and win the day. But none of this happens. The Fire Guts attack never fails to work and then when Ginrai pulls out the extra special super duper mega ultra final version to beat Devil Z there's no indication that he needs to in order to motivate its discovery. It just is treated like "well, this is the final boss so he'd better have something new and unique for it" and it feels weak.

The advantage of the Transformers in G1 was that you had a wide cast of characters with different powers and that allowed writers to craft stories that would cater to a particular cast member because they had a power that would solve the issue of the day. Or in a show like Beast Wars with a more economical cast you got problems outside the scope of the characters' abilities, so it required creative thinking or outside-the-box plans to make things work from an in-universe perspective. But there's none of that here because every time the Autobots or Decepticons look like they're in danger, someone snaps their fingers and has a brand new ability that perfectly fits the situation and doesn't 'earn' the win for their faction. And it's treated like the most normal and mundane thing in the world for this to happen again and again and again.



5) The necessity of secondary material (the Manga, fan club pamphlets, non-canon OVA clip shows, etc)

I'm not a published writer or anything. I don't even have amateur fanfiction out there floating around to my credit. But I have written more than enough content to know one thing that holds true of a lot of writers: when your creations are your babies, it can be hard to cut material out of them. Every word and concept and is viewed as important and an achievement and figuring out what can be removed in order to streamline or even improve a story. I've read more than enough works that meander and drag on forever which make it obvious that the author just couldn't bear to part with anything that they wrote (hi there, Headmasters!).

But I bring this up because Masterforce seems to have had the opposite problem. It had an idea and a full plot that described all the various aspects of the show and then for some reason it set about slashing and burning big swaths of plot until we were left with the show we got, full of holes and mysteries big enough to drive a big Ginrai-shaped truck and trailer through.

But what makes this almost worse? The fact that the writers chose to save some of that cut material by putting it into all sorts of secondary sources. You want to know about the history of Devil Z? What little there is gets told in a 7-minute recap clip-show thing that was part of a post-series OVA release. You want to know why Ginrai looks like Optimus Prime? It's covered (briefly) in the manga. You want to know the history of BlackZarak and how he relates to Scorponok from Headmasters? Well I hope you were part of Japan's Transformers fanclub in the 80s to be able to receive the special fanclub material that included that information.

It's inexcusable to force fans to resort to additional material to learn about vital aspects of the show. I don't mind if secondary sources give additional details that add context or provide fanservice or whatever, but it should never be that the main show suffers for not having material that you have to get elsewhere. Especially when you're a viewer outside of Japan that wouldn't have had access to the manga until recently and hasn't had access to those clip shows or fanclub material. A story should be crafted to be self-contained. You should NEVER need to know anything else to enjoy what you're presented. The Audience should never be left to feel like they missed something when they watched every episode, or that teases or hinted explanations for aspects of the show don't go anywhere and become wasted time. I'm not saying that every mystery needs and answer, but there should at least be a defensible reason within the scope of the show that the answer isn't necessary. Devil Z's history with the Godmasters and the Decepticons and everything that happens is a vital and important thing that teh show teases and refers to on multiple occasions. But they never properly do anything with it in the show and instead seem to expect that you should get your answers elsewhere. That's insulting, lazy, baffling, and amateurish all at the same time. And it speaks to the kind of attention and care paid in the writers' room of this show that would allow some of the other issues to pass. Because while G1 may not have been known for its intricate plotting or rigorous standard of craftsmanship, at least it has the excuse of being a mercenary show created by a variety of freelance or satellite writers. Not a set of like 2-5 people all constantly working together for 2 whole shows by this point and who are attempting to craft an explicitly serialized storyline. Those are the sorts of structural elements that should make it EASIER to avoid these pitfalls.


6*) The Transformers show that largely wasn't.

Look at that, I lied and put a 6th point on the "Stuff this series didn't handle well" side of the ledger. But it's only fair. After all, in essence this whole series lied to us about what it was. Namely it called itself a Transformers series but also did its level best to give us a focus that was as devoid of actual Transformers-centric characters as much as it could. Look at the major cast.

By the end of the series, the most significant Autobots are Ginrai, the other 3 Godmasters that aren't Clouder, and the Headmaster Jrs. All of them, to the very last, are human. The only major Cybertronians are Grand Maximus, who is a tertiary character at best, Sixknight, who's awful and is worse than tertiary (quarternary? Yes, I looked it up and that is the next word in that sequence of primary, secondary, tertiary, etc) in terms of his importance, and the Pretenders. But the Pretenders are so unimportant that they fail to show up for most of the last few episodes of the series when you'd think it should be all-hands-on-deck and Hawk, the former LEADER of the Autobots before the position is unceremoniously handed off to Ginrai, is reduced to basically beign a boring scout and showing up just so he can get smacked around and prove that they need Ginrai and the Godmasters to save the day after all.

On the Decepticon side the ONLY Decepticons who are full-blooded (full-Energoned?) robots are the Pretenders. And they're very quickly marginalized and reduced to flailing comedy goofball lackeys. Oh, and Browning I guess, but he's just a gag character anyway. Devil Z doesn't count since he's some sort of weird unknown energy being that the series never bothers to explain, and he hijacks BlackZarak well before the series begins and then bodyjacks him when it comes time to have the big gold lummox actually wade into the depths of combat. Everyone else, Giga/Mega, the Headmaster Jrs, and the Godmasters, are all humans granted Transformer powers.

What was the point of all this? To illustrate that in a show that is supposed to be about Transformers, its cast is like 80% human, 3% vague energy being, and 17% transformers who don't do much once the humans are there to carry the heaviest burden. (note: these percentages aren't accurate to anything. I just made them up) And that is perhaps the most insidious sin this show commits: between super chokon space magic, a cast full of humans, and the power-up, suit-on way that the action happens, this show is not a Transformers show. It's a Sentai show with a coat of Transformers paint slapped on it. The Autobots and Decepticons weren't fighting the Great War from Cybertron. They were fighting a glowy energy ball with designs on universal conquest while specifically only focusing on the fate of Earth. The Transformers were just a means to an end by bestowing their powers upon these humans to fuel their own specific conflict invented for the show itself.

That doesn't make it bad. The grades I gave should illustrate that I mostly enjoyed the series for what it provided. It was interesting and fun in places and had some cool characters. But I couldn't ever help but feel like the actual Transformers were secondary to everything. They didn't matter. The history didn't matter. The feeble amounts of canon welding they did to include Chromedome in a cameo, have a pair of characters who tie to Headmasters but never mention it explicitly except in the post-script infodump special (Grand and BlackZarak), the utter insanity of Ginrai looking like Optimus Prime with no explanation (again except for that infodump), and the general sense that this was not a world with any familiarity with the history of the Transformer war even though it apparently should've lived through like 35 years of it by the time this series starts all point to the fact that this show didn't seem to want to tether itself to anything that came before it unless it had to. And it makes me sometimes feel like if it doesn't care about the Transformers, and I as an audience member do care about the franchise, why should I care about this show as much as I might another very TF-centric work instead?

 

It's been longer than I intended, but I have part 1 of my look at the Masterforce manga with comments about the first 6 chapters.


The Masterforce manga is a lot longer than the Headmasters one in terms of chapters (12 vs 8), but it is actually roughly the same amount of pages. Interesting choice, and I'm wondering how it'll play out given how shallow and brief I felt a lot of the Headmasters chapters were.

-The opening chapter skips the first episode, starting with a retelling of episode 2 where the Decepticons attack Karin Island.

-Immediately I'm noticing a lot more attack-naming. Hawk's "shining arrow" attack is a carry-over from the anime, but Blood suddenly has a big sword-strike attack called "Bloody Moon" that I don't remember seeing ever before.

-Also new is a weird bit of backstory where it's established that in the millennia that the Pretenders lived on Earth, the Autobots became known in legends around the world as gods while the Decepticons with their fearsome animalistic pretender shell designs were identified as demons. It's kind of refreshing to acknowledge that they did actually live on the planet for thousands of years and had an impact on the world and not ignore that primitive people way back in history would've been freaked the hell out by giant monsters that turn into robots or guys that spontaneously manifest power armor.

-Ok, things are proceeding at a breakneck pace (to be expected given that they have to cover the whole series in 12 chapters) as chapter 2 picks up at episode 4: Birth of the Headmaster Jrs.

-So where did they introduce Minerva? in the first couple pages of the chapter. Literally she just shows up and says "Hello Shuta, Carb. I'm another ally of the Autobots!" Yes, Cab is called "Carb" in here. It's an odd translation as his Japanese name is キャブ or "Kiyabu" and doesn't have wiggle room to add an "r" sound. But that's less important than the fact that Minerva is just there with no introduction. The intro panel for her also gives her name with the subtitle "a beautiful European girl." giving us the first apparent confirmation that Monte Port is a European country. Not that we couldn't have surmised that from her being blonde with blue eyes, which is pretty much anime shorthand for "European-descendant white person"

-  in this version the HMjrs basically blackmail Hawk into letting them join the Autobots.

Kids: "Hawk, we want to help."
Hawk: "No, it's too dangerous. We can't just let children fight a war."
Kids: "Let us join or we'll tell everyone where your secret base is!"
Hawk: "You make a good point."

-We now get a bit of revised explanation for how becoming a Headmaster Jr works.

First Hawk refers to them as "The Masterforce, as if it's a team name and not the vague name for the power used.

Second, it apparently justifies using the kids because the "master suits" can only be used by people in a "rapid state of growth", aka children. Why this is true is not expanded upon (it seems that "this is the way it is because reasons" is going to be a common theme in this manga given the limitations of the space they have.

Still, they keep the explanation that these were built by Chromedome. And it actually makes more sense here because only a drunken idiot like Chromedome would be stupid and irresponsible enough to make super powerful battle suits filled with vague and ill-defined Transformers-y powers and also make them dependent on recruiting child soldiers to fight for the Autobot cause.

-Lander shows up in this chapter with no introduction or explanation. His first scene is admonishing Shuta and Cab for taking off in their transtector vehicles to go joyriding.

-When the HMjrs encounter their first fight with a Seacon (that manages to not spontaneously explode the moment it gets looked at), they transform for the first time and get subtitles giving them names

"Rescue Commander: Goshooter"
"Disaster Defence Warrior: Carb"
"Ambulance Nurse Warrior: Minerva"

That seems like it kinda undercuts Minerva a little bit, bluntly shoehorning her as a "nurse" even if they include "warrior" as a suffix.

-Chapter 3 passes mostly without incident, featuring the debut of the Decepticon HMjrs in much the same way that they appeared in the TV series.

-Chapter 4 debuts Giga and Mega, who are literally introduced as "Decepticon Father and Mother". This ties into Masumi Kaneda's odd explanation for the themes of this series, which he likened to the story of Adam and Eve for inexplicable reasons. The previous chapter ended with Blood giving a trumped up speech foreshadowing Giga and Mega's arrival and specifically referring to them as an Adam and Eve of Demons.

-Buster and Hydra are also now present, as is apparently Ginrai. None of them are given so much as an introduction the way that Cab was. This makes for a confusing story because the repeating of episode plots means that this isn't meant as gap-filler around anime episodes, but also that it relies on you having some level of familiarity with the characters and their introductions in the series otherwise you might be confused by the way things just jump ahead and suddenly there are new characters and scenarios in play.

-Giga and Mega speak about being Decepticons in a fashion that suggests they aren't human, which is weird.

-In a stunning small moment at the close of the chapter, Hawk is surprised by the arrival of Ginrai and he asks if the Godmaster is a "reincarnation of Optimus Prime, who had a chassis that shined like the sun and a burning heart of justice. Ginrai immediately brushes it off because it has nothing to do with him. It's a sharp reminder that Ginrai started the series as a selfish, flippant twerp and somehow became the gallant, selfless, messianic hero of justice that he was portrayed as by series end.

Chapter 5 shifts is way ahead to the birth of Super Ginrai. Apparently also multiple AUtobot Godmasters have joined the team in the interim, which is weird considering that Lightfoot and Ranger didn't join the team until the first couple episodes after Super Ginrai's debut. Also the breakdown of this chapter is pretty basic:

-There are new Godmasters, but they're all Autobots
-HOLY CRAP A BUNCH OF CLASSIC DECEPTICONS ARE BACK! GALVATRON! SOUNDWAVE! PREDAKING! DEVASTATOR WITH THE WRONG HEAD! MENASOR WITH WEIRD SHOULDER THINGS! BLITZWING! DIRGE! OR POSSIBLY RAMJET! IT'S HARD TO TELL IN BLACK & WHITE!
-King Poseidon is there too. But he's less shocking than all those old Decepticons.
-Hawk shows up with Ginrai's trailer.
-Ginrai transforms to super mode
-He debuts a new super attack "Chokon Guts!" almost immediately
-I guess the old decepticons were ghosts or something? They all vanish in a wave of energy with spooky faces in it. Also King Poseidon is almost scrapped immediately as well, leaving Turtler to escape on his own.
-Ginrai wins the day because he's the greatest hero ever.

That's it, They don't dwell on the ghostly old Decepticons, nor do they explain how they got there or what they are.

-Chapter 6 is up next. Apparently there's a giant memorial statue of Optimus Prime on Earth. No word on whether or not it's the same one that we were shown in Starscream's Brigade in G1 (you know, the one that was unveiled 20 years before Optimus actually died)

-This is important because in front of it Fortress steps down as commander of the Autobots and hands it over to Ginrai. That's right. The manga doesn't just posit that Ginrai is given command of Hawk's team of Earthbound Autobots. Nope, he debuted 2 chapters ago and after just 2 witnessed battles and the fact that we very recently saw him being his original jerky self, the supreme commander of the ENTIRE FREAKING AUTOBOT ARMY just goes "well, here are the keys" and buggers off back to Planet Master.

-I say "Planet Master" because as it turns out that Fortress also turned over command of the Autobot base on Athenia to Chromedome. So Ginrai is the new supreme commander and Chromedome is like a lieutenant/adjutant commander. Good god, the Autobots are doomed.

-It's also reported that the Decpeticons have attacked Athenia and the Autobots are sent to help.

-The Autobots that go help include the "new recruit" Sixknight. Yep, Sixknight is just a standard Autobot here, not Poochietron.

-On Athenia (I guess?) the Autobots come face to face with the weirdest thing this manga has done: a team of Turtler, Brawl, Blast-Off, Cutthroat, Dead End, Lobclaw, and Tentakil all combine into the "Most Powerful Decepticon Combination: Scramble 7"

-I have to ask because of this: Were the G1 Seacons a Scramble City style combiner? Or did they have unique engineering the way Devastator did?

-Super Ginrai manages to defeat Scramble 7 in one shot. So it was all for nothing. So much for all those classic characters getting something interesting to do. After all, we're not here to sell their toys.

-As the Decpeticons retreat they promise that they have more in store for the Autobots. We then get a 2-page splash that info-dumps on us a bunch of concepts including:

-the presence of Devil Z as the Decepticon leader

-BlackZarak, who is described as merely "resembling" Headmasters leader Zarak/Scorponok

-Giga and Mega's combined form of Overlord

-The already hinted at Godbomber Project, which blatantly shows us Godbomber as a robot and explains that he'll combine with Ginrai.

-This also leads me to a realization: The Autobots, all the Autobots, went off into space to fight the Decepticons in this episode. Even though the TV series made it seem as if Godbomber was necessary for Ginrai to leave the atmosphere and he was the only one capable of traveling into space. So.... the hell?

This leads us to the next chapter: Godginrai's Amazing Divine Combination!

What a guy! *Swoon*

TO BE CONTINUED...



I'll be back in a bit with part 2.

 

Yes, but with a twist! Every Seacon except Snaptrap could transform into either a leg, arm, or gun. That's why there are six of them, one to be the gun and the others to be the limbs.

 

Yeah, I knew that they had the extra bot and could become a gun. I just wasn't sure if they used the same setup as the rest of the scramble city style bots with the limb bots all having tiny heads and being able to plug into any scramble city torso bot. So at least Scramble 7 is potentially toy accurate like Wingwolf mode or Overlord's Space Jet or BlackZarak's toy-destroying hydra mode. Cool.

I've got 2 and a half chapters left to read for the second part of the manga review. It will be posted tonight.

 

THE MASTERFORCE MANGA RECAP WILL CONTINUE.... RIGHT NOW!

Chapter 7 starts with the debut of Overlord in a fight with Super Ginrai. No build-up, no explanation. They're just fighting.

-And also Godbomber is complete and in robot mode with the HMjrs riding inside his chest. At least he does appear to be a drone and not a sentient transformer.

-Ginrai transforms into God Ginrai to continue the fight in space. Except this time, unlike in the show, the Headmasters remain in the chestplate formed by Godbomber. This was something that only happened in the finale of the series during the TV run.

-In order to defeat Overlord, God Ginrai (or Godginrai as the manga renders it) unleashes his most fantastic attack yet: Great Chokon Power Screw Bomber Escape. Yes, that's the name. That whole thing. And no, I'm not doing it as a parody, that's legitimately it.

-It also turns out that this is him defeating both Overlord and Blackzarak who it turns out was there the whole time.

-As Ginrai defeats both Decepticons, a bunch of Autobot reinforcements show up: Grand Maximus, and the 4 Headmasters (Chromedome, Hardhead, Brainstorm, and Highbrow). They do nothing and are just there to fawn over Ginrai, who is called "The human of the future and the hero of love and trust." Yes, seriously.

-And that was the end of Chapter 7. Because Chapter 8 starts up on the next page with.... Shuta and Cab captured by the Decepticons and being tortured by Blood while Mega watches? Wow, that's a new one.

-Apparently they were captured with the intent of being recruited into the Decepticons.

-Minerva gets to do something useful! She rides the vehicle-mode Godbomber into the Decepticon base, crashing through a wall and hopping out to free Shuta and Cab (or Carb. I keep forgetting to adjust his name.) that's almost more than she ever got to do in the anime.

-To prepare for their final assault, Ginrai recombines with Bomber and then hops onto the Grand Maximus in ship mode, riding it like a mount as he did in the show.

-But this time, it comes with a helpful narrator box that states that Ginrai is so skilled at riding Grand Maximus like this "because he was once very skilled at surfing and skateboarding." So not only is he the greatest Autobot ever and the hero of love and trust, he's also a totally radical dude right up there with all the best icons of the 80s like Michelangelo or Denver the Last Dinosaur. And I'll bet you never thought you'd see a reference to the latter in a Transformers discussion in 2020  

-In the end Shuta and Ca(r)b recover from their injuries and reflect on the offer to join the Decepticons' "family" by saying they have a family of their own where Minerva is the mom and Ginrai is the dad. This is even though Minerva is only a year or two older than them and like 6 years younger than Ginrai. It also means they're pairing up the adult Ginrai with the very much still-a-minor Minerva. Unsettling.

-It's time for Chapter 9 and that means that we're just introducing Clouder right out of the gate. Up to and including his full slate of powers and potential double-agent status.

-Except he's not used as a double agent. Instead he's on the Decepticon side right away, supporting Overlord and his fancy new giant gun. Somehow the Decepticons are stationed on Mt. Everest and are able to "rain destruction" across the globe, attacking America, England, Japan, and Russia simultaneously.

-Mid-battle Clouder gets frustrated by the disrespect the other Decepticons are showing him and he promptly defects. It's even more blunt and rushed than the way his arc was handled in the show.

-Anyway, he blows up Overlord's super gun and becomes an Autobot and then we switch to space to actually show something useful that the show never addressed: Scorponok (the small bot. The one that was seen for most of Headmasters and became the head of MegaZarak) hooked into the body of BlackZarak and under Devil Zs command.

-Chapter 11 is all about Cancer leaving the Decepticons in an extremely compressed fashion. It starts with Giga and Mega finding a note from Cancer stating that he's left and then transitioning right into their attack on China.

-What happened to Chapter 10? It was basically filler. Nothing exciting or important happened. It was just Overlord vs Ginrai in a short and bland battle that did nothing. So I pretty much decided not to cover it.

-What also makes this odd is that there hasn't been any of the Cancer/Minerva backstory or interaction in this manga. So there's no reason for Cancer to be drawn to the Autobots in a way like what motivated things for him in the TV version of the story. Instead he simply has had enough of the Decepticons and bails.

-He also appears to not like Browning, as the diminutive bot tries to talk to him about leaving the Decepticons and Cancer tells him to shut up.

-BlackZarak arrives in China and takes Cancer hostage to prevent the Autobots from attacking him. But he's interrupted by Overlord. This is interesting because for one of the first times ever, it seems as if it's Mega in charge of the combined bot as she gets angry at Zarak for using Cancer in that fashion. That's a neat touch.

-For the first time ever Grand shows up and gets involved in the fight in his standard "Grand" mode (both the headmaster mini bot/pretender mode and his combined larger mode that's the equivalent of Fortress/Cerebros). That's also fun.

-The chapter ends with the Autobots victorious but Cancer has apparently gone back to the Decepticons with Mega and promises not to run away again. That's a significant change from how things unfolded in the TV series.

-The final chapter begins abruptly with BlackZarak in the middle of a fight with both Ginrai and Overlord for some reason. It also reveals right out of the gate that Buster and Hydra are now robots (to which Overlord brands them as traitors to the Decepticon cause) and that Devil Z has merged with BlackZarak. This merger is apparently the reason for the new Hydra Mode transformation, and Devil Z intimates that if he gathers enough chokon energy he'll be able to "Grow a 3rd head" for some reason.

-For a final chapter this one doesn't feel terrible extra important as it rockets through the fight. The Pretenders and Godmasters back up Ginrai and together all of them use a combined Masterforce/Chokon energy attack called the Great Chokon Perfect Transformation Attack to blast BlackZarak/Devil Z and destroy it. There's no lead-up to this and it comes out of nowhere across the span of a couple pages. But on the upside, at least it's not just Ginrai doing it all himself.

-This then causes the same thing that happened in the show where the Master Bracelets vanish off everyone's wrists and all the transtectors gain sentience and become their own bots.

-So what happened to Overlord in all this? Devil Z didn't Roboticize him the way he did in the show. Instead Overlord just agrees to help Ginrai beat Devil Z and then when the transtectors separate from their masters after Devil Z's defeat, we get some backstory taht says that the godmaster/Headmaster jr bond was because of Devil Z's machinations. So with him dead the bonds broke down and the transtectors returned to their default state as their own beings. This matters because apparently Giga and Mega were a married couple who drowned at sea. Their bodies were found by Devil Z and he reanimated them to serve as his heralds. With Devil Z gone, what was keeping them alive was gone too and so they simply died.

-the now fully robot Overlord and Ginrai then agree that they have to settle their Autobot/Decepticon conflict again in space and vow to pick the battle up again soon. Before that they bid farewell to the humans.

-Godbomber also speaks! He's apparently gained sentience somehow because chokon magic separation power masterforce voodoo.

-Having said their goodbyes, the bots all leave and the humans cheer them as all the Decepticon Headmaster Jrs are now standing with the Autobots even though they never had a defection moment.

-In the background the Decepticon Pretenders sneak away from the battle saying they're going to "Work on turning human tomorrow". Buster and Hydra had already fled the battle earlier before Devil Z was killed.

-And that's it.


So what of this manga on the whole? It's kind of a mess like Headmasters was. It's not a full companion to the series because it repeats events, but it's not a replacement or re-telling because it also tells those events differently.

It has the advantage that it tells some backstory elements that were skipped in the TV version (BlackZarak's backstory, Devil Z's history, the origins of Giga and Mega) and offers other characters more to do (previous series characters show up, Grand Maximus gets to fight more). It also has the advantage of letting other characters into the fights a little more so that it's not just Ginrai doing everything on his own. But it's hard to recommend as a read on its own because the limited space it has makes it hard to follow along as it condenses the plot into such a small space that it loses a lot of its pacing and continuity and becomes too confusing to follow without an understanding of the plot in its broader form. The other biggest issue is that the secondary characters are even more marginalized than they were in the show. The Pretenders besides Hawk are almost non-existent, and the non-Ginrai Godmasters do pretty much nothing on their own and only serve as support troops.

In the end I'm glad I have the manga volumes and they're an interesting read at least from an art standpoint, but they aren't great stories on their own because of how much they both overlap with and differentiate from the TV series stories at the same time.

Volume 3, which features Victory, Zone, and BattleStars and wraps up the TF Manga series isn't due out until late this year, so I won't be able to read it in lockstep with watching Victory, but I'll try to come back to it when I do finally get the book.

 

I should note that the manga review was the last of my planned wrap-up content for Masterforce. I expect/hope to start watching Victory next week and should have its thread up over the weekend. I just need to adjust my assorted graphics (thread header, sig, etc) and I don't have the files on this computer at the moment.

 

It's been a fun trip through this one, Liege. Unlike Headmasters and Masterforce, where I know something of the series, Victory? Pretty much nothing except some characters.