Let's discuss the Japanese G1 Continuity, as in, which parts of it are worth watching.

I watched Car Robots (Which is technically G1 in Japan) and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I tried watching Headmasters and fifteen episodes in I realized it was awful.

So now I'm starting Masterforce, which does seem better.

How have other users enjoyed the Japanese G1 Continuity?

 

I don't like Headmasters, from what I saw of Masterforce was pretty good and I intend to finish that and Victory someday for real.

 

Headmasters is pretty dull but if you keep watching you'll realize the Decepticons are now anime ruthless. They're killing or brutalizing people with no regard and blowing up worlds without a care. While this is a step up they're led by an extremely dull leader and the Autobots are carrying on a season 1-3 mentality in comparison, except much more dull.

Masterforce is a great show, up until Ginrai is solidified into the team. After that the show no longer cares about the other Autobot characters anymore and the once powerful villians that appeared go through quick villian decay. The show is till good but it just isn't at the same level as it's late beginning and middle parts.

Victory is a decent show with lots of good characters. The main problem is that the Decepticons pose no real threat at all. They're comparable to RiD Predacons and Decepticons. You start rooting for the villians instead of the seemingly overpowered Autobots. They get so little done it's amazing when things finally start to go their way towards the end.

 

Masterforce is my favorite g1 cartoon, with victory being a close second, headmasters is super dull to me though....

 

I guess I'm the only one who liked Headmasters then. I haven't seen any of the others yet.

 

Headmasters is the closest to the original series, but it is dull.

Masterforce is much better, although I still say it seems like something that was originally intended as a reboot rather than a continuation, until they tacked on a short scene in one episode meant to connect MF to Headmasters. But everything else about the entire series screams that it is something completely separate and that this is an Earth where the Decepticons (or Cybertronians in general, really) have never revealed themselves before.

Victory is fun. It was a step down from Masterforce for me, though.

Zone is freaking awful. If you haven't watched it, don't. Do yourself a favor and skip it.

Car Robots is... I don't know. I have mixed feelings about it. I love the toys. I like some of the characters. But the animation is poor, and the first thing I think about any time I ever think about the show is that it's a series made up almost entirely of filler episodes. And I hate that feeling of always waiting through 5 episodes for something to happen that should have been over with 10 episodes already if they didn't keep dragging it out forever. On the other hand, I like it more now that the community has produced a good fansub for it.

 

I thought headmasters was pretty cool. Haven't seen any of the other Japanese g1 shows. Not yet anyway.

 

Overal not a big fan, but I did see them all.

One thing I really dislike with most Japanese TF cartoons is how the Decepticon leader does very little: he sits in his throne room, lets his XO make the attack plans, berates and belittles him when they fail, but the few times that he himself fights he fares little better. This happened in Masterforce (a bit), a lot more in Victory, BW 2, and RiD.


As for the indidual series

Headmasters: pretty okay. I liked especially the beginning which felt as a continuation of season 3. But after Rodimus & co leave, the series went downhil fast.
- Fortress must be the worst Autobot leader of all time: he just sits in his spaceship not doing anything, his troops constantly rebel against him, two planets are destroyed due to his lack of action, vital information falls into Decepticon hands because all he contemplates is if it's morally just to do this instead of coming up with a rescue plan (or just encrypt the information like they had been trying to break Decepticon encryption for several of the preceeding episodes).
- The series has too much that whole "the most recent addition are the bestest warriors evah" attitude: headmasters rule everybody else, horrorcons are even better, targetmasters are even better.


Masterforce: didn't like this one bit. Mostly because of all the mythical and supernatural elements, but also because it almost completely ignores all the previous series. Also, I found the human kid extremely annoying (imagine my frustration when he ended up a headmaster), and the Decepticon pretenders, dangerous in the beginning, are quickly for laughs. And the big bad...is just a mystical glowy ball which is actually a big powerful force -- reminded me a lot of the Gatchaman series (Battle of the Planets). And of course, al the human bad guys realise their mistake at the end.


Victory: definitely an improvement over Masterforce. Very good animation and the story was more grounded. Especially liked how, after Deszares finally decided to do something, the Autobots started to lose. Some characterisations were a bit weird, but overal I enjoyed this series enough.

 

I don't know why more people don't notice this.

It's a direct rip-off of Gatchaman, in fact.

 

I really enjoyed the Japanese series, and echo the sentiment that Masterforce was the best.

I liked Headmasters too, it had its share of epic moments and the in my opinion was a better continuation than Rebirth. The longer arcs and tighter continuity was refreshing as opposed to the more episodic G1 series.

I actually found Victory the dullest, it reverted back to a more episodic style but the characters were nowehere near as interesting, save for the Dinoforce. I found the Brainmasters pretty unlikable, Star Saber was bland and Dezarus... well I actually wanted the guy to catch a break and win once in a while.

 

Headmasters was pretty good to me and I prefer this over The Rebirth too. I liked how the stakes were higher and that the war was wider in scope with the fighting going across the universe. Through it is rather bland at times and a little too long.

Super God Masterforce is the best out of the old Japanese G1 trilogy. I always liken to think of it as a parallel universe akin to how Marvel Comics' have made so many parallel universes to their stories; like what if Optimus and Megatron never came to Earth and it was Metalhawk and Devil Z instead.
The show holds up fairly well until the second half, where there are a lot of inconsistencies in the story. Overall I still enjoy Masterforce a lot and find myself rewatching it regularly.

Victory I though was ultra boring IMHO, everyone kept hyping how great it was but I found it to be a very underwhelming series that wasted a lot of it's potential. The whole series is largely filler-ish and has the generic "let's stop the Destron's Energi stealing plans of the week!" setup almost every episode. When the story finally looks like it was going somewhere, like when they went to Planet Micro, it went back to being repetitive. I did like a lot of the Transformers character designs through, and how all the Brainmasters ended their names in "-er" (Star Saber, Blacker, Braver and Laster). Overall the show was only worth watching when Ginrai was around.

Zone was wacky, but I kinda liked it...

 

I'm actually not so big on Car Robots or RID. For some reason I just couldn't get into it.

Headmasters was bad, like, really bad. So bad that it's laughably bad. Though I did watch it on a stream with a group of people and I had to admit... I was a little sad to see it end when it did.

Masterforce was better in pretty much every way. It does it's own thing, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It also had tamagete.

I've gone back to watching Victory, and man it's boring... it has some good, fun, moments, but I tend to watch an episode, and forget everything that happened in it right after. The episodes are just so similar, and other than Hellbat and the Dinoforce, the characters lack some defining traits, (Kilbison had a good moment though...). I kind of lack the motivation to finish it...

I watched the first few episodes of BWII, and it wasn't too bad. I haven't watched them in years, but it's something.

 

Headmasters was bad, SGM was ok, but Victory was awesome in my view. I wish they had skipped the first two and had moved onto Victory.
Now Zone is terrible. *shivers*
It doesn't give any explanation to the creation of the Decepticon "generals" (brutes were generals? Come on! You don't have your legions led by brutes! That's suicide!) by the main bad guy, who looks a little like Unicron

 

It's interesting how there isn't a consensus about what people like. I liked Headmasters and Masterforce equally (although if I had to pick one to be the best, Masterforce would win). I really didn't care much for Victory. Zone was only a half hour, so it really wasn't that big a deal to me (other than the two stereotypically gay human characters). I've never seen either Car Robots or RID, so I can't comment on that.

One thing I will say: I greatly prefer the Japanese continuation series over The Rebirth. I realize that the Sunbow cartoon was just meant to sell toys, but The Rebirth just took that to a ridiculous extreme. It was literally just a three part commercial to try and sell as many toys as they could within a 90 minute period.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're right. The beginning of the series screams late 1980's, not post 2010 like Headmasters. Plus the fact that nobody seems to remember who the Transformers were even though they were only supposed to have been gone for a few years. Then later in the show they start to retcon stuff in like moon bases and space stations to make it appear that it was post-2010 all along, despite the 1980's technology we saw at the beginning of the series.

 

what little ive seen of beast wars 2(about 10 episodes ), i think its awesome (its in the gen 1 continuity so it counts in this thread  )

 

I've only seen the first episode of BWII, but those characters on the Moon were insanely annoying. Of course, I saw an English dub and not the original Japanese with subtitles, so that also multiplied the annoyance factor.

 

I don't see RiD as part of the g1 continuity. It's its own thing to me

 

RiD isn't. Car Robots, however, is in the Japanese G1 continuity.

 

Yeah but wasn't that a retcon itself like how TFA was a movieverse prequel?

 

It's a little bit better defined than the TFA retcon.

There's a bunch of surrounding manga and story pages that make it actually make some sense.