*OBVIOUS SPOILERS ARE OBVIOUS*

So I've been out of Transformers for a little while and, since I love the G1 era the most, I thought I'd get back into the franchise with the Japan-exclusive shows.

I just finished watching The Headmasters cartoon for the first time and... yikes, am I mixed.

Animation quality is inconsistent, stories can get repetetive, and plot conclusions are consistently underwhelming.

It also has a pretty severe case of "To Sell Toys" syndrome, which results in the utter disrespect and misuse of legacy G1 characters, particularly Galvatron and Arcee. They even kill off Optimus Prime again in the third episode. Really? Are you kidding me? He literally just came back in "Return of Optimus Prime"!

However, there were some great episodes in there as well as a few stand-out characters, with Chromedome and Sixshot in particular coming to mind. It also made Wheelie slightly more bearable, so that has to count for something.

I also appreciated some of the bold decisions, such as the destruction of Cybertron, even if they were only done to free the Japanese shows from the American continuity.

But what do you all think of The Headmasters cartoon? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

 

I really hated the show the first time I saw it. It was just dull, boring and a complete disappointment for me. It was like the TFP of the 80's, tons of potential dragged down by predictable storylines and extremely annoying characters (honestly, Chromedome is like 80's TFP Arcee, extremely irritating and never learning the lesson at the end of the episode).

The only characters who had it somewhat better were Sixshot, Doublecross and the Decepticon Headmasters. Honestly, Sixshot was like Airachnid (and TFA Waspinator) all over again (only difference is that Sixshot wasn't as generic as Airachnid was). In TFP, I already hated Arcee a whole lot, and the addition of Airachnid just made her even more unlikeable. As generic as she was, I honestly was hoping for Airachnid to massacrate Arcee in TFP. Kinda the same with Waspinator in TFA. Bumblebee was an incredibly irritating character all the way through the series that when Waspinator was created, I also wanted him to rip Bumblebee to pieces (though again, unlike Airachnid, Waspinator wasn't a generic character). Sixshot, same story. I really wanted him to end Chromedome's existence very badly.

So yeah, not really impressed with the show, and the fact that the Headmasters were the only ones allowed to save the day irked me even more, 'cause all of them are irritating jerks.

 

I watched it for the first time a few months back...and yikes, was it ever a mess. It had a lot of neat ideas and interesting character concepts, but by and large, it never really did anything with them. It didn't help that it focused on the Headmasters to the detriment of the rest of the cast, especially since the Headmasters were either boring (like Fortress Maximus) or really, REALLY annoying (like Chromedome). Also, Daniel and Wheelie are incredibly annoying (Wheelie's lack of rhyming is a relief, but he shows up WAY more in Headmasters than he did in Season 3 of G1) and were heavily overused. Arcee and Carly were totally useless and painfully embarrassing in this show, and Raiden, the train combiner, was sorely underutilized. The Decepticon cast felt like it was handled better than the Autobot cast was, in general, but they were still rather bland and generic on the whole. The plot also felt like it moved too quickly and too slowly simultaneously, and I was never really invested in what was happening.

Also, I really really really REALLY hate Headmasters Chromedome. I don't think I've ever disliked a fictional character more than him.

 

The Headmasters is such a shitty, boring show, but it makes me laugh because before it was readily available to American fans in the early internet days people thought it was awesome. Or rather, what they heard sounded awesome. Everyone who had, or pretend to have, watched it claimed the fight between Soundwave and Blaster was the coolest thing ever, because they fought to the death and smashed each other to pieces. But it in fact sucked and it was just one of those early bits of gossip that could yet to be quickly disproved and thus propagated for a while.

Bear in mind this was during the days where the sweary fansubs of the "superior" Japanese TV shows were sparse but well-known, and people thought that things were much more mature and awesome in Japan.

Actually, he didn't. Japan didn't get TF:TM or season 3 of G1 right away, so that was actually Optimus' first death for Japanese fans.

 

Second if you count Dark Awakening.

*looks around with embarrasment*

Sorry...

 

At least the Omni Productions dub was funny. Memorable quotes such as "Fortress Maximus has come himself!", "This is Unicorn! The Earth will soon be a part of me!", "His plan is terrible.", & "Something strange has happened! Now there are two Optimus Primes!". And let's not forget "Ninja Consultant" Sixshot.

 

No, they got Season 3 relatively on-time. They didn't get the movie for like 4 years or whatever (to the point that I think they were halfway through Victory before it was available there) but season 3 appears to have aired with about 2-4 months of lag between the western release of a given episode and the Japanese one.

They also did learn about Optimus' death from the movie via a recap that was published in TV Magazine to fill the story gap created by the season 3 time skip. There's also the recap from the original JP version of Headmasters Episode 1, though it's hilariously inaccurate and depicts Optimus fighting alongside a bunch of random Autobots outside the Ark and just randomly getting shot and killed in the chaos while everyone keeps on fighting like nothing happened (for a couple of seconds before the scene switches to Rodimus now being in charge)

It turns out that there is a rarely seen version of this recap that was dubbed by Omni and is available on Youtube (even though it seems to not be part of most of the bootleg DVDs that exist now and carry the Omni dub)

As for my thoughts on the series, I watched the whole thing from December last year into early 2020 and recapped every episode (and slowly descended into madness). Ultimately I somewhat generously averaged the grades I gave out for all the episodes to an extremely low C+ (it was technically a high "C" but I rounded it up because I was feeling kind). My general take is that while I respected the audacity they had to go for a whole bunch of big, potentially interesting departures from traditional TF (all the new characters, Cybertron being destroyed, Mars being destroyed, the villains' power struggle, etc) almost none of it paid off satisfactorily and the series was further hindered by the fact that most of the "exciting" new characters were one or more of: a) boring, flat, lifeless props, b) assholes, c) "comedic" idiots, or d) never talked about beyond their debut.

The writers also fail at basic story structure as the plot meanders through far more episodes than it needed, introduces new and important twists only when they're story necessary so that it always feels like a cheating ass-pull to go "remember this thing that we've never talked about before but is somehow vitally important to everything that's happening now?", and spends far too much of its time with the narrator telling us what's happening rather than actually showing it.

I do agree with Split Lip that I can recall all the hushed tones and reverence that the series got back in the day when it only existed as rumor and innuendo. I remember the people who swore that Blaster and Soundwave's fight was the coolest thing ever because it was so edgy and brutal. But the reality is that it's short, ridiculous, anti-climactic, and feels like nobody really cared about it. Ditto for Ultra Magnus' death, which is set up as this big dramatic thing but then he goes down like a punk and there's no real payoff from it except to make Chromedome mad for like the 3rd or 4th time in the series on account of Sixshot killing a friend of his. Because all that matters is Chromedome's burning need for justice.

Chromedome is the worst character.

Community TF Cartoon Rewatch Thread - Phase 2: The Headmasters

(I have other similar rewatches for G1 and Masterforce in my sig and am about to start the same for Victory in a couple of days)

 

Yeah, that's the thing about Headmasters....it SOUNDS awesome, but in practice, it's really not. The other two Japanese-exclusive shows are (from what I've seen) better. (I haven't watched Zone's one episode yet; Scramble City felt like a giant toy commercial even by the standards of a giant toy commercial show.)

Super-God Masterforce has a better plot than Headmasters, and also has much better character work, but also feels, as Liege Nemesis and many others have noted, like it really wanted to be something other than a Transformers show. If you watch it on its own merits, it's a pretty good show, but as a Transformers series, it feels really weird and slightly out-of-place.

Victory is a show that I personally really enjoyed (to the point where it became my second-or-third favorite Transformers series ever!), though I can see why it might not be everyone's cup of tea. It has great animation, a good plot, and decent character work, and, unlike Super-God Masterforce, it does actually feel like a Transformers show. That being said, it also has WAY too many clip shows and uses WAY too much stock footage. (Apparently they were running low on the budget by the time Victory came around.) Probably its biggest fault from a narrative standpoint is the fact that the Autobots, as a whole, are kind of generic. There are some good Autobot character (Blacker was a particular favorite of mine), but most of them are sort of just generically heroic, without many foibles.

 

  I love the Omni dub.
"Fortress Maximus prepare for yer death today yer gonna die."
"Will Scorponok return? Of course he will! We haven't seen the last of him, that's for sure."

Yes, he is. I almost never feel anything worse than apathy towards fictional characters (with the exception of characters like Dolores Umbridge, who was supposed to be hated), but I hate Headmasters Chromedome. Words cannot express the frustration I felt with him while watching the show.

 

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from with your critique, ESPECIALLY with that last point. It felt like the writers made some enemies weaker whenever they went up against the Headmasters. This is my biggest problem with how Galvatron was handled. Early on in the show, Galvatron knocks the wind out of Optimus with a blast from his Alt. Mode and later beats Rodimus in a one-on-one fight.

Then when he fights the Headmasters, he suddenly forgets how to fight, ends up getting crushed under a bunch of ice, and DIES. This happens, despite Galvatron surviving in point-blank range of the explosion that destroyed Cybertron.
...sweet Primus, Galvatron's death was awful.

^^THIS. This right here is most of my problems with the show summarized. Bravo.

Well, they weren't wrong. When you hear parts of the show summarized it does sound pretty damn cool. Of course, good ideas don't mean scrap if the execution is wonky.

I admit to quite liking the Blaster and Soundwave fight, though I would've much preferred if both just stayed dead afterwards. Twincast and Soundblaster did next to nothing. Besides, Punch / Counterpunch was the writer's Autobot spy of choice anyway.

I honestly think a flat 'C' is the perfect score for this show. Its not good, but isn't terrible either. Its just very mediocre. Like you said, a lack of payoff is certainly its most lacking aspect.

I agree, the death of Ultra Magnus was so damn stupid and disappointing, especially after how they set up his rivalry with Sixshot in the first episode. I don't think Magnus even tried attacking him even once during that entire fight!

 

Peak Chromedome being an awful character was when he was going to head off to face Sixshot in a duel to settle their longstanding feud (for which multiple character deaths only exist as motivation for Chromedome to be all righteously angry). Brainstorm (in the rarest instance of him actually doing something in this series) offers to go with him and be his second in the fight so he can have some support. Chromedome's response to this selfless bit of camaraderie (which is even more significant considering he's doing this without permission, giving the other Autobots every right to stop him)?

He screams "go to hell!" at Highbrow and slugs him. Seriously. This is a thing that happened:



And we're supposed to side with Chromedome because he's the hero.

All the deaths in Headmasters sucked.

 

Thanks!

 

"Something strange has happened! Now there are TWO Optimus Primes!"

And of course, the one, the only:

"Darn that Soundwave.... Eeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuaaaarrrrgh......."

Actually, the whole Blaster/Soudwave fight episode is a gold mine of hilariously awful Omni quotes. "Billy are you OK?" "Not really. Find the power pack!" *dies*

I also laugh that the voice actors who felt that the best way to convey the speaking voices of characters with mouthplates was to muffle their own voices as if they're talking through their hands.

 

Yeah... I'll admit, unlike everyone else here, I don't hate Chromedome. In fact, I kinda like him.
In a show filled with characters that are either planks of wood or offer just one character trait to work with, Chromedome's variety in personality and character traits help him to stand out amidst the boring cast. Some of his focused plots were the best in the series, such as the episode about his friend Jack, and his constant monologues about justice or courage or whatever were fun!... in a vintage anime sort of way.

This scene was slaggin' inexcusable however, and I get why everyone else doesn't like him lol

 

It was a benefit to Chromedome that he had a characterization to work with whereas most of the others didn't, but his character was awful. He was selfish, egotistical, arrogant, whiny, impulsive, and utterly convinced that everything he did was right and acceptable even when it would be demonstrably shown as not afterwards. And while that might be all well and good if the point was to show him growing from this sort of fiery, impetuous youth character into a more mature and balanced warrior, he never actually does grow that much. Even by the end he whinges that he doesn't get his big showdown with Sixshot and then the show ends.

Also his infatuation with and awkwardly hitting on Arcee was creepy.

"It's an honor to drive with a woman. And I even get to see her transform!"



Gross...

It actually became a running gag in the rewatch between me, @Swerve and @RKStrikerJK5 that everything about Chromedome could be explained if he was actually secretly constantly drunk. The mood swings, the quick temper, the vast over-estimation of his own abilities, the poor decision making, the lack of common sense, the inability to remember the lessons he's learned... The best way it all makes sense is that he spends the entire series hiding his drinking problem.

 

 
And then in Episode 4 of the Omni Dub, "The Resurrected Billy Against the Decepticons", this happens:
Narrator: Galvatron has reused some of Soundwave's parts, along with some other new parts, and has reconstructed another Soundwave, and has renamed him New Soundwave!

And this:
Daniel: Billy! Billy!
"Blaster" (Twincast): Don't you call me Billy anymore. I'm Blaster now!

Oh, and then there was "Spaceship Bruce" (Battleship Maximus), "Roadimus Prime" (both Hot Rod and Rodimus Prime), "Marshall" (Jazz), "Wally" (Blurr), and, of course, the mighty "Philip" (Meroplex).

 

Don't forget

"Uncle sixshot!"

"I want you to get together and kick them out of here!"

Man that dub was so much fun to watch.

 

You forgot Sparkle (Spike)  . At least that one halfway makes sense since I can see the translators botching the Japanese version of his name "Supaiku" into thinking it sounds like "sparkle". Sort of the same way I can see it for Jazz (based on his Japanese name of Meister). The others? Who knows where most of those came from.

I bought one of the 35th anniversary War For Cybertron Soundblaster figures on clearance sale a couple months ago. I don't call it anything but Newsoundwave (All one word)

the most underrated bit of Omni renaming is that the Matrix is called "The Power Pack" and Energon cubes are called "power packs."

 

I'm starting to think the Dub may very well be the best thing Headmasters has to offer...

 

It's actually the classic "it's so goddamn horrible it becomes hilariously legendary" type of thing. It doesn't improve the series and the acting is horrible, but you will always get a chuckle out of it.