Transformers - Takara

Customer Reviews:

I love both anime and transformers ... but this series does neither particularly well ............2008-02-09

I have so many average/positive reviews in my archives .... I decided to review something bad for a change ... lol ..
In the past I have reviewed Metrodome's releases of digitally remastered transformer episodes, which sort of deserve a bad review themselves.
But I couldn't give them bad reviews since the episodes themselves were decent enough ( well by 80s American cartoon show standards anyway ) even in the presence of sloppy digital remastering.

But now I can review a transformers series that is quite appaling in it's own right.

I saw these recently been broadcast on the anime central channel and decided to buy the box set, but not because it was any good.
It's because this series will give you a good laugh it's so bad at times, mainly because of the way the English dub has been handled.

First of all even though this series isn't that great ..... it's made much worse by the quality of the English dub on this disc.
As you'd expect the voice cast of the English version of the original transformers titles in the west, weren't involved.

Instead we have a bunch of voice actors who probably don't even number into the double digits and whose first language probably isn't English.
So we end up with the characters saying sentences that don't make sense, awful lines and have horrible grammar .... hehe ....
There are a lot of literal Japanese to English translations which sound hilarious and just general mistakes overall.

Not only that the odd few characters and terminology have been changed. Sometimes with humorous results.
You know something is wrong when a grown man goes by the name of Sparkle ...... or when a mighty robot who can transform into a military city / command center goes by the name of Phillip ..... lol ...

As for variety in voices .... well to tell the truth it sounds like only half a dozen people are providing the voices for a cast of over a hundred ..... I know that in most animated shows people double up on characters to save costs ..... but in most shows when actors play more than one character .... they at least make an effort to an effort for them to sound different from one another , to give the impression they are different characters speaking ..... in this dub it sounds like the same people talking in every scene even when characters are different ....

Plus it's funny to hear muffled voices too, because the it's cute to think the voice actors think they have to cover their mouths whenever speaking for a character with a mouth plate.... hehe ... unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any sign of voice alterations to make them sound mechanical either.
Plus the voice performances are pretty wooden , but then again it's not surprising considering English obviously isn't their first language.

There isn't too much of a plot to get excited about to tell the truth , but has the continuity and character focus you'd expect from your typical anime , unlike the format of original transformers show.
Although saying that, a lot of the things established in previous american transformers shows have pretty much been ignored due to certain stories being skipped in the Japanese release schedule.

Although this is the last transformers series that retain characters from the old cast, they won't be doing much.
Many things won't seem that right in this series to transformers veterans.

Alot of the show revolves around random fights which sort of get repetitive after a while , although there are a few good ones.A lot of the concepts for episodes are generally lame. ( But a lot of old transformers writing weren't exactly gold either )
Most of the old cast ( post-movie ) have been either been demoted to nameless cannon fodder , administration team , comic relief or a shadow of their former selves .... to make way for yet another new generation.

This will no doubt upset some fans , as they wanted to see old favourites in new adventures.

Following the tradition killing off characters ..... lol ..... A certain someone dies for the 3rd time in this show ..... you wonder if he gets sick of being revived ....

Also following the tradition of the movie it seems when characters die , the ones with the worst injuries are ones the only ones allowed to be revived .... lol .... yeah .. you're sometimes left wonder ..... why they are so selective with miracle revives ?

Also in common with the movie ... lots of good people die ... but the villians don't seem to suffer any losses .....

Another unwelcome addition are the childish and unfunny adventures of Danny and Wheelie .... which is somewhat strange ..... especially when considering the darker tone of this series.

In the end this show ends in the same way alot of long running anime tv series end ... which is pretty horrible ...... with all the random violence in this series .... you'd think you'd be treated to the mother of all battles in the final episode ..... wrong ....

It seems to be a common trend in many mainstream tv animes ( most of those that are geared towards merchandise anyway ) : the way to beat the last bad guy in the last episode ..... is to beat them in a care bears style fashion and for all the good characters to send the energy of their friendship to the lead character to empower him .... and this title doesn't even do that tired and cheesey cliche ending well .....

Anyway even though series is pretty awful ... the original transformers series weren't that great anyway .... although they were probably among the most bearable incarnations .... everything after the movie wasn't that good ......

are their any good points about this series ?
Well I guess the art is generally a lot better and more consistent than the original transformers series. ( The quality of transformers art of the older series varied from very good to very bad because of the range of studios sharing the workload of the episodes )

I guess there is more character focus and consistent cast regulars, which is more typical of anime than the old transformers series. And it has a lot more emotional/melodramatic moments than the original transformers shows. Although the English dub probably brings these points down even more.
Plus a lot of characters don't seem to acting like themselves in this series and a lot of writing off characters seem to be poorly handled .....

Also like many mediocre animated shows from Japan, the opening / intro is very nice and catchy .... probably even better than the original Transformers show. Unfortunately the opening credits of Headmaster is probably better than the entire show.

Anyway that's enough good points , I want to get onto more bad points , because there are that many .... hehe....

Also the whole head swapping gimmick of the series is pretty lame, not used very well and could have been expanded upon to make more interesting scenarios. Such as the strong character needs to swap heads with a smart character to solve a puzzle .... but even an obvious idea like this isn't even in the show.

The subs are questionable too ..... but then again both the Japanese and English versions of transformers use different terminology ...... so yeah , the subtitled version is probably better than the lousy English dub available in this DVD , but it's still far from perfect.

By far the worst crime is that there are a handle of episodes on this DVD that have the audio track " out of synch " with the video track ... meaning the sounds/voices don't match up with the actions/lips.
Ironically this is quite fitting since the dubbing itself is poor anyway , so it all becomes quite like the bad dubbing of kung fu flick at times, heh ....

But anyway bottom line , this is not only pretty bad as a transformers show and an anime show.
It's just pretty bad as an animated show in general. This is easily the weakest Tranformers series due to the awful writing. ( Even if it was dubbed into English by decent people, it wouldn't be that great )

Only buy this DVD if you want a good laugh at bad dubbing because it really does have comedic value, it's so bad. Also kids no sense of dubbing standards or recognising of bad writing will probably enjoy this too.

My twenty year old son loves it!.......2007-08-23

He's always quoting the hilarious dialogue. (And it's not just the translation, it's the delivery.)

Personally, I enjoyed the new live-action film, and can sit through an episode or two of this.

It does strike me a bit bizarre, and perhaps a less than subtle jeer at the John Wayne-era of American cinema, but I assume fans of the original Transformers will have a ball with this DVD set.

Bye bye "Rebirth".......2007-07-31

This is much better than "Rebirth" aka Season 4 of Transformers: Generation One.

I remember the headmasters in Rebirth being green alien people that had robot suits that transformed into robotic heads that sat on top of robot bodies. How stupid is that?

The Headmasters series erases all that happened in Rebirth and does it right. This time there are no green alien people. Instead, the headmasters are are small, human-sized robots that transform into heads that control larger robot bodies.

It's an interesting series. Not everyone will like it, but the old fans most likely will.

The English language track is absolutely awful. I wish they would've recorded a new one, but that will probably never happen. The Japanese track is just fine, though.

Dubbing actually isn't bad.......2007-04-22

For some reason, people love saying things originally from Japan have "bad dubbing", even when they don't. The ONLY real problem with the dubbing is that it's somewhat monotone, but no more monotone than the first series of 'godzilla' movies.

The dialogue itself (aside from a few character names)is pretty much word-for-word with the subtitles. Okay, in the earlier episodes, the dubbing was 'censored', such as changing "We'll send you on a one-way trip to Hell' being changed to "We'll blast you off the face of the Earth". But after that, words like "Hell" were kept unchanged.

Autobots! Decpticons! Battle Beasts!.......2006-04-11

What are you expecting from this box set? First off, understand that the DVDs are region-free. You can play them on any machines, but may not be able to properly view the videos if you screens are PAL. To bypass this you can watch them on your computers with the DVD drive. I tried mine on my American Xbox and it worked too, but there were occasional skips on my TV due to the frame rates of PAL being one more than NTSC, which is what's used in America. The subtitle for the episodes are redone, continuing the naming of characters from the G1 toy line and series. You also get commentary tracks, as well as the horrendous StarTV English-language dubs (please avoid this, unless you need a good... bad laugh!). Of course you get the Japanese language track as well. The series begins with Optimus Prime, Galvatron and Rodimus Prime, but eventually makes way for Fortress Maximus and Scorponok as the main characters. The series itself is a direct continuation of the American "G1" series (minus season 4) and the "2010" Japanese series. You even get a few episodes of the Beastformers, which were marketed in the U.S. as their own toy line, the Battle Beasts, after the elemental feature was added to them.

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