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REVIEW: Transformers: The Headmasters DVD




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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4352
Location: New York
PostPosted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 11:38 pm Reply with quote
What else can one really say but "The lost season of G1 Transfomers"? Transfans have pre-ordered and those indifferent to the Robots in Disguise will have to wait till Masterforce for the show to be truly different.
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sharkticon



Joined: 19 Jul 2011
Posts: 30
PostPosted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 11:56 pm Reply with quote
I'm just glad that the cover is featuring the motherfucking professional known as Sixshot. I believe he kills more named characters than any other cybertronian in Generation One. Time to teach Ultra Magnus what happens when you don't have time for that now!
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Wed Jul 20, 2011 1:19 am Reply with quote
sharkticon wrote:
I'm just glad that the cover is featuring the motherfucking professional known as Sixshot.


Might want to watch your mouth there.
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malvarez1



Joined: 17 Nov 2008
Posts: 1628
PostPosted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 11:09 am Reply with quote
I wish that Hasbro would air this on The Hub, but that seems like a lost dream...
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TopGunman



Joined: 21 Dec 2010
Posts: 498
PostPosted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 5:22 pm Reply with quote
In my personal opinion, as far as the ENTIRE G1 series goes, this is the best season after the first and The Rebirth never happened as I opt to go for the Japanese treatment. Why?

SEASON 1


Let's start at the beginning, We had the first season, it was a good series. Decent animation, room for improvement but the story was good, The writes knew where they wanted to go. The show had continuity, focused on specific characters, particularly Optimus Prime and Megatron, but others had some presence when required. It hardly felt like a toy commercial. If only the series wasn't rushed at times and if only they'd hurry up and correct the animation errors.

SEASON 2

Season 2 is where some bad things happened, the animation may have gotten better for the most part but the writing was, with some exceptions, not up to standard with that of season 1.

- Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court
- B.O.T
- Atlantis Arise
- Child's Play
- The God Gambit
- The Girl Who Loved Powerglide
- City Of Steel (Optimus Prime becomes a crocodile robot, give me a break)

I could go on but you get it. Had there been more episodes as good as

- Auto Berserk
- Traitor
- Dinobot Island
- Make Tracks

Those that mainly focused on what the whole thing is, or should be about...War and Energy! - But they didn't care, they just wanted to sell toys instead of making the best cartoon possible that can also sell toys.

While the animation was better for the most part, some of the episodes, particularly the American and Korean animated ones, were way off-model and were visually terrible. Not to mention the fact that it became an obvious toy commercial where a new character would appear and then they'd talk about his traits and personality for the first 5 minutes and you go 'Okay, we're supposed to buy him, we get it!!' Season 2 passes but loses points for those reasons.

SEASON 3

Season 3 was mostly bad in story and animation because they for some reason had to abandon anime visuals with typical dull 80's American visuals and off-model and off-colored characters (such as Rodimus's shoulders being colored completely magenta instead of having those 2 white openings, talk about lazy). Very few of the episodes were good but at that point it committed sepuku by making Galvatron incredibly annoying instead of the badass he was in the movie, Grimlock being nothing but a comic-relief character and child-like instead of brutish and stubborn

SEASON 4

Season 4, took the faults of everything from the previous seasons and were all condensed into a 3-parter, and taken to another level. Inconsistencies such as sizes, rushed storytelling, animation errors, and no logic even for a show about living robots where they need PEOPLE to operate their functions, that's a major downgrade - AKOM-animated and written by David Wise, nuff said

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I know I sound biased towards non-Japanese animation, but when looking at the original series, the AKOM-produced episodes were very sloppy and the character models were way off. Story-wise, even the more elegant Japanese style couldn't save some of the horrible writing. But this is where the Japanese continuation, The Headmasters starts getting a lot of things right...and a couple of things wrong.

The Headmasters

Because The Headmasters had the qualities that made the first season good. There was a story, there was continuity, it took itself seriously when it needed to be. Season 2, 3 and 4 where S2 just had to throw so many crappy episode stories. This one is self-explanatory, so go back and see why S1 is the best the reasons are practically the same. In addition, certain characters were presented better, Galvatron was badass and not a whiny retard as in S3, Sixshot is a badass warrior and Megazarak is one hell of a spoiler[leader], not to mention with the exception of Prowl, all the old characters who were not shown to have died in the movie but were excluded from S3 made appearances, Hound and Jazz had speaking roles. Lastly, the headmasters concept MADE MORE SENSE, them being small robots that turn into heads and connect to larger bodies that become cars or planes that they pilot or drive when disconnected.

As for the cons, there are 2 of them

- DANIEL and WHEELY - They are soooo annoying and seeing their faces in EVERY episode destroys the mood sometimes. Had he grew up just a little bit just for the sake of having a more mature voice, he wouldn't have been as annoying. Daniel hardly helps out and is what Nostalgia Critic would call a Dumbass In Distress, and I'd put Daniel 2nd after Bella and Before Princess Peach.

- Fillers - There weren't many but for what there was, they were poorly written ones, particularly, the Beastformers arc.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I prefer the 'cool side' of the Transformers franchise. I hate any forms of silliness that got into it...I'm looking at you TF Animated! - I'm just gonna leave it at that until a review of Super-God Masterforce is posted. I'll just say it is surprisingly an enjoyable series
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Jessica Hart



Joined: 12 Aug 2010
Posts: 219
PostPosted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 7:03 pm Reply with quote
TopGunman wrote:
I prefer the 'cool side' of the Transformers franchise. I hate any forms of silliness that got into it...I'm looking at you TF Animated! - I'm just gonna leave it at that until a review of Super-God Masterforce is posted. I'll just say it is surprisingly an enjoyable series


Yeah, Animated was really bad. I've never been a big Transformers fan.. the only series I really enjoyed were Micron Legend and the last two seasons of Beast Wars (the first season was extremely lame and pretty kiddy; almost Transformers Animated levels) G1 was an 80s American cartoon so it was entirely episode and had no real story so I never got into it. Couldn't even list all the other ones if I tried.
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Greg Aubry



Joined: 10 Feb 2006
Posts: 224
Location: Detroit, MI
PostPosted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 8:27 pm Reply with quote
I'll be picking this up.

The new show, Transformers Prime, is actually quite good. It does have annoying children, but a lot of the time they're fairly well-utilized and not completely over-the-top. The 3DCG is fairly solid as well.
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MaxSouth



Joined: 11 Oct 2008
Posts: 1363
PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 5:50 am Reply with quote
since Transformers is actually Japanese idea, i have nothing against anime-style projects for this franchise...
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Vicserr



Joined: 26 Apr 2004
Posts: 480
Location: Carolina, Puerto Rico USA
PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 7:19 am Reply with quote
For me it's cool to see the series where US and Japan TF continuities stray apart, with animation slightly better than Akom delivered since SSN 2 of G1, I hope Shout Factory delivers the rest of the Japanese series individualy,
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TopGunman



Joined: 21 Dec 2010
Posts: 498
PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 9:49 am Reply with quote
MaxSouth wrote:
since Transformers is actually Japanese idea, i have nothing against anime-style projects for this franchise...


I think that's the best way to go, but I wish for once they'd do a more serious series and make it action-packed in a style similar to that of let's say...Gundam SEED.

-------------------------------------------

Transformers Prime looks bad to me. The human characters are unbelievably corny as hell and the character designs on the humans looks like they used cheap CG. Flat faces with hardly any dimension. I think Bud, Lori and Coby are by far the best humans.

The robot designs are also hard to swallow, Prime is ultra skinny when he should be HUGE. They combined Bayformers with Animated, both of which were utter crap. They should have gone with the War for Cybertron look because the designs in that game were so cool.

Another problem I have with TF: Prime is that most of the characters are not original at all. They're newer versions of G1 which is really stupid to keep revisiting a series that wasn't all that great over and over again, with the exceptions of Prime and Megatron as they are the main guys, everyone else who isn't them is...expendable.

With Armada we had new guys completely. Some of them shared old names but they were completely different individuals nonetheless. The only re-imagined G1 character was Starscream, while Megatron is too different from his G1 counterpart to be considered an 'alternate Megatron' and Optimus Prime is pretty much the same guy only with a different design, that's all that remained the same.
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