TRANSFORMERS: THE MANGA VOL. 1, PART 1

"FIGHT! SUPER ROBOT LIFE-FORM TRANSFORMERS"
Story by Masumi Kaneda | Art by Ban Magami

The Transformers manga was serialized in Japan's TV Magazine around the time the original series debuted. Ostensibly, at least from the start, it exists in the same continuity as the TV show, though it was clearly produced with a Japan-centric mindset, unlike the cartoon, which -- while inspired by Japanese toys -- was conceived, written and produced in the United States, with only the animation outsourced to overseas companies, including Japan's own Toei studio.

It's a little jarring at first, I'll admit. From the manga's start, the Autobots hang out almost exclusively in Japan. It's established that the Decepticons have a strong interest in conquering Japan for its energy resources, so the Autobots regularly patrol the country. It makes sense though, when you stop to think about it. After all, this manga was produced for kids as a tie-in to a cartoon series they were watching on TV. The cartoon was set basically entirely in the United States, so the manga creators likely wanted to give their young readers something a little more familiar.

I will say, though, that the series is "Japanese-centric" in more ways than simply the setting. There are a number of anime/manga tropes on display here that never showed up in the cartoon. In the first chapter, the Autobots befriend a young boy named Kenji. Somehow, this lad is a tactical genius, making suggestions to the Autobots on how to defeat their enemies, to the point that Optimus Prime names Kenji an "honorary Autobot" and provides him with a special helmet he can use to contact the Autobots the next time the Decepticons make trouble in Japan.

And do they ever! Subsequent chapters see the Decepticons returning to Japan again and again, but each time they're thwarted by the Autobots, with Kenji usually leading the charge. And the way the Autobots fight here is straight out of your favorite adolescent anime shows. Every time they transform, they yell "Transform!" (which I believe was something written into the Japanese-localized dub of the cartoon as well, but which was never in the original American scripts). They yell out colorful attack names when they fight. Bumblebee jump-kicking Soundwave while screaming, "Bumble-Kick!" is about as Japanese as it gets, though all the off-road Autobots standing on each others shoulder while shouting, "Four-Wheel Drive Corps Scrambuster!" is right up there, too.

The series also tries to bridge a gap of sorts between the 1985 and '86 product years. 1986 saw the premire of TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE, set twenty years after the TV show's second season ended. As such, a few chapters in the manga depict the Autobots building Metroplex, the Autobot City (a.k.a. "Scramble City" in Japan), while the Decepticons construct their own city-robot, Trypticon. The Autobots reveal that they've built secret bases all over the world, with an underground tunnel system connecting all of them. All of this is done in anticipation of the arrival of Autobot City Commander Ultra Magnus, who arrives in the manga's fourth (of eight) chapters.

Indeed, it's easy to imagine all of these eight chapters take place during that twenty-year gap. From the very beginning, the Autobots and Decepticons both have their full '85 character lineups including combiners such as the Stunticons and Aerialbots, who debuted near the very end of TRANSFORMERS season 2, so none of this takes place during the show's first season, or even during most of its second. I don't know that it was the intention of writer Masumi Kaneda, but slotting this material in between seasons 2 and 3 lets it all make a lot more sense. Like, the Decepticons decided to conquer Japan at some point after 1985, leading the Autobots to set up a formal presence there, as well as all over the world.

In fact the combiner teams get big spotlights in about five of the eight chapters, with Superion, Defensor, Menasor, and Bruticus factoring into all of the action. The stories also go out of their way to spotlight the "scramble power" of those combiners. I've always found it odd that this feature was apparently a major selling point in Japan, but was never mentioned in any U.S. advertising, cartoons, etc., so far as I can recall. The idea is that the Protectobots, Aerialbots, Combaticons, and Stunticons all have limb components that can swap around, both from place to place on their combined forms, and even from combiner to combiner.

Certainly this was easy to figure out as a kid -- all four teams (plus most of the combiners that came after them) used identical connectors. So you very easily could attach First Aid to Defensor as a leg rather than an arm, or attach him to Superion in place of an Aerialbot -- or even to Bruticus or Menasor if you wished -- but I just don't remember this being any sort of a seeling point, or even an advertised feature. (It's notable that another -- so far as I can recall -- feature unadvertised here in the U.S. was that all the "scramble city" combiner limbs could also be joined to Metroplex, which I never tumbled to as a child and only learned on Transformers websites many years later.)

Anyway, now I'm getting carried away. This first section of the manga ends with a bizarre story where the Decepticons "reformat" a dog with great energy power, and then Powerglide rescues the dog from the Decepticons. The dog then sacrifices its life (!) to supercharge Powerglide so he and the rest of the minibots can defeat Bruticus. It's... well, it's really, really weird.

And that's it for the pre-movie era of Transformers manga. The stories are weird. Sometimes cute, almost always juvenile (as to be expected for their target audience), but nonetheless an interesting piece of Genration One history. Next week, we'll take a look at the second half of the book, covering the post-movie (a.k.a. TRANSFORMERS 2010 in Japan) period.