TRANSFORMERS: THE MANGA VOL 1, PART 2

"THE STORY OF THE SUPER ROBOT LIFE-FORMS: THE TRANSFORMERS"
"THE GREAT TRANSFORMERS WAR"
Story by Masumi Kaneda | Art by Ban Magami

And just like that, we move twenty-five years into the future, to the far-flung world of 2010. After the second season of the TRANSFORMERS animated series ended, TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE released in American cinemas, followed immediately by the cartoon's third season. The movie was set in 2005, and season 3 in 2006. In Japan, however, things went a little differently. For convoluted reasons, TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE didn't reach Japanese shores for a number of years, but they did import and localize the third season. However in Japan, the season was presented as, essentially, a new series titled TRANSFORMERS: 2010 -- and that's the continuity these next stories cover.

I'm not sure why the Japanese writers decided to bump the timeline up five years. I don't think it has anything to do with missing TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE. Maybe they just thought 2010 sounded cooler than 2006. Though it's notable that, at least according to these manga chapters, TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE (which did happen in the Japanese continuity even if they hadn't yet seen it), was still set in 2005. There's an explicit line by Rodimus Prime in one of these stories where he discusses Megaton vanishing during the "Unicron Wars" of five years ago.

It's actually an interesting moment in the manga, as the Autobots speculate on what actually happened to Megatron. Some think he died. Some think Galvaton is Megatron in disguise. I don't believe the cartoon -- or at least the original American version -- goes into this at all. It's pretty much accepted by all characters that Galvatron is Megaton, the end. To the point that when Optimus Prime eventually returns in the season 3 finale, he talks about Galvatron and Megatron as if they're the exact same person, even despite Galvatron's clear personality differences.

I've long found it interesting just how much the Japanese creators and audience seem to love the 1986 characters. Where kids here in the U.S. cried and their parents wrote angry letters to Hasbro about the death of Optimus Prime, the Japanese seemed to revel in it. As noted above, Prime was resurrected in the final episodes of TRANSFORMERS season 3. When Japan produced its own "fourth season" called HEADMASTERS, Optimus was promptly killed off again in the second episode, replaced once more by Rodimus Prime. Further, I noticed years ago when I started paying attention to Japanese exclusive Transformers collectibles, that while Optimus Prime was indeed popular, you rarely saw secondary Autobots from the first and second seasons represented as little figurines or what-have-you. Aside from Bumblebee and perhaps Jazz and Ironhide, those characters were often ignored in favor of 1986ers such as Hot Rod/Rodimus, Arceee, Kup, etc.

Mind you, I have nothing against the 1986 cast. I like a lot of them in a vacuum. It's simply that I vastly prefer the '84 group, followed by the '85ers. As with G.I. Joe, I find that the Generation One brand offers diminishing returns as it goes along. Give me the original eighteen Autobots (plus the Dinobots and Skyfire/Jetfire) and the original ten Decepticons (plus Reflector, the Constructicons, the Insecticons, and Shockwave), and I need nothing more -- just as I need no more than the 1982, '83, and '84 G.I. Joe characters to be a happy fan there. And especially as relates to the Transformers, 1986 is practically its own separate thing, which is probably in part why the Japanese rebranded it with the above-mentioned "2010" appelation.

Anyway, I digress! These stories remain simplistic and juvenile all the way through. And I'm not saying that as a bad thing; again -- this stuff was created for young children. The stories are mostly entertaining and almost always beautifully drawn; they're just really short and fluffy at the same time. And they come across as advertisements far more strongly than even the worst animated product-placement episodes you can imagine. Chapter 3 is dedicated entirely to Metroplex and Trypticon reciting their play features to each other while they fight, while the final chapter features several pages of all the combiner teams announcing their names as they appear (though this chapter also features the Omnibots, an Autobot trio available, at least in the United States, only as mail-aways, who never appeared in the cartoon).

There's one chapter among these which, properly fleshed out, actually could've made for a really cool episode, though! In it, a Quintesson creates a robot called Gilthor, which has all the combined strengths of Optimus Prime and Megatron (and also has Prime's face), and sends it to do Galvatron's bidding -- until it is possessed by the ghost of Starscream, who turns it against Galvatron, forcing him to team up with Rodimus Prime to defeat Gilthor. Tell me that wouldn't have made for an amazing season 3 installment!

Following the five 2010 chapters, there's a 3-part finale called "The Great Transformers War". It's basically more of the same, though the final chapter serves as a bit of a bridge between 2010 and the next series, HEADMASTERS. It features the revived Optimus Prime leading the Autobots, establishes the new Autobot headquarters on planet Athenia as seen in the HEADMASTERS series, and introduces the Headmaster characters, as well as the "ninja Transformer" Sixshot.

Speaking of the artwork, I didn't touch on it at all last week, so I'll mention it here. Ban Magami is a very good artist! He handles the fight scenes with a ton of energy, and for the most part, he does a good job of drawing the characters in somewhat stylized and slightly more detailed versions of their Sunbow animation models. There are occasions, however, where it's clear he's just looking at the toys for reference. This was especially evident in the chapters we looked at last week, where Smokescreen was drawn with Prowl's toy head rather than his unique animation head, and Ultra Magnus was drawn to resemble his toy in places as well -- though that one is actually quite understandable, since Magnus wouldn't have had an animation model yet in 1985.

In these post-movie chapters, though, Magami sticks much closer to the animation models (including for Ultra Magnus). He still stylizes them, but it's not as overt as it was in some of the previous stuff. It should be noted (and indeed, has been noted many times here in past years) that I favor the Sunbow character designs over all other visual interpretations of the G1 Transformers, and so it probably goes without saying that I would've preferred if Magami had stuck to those designs religiously. But his work is close enough, with few egregious liberties taken, so I can't really complain.

The book contains, by the way, seventy-five pages of bonus artwork by Magami, from various issues of TV Magazine. It's really cool; apparently he drew little promotional ads for various episodes of the TRANSFORMERS series! It's kind of astounding to see that sort of publicity for a kids' cartoon in a mainstream magazine! While kids' shows certainly got ads and such in publications like TV Guide here in the U.S., they were typically via stock licensing images or sceenshots from the shows, rather than original episode-specific illustrations.

Next week we move along into the last chunk of this series for which I've seen the corresponding animation: 1987's TRANSFORMERS: HEADMASTERS.