Hold on a there, you get mad at us for swearing but you are ok with freely accusing us of taking drugs? I want you to apologize right now. I will not have anyone calling Jeremy or me a druggie.

-Andrew.

Fair enough...
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I will apologize for implying that you [two] may have used drugs. That was uncalled for, and I should not have done that. I am sorry.
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To this effect, I have rephrased my earlier comment(s) and/or removed the offending remarks.
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CollectionDX Staff

I think it's funny that one of the people you're accusing of this calls himself Ginrai and runs a site called Masterforce.

Didn't you know? Masterforce isn't really Transformers because it's about a bunch of stupid humans. MASTAAAFORCE!

-Andrew

Hello Jeremy and Andrew,

I'm a 1st time listener, 1st time blogger. Look, I've 95% agree with you guys about the Bay film. I on the other hand liked the effects and a few robot designs(Prime is my favorite design cause he looked like 'Prime', but the face was uncalled for. I hated Starscream b/c he looked like 'Beast Wars' Waspinator pretending to be Starscream. However I did like Blackout, but he lacks battle armor, Megatron? I--I don't want to talk about that......thing) . I thought Peter Cullen still got the touch after 25 years of brilliant voice work, but the rest was totally crappy and BS, and in my personal conscience it was an insult to the Japanese designers/artists like Shoji Kawarmori who made TFs a reality, and it just pains me that these American filmmakers didn't even bother to give their names out at the end credits. Yes sir, I am a fan of the TFs 80s and I still am, but my moral conscience comes first. b/c if you're going to make a typical hollywood movie based on a unique robot toy series w/ a unique Japanese history, at least have the decency to go to Japan and talk to Kawamori-sama and Shinji Aramaki their creative input about the so-called US movie, or at least honor their names the way J. Michael Stracynzski did for Alfred Bester when he made 'Babylon 5'. b/c without those Japanese mecha designers, Bay/Spielberg wouldn't know shit about making transforming robots themselves. Just like if it weren't for Alfred Bester (SF writer father of ESP stories) then there would be no Psi-Corps for B5. JMS knew that, why cant those Hollywood fat cats?

Speaking of Japan, this is my question to you Jeremy and Andrew. You guys seemed to know about what's going on in Japanese society. I have to know this b/c I'm curious. My question is how did the majority of Japanese audiences reacted to the Michael Bay version of 'TFs movie'? Did they loved it just like the Americans did? or had the common sense to find it as much of a disgrace like the U.S. Godzilla movie?

Please be honest with me, cause I have to know. If they could see thru Michael Bay's ego with honor and common sense, then I would know that Japan hasn't been effected by our demoralized, putrid stench of American pop culture.
Please don't get wrong about America, I do love my country, but I hate the media crap that I've been seeing. Can 21st century America get any worse?

Thank you

-Rodimus

Hey Rodimus,

Thanks for the feedback. Since Michael Bay's Transformers is not actually using the mecha designs created by Japanese designers but shitty American ones created by Hollywood types, they don't NEED to credit them. I would have been astonished if they did. The Transformers story was totally an American creation (the basics were created by an ad agency and then fleshed out by Jim Shooter, Bob Budiansky and others at Marvel for the comic book, which was kind of refined into the bible for the cartoon at Marvel Studios/Sunbow), so again, no real NEED on their part to credit Japan.

Also, Transformers does not open in Japan until August, so no word on how Japan feels about it yet.

P.S. It drove me nuts that Optimus' mouth was on the end of his chin, but that was a petty complaint so I didn't mention it in the podcast.

-Jeremy

Hey Jermey

I am honored that you've answered my feedback in such a short notice. A hundred thanks to you from the heart. About what you said to the TF Bible origin and so-on, yes...you are 80% correct about the TF playbook totally american, and I apologized for not bringing up Bob Budiansky, Jim Shooter, Larry DiTillo, and Simon Furman. The reason for saying 80% is because most of the concept designs for the US/UK comics and cartoon were developed by Floro Dery, an Asian illustrator from the Phillipines and one hell of an artist.

So the way I see it is that the TF mythos is actually developed by a layer of hardworking writers and artists from East to West. What remained of Diaclone still lives on with Japanese TFs with the Autobot Commander as 'Convoy' instead of Prime. Diaclone and Microman lives on through TFs. I'll always respect these guys from Marvel Comics for developing the Bots/Cons, but I'll always go back to the core that made it possible which is Shoji Kawamori and Shinji Aramaki and anybody else from Japan that I've left out.

Which is why it that it makes me feel guilty that I've bothered to watch this movie. I didn't pay a ticket to go see it, cause I've downloaded it but nevertheless, the guilt is still there because I've felt that I helped Bay and Spielberg(whom I've lost some respect) bushwacked Kawamori, Budiansky, Furman, Stan Bush, Frank Welker, Bob Forward, Larry DiTillo,Pat Lee, Peter Chung, and especially Floro Dery who was instrumental in fleshing out the creative visual force of Transformers: The Movie.

Honestly, I've felt sorry or Kawamori the most because he was the driving force of Diaclone...I mean he created Jetfire for God's sake, the most realistic, unique alien mechanoid ever designed in contemporary history. and Hollywood dismissed him like he didn't exist. If that's the case, those film moguls better stay the hell away from Anime...period!

I've felt like that I've betrayed these guys by watching this hypocritical American flismy-flopper.
Speaking of betrayal, I never forgave Hasbro or whoever was in charge of mishandling the G1 franchise for holding out on us by not distributing the lost 3 seasons of TFs which were shown in Japan after they axed the 4th season ending with 'Rebirth' trilogy. Japan got all the good stuff with God Ginrai, Metalhawk, and Star Saber, and Dia Atlas. While Hasbro's been covering-up this production by give us crappy Powermaster Prime and Action Masters and please don't get started with G2.

I've learned about this whole conspiracy when I was in college back in 1999. I was a fool into believeing that Corporate America like Hasbro has learned this lesson when they finally re-collaborated with Takara (now a part of Tomy) in developing Armada,Energon, and Cybertron, and the G1 reissues, but now with this TF:Animated, and the politically correct bullshit that has banned the G1 Megatron into US soil, my optimism of foreign relations has gone down into the bottomless pit of despair.

If the Japanese audience accepts this American Bay-Shit film this month just like those misguided Americans whom unanimously did....I think I'm gonna bash my head on the flatscreen and get brain seizures.

Jeremy, I must know....is it a box-office eclispe in the land of the 'Rising Sun'? Tell me the true and I promise....I really, really promise that I won't injure my head.

-Rodimus

TF opened at #1 in japan.

more proof people will go to see ANYTHING YOU TELL THEM TO. no matter how bad it is.

i bought a bootleg DVD last weekend for $3.

the designs of the robots are probably the *worst* i have ever seen on screen, no scratch that. *worst robot designs ever*. whenever there is more than 1 robot on screen you can't tell what's going on at all. just blur blur blur, jumble of kipple.

what a waste, glad i only spent $3 on this rather than waste anymore of my life at the theatre, and give Bay any more money.

the only good thing about this is:

everyone will forget all about this shitty film by next year, just like Independance Day.

Hey Rodimus, Kawamori was not the driving force on Diaclone by any means, only one of many artists working on the series for the years it was out, not to mention all the talented toy guys who actually made the designs workable toys. Also, Floro Dery was working with a talented team of assistants as well, and as far as I know, this was all taking place in LA in the 80's, so I'm guessing those guys were Americans too, not to mention the Japanese animators who were also involved in redesigning some of the season 1 characters. Dery and his team of assistants did do all the design work for the original movie, though, but none of this design work is in the Michael Bay movie.

There's no conspiracy of Hasbro keeping better stuff from American shores. In the cases of Headmasters, Masterforce, and Victory, they came AFTER America. The show was cancelled here because it lost popularity, not because Hasbro wanted to hide later seasons. Transformers was still popular in Japan so they made new stuff. The Headmasters and Powermaster lines were available in the US FIRST and were modified by Takara for the Japanese market, which is why you have toys like God Ginrai and Doubleclouder being superior to Powermaster Optimus Prime and Doubledealer. They were improved. This is entirely due to market conditions is not some "omg evil american corporation!" conspiracy.

Action Masters, like Micromasters, was an attempt to cash in newer toy lines that were popular in the US at the time to dubious success. When your gimmick (transforming) is no longer hot shit, toy companies frequently attempt to copy what is trendy at the time, and that almost never works.

G2 was mostly a matter of keeping their trademarks up to date and trying to make a few extra dollars as cheaply as possible, hence the recycled cartoon, recycled toys (both from the original American TF line, and the European/Japanese TF lines that kept going while the US one was cancelled), and you can certainly criticize it for being lazy, but obviously they felt it was not worth expending huge amounts of money on. I don't know why you are so up in arms about this considering that since Beast Wars, over ten years now, TF has been enduringly popular in the US and has had new toys and new cartoons every year for ten years. What more do you want?

Anyway, I am still not surprised the movie did not credit any of the Japanese designers or American writers of previous material, because they do not LEGALLY or for purposes of writer's guild abitration NEED to. The movie does NOT use the original designs at all, clearly, and only vaugely resembles the old story. Futhermore, Hasbro has always retained all rights and thus the movie is not REQUIRED to credit anyone except Hasbro.

Save your anger for Michael Bay's movie just being a pisspoor movie, because that is the real issue, not that it didn't credit people who weren't involved. If I were someone like Bob Budianksy or Simon Furman, I would be glad my name wasn't on this piece of crap.

-Jeremy

Thanks for the update, Big R. Let's see how long it STAYS at the top of the box office charts...

-Jeremy

Well... I was writing that as I was listening, on the go. Perhaps I should have double-checked before I posted it.
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But the other reason is that: I am a fan of transforming robots, but I am not a Transformers fan per se. So, I was trying to say that these two may be too close to what has been established before to appreciate what has been done here. (To prove my point, I'll ask what is Masterforce anyways?)
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But I can also understand their frustrations- [when] the Evangelion live-action movie is [finally] made, I want it to be as accurate with the originating anime as possible. If it isn't, be certain that I, too, would protest quite loudly. But, on the other hand, if the film is well made, perhaps I would not bash it quite as harshly as these two are "Transformers".
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CollectionDX Staff

Eva: So first you try to discredit our review by suggesting that we are not Transformers fans and therefore do not "get" the subculture and are incapable of appreciating the movie, and then you try to discredit our review by saying we are biased because we are fans? Make up your mind.


I thought we did an admirable job of shelving our nostalgia and rose tinted glasses and viewing both Michael Bay's Transformers movie and the 80's cartoon movie on their own merits. Just because it is a movie about something we like does not give it a free pass.


We "bashed" Transformers because it is a poor movie created by an incompetent director whose shoddy movies consistently make big money, to my consternation. His body of work shows him for the hack he is, and it's not my fault he made a bad movie. I do not care about "accuracy" to what came before, I just wanted a decent movie, which I did not get.


Did you hear us complain that the Allspark was previously described in Beast Wars as a mystical place where Transformers go when they die, like heaven or something, and not a magic size-changing box that turns soda machines into robots? Did you hear us complain that that Optimus didn't have a trailer? Did you hear us complain that Frenzy turned into a stereo, or that Soundwave wasn't in it, or that Jetfire wasn't in it?

No. We complained that it had a meandering, incoherent script, it was way too long, the music sucked, there were ton of extraneous characters and subplots, and the good effects were impossible to see because of the drunken cameraman.


The problem is not that it's a bad Transformers movie, the problem is that it's just a bad movie period. It's a loud, stupid, incoherent movie obsessed with action scenes, but you can't even tell what is happening in those action scenes. It's a big failure, no matter how much money it makes.


P.S. Transformer: Super God Masterforce is the second Japan-only Transformers anime series. While the previous series, Headmasters, largely emulated the style of season 3 of the American Transformers cartoon, Masterforce abandoned that in favor of pairing Transformers (that disguise themselves as humans) with humans (that control Transformer bodies through various means). It is a very anime concept.


-Jeremy

My nostalgia for Transformers dried up in high school. Haha. Also, every time I try to get back into Transformers the franchise convinces me to spend my money elsewhere. Especially the comics, where somehow stories about robots that turn into vehicles has been saddled with a retarded "mysticism" and "lol death god." The Spotlight comics are especially bad. I don't want to spend three bucks just to read ULTRA MAGNUS THE HARDBOILED COP who also turns into a car carrier. Seriously the next Spotlight is going to be about Grimlock and how it's hard for him to be a single parent in today's society.
-Andrew

Hey, don't knock that Ultra Magnus book too much - our banner artist, Robby Musso, did the art for that book!

Josh

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CollectionDX Admin

Unfortunately it is not uncommon for comic books to have a disparity between quality of writing and quality of art. Often you will find a well-written story with poor art or a poorly written story with amazing art. For some reason it seems difficult to find both in the same book.

-Jeremy

Oh, that's right... that's where we got Powermaster Optimus Prime (aka God Ginrai) from! Now I remember. I don't know much, but I remember that now!
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CollectionDX Staff