G.1 Transformers remake in the works?

[Raph's Girl]

From Frank Welker's blog:
http://www.mkbmemorial.com/FWHp/fwhp_Q-and-A.html

I am not really sure what's happening with the "Transformer" movie other than my talented friend Peter Cullen has been cast. Presently, I have not been offered any roles. They are doing a new series based on our old shows which neither Peter nor I were cast. I think Corey Burton is playing the new Megatron. He is a wonderful voice talent and a great guy, so it's nice to be replaced by folks you like at any rate.

[DrSpengler]

No, it's not a "remake" of G1 any more than Armada, Robots in Diguise and Beast Machines was.

The new show is being called Transformers: Heroes (working title, 99% likely to change).

The good news is...NO MORE OUTSOURCING!!!!!

The show will be written by AMERICANS for the first time since Beast Machines. Additionally, the cast will be comprised of AMERICANS and not Canadians, for the first time sine Robots in Disguise. Tara Strong and Tom Kenny have already been secured and I've heard that David Kaye has been signed on as Optimus (not Megatron).

All we know about the story is that it might possibly take place in Earth's future and is a reboot (not connected to the previous Unicron Trilogy). Optimus will supposedly by a lot younger than previous depictions and won't start out as the leader, but will gradually develope as one.

I've seen some commissioned artwork for the show and it looks kind of...bizarre. Still, very refreshing after 5 years of bland anime. I heard the animation team for the show might be Mook (who rock), but that's unconfirmed.

I'm really looking forward to the show. The shear fact that its NOT JAPANESE is enough to get me excited.

[ZariusTwo]

Yeha, the animation does look very different from previous series, some people have been labelling it "Higglytown Heroes", and I'm getting bored stiff of "prequel" series, but hey, it's a reboot, so it'll tell it's own thing without depending on anything.

[Time Mistress]

The good news is...NO MORE OUTSOURCING!!!!!

I'm really looking forward to the show. The shear fact that its NOT JAPANESE is enough to get me excited.

Me too! G1 and BW remain my favorite cartoons of all time (followed by TMNT of course.) It was interesting to see RID in 2000 since we'd never even seen a Japanese TF show before in the west. But the sad truth is we weren't missing much. I'm glad the storytelling ball is now back it the court of North America.

[DrSpengler]

I have this love-hate thing for RiD.

I watched the show all the way through in Japanese as Car Robots and pretty well loathed it. I had just gotten through with Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo (the Japanese exclusive Beast Wars shows) which were also pretty terrible (though Neo improved greatly toward the end).

I had no intentions of watching Robots in Disguise when it aired on Fox Kids but eventually broke down and checked it out. And ya know what? It's 100% more watchable in English.

I love what Saban did with the show; the same thing they do with Digimon. They insert a lot of extra, self-referential and self-aware gags into the dialogue and REALLY spice the show up. It still wasn't great; the story was as shallow as it was in Japan, but the voice acting and dialogue made it far more entertaining.

I still prefer RiD over the Unicron Trilogy.

[Time Mistress]

Love G1!
Love BW!
Mixed on BM - hated Saladtron, but it's better than most of the Japanese stuff
Liked Headmasters
Hated Masterforce
Haven't seen much Victory or Japanese Beast Wars
RID is okay, never got to see how it ended
Hated Armada
Liked how Energon started, hated how it ended
Liked Cybertron, at least it had a decent ending

But none of the Japanese TF shows can compare to the US/Canadian ones, imho.

I hopeful but cautious about the new movie. I'm not keen on a lot of the new character designs, but they did get Peter Cullen back for Optimus so that gurantees I'll see it at least once.

[DrSpengler]

The Japanese have a very different perception of what the Trasnformers should be than North Americans/Europeans do, and it can REALLY rub me the wrong way at times.

In the West, we market Trasnformers towards the 10 year olds to the early teens, and write our fiction accordingly. In Japan, Transformers is skewed for a much younger audience, the pre-10 year olds. As a result, their fiction is often remarkably more simplistic than our's.

It's also just the way they do things that can make their shows hard to stomach. Western action animation tends to go with having a nearly completely self-contained story in each episode, though events from the stories evetually lead into an over-encompassing arc that culminates in the finale.

The Japanese like to do their shows almost "soap opera" style, where each episode leads into the next and missing one can leave the viewer lost or confused.

We also tend to have a bit more fun with our fiction. Look at G1 and Beast Wars. The episodes tended to have some crazy plots, like the Trasnformers going to a planet of giant humanoids, Megatron using a machine that locked all the Autobots in their alt modes, things like that. The general plot was that Megatron or whoever wanted to steal energy...but he wanted to do it in an interesting way.

The Japanese don't really do that. It's just the bad guys attacking places, fighting and then running away. There's nothing...interesting about it, which is why so much of the Japanese fiction bores me to tears. The writers ae afraid to have fun or use their imaginations.

Then there's the typical "anime" way of doing things. Such as Sailor Moon-esque stock transformation sequences for every character which take forever and, when repeated in every single episode, grate heavily on the nerves. Hell, the English dub of Galaxy Force (Cybertron) had to interject dialogue into all the stock transformation sequences to keep them from boring kids to sleep (and even with the extra dialogue, they were STILL annoying).


That being said, I don't hate *every* Japanese show. I rather liked much of their G1 endeavors. Victory was particularly good, though I'm not sure how strong it will be when I rewatch it soon. Beast Wars Neo started out very poorly but got really really good when the Return of Unicron arc kicked in at the last third.


And on another tangent, the Japanese dub of Beast Wars is an absolute abomination and crime against nature. I want to find Shigeru Chiba and ram a stop sign down that ****er's throat.

[Aelia]

It seems to me that the Japanese have a lack of respect for Transformer's if most of the series' produced in Japan or the dubbed versions of the American-made series' are terrible. And if I may recommend, DrSpengler should stay away from the typical animes like Sailor Moon (Which disgusts me, I hate it's characters and it's stupid wands.) and start searching for anime like Cowboy Bebop (Overrated, yet still very awesome series. Short though.) and works by Katsuhiro Otomo (Specifically AKIRA) and Hayao Miyazaki (Specifically, most of them with the exception of My Neighbor Totoro and Howl's Moving Castle.) But I'm not supposed to be reccommending anime series that don't suck, I'm supposed to be talking about Transformers. I think it's pretty awesome that they're deciding to make a remake of G1 Transformers, but it's not safe to be assuming anything before the show even comes out.

[DrSpengler]

Oh, I've seen Cowboy Bebop, and regard it as one of my favorite TV shows of all time. :)

I'm a pretty fierce Transformer fan, and since I know Japanese, I've made it a point to seek out as much of the Japanese stuff as I can find. A lot of it is bad, but sometimes they hit a gem. I've been translating a lot of the hard-to-find manga and story pages. You can see my stuff here:

http://www.tfarchive.com/comics/japanese/

Well, some are better than others. Most of the G1 mangas are tough to sit through, but I highly recommend the G2 minicomics by Hidetsugu Yoshioka. Short but cool.


If I do have to give the Japanese credit, it's that I love the way they draw Transformers. It's not to say that I don't like artists such as Andrew Wildman, David Yaniger and Floro Dery, but the Japanese have a very good art style when it comes to the Transformers that I especially like.

Which is why I think the BEST way to do Transformers is to have Westerners write the stories and the Japanese draw them (ya know...like they did in the 80's). That way everyone wins.

[Aelia]

Sweet, mine too. And I completely agree with you on the art style and the writing, the one good thing I could say about the Transformer's series in Japan was that the Transformer's were pretty well-drawn (Can't say the same for the human characters though.) I'm trying to find Japanese lessons, but apparently I have to wait until I'm in college to do so, but good things come to those who wait.

[DrSpengler]

Sweet, mine too. And I completely agree with you on the art style and the writing, the one good thing I could say about the Transformer's series in Japan was that the Transformer's were pretty well-drawn (Can't say the same for the human characters though.) I'm trying to find Japanese lessons, but apparently I have to wait until I'm in college to do so, but good things come to those who wait.

You're better off waiting until college, anyway. I took a Japanese course my senior year of high school and the pace was geriatric. Everything I learned in that year we covered in the first two weeks of my first college Japanese course.


Back on topic, the Japanese have never been particularly kind to the Transformers, even back when they were dubbing the American G1 cartoon. They actually editted the episodes for length because they wanted to have a longer opening song. Because, you know, J-Pop is more important that pacing and story. And then there's that damn narrator...

You might want to check out this essay I threw together after I got my Pioneer box sets of Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers and Transformers 2010 (the American G1 series dubbed in Japanese):

http://www.tfarchive.com/creative/showentry.php?s=530

The things they did to the show could be pretty heinous. However, continuing my point, while their dub of the show let something to be desired, their coverart for the DVDs was fantastic. I scanned em in here:

http://www.tfarchive.com/cartoons/japanese/pioneercovers.php

I'm particularly fond of This One (http://www.tfarchive.com/cartoons/japanese/pioneer/DVDbox1d1.php) and would love an entire Transformers G1 series done in that style.