Transformers "Beast Wars": The Spark

[Ghilz]

She does quite a bit in the rest of the first season but yeah she never gets an episode that examines her character. Still better than the manga in which her character can be summed up as "is in love with Tigatron".

"Does quite a bit" is overselling it. Her biggest episodes in season one are "The Trigger" where she gets shot and spends most of the episode riding Tigatron (who still gets more screentime than her), and "Call of the Wild" where she gets to storm the Predacon Base solo while the preds are away.

Otherwise she's mostly... just there.

Yeah didn't the Japanese dub team turn her into the Robin to Tigatron's Batman and had to kept that up even after their relationship developed into a romantic one in the original English until they got to the episode Airazor and Tigatron die in and finally gave up and admitted they'd accidentally made the first gay transformer couple.

You're also missing the part where this forced them, in the official Beast Wars Magazine, to write a very special letter to explain to the kids what homosexuality is, because kids kept mailing them in confusion at the sudden change in personality.

Question: "If Tigatron and Airazor are both boys, how come they were flirting when the Aliens abducted them?"

Answer: "Even among humans there are boys who both love (like) each other. In the case of Tigatron and Airazor, they had been fighting together for a long time and as their emotions increased, their friendship turned to feelings of love. 'Transform', indeed!"

[CareerKnight]

Yeah didn't the Japanese dub team turn her into the Robin to Tigatron's Batman and had to kept that up even after their relationship developed into a romantic one in the original English until they got to the episode Airazor and Tigatron die in and finally gave up and admitted they'd accidentally made the first gay transformer couple.

For some reason (no idea why) Japan only dubbed the first season initially and only came back to season 2 and 3 later. Honestly making her male was probably one of the random changes that caused them the least amount of problems later. Wonder how they handled Megatron considering they turned him from a calculating chessmaster into a sniveling coward, him winning a lot of the time would have made that awkward.

[Wargriffin]

Well it makes sense when you consider that the guy in charge of the translation was famous for his Gag dubs

Basically He'd ignore the source materiel for of the cuff humor and satire

[Megabob452]

If I remember correctly from the Transformers wiki, the only time that dub respected the source material was with Dinobot's death.

[Dînadan]

Well it makes sense when you consider that the guy in charge of the translation was famous for his Gag dubs

Basically He'd ignore the source materiel for of the cuff humor and satire

Yeah according to the TFWiki every character was given a verbal tick they'd constantly repeat (along the lines of if Homer Simpson said "D'oh" after each sentence from the sounds of it) and there were running gags like Rattrap commenting on what the viewers were eating. Sounds totally surreal compared to the original English O.o

[Ghilz]

Basically goes to show that horrible import jobs work both ways. Back in the day there were Japanese fans annoyed they couldn't watch the show as it was made (Remember, pre-streaming and torrenting internet).

For some reason (no idea why) Japan only dubbed the first season initially and only came back to season 2 and 3 later. Honestly making her male was probably one of the random changes that caused them the least amount of problems later. Wonder how they handled Megatron considering they turned him from a calculating chessmaster into a sniveling coward, him winning a lot of the time would have made that awkward.

What's funny is Japan has sequels to Beast Wars (Not just Beast Machine!) called Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo. And the former at least take place some time BEFORE Season 2, coz Optimus Primal shows up a few time in his pre-transmetal form.

Then they imported season 2 and 3 as "Beast Wars Metals" so try to make sense of that continuity clusterfuck.

[Wargriffin]

Ah yes...

Galvatron and Magmatron


... The Manga on the otherhand left no room for doubt on Air Razor's gender and the fatc all the Male Maximals not named Rhinox were suffering a massive case of Cyber blue Balls
http://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/8/8 ... anga01.jpg

[Rocketboy1313]

To comment on the female characters being introduced in the form of Aracnia and Air Razor I feel like I should point people to the modern comics for some real in depth stuff on robot civilization.

As strange as this may sound the topic of gender identity, sexual interactions, and long term romantic relationships are touched on in the more modern IDW comics. Transformers do have life long friendships that can be given a legal status akin to marriage but they aren't really sexual and gender signifying characteristics are mostly treated as cosmetic.

Chris Sims, a comics blogger on Comics Alliance did a 20 part weekly series on the Transformers called "The Transformed Man" where he (as a totally new to the franchise geek) explored the two major titles he got as part of a big Humble Bundle. He ended up loving the whole series.

(Edit: Here is the link to the blog, http://comicsalliance.com/idw-transform ... mus-prime/)

If you guys like the idea of exploring Transformer society and metaphysics (that shit gets odd) and the history of the characters (like the origins of the terms "Autobot" and "Decepticon") you might want to read a couple of his blogs or just take the recommendation and jump into the comics.

[Beastro]

btw, I was just at the wrong age when Beast Wars came out. Too old to watch the show but too young to watch out of nostalgia

How old exactly?

I ask cus I was around 12 then, and given my knack back int he day for stumbling across series on their opening episode, followed despite fitting into the bracket. I missed the 80s cartoon and it never came back on at a decent hour for me to watch it on more than rare occasions (I preferred to use my weekends to sleep in, so Saturday morning cartoons were treat I relished on the off chances I wasn't dead tired to get up then), but I played with my Gen2 Transformers and picked up a lot of my cousins Gen1s (only one he wouldn't part with was Optimus, in the end most of the ones I had lasted longer than old Prime did), plus from hearsay I got to know just enough about the series for it to gain mythological status.

Given that I was really sucked into Beasties (as they called it up here in Canada) from the get go and was lucky enough to have that happen with a series that had as much awe-filled respect for the canon as I had (I pity any kid today that has that feeling only to be given Bay's cr@P).

As for the episode itself, I didn't like it retroactively because the series had spoiled me with being so serialized, and I assumed that given what Rhinox did for Airazor and what they're like at the end that we'd see something of a father daughter relationship happen where he was the closest one she was to, but instead the only real interrelationship business she had was hints with Tigertron that were rushed in their last epidsode and typical dialogue with Primal.

I often wonder if a semi-remake could be doable, preserving the old dialogue and adding some new stuff in (IIRC, none of the VAs have died AFAIK) along with some new episodes to give a lot of stuff more time to be worked on, Airazor and a lot that went on in seasons 2 and 3 with some new CGI to round it out.

[Ghilz]

To comment on the female characters being introduced in the form of Aracnia and Air Razor I feel like I should point people to the modern comics for some real in depth stuff on robot civilization.

As strange as this may sound the topic of gender identity, sexual interactions, and long term romantic relationships are touched on in the more modern IDW comics. Transformers do have life long friendships that can be given a legal status akin to marriage but they aren't really sexual and gender signifying characteristics are mostly treated as cosmetic.

Chris Sims, a comics blogger on Comics Alliance did a 20 part weekly series on the Transformers called "The Transformed Man" where he (as a totally new to the franchise geek) explored the two major titles he got as part of a big Humble Bundle. He ended up loving the whole series.

(Edit: Here is the link to the blog, http://comicsalliance.com/idw-transform ... mus-prime/)

If you guys like the idea of exploring Transformer society and metaphysics (that shit gets odd) and the history of the characters (like the origins of the terms "Autobot" and "Decepticon") you might want to read a couple of his blogs or just take the recommendation and jump into the comics.

I love IDW but I am not sure I'd point to them as an "Exploration of gender identity, sexual interactions, and long term romantic relationships in a robot civilization".

To make a long story short: When IDW started their comic run, the idea was that Transformers had no gender- well, in theory it was the idea, in practice, they were all clearly male. They referred to themselves using male pronouns, acted for the most part like guys, and have body structures that are sterotypically masculine. Then Transformers Spotlight: Arcee was written. And it's awful. Long story short: Arcee is a robot who was tortured / mutilated by a decepticon mad scientist and turned into a female. This left a lot of people uncomfortable for a variety of reasons, such as the idea that male robots are "normal" but female robots somehow break suspension of disbelief and need explanation - "male" somehow being the universal default. Because after all, the comic NEVER has Jiaxus create a "male" robot to accompany his females. This backs the assertion that this genderless race never was genderless - they are all males.

Anyway, the comics (wisely) decided to drop that, retconning females as always having been part of the Cybertronian race - they are rare on Cybertron but exceedingly common on the colony worlds. They also wisely dropped the idea that females need a "reason" to exist while males do not.

The one fun thing that did come out of this, I'll concede, is the idea that Cybertronians are insanely progressive when it comes to romance since for them gender isn't an issue. One of the most popular comics features ano less than three major same-sex pairings / "marriage" (Cyclonus and Tailgate, Chromedome and Rewind, Nautica and Firestar).