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cleverthylacine · 7 months ago

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Japanese G1 continuity is absolutely not normal about girls but damned if they don't give us some of the best ones

There was a significant amount of Transformers continuity released between 1987 and around 2007 that was produced in Japanese and is really only known to most English-speaking fans through fansubs, dubs that were only released in Australia, and the like. Shows like Headmasters, Victory, and Zone. Manga like Victory and 15 Go Go Go Teletraan (which was really mostly Kiss Players). Radio shows like Kiss Players.

I'm gonna be super up front. Japanese G1 is not normal about femmes in any way, shape or form. At the same time, it gave us some of the BEST and most underused female characters in the Transformers universe.

Headmasters, which came out right after the US G1 show ended, is particularly egregious. In Headmasters, Arcee has been reduced to Fort Max's administrative assistant, uses ridiculously polite and subservient language, and is also the only medic. And being a medic would be kind of badass if they let her be as badass as Ratchet, you know? But they absolutely do not.

Also, in Headmasters, Carly (now married to Spike) allows her son--a freaking child, not even a teenager--to go on missions when Spike can't and a human is needed, because uh, for some reason it's better for a 12 year old boy to go, not an adult woman?

But most of the good femmes don't come from Headmasters. And some of the best femmes we have are from Japanese G1.

Super-God Masterforce made it up to us by giving gave us Minerva, a human girl who is a Headmaster with a robot body (transtector) making her basically a bad ass mecha pilot, and who actively does fight.

The Victory manga gives us Esmeral, Deathsaurus' incredibly classy wife, and Lyzack, Leozack's twin sister, who is in charge of defending the homefront but really does want to go out and fight. Illumina appears in both the Victory manga and the anime. She's a little human girl who has a crush on Jan Minakaze and is always trying to get people to choose nonviolence.

(Lyzack later appears in an English-language comic - the Wings Universe--wherein she's basically Deathsaurus' servant and Starscream hits on her. I don't like that.)

There are a number of great femmes who were only ever toys. The Cobalt Sentries set gave us Howlback, leader of the Decepticon military police (called the Cobalt Sentries). She is basically Ravage's twin sister but instead of being super stealthy she can turn your attacks right back on you.

(Later she appears in several English language comics and in at least one she is canonically trans. I'm not a fan of her depiction in the SG Recordicons Batman tribute arc, though.)

The Unite Warriors toyline - Takara's response to Combiner Wars, basically - gave us the combiner Megatronia, made up of Megaempress, and her four guards, Lunaclub (sometimes called Luna Clover or Luna Trefle), Flowspade, Moonheart, and Trickdiamond. They are incredibly awesome.

(IDW 2019 used Trickdiamond, but none of the others. Tricky was one of Swindle's contacts.)

Then there's the elephant in the room that everyone pretends isn't there...Kiss Players.

So, okay. There is nothing normal about Kiss Players whatsoever. On the other hand, I'd rather listen to KP than watch RID2015 which is just blatant copaganda from hell.

Kiss Players had an interesting plot involving little bits of Galvatron and Unicron getting into humans and creating the Kiss Players--humans who could give TFs a powerup by kissing them and then merging with their internals somehow. Then there are the Legions, the dick-tongued monsters that everyone who hasn't actually listend to the show or read the manga thinks are Megatron.

The dick-tongued monsters are gross. It is also gross that some of the Kiss Players are barely teenagers and definitely not adults and are constantly ending up in Situations.

But the plot centres around the apparent rise of Convoy, or Optimus, from the dead, and his transformation into a weird groomery dude, which many people don't understand there was an actual reason for, because it's not Optimus, it's someone else riding around in his body.

Melissa Faireborn is like if you chopped Marissa Faireborn's IQ in half, dyed her hair blond and threw out any pants or skirts that covered her knees. She is nothing like Marissa and I treat them as cousins, but Xiaoxiao Li is amazing and her real lover.

Anyhow, this female scientist (Dr Amaou) lost her mind over the loss of her daughter during the events of the 1986 movie et sequelae, and she's got to be stopped from turning Atari and her Autorooper robot pal into a permanent fusion to reincarnate her daughter Shizuku (whom for some reason I always want to call Setsuna instead).

It's a little confusing because most of the really good parts of the plot got jammed into a few episodes near the end of the season, although once you know what it is, it's clear that it's being set up. That artist just likes borderline lolicon way too much.

The second season of KP is very squeaky clean and sends the girls out to collect what they think are Allspark fragments, and they are very annoyed because Ravage, whom they call "black panther man" keeps getting in their way and fucking with them, only to later find out that the bots who gave them this task are Unicronian heralds and Ravage is trying to stop them from helping Unicron do what Unicron does.

Rosanna, everyone's favourite robot pop idol, comes from the second season of KP, although you don't see very much of her or her companions Glit and Sundor.

Incidentally KP sets up the Unicron Trilogy and some of its characters end up in the UT--which did come to the US, and gave us Alexis Thi Dang.

(This post is brought to you because I just wrote an Esmeral thing and someone was musing separately about Megaempress as a parent and I almost ended up writing this post while reblogging them, because I'm a nerd with a hyperfixation).

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