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Greetings All,

If like, me you may not seem too excited on the prospects of the upcoming Botbots, or Earthspark Transformers cartoons (not saying they are inherently bad, but they may just not be desirable to everyone). You may want to take a dive into anime history with a few shows that were influenced by (or in turn influenced) Transformers.

Of course I being a fan of the Mecha/Super Robot/Real robot genres could suggest literally dozens of shows. However there are a few that have soem direct ties to Transformers in some odd ways.

1. Special Armored Battalion Dorvack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_A ... on_Dorvack

I am especially excited to finally delve into this series as Discotek just announced last week that they will be releasing this series as SD on BRD later in 2022. Basically this was the show/toyline that the original Roadbuster & Whirl came from, and while they are piloted mecha in the series, it is nice to see their visage in animated form.

2. Machine Robo: Revenge of Cronos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_R ... _of_Cronos

Technically this may speak more to GoBots fans than Transformers, however I still think it is worth a watch now that Disctotek has also released it as SD on BRD as of last month (I'm personally about 2/3 of the way through the series). This series is unique however in that like Transformers, these are living robots, not piloted mecha. Their designs are all based on the Bandai Machine Robo toyline which Tonka imported as Gobots (and later Rock Lords), so you will see many familiar faces especially as the series goes on. Just know these are not "our" Go Bots. Characters like Faclcon Robo (Leader 1) are tertiary at best. Blue Jet (Fitor),and Drill (Screw Head) are part of the main cast along with the humanoid Rom Stol and his sister. Definitely a fun watch.

3. Brave Series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_series

The Brave series was created by Sunrise Animation, and the toys by Takara. They were designed as replacements for the ending Transformers series for the better part of the 1990's. IN all 8 series were produced (most independent without any overall connectivity) with a few OVA and Manga follow ups. Sadly to date the only official release on DVD in North America is the last series King of Braves GaoGaiGar. Whose DVD is long OOP from Media Blasters. However it, along with most of the other Brace Series can be found online with varying levels of fan sub translation.

The Brave series are fun in that you can definitely see the Transformers influence. Many animation designs are taken from past Transformers (for example the enemies of the first series Brave Exkaiser (The Geisters), are clearly heavy revamps of the original Dinobots, sadly never being realized in Toy form).

However some other Brave Series (Might Gaine, J-Decker etc...) had Transformers retools that did appear as toys. There is a long list that you can look up on other sites, too many to name. But if you have a keen eye, it is so fun to watch these series, and see perhaps one of your favorite Transformers characters show up completely redesigned . Lastly I should probably mention the fact that since Sunrise Animaiton was purchased by Bandai (a direct competitor of TakaraTomy), that means TT unfortunately no longer has the rights to reissue older versions of its Brae series toys, making them extremely expensive on the secondary market. Bandai has issued a few high end Brave series toys in Soul of Chogokin and other toylines, but again, very expensive.


Of course there are others, but these are the ones that are most directly connected to Transformers in one way or another. At the very least, I hope this has given some ideas of alternatives fans can watch while they wait for Transformers itself to come around to developing something we can enjoy.

feel free to add your comments, suggestions etc. Have you watched these shows? What are other Mecha/Robot shows that you enjoy?

DinoZaurs! I still have all my original toys and the show, while not great, feels like what a Beast Wars anime set on modern-day Earth (as opposed to post-apocalyptic Earth) would be like.

Note that I specify "Beast Wars anime", meaning the younger-aged Beast Wars Second and Beast Wars Neo, not the older-aged Beast Wars cartoon of North America.

Great choice. I remember seeing some pictures of the original Japanese version in several magazines. I think I caught parts of a couple of episodes on Fox Kids. This would make a great Toy Galaxy video on YouTube.

o.supreme wrote:Great choice. I remember seeing some pictures of the original Japanese version in several magazines. I think I caught parts of a couple of episodes on Fox Kids. This would make a great Toy Galaxy video on YouTube.

Yeah, they were basically Bandai's attempt to compete with the Transmetals, even though those wouldn't reach Japan until late 1999 while 1998 was knee deep in Beast Wars II.

When the West finally got them in 2000, Beast Machines was in full swing, so Bandai of America missed out on direct competition with Beast Wars.

Although, the DinoZaurs line did get one toy that the original Japanese DinoZone line did not receive: The Drago Draconus toy (renamed in the cartoon as "Dark Dragon"), which was originally designed to be a Mystic Knights toy, but when the sequel line for that series got canceled, Bandai recycled the mold and put it in DinoZaurs to give that line another big villain toy.

Not quite what was being discussed, but the Diaclone Powered Convoy appears in a race scene in Trigger's absolute masterpiece, INFERNO COP.

One of the robot anime that I like and would recommend is Patlabor


To give a brief summary:the series follows a a police squad that access to these robots.But in this future,robot technology is common enough that see other industries also has robots,like construction.
The technolgy is mostly grounded and the case that the police deal are not always related to battles.
An comparison with Transfomers I could make is Rescue Bots in a sense that there is no Decepticons or war in the main plot,but they still have to maintain a society.

I'm so excited, Dorvack now has a release date July 26th:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09YGFP2WZ/?c ... _lig_dp_it


Also, I've been playing a LOT of Super Robot Wars 30. It features both J Decker and GaoGaiGar vs Betterman stories from the Brave series.

See the animation below for Shadow-Maru a heavy retool of "The Most Challenging Transformer of them all" (*hint, it's NOT Megatron despite what the video is titled)

I'm not very familiar with anime; the closest I could think of were the Dinozaurs. They even had their own Mini-Cons, Targetmasters and combiners.

Huge fan of Brave, I was very lucky to get quite a few of the Sonokong reissues before they shot up in price. It's amazing to see what was going on in Japan with transforming Mecha as it relates to new transformation styles, combinations, and gimmicks.

Good Smile Company is doing some Brave figures. The first, Da Garn X was released earlier this month and I just got mine today. Just in time to find out that there's an issue with the legs and GSC will be making replacement parts available soon. Nothing too bad but had I known sooner I would've taken steps to cancel my order and wait for the second run. At least they have an American website to communicate with them.

I was surprised and super excited to see this announcement yesterday:

Discotesk is releasing on SDBD the series Machine Robo:Battle Hackers. This is, the quasi-sequel to Revenge of Chronos which had Sentient Robots based on the toys we westerners know as Gobots.



While I had seen/owned some episodes of RoC before Discotek released the full series earlier this year, I have not seen a single frame of Battle Hackers. I only am vaguely familiar with it based on what I've read online. I'm kind of surprised I guess because just because Discotek releases one series, doesn't always mean they will get its adjacent series (Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger were released several years back, and we still dont have Grendizer... )

Still, I'm curious to see what this show is about. I know next to nothing other than the fact it really doesn't connect to the previous series at all.

*edit*

I just watched the opening to this series and already find it to be amazing! Gotta love "Japanese Beastie Boys"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwb38XV3nIc&t

Felt this was relevant to the thread:

^ Great video. Thanks for the reference. I've seen all of these except Gold Lightan, but its on my eventual watch list. I still have the Wii Game Tatsunoko vs Capcom, and Gold Lightan was a hilarious character to play as.

I had seen his channels other video previously, btu not this newest one. Something that was new to me was that... I figured in the mid 1980's, while Transformers did have some success in Japan, I didn't think it was anything even as close to Gundam, or some of the more domestic series and films in Japan. Hearing that the creator of Gudam was actually concerned, and stepped up his game is fascinating, especially since Zeta is one of my Favorites (second only to 0083) .

o.supreme wrote:^ Great video. Thanks for the reference. I've seen all of these except Gold Lightan, but its on my eventual watch list. I still have the Wii Game Tatsunoko vs Capcom, and Gold Lightan was a hilarious character to play as.

I had seen his channels other video previously, btu not this newest one. Something that was new to me was that... I figured in the mid 1980's, while Transformers did have some success in Japan, I didn't think it was anything even as close to Gundam, or some of the more domestic series and films in Japan. Hearing that the creator of Gudam was actually concerned, and stepped up his game is fascinating, especially since Zeta is one of my Favorites (second only to 0083) .

Transformers did ok in Japan but it's audience was way younger kids due to the sentient robot angle. It wasn't the earth shaking life changing experience like in the US.

I like the other videos this guy has done but I think he teaches a bit trying to tie everything with a robot to anime.