Shout! Factory Enters Distribution Agreement for the Unicron Trilogy and Transformers Animated

This is hopefully great news for Season 3 of Animated finally getting released. It'd be great if we could get RID and the Japanese Beast Wars series as well. Wishful thinking I know. It'd be nice though.

sixshot20 wrote:Was season 4 of animated cancelled before it was made or was it made and then cancelled?

It was canceled before it was made, while they where making season 3, so most of the stuff that was meant to lead into season 4 was removed from season 3.

Animated is an instant import.

Excellent! I will probably pick up Animated, and maybe the Unicron Trilogy if it comes in a box set. But I still don't even have the Japanese Collection, so that would be a long way off.

If the Unicron Trilogy stuff also has the Japanese versions with subs, it's instabought!

I'd love the Japanese Beast Wars stuff too, but is BWII a no-go because of the Mexican stereotype jokes from the Jointrons? Considering how mutilated the subs on Shout!s Japanese G1 stuff ended up, I've gone from patient to pessimistic on it and Neo.

And I love Animated so much that I already bought season 3 on DVD...from my local bootlegger, partly to force him to stock it for others. But that was before the HUB reruns; please release it all in widescreen on BluRay and make my copy obsolete, SF!

Oh yes, Animated in HD, and finally in widescreen.

Damn, my mouth is watering right now

i COULDN'T CARE LASS ABOUT THE CRAPPY ANIMATED SERIES

BUT TO GET MY HANDS ON ARMADA, INSTANT BUY!!!!!!!!!!!

RiD, BWII, BWNeo, and Japanese versions of the Unicron Trilogy are all highly unlikely.

For RiD, it's still in business limbo since the last ones to own it were Disney and Saban didn't buy it back, so Disney could still have it.

For BWII and BWNeo, the only reason Shout! Factory was able to release the subbed versions of the three JG1 series is because Metrodome had already done so several years ago. Thus, there were already existing subtitle scripts available for them to use. BWII and BWNeo have never received any full subtitle treatment all the way through, and thus have no subs readily available for Shout! to use.

The reason for these two having never been fully subbed is mostly because of how hard these two were to come by for many years. Neither was released on DVD until 14 years after each's original broadcast, leaving no high quality digital copies of the original masters available to use during those 14 years. The only things that were available (of you can call it that) during that period were VHS tapes of the shows that have since become long out of print and exceedingly hard to come by on the secondary market (you'd have better luck finding the Fountain of Youth before finding complete, good quality video sources for these two shows back then). But now that we have DVDs for both, that's one step in the right direction. But, the DVDs themselves are EXTREMELY expensive (being worth roughly $300 USD each).

Also, back when Metrodome was subbing the three JG1 cartoons, they were able to do so since the right to those three shows were included in a bundle with the G1 cartoon rights back when Metrodome got to do that series. Meanwhile, BWII and BWNeo were not made by the same company as the JG1 cartoons, so their rights belong to someone else entirely; someone whom Hasbro has never done business with.


And as for subbed versions of the Japanese Unicron Trilogy, this is unlikely since the subbed DVDs of the JG1 cartoons sold poorly and did not meet Shout! Factory's sales expectations. Subbed anime just doesn't sell well on the mainstreamm U.S. DVD market, thus it's mostly a niche appeal.

Sabrblade wrote:And as for subbed versions of the Japanese Unicron Trilogy, this is unlikely since the subbed DVDs of the JG1 cartoons sold poorly and did not meet Shout! Factory's sales expectations. Subbed anime just doesn't sell well on the mainstreamm U.S. DVD market, thus it's mostly a niche appeal.

But would that rule out including the Japanese versions via subs and angle options on the regular box sets? Or was Micron Legend really so thoroughly redrawn that it wouldn't be practical?

Since these series have gotten western DVDs before, going that extra mile for the sake of claiming the most complete release ever might be worth it to compel anyone who already has them to double dip. There was also that one Superlink ep that was left out of Energon: if no dub track exists, they'd have to at least include a sub of it to release the complete collection.

Sabrblade wrote:The three series weren't dubbed uncut, so dual-audio w/ subs wouldn't work.

Which is why I mentioned angle options. Hasn't that been attempted with different international edits of material on the same disc, beyond just alternate openings and bumpers?

And the "lost" Superlink ep would still be a bonus feature worth pursuing. "More complete than ever," is just good press-release hype, as long as there's some truth to back it up.

Though as for past precedents, were there any improvements in Shout!s Beast Wars rerelease, or was it exactly like Rhino's? If not, we probably can't expect much beyond the glitches in the Cybertron set not reappearing.

This is great news! I was just recently scouring the interwebs for the TFs: Cybertron DVD set, but only found a few used ones that were way overpriced over the original list price. I'm glad I held back on clicking on the "Buy Now" button.