Finally! I managed to get the complete set.
First, I'll gloss over the plot (typical japanese anime). Its got drama, gratuitous violence, transforming boys and girl, slapstick, death and naughty tentacles (yup you got that right ......Tentacles!)
Art style reminiscent of the grand old days of the 80s to the 90s! No CGI stuff! Just good old fashion hand drawn action! Especially loved Masterforce and Victory art style. Headmaster more or less continued the Sunbow style (including a lot of its errors) though in a much more improved consistency.
Now for the specific volumes (Please gloss over the plot because, well it won't win you any Oscars but way more coherent than revenge of the Fallen
)The Headmasters
A continuation after Optimus Prime's return.Plot wise, imho, haphazardly done in transitioning Optimus, then Rodimus until finally Fortress and Chromedome as the lead characters. Art design is a mixed bag. It's more stylized anime but still retained a lot of Sunbow (though waaaaaaaay better than Resurrection).
It was quite confusing especially when the subtitles kept mentioning their American names when you can hear them in their Japanese names (this could have been conveniently handled better in a special features section). Some of the translated titles in the menu selections did not jive with the episode titles. Its like the actual translation was sanitized a bit.
No pun intended but the video masters used was crisp, colorful and lively despite its age. though I noticed a weird effect during the Opening sequence. Several characters were flickering ( 6 shot, Galvatron etc while the secondary ones weren't) This is most noticeable in a PS3 player on a 32 in LED TV. On a PS2 connected to a standard 20 in, the effect was absent.
Masterforce
Set years after Headmasters. The plot changes radically. more like their "Diaclone" roots where humans actually pilot the machines. Includes a lot of elemental mombo jumbo and the same package genre (transformation,violence, naughty voyeurism, death etc) in your typical anime.
The character development kind off dragged a bit(42 episodes unlike the previous 35) but suddenly abruptly ending. So imho, it was too long and too short and I felt kind of left hanging.
Art design........on a scale of 1 to 5? I give it 4.9! The quality was consistent in all the episodes. If there were indeed errors, maybe it would have been due to the editing of the story sequencing because I could not find one(art errors)
Subtitling issues again. In the package the Autobot God/Powermasters were called "Gunmen" while in the actual episode translation they were designated warriors. Whatsup?
Victory
One of the best and the shortest. Limited to one pesky human interest but the freakin' series used a lot of transitional "updated" filler episode segments which further shortened the story. Maybe they could just have followed the plot of the manga instead hehehe.
Again with the translation with their Japanese names. On occassions, Lightspeed was actually called Laster in the subtitles.........why not just stick with the Japanese name and explain in in the special features?
Video quality.......it totally sucked on an LED TV. On a standard picture tube set, the resolution improved a bit ( as in the flaws were less noticeable). As I previously opined, were the masters used of poor quality unlike that of Headmasters and Masterforce? Or was it due to the film type used back in the day?
Rating:
Effort: A
Finally a R1 release. Owning one without the astronomical prices of the Japanese version is a feat itself!
Localization B
Is a mixed bag. Sentaifilmworks does a lot better in that some needed translations are included during certain important segments of story.
Packaging: B-
Rife with errors
Headmasters package episode guide inaccurate
Masterforce decal states "52" episodes
Victory *
* as Saberblade pointed out................all had the "Headmasters" font on allthe packages. Couldn't they have just hired consultants like Saberblade or stovokor 2000? Could have prevented them from implementing a lot of errors on the packaging.
Art of the package is above average but below awesome..........wished it was smaller to present the entire artwork.
Video quality: A for both Headmasters and Masterforce. B for Victory. on my 32 inch LED, despite all the optimal settings, Victory still looked smudged.
Extras: C
Just animation (very limited) model sheets we've all see at Boltax archives and the TF Generations art books by Million Publishing
Wished they've included the Takara extra videos that would have helped clarify some issues
The only good thing is that there was no Omni productions dub.
As a G1 fan, despite the flaws( heck! who am I to criticize cough,cough Sunbow G1 cough,cough...........)finally you get to own one. No true fan should be without this collection.
