Gauntlet101010 wrote:I mean, Cody
"Koji" in the dub, "Yuki" in Car Robots.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:should definitely recognize the Autobots because Cybertron really was in Earth's orbit.
He's only a grade-schooler, most likely born in the 90s after all the weird stuff in G1 seasons 1-2 already happened in the 80s. At the oldest, I'd say he's only around 10 or 11 (the dub aged him up to be a teenager whose voice has already deepened).
Gauntlet101010 wrote:Autobot City is definitely a thing that exists
...No it doesn't? At least, not yet. It didn't first appear until TFTM in the year 2005; the Autobots only had the Ark in seasons 1-2 of the cartoon.
When the Transformers: Binaltech line (the Takara counterpart of Hasbro's Transformers: Alternators line) launched in 2003, each toy release included a chapter of a larger story set in the years 2003-2008, and the first chapter of the "Story of Binaltech" said that Autobot City was under construction in the year 2003. Then, a year later, the RobotMasters line had its own fiction that showed the development of Autobot City to still be underway (but
much further along) in 2004, and also revealed that Brave Maximus (after returning to Earth after the end of Car Robots) was used as the starting point for Autobot City's construction, serving as the core of the city around which the rest of it was built (because in Japan, both Autobot City and Brave Maximus's city mode have the same name: "Cybertron City"). A rerelease of the Brave Maximus toy was even offered in the RobotMasters toyline as a contest prize, albeit renamed "Cybertron Base" (further insinuating that he was meant to be the headquarters used by the Autobots during RobotMasters).
Gauntlet101010 wrote:But also, the Cybernet is even more of a problem. Because I guess it's just lying low during all this time? Was it built in secret? How long did it take the Build Team to make exactly!? It's such a terrible element to add to the show.
I just figured it was destroyed (or at least severely damaged) in the finale, what with that massive explosion the final battle surging through it from the Earth's core all the way to the surface, as well as Devil Gigatron flooding another part of the Cybertron Net with lava in the penultimate episode.
Or if nothing else, it was probably just decommissioned after Fire Convoy's team ultimately left Earth. They're a group that has a lot of strict protocols and formalities on how they do things; I can imagine them having a sort of "leave no trace" policy when it comes to their tech and equipment (even ones actually built
into other planets).
Of course, that admittedly does beg the question of why it was built in the first place. Well, truth be told, the Cybertron Net and the headquarters used by Fire Convoy's team aren't actually unique concepts created specifically for Car Robots. Back in 1986, Japan published a manga series for the G1 cartoon's first two seasons in TV Magazine, and the fourth chapter introduced a secret underground base for the G1 Autobots located beneath a parking garage exterior in Tokyo, Japan. This base had its walls lined with monitor screens and workstations with computer consoles all over the place. And to top it off, this base even had its own underground transit system called the Cybertron Road, which enabled the Autobots to travel all across the globe.
(
NOTE: The first pic is from the official English translation by Viz Media, the second and third are from an old fan translation that's... not great, and incorrectly states that humans work at this base; they're actually robotic androids made to look like human security guards)
Compare:
Monitors everywhere and several human-sized workstations, despite no humans actually working there (Ai only ever used just one console throughout the entire series, with the rest of those workstations going unused). While not an exact match in artwork, the resemblance between the two both in concept and design aesthetic is remarkably uncanny. The cartoon version would merely be a simplification of the manga's more detailed artwork.
Now, I did mention the Cybertron Road (or "Autobot Road" in the English translations) earlier, and while Car Robots's Cybertron Net is very similar in concept, those two I don't actually believe to be one and the same. The Cybertron Road is said to be only 2500 meters below the surface, which would place it within the Earth's crust. Meanwhile, the first episode of Car Robots states that the Cybertron Net runs through Earth's mantle. Since the Earth's crust is about 70 kilometers deep, the Cybertron Road being 2500 meters underground would only be 2.5 kilometers down. Whereas the Cybertron Net being inside the mantle would put it
way down,
far below where the Cybertron Road would be.
Plus, Episode 21 of Car Robots also has Build Boy confirm that he and the other Buildmasters are the ones who built the Cybertron Net in the first place, and they didn't come to Earth until 2000, when the manga is set during the late 1980s. Though, it is still possible that the Buildmasters could have used the Cybertron Road as a springboard for the Cybertron Net, and simply incorporated it when they built the Cybertron Net.
Nevertheless, I do remain firmly convinced that the Japanese base seen in this story would go on to become the same one used by Fire Convoy's team in Car Robots over a decade later. Or at the very least, served as the direct design inspiration for the Car Robots base.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:I guess we're supposed to imaging that Fire Convoy contacted Optimus Prime and told him not to worry about Gigatron. Which would be fine, TBH. Standard superhero logic, really. Although Gigs never bumped into any present-day Autobots.
Yyyyeah, the lack of any G1 Transformers on Earth in Car Robots is a major oddity. And it seems some of the folks at Takara over in Japan agreed with that and set out to make sense of it.
In 2003, a four-chapter manga series written and drawn by Naoto Tsushima was published in Super Robot Magazine, in the final four issues before the magazine went under. Titled "
Transformers: Star Gate Sen'eki" (the official Romanization is the grammatically-awkward "The Battle of Star Gate", TFWiki opted for "The Battle of the Star Gate", and the fan translation by Andrew "Hydra" Hall went with the most natural-sounding title of "The Stargate Battles"), this four-part G1 manga story was a rarity in its own right, being one of the very few pieces of Transformers media that existed solely as a storytelling medium and did not in any way advertise any toys released contemporaneously to its publication. As such, it was arguably the most mature piece of Japanese Transformers fiction ever produced, telling a story that was rich in emotion, thought-provoking moments, and even some bold and dynamic action sequences that felt meaningful.
Anyway, the significance of The Stargate Battles in relation to Car Robots is that it told a story set in the late 1990s just a few years before Car Robots began. And like Car Robots, The Stargate Battles brought up the notion that the existence of the Transformers on Earth were still not widely known outside of the United States. It's a pretty big gaffe, yeah, but it also led to some really suspenseful drama during the first chapter. But most importantly of all, the final chapter ended with an absolutely
massive battle in space high above the Earth, a battle whose ending was so
cataclysmic that virtually
all of the G1 Autobots and Decepticons who had been stationed on Earth since 1985 in the G1 cartoon were knocked offline and vanished from the Earth; their disappearance done in such a way that what happened to them all was left a complete mystery to most of humanity. The story ended with the vague promise that the Transformers would likely return, but probably not for a while, almost as if to deliberately allow Car Robots to slot in right after these events.
Of further note is that Naoto Tsushima would continue to work with Transformers following the conclusion of The Stargate Battles. He would go on to write and draw the RobotMasters fiction (which made the aforementioned connection between Brave Maximus and Autobot City), and draw (but not write) the Binaltech Asterisk web comics (which featured two human characters who were directly tied to Car Robots).
And speaking of RobotMasters, the Decepticon tow truck Wrecker Hook from that series is actually the very same Autobot Wrecker Hook from Car Robots, having joined with the Decepticons after they found him basically left for dead in a non-functional state and completely amnesiac, at some point after Fire Convoy's team had departed from Earth; a backstory mystery that has never been explored to this day.
Gauntlet101010 wrote:But, then, why is he an Autobot and not a Maximal? Does his team just like the retro look? (I know the real life reason of course)
The running theory is that Fire Convoy's team simply adopted the old
insignia in order to better blend in with the time period, whereas the Destrongers just didn't care about blending in or lining up with history and so kept their
insignia instead of using
(though, you can't even see any insignia on them since their animation models didn't have any, so for them it's kind of a moot point).
Though, as for why the Combatrons use an upside-down
as
, Unite Warriors would reveal that the time period their ship came from was the G2 era (the pic I posted above with the Combatrons captured and standing over a giant vat of green liquid has a bunch of G2 Autobots in the background, and all of which were G2 toys never released in Japan, interestingly enough).
Gauntlet101010 wrote:There doesn't seem to be any real link between this and G1. It just seems like it's been tossed into that gap era without much thought or care. It doesn't add a thing to G1 lore. And G1 doesn't add a thing to it.
It does kinda show where Autobot City got its beginning with Brave Maximus. Or rather, where "Cybertron City" got its beginning with "Cybertron City".
Gauntlet101010 wrote:I thought it was supposed to be after Victory, years de damned, but if it really is pre-movie then ... yeah, terrible stuff. Terrible and pointless. Make a special anniversary episode where Black Convoy meets G1 Convoy or something. I dunno what, but something. There's a lot of interesting things you can do if you decide to play with the timeline like that. But them being at that point in the timeline just for shits and giggles seems just utterly pointless to me.
Japan did get this art piece published in May 2000, which was the month Car Robots episodes 5-9 premiered over there (and was
long before Brave Max made his debut in October-November, so that background was unknowingly-at-the-time some
major foreshadowing):
