Beast Wars II: Super Lifeform Transformers Seal Retsuden
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Beast Wars II: Super Lifeform Transformers Seal Retsuden (ビーストウォーズII 超生命体トランスフォーマー シール烈伝 Beast Wars II: Chō Seimeitai Transformer Seal Retsuden) is one of the Seal Retsuden<ref>In "Seal Retsuden", "seal" is to be understood as "sticker" and retsuden carries a common pun. Normally, retsuden is spelled 列伝 and means "series of biographies", which refers to the profiles printed on the back. 列 means "series", and in 烈伝 gets replaced with the homophone 烈, which means "intense". One way to translate it is as "Xeries of biographies".</ref> series of stickers published by Amada. They came to market in the first half of 1998 and were sold in mystery packs of ten.
There are a 102 stickers in total to collect, which are numbered and divided in three types of increasing rarity. The first 75 stickers are normal (ノーマル), the next 18 are metal (メタル),<ref>In consumer circles, these are also known as silver (シルバー).</ref> and the final 9 are gold (ゴールド). The final 6 normal stickers, the metal stickers, and the gold stickers are complementary and distinct from the first 69 stickers in several ways. For starters, it's only the first 69 stickers that have Tech Specs on the front and bios on the backs, while the remaining stickers are limited to the franchise, character name, and character function. The first 69 stickers depict the toys in small dioramas and for the most part come in sequential sets of two, with one sticker showing the robot mode and the other the alternate mode. Galvatron and Bigmos have three stickers to accommodate their third modes and combiners have no alternate modes to show. Starscream and BB uniquely share their stickers and there is no separate one for the Combination Stealth Mode. Stickers #70 and #71 are dedicated to the two main factions as represented by the same CGI art also found on the back of the toys' packaging. The final 31 stickers reuse package art and relatedly the individual Seacons, who were sold as a God Neptune giftset and never received separate package art, are not featured in this set.
For the Seal Retsuden branding, the bios on the stickers are quite extensive. Not only is the entire back filled, two or three stickers of one character have different bios printed on them. The robot mode stickers have text more related to the characters and the alternate mode stickers have text more related to their powers.
Aside from the Data Files found at the end of the Beast Wars II comic stories, which only cover the Lio Convoy Unit, the stickers are the only publication that displays the names of the Beast Wars II cast in Latin script, although they are not necessarily reliable; for instance, "Dirge" is rendered as "Darge".
Gameplay
[edit]Like most collectible cards, there is a game associated with the normal stickers as printed on the back of the mystery packs, although it's not much of a game. Each of the first 69 stickers has the standard Tech Specs of strength, intelligence, speed, endurance, rank, courage, firepower, and skill printed on the bottom. The sum of the numbers assigned to these stats is depicted in the upper right corner as their POW. or total ability.<ref>The cards themselves call the sum of the numbers "POW." "Total ability" (総合能力) is what the number is referred to in the game instructions.</ref> The first rule proposed is that players each present a sticker of their choosing and whoever has the sticker with the highest total ability wins. The second rule proposed is to play rock paper scissors and who wins gets to pick a stat which number is to determine the winner.
Stickers
[edit]Normal
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Metal
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Gold
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Notes
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- With the term "mechabeast", the stickers make a distinction between the organic beast modes of the Maximals and the mechanical beast modes of the Seacons. This is the first time Transformers fiction provides a name for mechanical beast modes.
- The term "mode 3" is used to describe Bigmos's antlion mode and Apache's Angry Combat Mode. More remarkably, the stickers avoid classifying Galvatron's dragon mode as beast or mechabeast or machine by classifying it as "mode 3".
- Sticker #020 makes reference to the episode "Mystery of the Ancient Ruins".
- On sticker #62, the object of Scylla's affection is said to be Diver instead of Scuba, whom she pines for in both cartoon and comic. Furthermore, her love is defined as 横恋慕 (yokorenbo), which is a term for having feelings for someone who already is in a relationship. What relationship this refers to is unclear as the only time Diver has any dealings with "romance" is when in "Demolish the Superdreadnought Tank!" a number of frogs fall for him, which he calls an "inexcusable love" (ゆるされん恋 yurusaren koi).
- On sticker #64, Coelagon's Coelatelephathy is described, but not named. This ability of his was not used in any of the Beast Wars II fiction.
- On sticker #67, Sea Phantom's Telephantom is described, but not named. This ability of his was not used in any of the Beast Wars II fiction.