Talk:Sonic Bomber (Cybertron)

Alright, seriously, what is the point of this? Who does this benefit beyond the most "in the weeds" editors who are familiar with the Galaxy Force behind the scenes stuff, and why is Wing Saber and Sideways any more special than Hot Shot or Red Alert or Landmine or whoever to make this justifiable as a split? And before anyone raises any hackles about this being biased against Japanese media, let it be known that I also feel the same way about the pages for Energon Mirage and Snow Cat, i.e. that they're useless and pointlessly confusing to readers. Escargon (talk) 10:11, 30 December 2022 (EST)

After some consideration I'm inclined to agree; this feels like making separate pages for RID01 Megatron and Gigatron when that's not something we traditionally do. Grum (talk) 10:48, 30 December 2022 (EST)

Or for Japan's male Airazor. I agree that this page should instead be a note on Wing Saber. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 11:36, 30 December 2022 (EST)

Fourthed. --M Sipher (talk) 06:34, 31 December 2022 (EST)

Neither of those examples are equivalent scenarios; they're just dub changes that don't retcon them to be different characters. Sonic Bomber isn't Wing Saber or designed to be him, and that characterization remains so for the cartoon, which is a step above profile-only dudes like Mirage and Roadblock. If this goes, the rest have to go too. Saix (talk) 11:05, 31 December 2022 (EST)

As I said, I am also all for merging Mirage and Roadblock with a note explaining that their Hasbro bios make them separate characters. In fact, the only reason why I wasn’t more vocal about Mirage in particular is because until recently I was under the impression that the Dreamwave comic also made Tidal Wave a different dude from him. Escargon (talk) 11:19, 31 December 2022 (EST)

I would say "isn't Wing Saber in the original anime and the manga" is equivalent or bigger than "isn't Tidal Wave in the comic". Same reason we have a separate Victory Leo article when 90% of media has him be God Ginrai. Saix (talk) 12:41, 31 December 2022 (EST)

For the sake of devil's advocacy, I would be in favour of having separate Megatron and Gigatron pages if RID01 had presented Megatron as a new form for the original Megatron, which would be closer to what's going on here. I don't feel particularly strongly either way, but I don't think the RID01 comparison is a very good one. --Riptide (talk) 13:50, 31 December 2022 (EST)

I disagree with the opening assertion that this is somehow confusing to readers. It's really as simple as the note in the cartoon section says, that when Galaxy Force was dubbed into Cybertron, Sonic Bomber was reinterpreted as a new body for the existing character Wing Saber. That note could perhaps stand to be rewritten, but it's not a difficult concept. Also, said users that aren't in the weeds won't even know what Galaxy Force is and as such would be looking for Wing Saber anyway. Wing Saber's page does include his Cybertron incarnation, so they're not going to be missing anything. I agree that the RID comparison isn't a good one. It's more akin to Powermaster Optimus Prime vs Super Ginrai. --Tigerpaw28 (talk) 14:53, 31 December 2022 (EST)

Regarding just Snow Cat, Furman told me pointblank that Dreamwave Snow Cat was not an upgraded Cyclonus. He said that he and the others at Dreamwave were not looking at what the cartoon was doing at the time of their working on the Armada/Energon comics. --Sabrblade (talk) 14:56, 31 December 2022 (EST)

Again, I go back to Hot Shot, Landmine, and the like. What makes Wing Saber different from them? And honestly, I’m not convinced that the Cybertron character is meaningfully different from the Energon character, anymore so than the others, especially in the case of guys like Hot Shot. Sideways, sure, but “serious” to “cocky” is about the same leap Hot Shot makes. Escargon (talk) 15:07, 31 December 2022 (EST)

I think I can try answering this one. When Hasbro and Takara were first creating the toys for the Cybertron/Galaxy Force characters, the likes of Optimus Prime, Hot Shot, Jetfire, Landmine, Red Alert, Megatron, and Starscream were all conceptualized as being new toys/bodies of the same characters from Armada/Energon. When Sonic Bomber was created, however, Takara intended for him to be a brand new character altogether (a very early name for him was even "Roadfire"), and he was presented as a new guy in both the Galaxy Force cartoon and manga. To reflect this new-character status of his, Hasbro was originally going to give him the English name of "Knockdown", but later changed their minds at the very last minute and decided to instead give him the name "Wing Saber", pretending that he was actually the same guy as the Energon character, regardless of how little sense that made. --Sabrblade (talk) 15:31, 31 December 2022 (EST)

What's getting lost in the weeds of all these specifics is; what is the point of this page that exists only to showcase the Galaxy Force manga and a hyper-truncated summary of the Cybertron cartoon? It's not like Victory Leo, where the manga deliberately chose to, for whatever reason, make him separate from God Ginrai, or Greatshot, where it's a deliberate retcon years after the fact. This is a simultaneous thing, and for all intents and purposes, the Galaxy Force anime and related things treats Hot Shot, Red Alert, Jetfire, et all as different characters. Wisely, we don't make a separate page for them because it's redundant. I don't think Wing Saber (and Sideways) having separate origins from those deliberately designed as the same character is enough to justify them getting their own page. And that's without mentioning how Club stuff treats them as the same characters (see, the Caliber Mini-Con guys). Escargon (talk) 18:51, 31 December 2022 (EST)

A. I don't see how the timing being contemporary makes it less justified. If anything, that should make it more justified because they were different from the start. B. It's exactly like Victory Leo, two contemporaneous pieces of media with differing interpretations as different individuals. The Cybertron dub chose to, for reasons we know very clearly, to make Sonic Bomber not separate from Wing Saber. --Tigerpaw28 (talk) 23:15, 31 December 2022 (EST)

Probably a mistake to push forward on this but I don't want this to just peter out, even if it makes me sound like a broken record: in-universe (not including out-of-universe details like designs, because that's not what factors into Energon's splits at all), what justifies this having its own page and not any of the other Cybertron guys? Is this actually helpful or is this just a random bit of separation that only exists because of technicalities? Escargon (talk) 22:59, 4 January 2023 (EST)

I say just make those characters' pages a sub section of the basis' pages. That way, we can have both sides repped.--Poliwag06 (talk) 01:02, 5 January 2023 (EST)

I mostly agree that it's silly to split Sonic Bomber from Wing Sabre, though I see the reasoning. For me, Hasbro's intent was that "jet plane power mushrooms for optimus prime is the same", no different to the Sideways situation. However, maybe uniquely, I also think the Energon characters should stay split, as that was Hasbro's intent that's plainly reflected in both the toys, names, bios, and even fiction, and I think a bit of bias towards English media is appropriate considering this is an English-language wiki. Creating a separate page for Sonic Bomber simply does not benefit our readers.--The Wadapan (talk) 09:49, 5 January 2023 (EST)

Keeping those guys separate but not this makes zero sense and waffling it up with "it's an English wiki" is silly. Either those profile-only nobodies go too or this guy who has actually appeared in fiction stays. Saix (talk) 14:58, 5 January 2023 (EST)

I agree with Saix here. I don't think it makes sense to be picky choosey about who stays and who goes. If we're going to merge back Sonic Bomber into Wing Saber's page, then it only seems fair to do the same thing with Roadblock, Mirage, and the like. Phaze (talk) 15:32, 5 January 2023 (EST)

And what about Thundercracker? To elaborate on why I think the Galaxy Force situation is dissimilar to those early Armada and Energon examples, I don't think it's misrepresenting anything to say that Hasbro created characters like Thundercracker, Snow Cat, and Mirage, which ended up being repurposed as Starscream, Cyclonus, Tidal Wave, by some sources. That's a matter of record—so fair enough, put the coverage on those latter pages. With Cybertron, it's the opposite; characters like Sideways, Jetfire, Wing Sabre, were envisioned by Hasbro as persisting from previous series, and then ended up getting different names as part of the whole snafu with Galaxy Force being produced by a new studio—only for Hasbro, in this case, to bowl over that change and treat them as the same characters in the dub, in line with their intent. The equivalent, in my eyes, would be if Hasbro had reworked Energon to have it so Cyclonus is suddenly replaced by a random new guy, Snow Cat—an impossibility, but my point is that from a Western (i.e. our) perspective, there's no such guy as "Sonic Bomber", that's just the Japanese name for Cybertron Wing Saber! It's a localisation note. Meanwhile we do have two separate portrayals of Snow Cat across separate Western media. Do you see where I'm coming from? —The Wadapan (talk) 16:10, 5 January 2023 (EST)

No, yeah, I see where you're coming from now. Thank you for articulating your argument clearly! Phaze (talk) 20:46, 5 January 2023 (EST)

But the difference is that Sonic Bomber wasn't developed as Wing Saber. Hasbro was even going to name him Knockdown, but slapped the Wing Saber name on at the last minute. By the same logic you're using for Mirage et al, Sonic Bomber warrants a page because him being an original character was the intention all along. Saix (talk) 02:12, 7 January 2023 (EST)

By my read, that looks like 5 in favor of merging and 3 saying to leave them separate. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 10:47, 5 January 2023 (EST)

I'll be the sixth. I was holding out for a while to gauge how the discussion was going, but I just find the split to be confusing and unnecessary. It's a cleaner explanation to just have a footnote on the original page explaining the whole continuity situation with characters from Cybertron and Galaxy Force. Phaze (talk) 13:38, 5 January 2023 (EST)

There is another point which has not been considered here vis-à-vis characters crossing continuities, which has long been cracking our traditional continuity family system. As an example, "Shadow Striker (G1)" solely exists for a Cyberverse character with minimal visual and personality changes and without new multimedia presence, which is our criterion for definitely giving new pages to Cyberverse and EarthSpark characters. The debate has long been hanging around that "Shadow Striker (G1)" might be better served by getting recombined back into "Shadow Striker (Cyberverse)" because IDW comics are not a new multimedia project. But, at least one Shadow Striker character page will always remain.

I have long been an advocate for acknowledging more UT cameos in IDW stories and the like. Sonic Bomber (named "Wing Saber") appeared in BWU - "Derailment", implicitly as a separate individual from Energon Wing Saber. Noisemaze appeared in Optimus Prime #20. If we then take into consideration that IDW 1.0 made Armada Cyclonus separate from Energon Snow Cat, with Armada Smokescreen and Hoist separate as well, then this site will always have a need to give some version of Sonic Bomber, Noisemaze, Snow Cat, and Hoist separate pages for the continuities in which they are definitely coexisting persons. Thus, this character page for Galaxy Force Sonic Bomber can acknowledge more than one continuity in which the Galaxy Force design was someone distinct by integrating the page currently titled "Wing Saber (BWU)". S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 12:40, 6 January 2023 (EST)

This is exactly the right argument to make to sway me, especially combined with Saix's information that "Knockdown" was developed independently--though I wish we had more behind-the-scenes information on that front, especially cited. Thing is, we're not going to put that BWU content on this page, are we? It's just going to be the exact same fragmentary situatuon, with readers needing to visit three different pages to get the full picture. --The Wadapan (talk) 12:14, 7 January 2023 (EST)

We had this discussion about little artist cameos years ago with the Titan Hunters guys when someone (McFeely?) put their foot down and said "no, we're not giving pages to guys who don't do anything except appear in the background." I really don't think we need to do the same with these random ass UT cameos either, unless they're named or (in the case of the Lunabots) actually have lines of dialogue/do something or are in the script. As for Derailment, speaking as someone who just read it for purposes elsewhere...Wing Saber isn't implied at all to be a separate character from the Energon one there? He's appears for a few sentences as a lobotomized vehicle and there's no indication that him and the Energon one exist as separate characters there. Escargon (talk) 12:28, 7 January 2023 (EST)

For my part, I also don't think this needs to exist. If there were a note that said why he's a separate guy, then maybe I'd be for it, but as-is I don't see the point. This is like creating a new page for, say, Japanese-dub G1 Shockwave. If someone could explain, then by all means go ahead, but I also don't see the point of this being a separate page. ThatGuy79 (talk) 13:59, 27 February 2023 (EST)

I'm inclined to agree. There is next to no point to this being a seperate page.The Metropolitan Dancou-Maryuu (talk) 19:34, 6 October 2023 (EDT)

After much consideration, I am of the opinion that this page (and the Noisemaze one) is indeed a redundancy. While going by the logic of Snow Cat, Mirage, Roadblock, etc. getting their own pages because of how their toy bios and/or Dreamwave appearances depicted them as their own separate characters coexisting with those of whom they were all depicted as body-upgrades in the Energon cartoon, theoretically means that this page should stay (since GF cartoon Sonic Bomber technically coexists separately from SL Wing Saber in the Japanese UT cartoon continuity), that same logic would also suggest that EVERY Galaxy Force character should get their own pages separate from those of LOTM and SL with whom they share names in Hasbro's market, and that would just be overkill. In other words, Cybertron/Galaxy Force is just another one of those "continuity kerfuffles" that we have to treat as a special case and make exceptions for in the name of reducing redundancies.

And which we can currently do because, thankfully, there has yet to be any Japanese fiction that has actually depicted the GF cartoon characters alongside the LOTM/SL cartoon characters (e.g. - there is no Japanese fiction that sees the cartoon versions of Grand Convoy and Galaxy Convoy standing side-by-side one another as separate individuals). If such fiction ever comes about, we'll cross that bridge when we get there (and could likely just explain why there are, say, two Optimus Primes next to each other, with a note). But until then, every GF cartoon character should go on the same page as the LOTM/SL cartoon characters that the English version treats them as being. While Sonic Bomber may have had unique production origins, they are not reflected in the final version of his appearances to make him stand apart from any other GF character (since, again, EVERY GF character was a new character). Even Noisemaze had the preliminary Takara name of "Sideways" according to this chart (yes, yes, I KNOW Armada Sideways's Japanese name was "Doubleface"; what I mean is that this shows Takara was originally on the same page as Hasbro in considering him a new version of the guy Hasbro called "Sideways" before deciding to make him—like EVERY other GF character—a different person).

As for the Galaxy Force manga, there is no conflict there since that is a separate continuity in which the LOTM/SL characters don't seem to exist at all. So for all intents and purposes, SL Wing Saber and LOTM Doubleface don't even exist in that continuity, meaning GF Sonic Bomber and GF Noisemaze are the only Wing Saber and Sideways that exist in that manga continuity. They're each just a "different-continuity version" of Wing Saber and Sideways just like all the other different-continuity versions of every other character on this Wiki (heck, Dreamwave Sideways is even "just some guy" who isn't affiliated with Unicron at all in the few cameo appearances he made in the Armada comics proper). And as for the likes of Snow Cat, Mirage, Roadblock, etc., we can still keep their pages because they're just a small few in number, unlike the entire cast of the Galaxy Force cartoon. --Sabrblade (talk) 01:17, 25 October 2023 (EDT)

This is presupposing that the entire cast of Galaxy Force aren't the same guys as the Micron and Super Link characters, which we have zero evidence of. Saix (talk) 02:10, 25 October 2023 (EDT)

Why wouldn't they all be separate characters? When the show was first airing, it was initially treated as a separate series, which by default made everyone new characters. When Takara later rolled it back with its predecessors, all they did was declare to be in the same universe. They didn't play damage control anywhere near to the same extent that Hasbro did with the English version (e.g. - using the Fun Pub Cybertron comics/prose stories, the original Hasbro.com version of Ask Vector Prime, some of the Cybertron toy bios, some of the Cyber Key Code content, and certain deliberate script alterations in the dub scripts, to help explain as many of the discrepancies between Armada/Energon and Cybertron as they could).

This early Galaxy Force promo (which even features imagery from LOTM and Superlink in an attempt to help bridge the gap between those two and Galaxy Force, as if all three were still considered to be one universe at the time this promo was made) sees Galaxy Convoy refer to him as "the new leader" (新のリーダー shin no rīdā), and the promo's title calls even him the "New Commander" (新司令官 Shin Shireikan). By contrast, this early Superlink promo made it abundantly clear that Grand Convoy is LOTM Convoy, never addressing him as a "new" guy in any fashion.

The Japanese Wikipedia article for Galaxy Force even consistently specifies that the nine GF characters who are the same as those from LOTM and SL are only acknowledged as being those same characters in the "overseas version", with the entirety of the article treating each and every character in GF as their own separate individual from their LOTM/SL counterparts. If any of these nine GF characters might be the same as their LOTM/SL namesakes, Master Megatron and Starscream have the most possibility since both that same GF promo and this second one refer to them both as having "returned from Hell" (地獄 Jigoku) by the start of the series, which, in theory, would align with the fiery deaths of both Galvatron G and Nightscream R at the end of Superlink. But it's still not entirely clear if they are the same people, since even Thundercracker seems to be treated by the promos as being among the "returned from Hell" Destrons, when he was never in LOTM or SL. --Sabrblade (talk) 12:10, 25 October 2023 (EDT)

I think you're getting too caught up in what some irrelevant promo says and Takara's lack of commitment to continuity. If we take Galaxy Force as an AU to LOTM/SL (which seems to be the idea of the people who were making it in the first place), then we can read those characters as AU versions of the LOTM/SL characters. If we take GF as in continuity with LOTM/SL, we'll need more than a promo trying to sell you on the next cool toy and a Wikipedia claim (which is more of a clarification as to what the Cybertron dub did than anything) to insist that they're different guys. Saix (talk) 12:49, 25 October 2023 (EDT)

I think we also need to consider the precedents set by other characters' pages, such as those from G1. For instance, Prowl (G1) has appeared across multiple continuities in cartoons and comics, yet those continuities are all still listed on that one page. The Weltschmerzic Dancou-Maryuu 12:58, 25 October 2023 (EDT)

I really don't think you're comprehending the argument here. Saix (talk) 13:40, 25 October 2023 (EDT)

I just said that Takara declared GF to be the same universe. Back when they were assembling the timelines of their two biggest continuities (Japanese G1 and Japanese UT) in the mid-2000s, their website put the events of GF on the same timeline as those of LOTM and SL (sadly, this timeline was Flash content and WayBack doesn't have the .swf files to retrieve it, but I wrote a lengthy description of it back in the day here, with specifics pertaining to the UT timeline in the second-to-last paragraph), and further published timelines (such as this one) reiterate that notion. The "World of the Transformers" flowchart likewise connected LOTM, SL, and GF to each other and grouped all three in the same gray color.

And if they were meant to be AU versions of the LOTM/GF characters, wouldn't they have tried to make that more clear by keeping all of their names similar to their LOTM/GF counterparts, instead of giving five of them such radically different names as "Exillion", "First Aid", "Dreadrock", "Guardshell", and "Noisemaze" (compared to "Hot Rod/Hot Shot", "Ratchet", "Jetfire/Skyfire", "Landmine", and "Doubleface", respectively)? This is Takara we're talking about, they like to stick to naming traditions and typically refrain from drastically altering names of characters who are supposed to be AU versions of other established characters. Also, you yourself have used Japanese Wikipedia to check certain things like this before, Saix, so that's not cool, man. --Sabrblade (talk) 14:16, 25 October 2023 (EDT)

Deletion?

I've decided to take the initiative and copy-paste the Galaxy Force comic info into Wing Saber (Energon). Now that there's no longer anything in this article that's not in that article, I am nominating this article for deletion since the merger is more or less complete now. The Metropolitan Dancou-Maryuu (talk) 17:57, 24 October 2023 (EDT)

Converted to a redirect. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 13:38, 25 October 2023 (EDT)