Talk:Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2001 franchise)

CR vs MB

That section sure is... black and white. There are a lot of other reasons Beast Machines went the way of eek, but they're not addressed here. (For example, the final folding of Kenner into Hasbro.) Also, all US fans rejoiced when RiD was announced? Like hell. Scores of people were pissed that now everything they imported for twice US retail was now going to be brought over domestically. Another group of peoplwere were pissed it was nothing but "repaints" for a year. And then they were pissed even more when the cartoon turned out to be not exactly Babylon Five. "The US fandom rejoiced" is way oversimplified. I think that section needs some heavy moderation. --ItsWalky 15:24, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

RID rox, BM sux!!!1

"Many fans were paying hand over foot for imports of the Japanese line, all the while complaining about the poor quality of the Beast Machines line and show"

"Couple that with an all new 10-changer, Beast oriented, Gigatron and you had the making of the first new millenium Transformers series, one that combined the best from everything before it into one."

I think those two statements of opinion also need to be edited or eliminated.

Shellspark 16:49, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. The fandom complaining about the quality of the current line and buying imports from Japan is not a phenomenon exclusive to Beast Machines. It is merely the status quo. --ItsWalky 16:52, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

It seems that most of the opinion-laden statements were made by a single anonymous poster. I'd actually advocate just reverting back to MSipher's last version.--G.B. Blackrock 17:01, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

"yuk yuks"

I edited out the part that said the DVDs don't play in "real DVD players". Some of these jokes are dumb and misleading. I'm all for fun, but why litter this encyclopedia with it? It there a rule with this wiki that says writers have to put jokes in? Crockalley 14:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Crockalley -- actually, yes. It's unwritten but it's the way things are done around here, especially in photo captions. Take out the funny and we've got nothing over any other TF resource. Well, we do tend to specialize in absolutely obscure arcana too. But seriously, read the wiki for a while to get the feel for the place; you'll find that the jokes don't interfere--there's simply so much built-in ludicrousness in the Transformers universe/fiction/toyline! And sure, some jokes are nerdy. Learn to embrace your inner nerd. :) One of us...One of us... But it's also true that it must be possible to distinguish a joke from legit info, so you do have be somewhat careful. Autobus Prime 14:44, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Then you might want to change this page Introduction

"Teletraan-1 does not contain opinionated reviews, only facts."

I'm not going to run around making wild changes here, but this humorous slant goes against my understanding of what a wiki should be. Plus I'm grumpy this morning. Sorry. Gooble gobble Crockalley 14:59, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Eh, i wrote the 'real dvd players' crack, I expected someoen (probably McFeely) would remove it. It was a gentle poke at Region-2, nto really much of a tf joke at all. I shall not mixx it. -Derik 18:40, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I contemplated replacing it with "lame Yank DVD players," but I thought yours was funnier. :) - Chris McFeely 19:13, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I object to Autobus Prime's assertions on the purpose of region encoding. IIt has nothign to do with piracy, it has everythign to do with allowing copyright holders to sell the rights multiple times. (This is, mind a good thing. If the regions were not broken down, a production company wishing to produce a version of The Soudn of Music subbed in, say, Tagalog, would have to purchae worldwide rights to do so, which is ten kinds of stupid. Breaking the rights down into smaller regional chunks makes those rights affortable for amll markets-- an overall benefit to customers.) I admit I find region encoding aannoyign as hell, but there's also clear benefits to it. (I try not to hold unconsidered opinions.) -Derik 03:15, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't you just love reading dicussions concerning ancient versions of an article so you have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on? Takeshi357 (talk) 12:15, 28 December 2014 (EST)

Sideways

Curiosity: How does "Takara asserts that CR is RID" connect to "RID Sideways is UT Sideways"? I'm not doubting that they are the same character, I just don't understand what Takara has to do with it. --Crockalley 00:59, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Takara produced some nifty bio's for their Robotmasters characters, saying both who they are, and where they first appeared. Robotmasters Doubleface said he was ARM Doubleface- and listed his first appearance as Car Robots. This is a reference to RiD sideways. -Derik 01:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. --Crockalley 12:30, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Logo placement

I'm fine if everyone likes this better than the last way, but I think the big white space above the reletively small logo is really rather ugly and awkward looking. At least with the logo off to the left we loose the big white nothing at the top and things are symetrical. Anyone have any other ideas to make things work better?--ZacWilliam 15:17, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Big... white space? Oh, DEAR GOD... I just tried my version in MSIE and can now see what you are complaining about. I don't know what the hell IE is doing, but my other browsers don't have that gap:

http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/5183/clipboard1qj0.jpg Also I didn't realize the nav tables have horrible white gaps between cells in IE. These are both style issues that I guess I'll try to fix that at some point... although Derik is more capable than I at that sort of thing. Maybe he can fix it. --Steve-o 16:03, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm confused about what exactly people are objecting to. (I'm also confused as to why those blank lines were inserted after the logo.) I do see the table problem though- THAT is hard to miss.

Can I get a comparative IE/Firefox screencap so I can see exactly what you mean? -Derik 20:32, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Original picture (from Opera, I think, but it's almost identical in Firefox), and IE picture. Those are of the same revision (although one was on a diff page and the other was just the old version page, hence the different headers before the page content starts). This is that revision in case you want to test with it. --Steve-o 04:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Firewall's mug

...Wait, what? I realize that it's TFW2005's logo, but their logo is RID Prime's phiz. Chip 04:34, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

More or less. TFW2005's pic changes the antennaes into giant headphones with tiny silver antennas coming out the sides. Firewall's mug, though, totally shows Fire Convoy, as evidenced by the fact the he has Fire Convoy's antennas and not TFW2005 Guy's headset. --Detour 05:18, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

RiD Prime's head does NOT have the cylindrical "ear muffs" + separate antenna rods that either the TFW2005 logo or that mug have. --ItsWalky 05:51, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Well it's got yellow eyes like Fire Convoy, and while it has the earmuffs everything else about it is Fire Convoy. And those antenna rods are too big to be those tiny silver ones on TFW2005 Bot... And he also lacks the wraparound piece going around its head. Hence it looks more like Fire Convoy than it does TFW2005 Bot. --Detour 06:07, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I really disagree that it looks more like Fire Convoy than TFW2005 Bot. It's the TFW2005 logo doodled at extremely small size on a tiny mug, where putting in the details you claim aren't there would be ridiculous. And even at that scale, the ears are completely different from Fire Convoy. Claiming Firewall has a RiD Prime mug on this page is irresponsible. --ItsWalky 14:38, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

For me, I would just say that "There is a head looks like a miscolored head of Fire Convoy on the cup." instead of "There is a head of Fire Convoy on the mug cup." due to the difference between the Head and Fire Convoy in order to reduce different opinions, unless the artist of the picture say "It is Fire Convoy's head" some day. --TX55 06:20, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Inadvertently

"The series dub was inadvertently bought by Disney in 2002."

I know that those sorts of things happen sometimes in the world of insanely large companies, but this needs some elaboration. Did Hasbro accidentally sell the dub to Disney, or did Disney accidentally buy it? 137.195.68.169 09:46, 23 July 2009 (EDT)

Car Robots

We've just had a monster of a discussion that concluded that the initial franchise of origin for a character should be the disambiguation point, regardless of prominence or nationality. While RID is a dub of the Car Robots cartoon, it's clearly not the same franchise. Among other things, they have different logos, which we've always taken to be the primary indicator of franchise. So, while Car Robots and Robots in Disguise both take place in the Robots in Disguise continuity family, since it's actually franchise of origin that matters for disambiguations, it's clear that most characters with the (RID) disambiguation should be switched to (CR) or maybe (Car Robots).

Thoughts? --Jimsorenson 12:43, 29 January 2010 (EST)

I always got the impression that we always go by the English version of things wherever one exists, with the exception of the RTM dub. Especially considering that we don't even have a separate Car Robots page. --Jeysie 13:02, 29 January 2010 (EST)

If we ended up switching all the (RID)s to (CR)s we'd end up with a bunch of mis-matched American names with Japanese franchise identifiers. So then, do we change them all to their Car Robots names? That doesn't fit with our standards either, right? I think the system is fine as it is, even when it is not 100% consistent across the board. Flexibility where warranted: good, undeviating adherence to rigid standards: bad. --KilMichaelMcC 14:16, 29 January 2010 (EST)

THIS A BILLION TIMES. --M Sipher 16:27, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Seriously? RID is the western version of Car Robots. Like Cybertron/Galaxy Force and Transformers/Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers. Different logos and everything. Do we have to go through each article to check release dates to see which was first? - Starfield 14:31, 29 January 2010 (EST)

It's not the same scenario, though. Cybertron/Galaxy Force really is just two different versions of the same thing, but Car Robots / RID was not. RID had a much larger scope in terms of toys, takes place in a different time frame, takes place in an entirely different universal stream (as Walky points out below.) There is also the issue of timing; The UT releases were more or less simultaneous, RID took place AFTER Car Robots had ended.--Jimsorenson 14:58, 29 January 2010 (EST)

And the timing DOES matter. A few weeks here or there, ok, that's normal fuzziness. But if somehow Masterforce was released today in the US with a huge title "HUMAN POWER" as the logo, would we REALLY go back and change all the Masterforce stuff to "HUMAN POWER"? What if the cartoon was released halfway and stopped? Would we change the Headmasters and Pretenders to Diver (HP) and Cancer (HP) but NOT the Godmasters?--Jimsorenson 15:01, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Yes. We already do by talking about Transformers as sentients instead of Diaclone mechs. Plus, there's no such thing as "Sky-byte (CR)", so let's not try to solve a system with subtle errors by creating one with glaring errors. --Thylacine 2000 16:05, 29 January 2010 (EST)

There's a huge flaw in your reasoning, Jim, but it actually inadvertently points out an actual flaw in our wiki. Car Robots is NOT part of the Robots in Disguise continuity family. Car Robots is part of the Generation 1 continuity family. These characters should be split out onto their own pages, if we're to be consistent. --ItsWalky 14:46, 29 January 2010 (EST)

No, no, I thought of that point. Car Robots is part of the whole G1 continuity in Japan, I understand, but in the way the wiki has come to define a continuity family (i.e. the Beast Era is basically a 'continuity family') Car Robots is not. But you see what I'm doing, don't you? I'm banging on the pipes of this thing. My gut tells me that there's a fundamental wrongness in our organization scheme, so I'm looking at the fracture points to see WHY I think that. (I'm really not trolling, I promise.)--Jimsorenson 14:55, 29 January 2010 (EST)

The Beast Era is not a continuity family. If any page says this, we should change it immediately. Car Robots is part of the G1 continuity family, same as Beast Wars, while Robots in Disguise is its own continuity family. --ItsWalky 15:05, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Doing a search for "Beast Era portion of" nets me 99 pages, so apparently we do use it at least as a continuity family within a continuity family. --Jeysie 15:19, 29 January 2010 (EST)

.... that doesn't mean it's a continuity family. Why would that mean it's a continuity family? We also say "the Armada portion of" and "the Marvel Comics portion of," and those don't mean that they're continuity families! Just subsets of a continuity family. --ItsWalky 15:23, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Because Beast Era isn't a franchise. Beast Wars is a franchise. Beast Machines is a franchise. Beast Era isn't even a continuity like "Marvel Comics portion of", so that doesn't apply either. Saying "Beast Era" is just like saying "Unicron Trilogy", IMHO.

As such, if we're not allowed to use "Beast Era" as a continuity family (even though it acts like one in all aspects other than borrowing the G1 fiction as its backstory), then those characters should either say the appropriate one of "Beast Wars portion of"/"Beast Machines portion of" or drop the "portion of" altogether, depending on how you look at it. --Jeysie 15:28, 29 January 2010 (EST)

That makes absolutely no sense, and I'm not going to give myself a goddamn fucking heart attack trying to explain why to you. --ItsWalky 15:32, 29 January 2010 (EST)

From an in universe perspective, Beast Wars is definitely part of Primax. But from an out-of-universe (i.e. wiki) perspective, Beast Era functions in many ways very much like a continuity family. There are a series of different franchises collected within it, primarily Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo. Thematically and tonally, it's very different from the rest of classic G1 stories. It largely uses new characters. (Largely, there are plenty of crossovers too, but the majority are new.) There is some value to being able to, at a glance, separate the classic G1-G2-Masterforce-Victory-etc ideas from the Beast Era ideas.--Jimsorenson 15:37, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Yeah, this, exactly. The term looks exactly like "Unicron Trilogy" to me, in the sense of being a term covering a franchise and its sequel(s), and their various related sub-continuities. It just, unlike UT, happens to also fit within another continuity family. --Jeysie 15:47, 29 January 2010 (EST)

It's a subset of a continuity family. Whoo. —Interrobang 15:52, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Exactly my point. It behaves like a continuity family within a continuity family. --Jeysie 16:00, 29 January 2010 (EST)

On second thought, the logical conclusion of what Jim is saying is that the pages should actually be split. Side Burn (RID) and [[Speedbreaker]]—with a (CR) if necessary—like Squeezeplay and Cancer. Side Burn and Speedbreaker are in separate continuity families. And Car Robots should have its own franchise and cartoon pages. I always wondered why Car Robots didn't. I figured it was because nobody who was familiar with it made one yet. - Starfield 15:52, 29 January 2010 (EST)

I think what Interrobang has done is good enough. It's kind of ridiculous to have two identical pages for every character and every episode in RID/CR, with just the continuity family notation at the top being different. Just put those pages in two categories, address the problem at the bottom or whatever, the end. The end. --ItsWalky 15:58, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Nothing in CR is distinct enough to warrant more than a trivia note at the base of the current articles that are devoted to the English media of our English-centric wiki. It isn't even "really" part of G1 except for some bizarre after-the-fact handwaving that only ever appeared on a retarded poster or something, not within any actual story material. --Thylacine 2000 16:05, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Not exactly true. --ItsWalky 16:14, 29 January 2010 (EST)

(Bangs head on desk repeatedly.) I'm really, really, really getting sick of these proposed unnecessary broad-stroke sweeping changes that would severely fuck up everything and obfuscate information because of some bizarre need to adhere to some imagined rigid fictional standard. --M Sipher 16:25, 29 January 2010 (EST)

This is an example of why Jimsorenson's original proposal of disambiguation by continuity family wouldn't work. Because Side Burn and Speedbreaker are in different continuity families. Disambiguation by franchise still works if you consider RID and Car Robots the same franchise. Forget continuities and continuity families and look at the characters. Both pull from the same general pool of characters with generally the same personalities. The fact that episodes and characters can share the same page proves that they are really the same franchise. Yes we should use the English version of the franchise as the disambiguation. And yes I would change "Super God Masterforce" (wtf?) to "HUMAN POWER" in a heartbeat, but that may be just me. I would use "Overlord (G1)" because he did have a G1 toy. - Starfield 16:28, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Well, it failed, because all it's doing is creating a ton of work for no actual benefit. And in this instance, RID is both a franchise and a continuity family at once, a rare instance. Which is why we need to not try and apply that one oddity to everything else. --M Sipher 16:33, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Well, it succeeded, in that it was a topic for exploratory discussion rather than a "ok let's do this now here's the vote" that garnered a discussion and reached a consensus. But Siph, you should realize that improved taxonomies are desirable in and of themselves. They are easier to maintain, easier to create and better reflect the underlying reality of the property. You shouldn't be so quick to dismiss potential changes simply because they're new. Or are you seriously putting forth the proposition that every system we have in place on the wiki right now is basically perfect?--Jimsorenson 16:45, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Are you actually reading what I wrote? My whole POINT is that our system isn't perfect because it can't be thanks to the material we're covering, but it's 99.9% of the time as good as we can hope to get it. What I find is these broad changes keep coming up for proposal, they're taken to ridiculous extremes... and then a tiny, situational, elegant solution that solves the problem for that 0.1% comes along within our normal bounds, without requiring massive wiki redos. Interrobang's addition of "Car Robots characters" is, for my money, the best way to approach this specific issue. The reworked disambig for Unicron-agent Sideways is another one. There's "how can we handle this odd exception", and then there's "hey, here's this odd exception, LET'S CHANGE EVERYTHING TO ACCOMMODATE IT." --M Sipher 17:03, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Are you actually reading what I wrote? I didn't suggest a broad, sweeping change. I suggested that our current rules would imply that our RID disambiguated guys are incorrectly placed. We're talking maybe two-dozen guys here. Is that what constitutes a broad, sweeping change in your mind? I believe that Walky is the one who brought up the idea that maybe we should double every single page in RID to accommodate the G1/RID continuity family dichotomy, and I was against it. And the system CAN be better, AND flaws are more frequent than you would suggest. If the flaws were really only one article per thousand, we'd be talking 10 articles, not ALL of RID, ALL of Animated (from Japan, in the movie continuity), All of the G1 stuff that didn't actually have a franchise, ALL of RotF .... each of these was a flashpoint for this kind of discussion or at least potentially will be.

A system that's broken maybe 10% of the time PROBABLY CAN BE MADE BETTER. I'm NOT going around making broad, sweeping proposals. I'm examining flash points to try to understand HOW the current system is implemented, WHY it was implemented that way, and see if maybe, possibly, there's a better way. This strikes me as a more productive approach than bitching about all these newfangled kids who come along and want to make the wiki a better place.--Jimsorenson 17:21, 29 January 2010 (EST)

There is nothing concrete that actually says Japanese Animated is in the same continuity as the movie. —Interrobang 17:26, 29 January 2010 (EST)

I'm wondering whether redirects based on Japanese names should be made, and then the relevant categories (e.g. "Car Robots characters") placed on them. That way, the theoretically different, G1 character of "Flame Convoy" can appear in the category instead of RID Optimus Prime. That's as far as I'm willing to go—49 pairs of identical articles with the only difference most of the time being names is excessive. —Interrobang 17:20, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Of course, this is really only an exercise in anality, and some of the Romanizations ("Valdigus") were pulled out of our asses. —Interrobang 17:23, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Considering they pulled the name itself out of THEIR asses... --M Sipher 17:30, 29 January 2010 (EST)

To address the issue itself... This is one instance where I don't mind a foreign-name redirect-with-category. --M Sipher 18:49, 29 January 2010 (EST)

I doubt you guys have any inkling of how barely-restrained my current desire to murder you all is. - Chris McFeely 17:35, 29 January 2010 (EST)

And yet you still love us. --Lonegamer78 20:31, 29 January 2010 (EST)

RID is a dub of the Car Robots cartoon, it's clearly not the same franchise.

Cybertron/Galaxy Force really is just two different versions of the same thing, but Car Robots / RID was not.

I agree with Jim and vote for a huge YES. Basically, in some way, we can say RID features CR toyline and CR anime plus some original factor. Plus, in my opinion, I don't think change "English name (RID)" into "Japanese name (CR)" is not good, since we have "Lio Convoy" instead of "Leo Prime". --TX55^TALK 21:10, 29 January 2010 (EST)

I guess I don't understand how Car Robots is so different from RID. We need a Car Robots francise/cartoon page. But, I don't think you can have it both ways. If they are not the same franchise, than the characters are in neither the same franchise nor the same continuity family and should technically have separate pages. Or they are near enough to the same franchise that we can go on the same page with English disambiguations. We would use English names regardless. (The name Lio Convoy made it into English fiction in defiance of common sense and is therefore an official English name.) - Starfield 21:25, 29 January 2010 (EST)

And here's when we start to have problems. "Technically" does not fly with Transformers. Having separate pages for the CR iterations of characters and episodes would be possibly the most retarded thing ever done on this wiki. --M Sipher 05:35, 30 January 2010 (EST)

Car Robot

The Japanese name appears to be Transformers: Car Robot. The wiki uses "Car Robots" for some reason. Is it a good reason, or should we change over? - Starfield 12:03, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

Japanese doesn't always distinguish between singular and plural, and this can be further exacerbated when pulling in English loan words. Yes, it's possible to transcribe "robots" as ロボッツ, but when the standard word for "robot" in Japanese is ロボット, the more likely plural is going to be ロボット達, and that just looks wrong in a show title. :-) Granted, the usage of "Robots" as part of the title does make some assumptions of Japanese grammar holding sway and compensates on the side of common-sense aesthetics...so yeah, technically, "Car Robot" is a more accurate literal translation. I tend to put this in the "Minelba" category of translations, though; sometimes, you have to account for linguistic differences and interpret a little.--Apcog 15:17, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

If someone from Japan were to say the name of the cartoon, what would they say? - Starfield 16:49, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

They'd say トランスフォーマーカーロボット or just カーロボット. That is to say, they'd be using the Japanese title. They wouldn't necessarily render it according to the sense of English grammar, so one can't absolutely rely on that idea. A Japanese person with sufficient English comprehension who'd heard/read numerous English references to the Japanese title as "Car Robots" might refer to it that way, or he might not.--Apcog 21:42, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

RID Timeline

I was wondering if we should make a timeline for RID 2001 using the events that take place in the Viron 903.0 Beta universal stream. It ties a lot closer to the cartoon universe and that Optimus Prime/Omega Prime does play a big roll throughout the Universe War and Funpub fiction, so to me it makes a lot of sense to use that. All the other Viron universal streams seem to branch off into their own realities like: Viron 102.0 Beta tying into events from the Beast Wars cartoon universe and Viron 704.31 Epsilon seems to rewrite the entire timeline by having Optimus and Megatron dying.

I only ask because the Unicron Trilogy timeline uses events from the Funpub fiction and the Linkage manga which I understand doesn't contradict eachother so they work well in a timeline and we have timelines for every other series done up in a similar fashion, including this one but in the Japanese G1 fiction, so why not have one for the Amercian fans of the series like myself. I love reading this wiki's timelines and it only seems fitting to give this series a little more love. It would also help marry up the use of Viron 903.0 Beta's Prime and Magnus appearing in the Balancing Act arc, the 3H Universe comic arc and the other Funpub fiction that Prime later appears in (I haven't read that far into that at the time of this post). I'm pretty sure most fans who have read those comics and stories would already take that Prime and Magnus as being from the cartoon universe in their personal canon anyway so why not just put a timeline together for those who enjoy that sort of thing to read through.

If you have any objections feel free to speak your minds. I will take some time away at some point to rewatch the American dub of the series and put together a sandbox page for us to look over. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 20:06, 17 June 2020 (EDT)

Late response, I know, but I'd be down for it. --Sabrblade (talk) 14:11, 31 January 2021 (EST)