Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2001 franchise)
| This article is about . For other uses of "Robots in Disguise", see Robots in Disguise (disambiguation)|The name or term "Robots in Disguise" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Robots in Disguise (disambiguation).}} |
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Transformers: Robots in Disguise is a franchise that launched in the year 2001. The first full-on reboot series in Transformers history, it caused a heck of a ruckus in the fandom when it was new. Since then, however, it has faded into relative obscurity.
Taking place on Earth at the turn of the century, the series follows Optimus Prime and his Autobots protecting the planet and its long-lost Cybertronian artifacts from the ambitions of the evil Megatron and his Predacons.
In-universe, the Robots in Disguise continuity family is referred to as "Viron" in the TransTechs' universal stream designators.
The Robots in Disguise franchise features the following primary components:
- A toyline
- A cartoon series imported wholesale from Takara markets (more on that shortly).
- A single American comic book story produced by Dreamwave Productions in 2004 (a few years after the cartoon ended production).
Due to retcons by the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime, the franchise also encompasses:
- Another toyline composed entirely of six Dinobots.<ref>Ask Vector Prime, 29/05/2015</ref>
- Another American comic book story produced by 3H Productions for OTFCC 2004.<ref>Ask Vector Prime, 29/07/2015</ref>
Japanese release
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The series's original incarnation, Transformers: Car Robots (トランスフォーマー カーロボット), was created in response to the declining sales of Takara's Beast Wars toylines and their displeasure with Hasbro's unorthodox design methods for the high concept Beast Machines<ref>Transformers Beast Wars: Beast Generations, p. 121</ref>. Takara opted instead to tap into nostalgia by bringing back the traditional modern Earth vehicle heroes with the classic red face Autobot symbol. The villains of the series did not follow suit as Takara decided to more or less stay the course charted by the likes of Beast Wars II and Neo with a show-stopping new flagship mold for series villain "Gigatron" while his lackeys were composed of an eclectic mix of redecoes culled from prior Beast Wars, Generation 2, and even Generation 1 toylines.
Set on Earth at the turn of the century, Car Robots follows a "Dimensional Patrol unit" led by Fire Convoy protecting the planet and its long-lost Cybertronian artifacts from the ambitions of the evil Gigatron and his new "Destronger" faction.
What exactly that *means* was the subject of no small amount of confusion, but to skip to the end, Car Robots is the final Japan-exclusive season of the behemoth Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity, with a cast composed of all new characters, having time-traveled from the distant future some time after the events of Beast Wars Neo.
As it turns out, nostalgia marketing for fifteen-year-old cartoons does not work on nine-year-olds, and the Transformers brand closed the decade on a whimper in Japan, lying fallow with the core demographic until 2003's radical reimagining with Legends of the Microns, Takara's version of Armada.
Development
[edit]A year later in America, Hasbro decided it was time to end the Beast Era (which was also flagging in sales). Hasbro and Takara began work to co-develop the next series intended for both markets, Transformers: Armada, but Hasbro refused to have no Transformers toys on the shelves despite Beast Machines under-performing. Thus, they quickly ported over Car Robots, re-branding it as Robots in Disguise, a low-cost, low-work "filler" line. While the animalistic villains retained the Predacon logo (and faction name), all of the villains who turned into Earth vehicles received the traditional Decepticon emblem. Hasbro took to Takara's grab bag approach like a fish to water, expanding the product offerings with more redecos and minor retools of older molds, including a few previously canceled ones.
Declining to attempt to endear American children to Car Robots' cast of unfamiliar characters, Hasbro took a page from the book of the nascent Armada treatment and styled them as new incarnations of the familiar Optimus Prime, Megatron, and friends, give or take the unavoidably eclectic mix of antagonist factions baked into the line. Hasbro handed off translation to Saban Entertainment, who produced a fairly liberal reimagining for Western markets per the style of dubbing for children's anime on American broadcast television at the time, landing a spot on the coveted Fox Kids Saturday morning block.
Where Car Robots sputtered as the last gasp of the original franchise in Japan, Robots in Disguise took off with a roar in America, thanks in no small part to riding the wave at the height of the American anime boom alongside such titans as Pokémon and Dragon Ball Z.
The continuity kerfuffle
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To put it bluntly, the continuity placement of the original Japanese Car Robots version of the series has been a point of contention within the fandom, particularly in the West.
Early materials & initial impressions
[edit]In its original broadcast on Japanese television, Car Robots was the final installment in a series of five Transformers cartoons that aired consecutively on TV Tokyo from 1997 to 2000. Beginning with the first season of Beast Wars, this five-series run aired undisrupted on a weekly basis,<ref group="note">Barring two delays from December holidays in 1997 and 1998 that, respectively, pushed back one episode of Beast Wars to air a week later back-to-back with the next episode, and shifted the last four episodes of Beast Wars II (and thus every episode of the next three series) back one week.</ref> continuing directly into Beast Wars II, Beast Wars Neo, Beast Wars Metals, and finally Car Robots. The first four series' final episodes each ended with a short promo that previewed the next series in the line, as if each show was one part of a larger ongoing series of interconnected shows. The promo for Car Robots aired immediately after the final episode of Beast Wars Metals, and featured Fire Convoy thanking the Maximal Beast Warriors for preserving Earth's history and promising to keep the modern day safe from the Destrongers.<ref group="note">This information was largely lost on larger English-speaking world due to a lack of widespread knowledge that this obscure promo had even existed, let alone what was said in its Japanese dialogue.</ref>
The series' synopsis found on TV Tokyo's website described Car Robots as "A new entry in the popular Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars series" and even mentioned by name the Great War of old. Said site and the first toy catalog also claimed the Destrongers had come to the 21st century through a dimensional rift, with the catalog calling them "an extremist group of the Destron race" ("Destron" referring to the Predacons of the Beast Era). The catalog also referred to Fire Convoy's team as a "Dimensional Patrol unit" sent to stop the Destrongers, and even described the series premise as "Car Robots versus Beast Wars". Plus, while not known at the time, early concept art for Fire Convoy (released publicly via Transformers Generations 2015) depicted him with a Maximal symbol instead of an Autobot one.<ref>{{#if: So i was looking up the contents of a book i've got on the way when i stumbled onto this interesting piece of concept art included in the 2015 Generations book that appears to show a closer link between Beast Wars with Fire Convoy having a Maximal symbol. https://t.co/wyzrkAX0vS |"So i was looking up the contents of a book i've got on the way when i stumbled onto this interesting piece of concept art included in the 2015 Generations book that appears to show a closer link between Beast Wars with Fire Convoy having a Maximal symbol. https://t.co/wyzrkAX0vS"—|}}{{#if: https://twitter.com/walruslaw/status/1488875871847043072 |walruslaw|walruslaw}}{{#if: Twitter |, Twitter|}}{{#if: |, ""|}}{{#if: 2022 |, 2022{{#if: 02 |/{{#switch:{{#len:02}}|1=002|02}}{{#if: 02|/{{#switch:{{#len:02}}|1=002|02}}|}}}}|}}{{#if: https://twitter.com/walruslaw/status/1488875871847043072 ||}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/walruslaw/status/1488875871847043072%7C7%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/walruslaw/status/1488875871847043072%7C8%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/walruslaw/status/1488875871847043072%7C7%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/walruslaw/status/1488875871847043072%7C8%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#if: | (dead link)}}</ref><ref>20thDan on Twitter, with higher-quality versions of the artwork, originally posted by Hisashi Yuki in a since-deleted Tweet.</ref> Coupled with the first episode featuring a celebration for the new millennium (setting it in the year 2000), all this led to initial speculation that the series would be set within the preexisting Japanese Transformers continuity, during the at-the-time unexplored gap between the second season of the Generation 1 cartoon and its movie, with the Car Robots cast having time-traveled from the future à la Beast Wars.
As the series continued, however, it began to feel less like a part of the preexisting continuity and more like a fresh start, presenting itself as a self-contained story isolated from everything that had come before it,<ref group="note">The Beast Wars II cartoon was similarly isolated and self-contained, but the appearance of Optimus Primal in both its first toy catalog and its movie made it easier for fans to accept it as part of the preexisting continuity.</ref> with no obvious ties or references to the Generation 1 cartoon whose second and third seasons Car Robots was, ostensibly, supposed to be set between.<ref group="note">Although, the Autobots' base and underground transit system were strikingly similar to ones first introduced in Issue #4 of the Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers manga; a series that not many Westerners were familiar with at the time.</ref> There were no guest appearances from any Generation 1 characters (who, logically, ought to have noticed the globally Earth-based conflict of Fire Convoy and Gigatron's forces),<ref group="note">Even the similarly self-contained Super-God Masterforce cartoon at least had a brief guest cameo appearance from Chromedome in its third episode.</ref> and Fire Convoy's team took a more covert role in their relationship with humanity, using their vehicle modes to keep themselves incognito when not in battle, unlike the Generation 1 Autobots who regularly interacted with humans in their robot modes both on and off duty.<ref group="note">Though, Fire Convoy's team had no qualms whatsoever with showing their robot modes to humanity whenever their battles took place in cities or other populated areas.</ref> In fact, none of the early information about the characters being time travelers was ever brought up in the show, with almost no indication of the cast being anything but native to the year 2000 (save for one extremely brief moment in Episode 12 that many fans did not catch, wherein Fire Convoy vaguely hinted at having originally come from another time).<ref group="note">Upon finding the first O-Part of the series, Fire Convoy recognized what it was and questioned how it could possibly "exist during this time," as if both he and the O-Part were not native to the series' present time.</ref> The Destrongers being a radical group of rogue Destrons was never mentioned either. Thus, fans began to reconsider the series' original continuity placement and wondered if it might instead be an alternate universe—a sort of continuity reboot—dismissing the early time-traveling info as mere rumors or dropped concepts (or simply never knowing about it in the first place).
On the other hand, Car Robots also never actually made a concerted effort to explicitly separate itself from everything that had come before it, either. At most, it maintained a largely indifferent relationship with the greater Japanese continuity... at first. As the series moved into its second half, it finally started to do some actual continuity-based world-building, reintroducing concepts and lore originally from Beast Wars II (the Energon Matrix), Beast Wars Neo (Vector Sigma as the God of the Transformers), The Headmasters (Brave Maximus being controlled by a "Head On System") and even the American Beast Wars cartoon (a spaceship based directly on the Axalon containing protoform-filled stasis pods). At the time, the greater Western fandom still had very limited knowledge about the various Japanese-original Transformers series, and thus weren't privy to all of these references. But those residing in Japan who did catch these references (and hadn't fully dismissed the original shared-continuity speculation) postulated if maybe the cast of Car Robots had come from the future-set Beast Era, specifically around the time of Beast Wars Neo. But, the more vocal fandom perception that Beast Wars II and Neo took place chronologically before Beast Machines challenged this theory and attempted to silence it. <ref group="note">Even though Beast Machines had not yet reached Japan by that point, and thus wasn't yet a factor in the Japanese continuity until its belated release in 2004.</ref>
And then...
The English version
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When Car Robots was brought over to the West as Robots in Disguise, the cartoon's English dub was absolutely treated as a reboot by its production team (though, likely based on the same fandom belief in the first place). New leaders Fire Convoy and Gigatron were reimagined as new versions of Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively, the entire cast of original characters were given different English names (mixing familiar names taken from Generation 1 with several brand new names), and episode scripts were written in ways that made the dub completely incompatible with either of the two major, Hasbro-backed Generation 1 continuities of the 20th century.
Muddying the waters further was the English dub's tendency to namedrop numerous references to concepts and characters from Generation 1, Beast Wars, and Beast Machines (which typically made things even less compatible), as well as the expanded Hasbro toyline featuring toys of Axer and Optimus Primal (whose toy bios strongly insinuated that they were the very same Axer and Optimus Primal as those originally from Generation 1 and Beast Wars/Beast Machines, respectively). This caused no end of confusion among most of the Western fandom since, at the time, the idea of a total continuity reboot in Transformers was still very new and took some time to settle in.
Some fans even attempted to theorize how Robots in Disguise could fit into a combined timeline of the English-language Generation 1, Beast Wars, and Beast Machines cartoons, jumping through hoops to explain how most of the characters with Generation 1-based names could be the same people as their namesakes via body-changes (like Ultra Magnus becoming Ultra Magnus), or how those with new names could later become familiar G1 characters via body- and name-changes (like Side Burn becoming Hot Rod). Other fans even theorized if Robots in Disguise could have been the result of Beast Wars having changed the timeline of Generation 1's history. Of course, these fan theories were going off the English dub due to its easier accessibility in the West, ignoring the fact that the characters in the Japanese Car Robots version were all originally brand new characters with mostly brand new names and no inherent ties to any prior series' characters (which, interestingly, would allow the Car Robots version to "fit in" better than the English version).
Eventually, the fandom grew used to the idea of this series (both its English and Japanese versions) being on its own, unconnected to any other series, helped along when Armada would unquestionably reboot Transformers continuity one year after Robots in Disguise in the West and three whole years after Car Robots in Japan. This tactic of starting things over every year is common in several long-running Japanese franchises, but had not yet been applied to Transformers until this point. Subsequent series would later follow suit, creating more and more non-Generation 1 continuities with each new reboot, making Car Robots/Robots in Disguise appear as less of an anomaly and more acceptably understood as just the first of many non-Generation 1 cartoons to come about after the Beast Era.
This would later be reflected in such multiversal series like Transformers: Universe and Transformers: Timelines, in which characters from Robots in Disguise were depicted as hailing from alternate universes different from those of Generation 1/Beast Wars/Beast Machines. Timelines and related works would even further distinguish the worlds of Robots in Disguise from Generation 1 by designating those of RID as part of the "Viron" cluster of universes, while G1 worlds were of the "Primax" cluster, in the universal stream system.
And thus, all things seemed to mostly make sense.
BUT THEN...
Takara builds the Japanese G1 timeline
[edit]In 2003—three years after Car Robots had run its course in Japan—Takara released a new set of redecos for the Car Robots Spychanger toys in a small toyline called The Transformers: Super Spychanger Lottery. While pack-in material for this line indicated these toys represented the same Spychangers from the cartoon at a point set after the final episode, the line was branded not with Takara's Car Robots logo but instead with Hasbro's original Generation 1 logo from 1984–1988. Though many fans found this quite puzzling at the time, the contemporaneous Japanese lines of Generation 1 reissues—The Transformers: Collector's Edition, The Transformers Collection, and The Transformers: Micromaster—all likewise made use of this Hasbro G1 logo. A year later, 2004's Robotmasters series provided further hints regarding the placement of Car Robots in Japanese continuity. In celebration of the brand's 20th anniversary, this series featured a big crossover event between Generation 1, Beast Wars, and more, with characters time-traveling to the year 2004 through a set of dimensional rifts known as the Blastizone.
One character in this series, an amnesiac Decepticon named Wrecker Hook, shared the same toy mold and Japanese name as Car Robots Wrecker Hook (known in Robots in Disguise as the Autobot Tow-Line). At the time, it was not clear if the Decepticon Wrecker Hook was meant to be the Autobot Wrecker Hook/Tow-Line having switched sides, but even if he was, there still remained speculation over whether or not he had come from another dimension, since another character in the line was also suspected to be a dimension-hopper. However, a closer examination of the Robotmasters toy bios and fiction reveals that the only characters who came through the Blastizone were just the time-traveling ones from Beast Wars, Victory, and Beast Wars II; not Wrecker Hook.<ref group="note">And not Double Face, either. There was never any dimension-hopping in Robotmasters.</ref>
Also in the Robotmasters line was a rerelease of the Car Robots Brave Maximus toy, offered as a contest prize and renamed "Cybertron Base" (a name not too dissimilar to the name of its city mode in the Car Robots cartoon: "Cybertron City").<ref group="note">Note that "Cybertron City" is also the Japanese name as Autobot City.</ref> But since Brave Maximus/Cybertron Base did not actually feature in any Robotmasters fiction (barring a single vague mention in the first catalog comic that a "great fortress" served as the core of Autobot City), his inclusion in the Robotmasters line was largely ignored by the Western fandom. Also released in this year was the e-HOBBY-exclusive G1 GoBots set, whose toy bio made explicit reference to the Spychangers of Car Robots in a way that tied them directly to their toy mold predecessors, the Generation 2 Go-Bots. While the characters in this set would never be used in Japanese media, the Spychanger reference was but a small glimpse of much bigger things yet to come.<ref>Post by Andrew Hall on The Allspark (dead link)</ref>
In 2005, the Binaltech Asterisk line featured human figures packed in with new toys of Generation 1 Autobots; two of these figures (Ai Kuruma and Junko Shiragami) were based on the Car Robots characters Ai and Junko (known in Robots in Disguise as "T-AI" and "Kelly", respectively). While Ai Kuruma was definitely not the same person as Ai/T-AI (since the latter was a hologram, not a human), it was not quite known if Junko Shiragami was supposed to be the Junko/Kelly from Car Robots or just an homage to her (like how Ai Kuruma was to Ai/T-AI).<ref group="note">Though, both of their Binaltech Asterisk toy bios had some vague but notable hints that seemed to imply some kind of relation to their Car Robots namesakes: Ai's bio alluded to a supposed history between her and the Transformers that somehow existed before she had even met them (seemingly in reference to Car Robots Ai resembling her likeness), while Junko's bio stated that she loves to take long drives but has had no luck with cars for a long time (much like Car Robots Junko's bad luck with always running into Transformer activity that often led to the destruction of many of her automobiles).</ref> The latter notion soon began to seem more likely when a third human figure, Lumina Hoshi, was released as a new character who, like Ai Kuruma, was merely an homage to another preexisting character (in this case, Illumina from Victory). However, little did anyone in the West realize at the time that these little hints were all just the tip of the iceberg.
By 2006–2007, Takara surprised the Western fandom by directly clarifying Car Robots's place in continuity. The Kiss Players series featured a storyline in which the series' protagonists traveled through time aboard Brave Maximus, the very same one from Car Robots. One of their jumps even took them to the first episode of Car Robots without any dimension-hopping, only time-hopping. The story later saw Brave Maximus get thrown far back in time to crash-land on Planet Master, at a point set before the planet's refugee inhabitants had developed the Headmaster technology; Brave Maximus's wreckage ended up providing the catalyst for not just the technology but also the construction of the physically similar Fortress Maximus. The story's conclusion even featured the creation of Brave Maximus on Earth in the distant past, finally explaining how and why he was first seen hidden deep within the Earth back in Car Robots. Other print media released at the time even produced a long, highly detailed timeline that mapped out just how the hell this all worked.
Essentially, Takara had stuck to the original claims of the series' preliminary info by officially declaring Car Robots to have been part of the massive, sprawling Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity all along, hand-waving the cartoon's lack of previous-series Transformers appearing on Earth by utilizing the ending of a short-lived, somewhat obscure Generation 1 manga mini-series first published in 2003 (but notably written and drawn by Naoto Tsushima, the very same man who wrote and drew the aforementioned Robotmasters series the following year, and illustrated the Binaltech Asterisk manga in 2006). Titled Transformers: The Battle of the Star Gate, this mini-series took place in the latter 1990s and ended, practically on purpose, with virtually the entire Generation 1 cast completely disappearing from Earth after a cataclysmic battle in space, and not returning until a few years later, allowing Car Robots to conveniently slot right into the year 2000 while the Generation 1 characters were gone.
With much of the fandom having already grown used to the idea of Car Robots being as much of a reboot as Robots in Disguise by that point in time, this revelation was initially met with quite the startled reaction; many even wrote it off as a nonsensical retcon.<ref group="note">A 2015 Ask Vector Prime Facebook entry even attempted to provide a "quantum-babble" explanation for how the events of Car Robots came to take place in the Japanese G1 universe, which leaned into the idea of it having indeed been a retcon instead of the original intention for Car Robots all along.</ref> Regardless, subsequent Japanese media would adhere to this decision, leaning into the once-quelled idea of the Car Robots cast originally hailing from a future set at some time near that of Beast Wars Neo. The aforementioned Robotmasters Wrecker Hook and Binaltech Asterisk Junko would even be confirmed to be the same characters as their Car Robots counterparts in 2013's "Metrowars" and 2016's Unite Warriors Offshot, respectively.
In the end, it appears that, from Takara's perspective, Car Robots really was always meant to be part of this larger Japanese G1 universe. It's just that the cartoon itself did such a really lackadaisical job of actually making that clear; most likely because Takara felt that it simply went without saying, and weren't aware that the fandom felt otherwise. And because it wasn't as obvious as Takara thought, it took all these extra efforts made after the fact to help Car Robots feel more inclusively like a part of Japanese G1, but to very mixed results.
BUT, even with all of THAT said and sorted out...
East vs. West
[edit]Hasbro, on the other side of the pond, has shown NO such plans to align the English version with any of this (which is for the better). To this day, the 2001 Robots in Disguise cartoon remains its own little separate, distinctly non-Generation 1 thing, and Hasbro has shown little inclination to revive its characters or concepts; most of the callbacks have come from licensees Fun Publications and IDW Publishing, but a few characters and ideas have persisted in toy form from Hasbro proper. Thus, Car Robots/Robots in Disguise is in the unique position of being simultaneously part of and completely separate from Generation 1... depending on which side of the globe you're looking at.
In order to keep things simple for readers and cut back on redundancies, TFWiki.net has opted to roll Car Robots character and cartoon information into the Robots in Disguise counterparts' pages. Just know that any Robots in Disguise character who appears in the "Car Robots characters" category has a nigh-identical Generation-1-timeline doppelganger with a different name who did pretty much all the same stuff in the cartoon, only they did it all in a Generation 1 timeline. Though some modern Western fiction has introduced distinctly Generation 1 versions of Robots in Disguise characters—such as Sky-Byte, Side Burn, and Gigatron—these versions of the characters are all covered on the same pages as their Robots in Disguise counterparts since, it turns out, the original Car Robots versions that started it all were all originally Generation 1 characters anyway!
Head hurt yet? GOOD!!
Notes
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- That retro gimmick we mentioned goes more than skin deep. Car Robots is so named for the original Car Robots (カーロボット) subline imprint of the pre-Transformers Diaclone franchise from which we receive the original 1984-1985 assortment of Autobot Cars, along with Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus.
- When asked about the Diaclone angle, TakaraTomy designer Hironori Kobayashi explained that their driving philosophy for the line was to recreate the original Car Robots from first principles with then-modern (read: Beast Wars) technology.<ref>Interview with Kobayashi in Transformers Generations 2015</ref>
- The Car Robots Encyclopedia equated the two directly, telling the kids of 2000 that the Car Robots had been defending the Earth for a loooong time before Fire Convoy's crew came along, and gave them a brief out-of-universe rundown of vintage Diaclone in an elaborate cross-sell for the contemporaneous Generation 1 Optimus Prime reissue.
- If this seems like a lot of fuss for the Autobot Brothers specifically, it bears mentioning Car Robots' wider orbit in the Diaclone line accounts for the remaining new-mold Autobots in the form of the heroic train and construction vehicle combiners that became 1987's Trainbots and 1984's Constructicons respectively.
References
[edit]Footnotes
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