User:JoseBxR

About

Music artist and Media Editor for OverClocked ReMix.
Creative talent with absolutely no free time to create.
Maintaining a YouTube channel for multimedia product, but so far is mostly a collection of funny English dubs of martial arts films.
Animation maven from the prehistoric (before Internet) era. Areas of interest: U.S. theatrical shorts from 1930-1954; U.S. theatrical cel animation; Animation produced in Japan for Japan from 1970-1995; TV animation co-produced in Japan from 1980-1995.

This page is to be a repository for information regarding my research in identifying G1 animation works, and also possibly information on poor G1 English dubbing, perhaps even the music from the series and my issues with presenting so many show oddities as "errors".
UPDATE July 20. 2024: I decided after decades to finally get around to restoring and compiling my G1 collection digitally; I think there are enough tools out there to do the job somewhat conveniently, although I still don't have the free time to do it as quickly as I'd like. This is concurrent with the task of figuring out which animation was done where, because a lot of overlap occurred during research on both fronts. It turns out that the Rhino releases, which I own, has a far larger rabbit hole of editing errors than I think most of us even realize (even Shout Factory managed to ignore a lot of it), and so I'm forced to keep a running tally of what I discover. Of a huge help is the release of G1 episodes dubbed in Japanese by the Takara Tomy channel on youtube. I also want to try for a new, more definitive, higher-quality collection of BGM from Douglas and Walsh, to add Japanese and Spanish audio (I can't do much about the quality of those, regrettably), and may ask for or contribute to efforts to translate and create subtitles in English, Spanish and Japanese. Since I'm here at the wiki, this will be the hub for all info on this project. I understand there must be other similar media efforts out there (I've seen little truly promising work except perhaps for the Grim2 channel), and whenever I get the chance, I'll "compile and eval" those. I apologize in advance for not having any sort of timetable for anything (maybe after I retire from my job; I'm still far too "young"), so I won't ask folks to "stay tuned", but I promise to work steadily (as I type, I'm currently working thru Episode 1 issues).

All notes on identifying G1 animation (subject to change)

Following is pure draft speculation, and is being updated constantly as I uncover new evidence. Nothing is 100 percent, so please do not spread this info elsewhere, unless it's in an episode's discussion tab. Everything so far is mostly attributed to "my own eyes and my own experience", which may be what got us into this mess regarding AKOM's work, but the difference with me is I keep my conclusion-jumping to an absolute minimum. Anyone can feel free to comment and point me to any and all additional, even contradictory, evidence for consideration within the discussion tab. I intend to compile video evidence of animation techniques, movement and styles between episodes (eps), and present them somewhere for the community, possibly for linking to talk pages.

Animation Determination As Of May 12, 2023

Season 1 (s1):

• 16 TOEI and/or TOEI-Outsourced

Season 2 (s2):

• 39 TOEI and/or TOEI-Outsourced
• At least 7 AKOM and/or AKOM-Outsourced
  • "Auto Berserk"
  • "A Prime Problem"
  • "A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court"
  • "Make Tracks"
  • "The Secret of Omega Supreme"
  • "Kremzeek!"
  • "Triple Takeover" (evidence of Sei Young animation, suggesting TOEI/AKOM collab)
• 3 HANHO HEUNG-UP, possibly produced by MIHAHN
  • "City of Steel"
  • "The Autobot Run"
  • "The Core"

Season 3 (s3):

• 13 TOEI-Outsourced
• 15 AKOM and/or AKOM-Outsourced
• 2 SEI YOUNG
  • "Surprise Party"
  • "Only Human"

Season 4 (s4):

• 3 AKOM

Factual Evidence

This collection of facts and creator claims is the basis for research on all eps, on the understanding that there may be errors here as well.

AKOM claims work on 39 eps from the entire series (according to their website)

Toei (according to archived "resume" webpage) claims work on

• all 3 eps from pilot miniseries
• all 13 eps from "Part 1" (season 1)
• 39 eps from "Part 2" (season 2)
• 13 eps from "Part 3" (season 3)

The Megna Co-Productions Database is quite valuable as a resource for identifying studios, but at the same time as horrifying as any other source for the lack of attributions, bibliography or citations. Major props to member Danja for the find.

Production materials allude to AKOM out-sourcing to Sam Young studio. Production materials belonging to Paul Davids indicate Sei Young worked on "Surprise Party", with no evidence of Toei involvement. Davids also claims some work came from a studio in the Philippines. There is confirmed evidence of storyboards shipped to Korea or Japan for preliminary work, which may or may not offer clues on the studio(s) ultimately selected for animation work. Nobuyoshi Habara (apparently with Ashi Pro at the time) claims work on several episodes; it's unclear which ones based on the episode numbers he offers, but his impressive technique is highly recognizable, which will make it relatively easy to identify episodes. Eiji Suganuma claims work as animation director on "Call of the Primitives" and says Toei passed work to Studio Look, which in turn passed some work to "International Animation Research Institute". Daewon Media of South Korea confirms on their website that their previous incarnation, Dai Won Animation, has provided OEM work for Marvel's productions as a Toei subcontractor.

Challenges

It is admittedly difficult to identify studios in general, and non-Toei animation in particular, as explained below. However, I’m still baffled as to why only three eps out of s2 were readily identified as AKOM, and nothing else, considering that Nelson Shin was supervising producer, his wife was production manager, and especially with so many other eps unidentified. There should have been no “unknown studio” as understood up to this point: if it’s not Toei, then the next reasonable thought would be that Nelson got his people to do it. Now that we have some numbers out there, any “unknowns” that exist will likely not match the accepted info.

I want to note here: the mission for now is to determine which eps are claimed by Toei and which by AKOM, that is, which studio produced key animation, whether outsourced or in-house, and after I'm satisfied with the result, I'll see if it's possible to look into the various other studios being mentioned, keeping in mind that listing of an extra studio doesn't indicate anything more than involvement, let alone main animation production. I didn’t necessarily wish to go into the weeds of exactly who was outsourced to do which ep, but some of that work will have to be done to the extent of gathering evidence for identifying Toei and AKOM work, and maybe it’s worth trying so that the wiki could be able to link to and track all evidence linking studios to this work.

I need help on citations: This site links to that one tweet about Studio Look, since everyone was dying to know who was behind "Call of the Primitives" (what made you all think it was TMS? LOL), and then there is the archived Toei resume and the aforementioned Megna Database where mentions of "Nakamura", "Dai Won", etc. come from, but the latter is the only place that has apparent authority of any sort, yet still no citations. Sites such as iMDB, TV Tropes and ANN welcome contributions, but with no apparent links to authoritative resources, not even on an "some guy said to me over DMs" level. This is maddening. Anything real that I collect I want to try to get preserved on this page, at least until we have something better established in the community.

Speaking for myself, this process is not as easy when there aren’t enough human characters running around to compare with. Robot characters make it more difficult. Most times you can only rely on mouth movement, a few poses and possibly some special effects, and that’s about it.

The greatest difficulty with identifying AKOM work is that this show is essentially their very first product: Marvel helped establish the studio in South Korea in 1985, and they probably hit the ground running, even though their first official work may be “My Little Pony: the Movie”. There’s almost nothing else from the time period, all the way until “Spiral Zone” in 1987, and by then their style changed significantly in some areas. Still, there are some good clues in that show, and they credit the animators!

Some folks are using “models” as a way of identifying animation. Although bad animation wouldn’t necessarily follow models anyway, and I wouldn’t want us to overthink about how something looks, at the expense of how something moves, this could be helpful in spots. In the case of Hoist, it helps me confirm where there’s a previous suspicion; The “alternate" Hoist model is identified only in eps that I already suspected were done by AKOM.

AKOM's majority of work in s3 is on another level of garbage generally, and IMO it should not be used as any sort of guide for comparing techniques in other seasons or shows. It just doesn't look like anything else out there; it seems to be almost exclusively the work of Sam Young, and I hesitate to even assign blame to AKOM, except for agreeing to outsource work to this bootleg outlet. AKOM is capable of good animation, even great animation in the view of some. They apparently allowed their dregs to work on s3, but s2 had a few legit awesome sequences. I’m convinced “A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur’s Court” is one of theirs, and it’s arguably their best TF work. By the time s4 came around, AKOM settled on a style similar to most contemporaneous South Korean output, but still characterized by their almost singular sloppy line work.

THOSE “Three”

"City of Steel", "The Autobot Run" and "The Core" are in my view very, very obviously produced by some studio out of South Korea employed by Marvel around this time (basically MiHahn and/or Dong Seo, with a Hong Kong outfit called Pan Sang East possibly collaborating with Dong Seo), because the work is virtually identical to work on "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends", as well as other Marvel shows of that period, not to mention several Ruby/Spears productions. “Amazing” explicitly credits an "association" with MiHahn, and “Incredible Hulk” is said to be from Pan Sang East. I have seen credits from either “Hulk” or “Hulk & Spider-Man” that mention Pan Sang East. It’s my guess the "Philippines" remark references something from these ranks, although they're not located there. Those eps are not AKOM-style to my eyes, and apparently no one has challenged this for a long time. Previously, I didn't rule out the possibility that this unknown studio may have ended up as an AKOM sub-contractor, because we have evidence of AKOM outsourcing due to the Sam Young materials. However, more evidence from Megna leads me to what may be a conclusion.

IF it is TRUE that 1) Dong Seo worked on “Spider-Friends”, “Hulk”, and several Ruby/Spears shows, 2) Steven Hahn founded MiHahn (which produced for “Spider-Friends” apparently with Dong Seo) in 1984, then founded Hanho Heung-Up soon afterward, out of animators at Dong Seo, 3) MiHahn and Hanho then formed a partnership on several 80’s shows, mostly for Nelvana in Canada, THEN the animation in “those three” could plausibly have been produced after the combination of MiHahn/Hanho was in effect, but before AKOM was formally established in '85, especially considering the talk at TV Tropes that Marvel didn’t want to keep paying Toei. Until I get contradicting info, I'm awfully close to concluding that those 3 are “Hanho Heung-Up” or “Mihahn & Hanho Heung-Up” productions. Interestingly, Toei and Hanho are said to have worked on "Turbo Teen". I’d still like to know what the deal was with Pan Sang East, tho. (Current suspicion: after working on "Pandamonium" and "Meatballs and Spaghetti", the Hong Kong studio went on to create all the awesome transformation sequences for "The Incredible Hulk", leaving all other animation in the series to Dong Seo.)

Overlap?

Some folks have it right that because one studio claims an ep, it doesn’t preclude other studios laying claim to the same ep. The numbers from Toei and AKOM imply some overlap. I have come to rely on depictions of Megatron for identifying Toei works, and Starscream for identifying AKOM works, but it's not foolproof. I worked out all the Toei claims, stupidly not considering that the community has already done most of that good work, but the AKOM stuff will require much more study, especially since, unlike with Toei, there are no numbers on how many eps they produced for s2. Has anyone tried to ask Nelson Shin? People have indeed contacted him about possibly releasing his magnum opus “Empress Chung” internationally. Unless AKOM themselves come clean about which 39 eps they are claiming, we may never have a complete resolution. I don’t expect they’ll cooperate after decades of (some undeserved) scorn and ridicule heaped on them by the fandom, but maybe worth a shot?

More new evidence to consider. IF it is TRUE that 1) Toei, according to their resume, produced 33 out of 39 episodes of “Jem Part 2” (understood to be Seasons 2 and 3), 2) “Jem” was animated, according to Megna, by Toei, Shin Won and Sam Young, 3) the work went to Shin Won and Sam Young because, according to TV Tropes, Marvel couldn’t afford to keep paying Toei for this show, 4) AKOM (which employed Sam Young) produced six of these 39 eps of “Jem”, according to Wikipedia, 5) Shin Won, according to TV Tropes, worked on specific s2 eps, THEN the question that could blow this case wide open becomes: What if Shin Won was indeed another AKOM subcontractor? I said before that Shin Won might not have done anything beyond in-betweening, but that was because I assumed they worked for Toei, but if it was AKOM, then that changes the game. The problem so far is they don’t seem to be working for AKOM in every show said to be theirs, and I’m also highly skeptical of some of the Shin Won assertions at TV Tropes, but I admit it’s an interesting clue.

Recycling

Recycled animation is virtually a dead giveaway for identifying studios. I started with the idea that any ep that reuses animation from Toei could be assumed to be claimed by Toei. I strongly suspected that even if an episode has nothing else from Toei except that Prime animation, then Toei claims it. “Attack of the Autobots” doesn’t seem to have anything else Toei-like, but I'm not sold in either direction yet. Same for "Starscream's Brigade", which is likely a cheap Sei Young product, but has the Prime sequence, and also a Lazerbeak eject sequence actually re-traced from the original shot in the Toei-produced "Changing Gears". I am marking stuff like this in my research. It’s not just Prime: “Golden Lagoon” features stock Toei animation of Omega Supreme; a Bruticus merge is repeated in “Revenge of Bruticus”; certain cassette ejections are repeated in certain episodes; etc.

Other Eps and Other Shows

My research spreadsheet has descriptions of certain styles from Toei such as "Traitor" animation and "Immobilizer" animation, so I could try to compare between eps, but I'm watching other shows of the period as well. “G.I. Joe” and “Defenders of the Earth”, as mentioned, are very good study resources. For example, I realized that although “Aerial Assault” is unique for Transformers, this animation (possibly in-house) is in quite a few “Joe” eps (most notably the “Pyramid of Darkness” 5-parter), and I'm now seeing plenty of this work in "Jem" eps. That's another very helpful source. In the case of Sei Young, “Defenders” gives us much more than “Surprise Party” to use as a reference, because they produced so many eps on that show. I’m convinced “Only Human” is a Sei Young product, which would actually reconcile some of the available info. Here’s why: The Toei resume indicates 13 “Part 3” eps, but also indicates a production year of “1987”; that would seem incorrect, unless they either didn’t count “The Return of Optimus Prime” (which aired Feb. ‘87) or didn't work on two of the non-AKOM eps. However, if the two Sei Young eps don’t count as Toei-produced, the numbers check out. Toei’s resume claims only two eps of “Defenders”, so we know Sei Young doesn’t count under Toei in that case. "Starscream's Brigade" is said to be done by Sei Young, and I believe that as well, but on the other hand there is also the Toei Prime animation and evidence of a "retraced" Toei shot of Soundwave, which points to a Toei claim as well. If anyone has evidence of other shows, animes and animation confirmed to be produced by certain studios mentioned here (I already checked AKOM's other stuff), please call to my attention.

Case in point on this subject: There's been a lot of activity over the past month at TV Tropes (March/April 2023), with a couple members entering a whole lot of G1 animation info. Some of it seems quite legit, some of it harder to believe, and at least one seems to have come from my offhand comment about “G.I. Joe” at "Unknown Studios" (not cool). My spreadsheet now has all this info entered under a new column called “WHO THE HELL SAYS?”, and I don’t know how to begin reconciling because, LIKE ALWAYS, this new info has no attribution and no source citation. If I had hair on my head, I’d be pulling it right out.

Ink & Paint

Folks should keep in mind that “later” stages in animation, such as ink & paint, could be done by other studios. I feel as though certain episodes may have farmed that work out, so when folks, for example, say that “Starscream’s Ghost” is so much better qualitatively than their other s3 works, I don’t see that as much as I see slightly better work enhanced with better ink & paint. In the case of “Only Human”, ink & paint seems to make Sei Young’s animation better than their exact same output for “Surprise Party”. “Return of Optimus” Part 2, IMO, is quite terrible, but with very impressive ink & paint work that I believe makes people think the animation is better than it actually is.