Transformers Legends (comic)

The name or term "Legends" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Legends (disambiguation).

Japanese G1 continuity « Legends » Toyline Comics

Making e-Hobby comics look approachable since 2014.

Transformers Legends (トランスフォーマーレジェンズ Toransufōmā Rejenzu) is a series of comedic comic strips helmed by Hayato Sakamoto and published online to promote the titular Transformers Legends toyline, with special Bonus Edition (出張版 Shutchōban) chapters of the comic packed with the toys themselves. Initially showcasing the misadventures of the Beast Wars cast re-imagined as adult Transformers fans themselves, Legends eventually spiraled into one of the most convoluted narratives in the history of the mammoth Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity.

The comic represents something of a second pass at a hard pivot towards Japan's "otaku" market of adult collectors in the face of the brand's dwindling popularity with children after TakaraTomy's disastrous first attempt in the mid-2000s, unfortunately once again trafficking in quite a few of the questionable tropes endemic to the genre. This time TakaraTomy seemingly found their audience, with the comic running for five years from 2014 to 2019.

Legends ultimately concluded when TakaraTomy began a brand unification with Hasbro starting with Power of the Primes, deciding to mainly sell Hasbro toys as is with minimal changes to packaging. It was eventually succeeded by the more action-oriented Generations Selects Special Comic promoting Hasbro and TakaraTomy's joint Generations Selects imprint.

	Main Transformers Legends comic
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 Bonus (Transformers Celebration 2014) #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 LG01 LG02 #15 LG03 LG04 LG05 Bonus (Christmas) #16 #17 LG06 LG07 LG08 #18 #19 LG09 #21 LG10 #20 LG11 LG12 #22 Bonus (Deckss × Q-Transformers) #23 LG13 LGEX (Black Convoy) LGEX (Armada Megatron) #24 #25 #26 #27 #28 LG14 #29 #30 LG15 LG16 LG17 #31 #32 #33 #34 #35 LG18 #36 LG19 LGEX (Deadlock) LGEX (Rattrap) LGEX (Waspinator) LGEX (Rhinox) LG20 Headmaster Chapter: #37 LG21 LG22 LG23 #38 LG24 LG25 #39 LG26 LG27 LG28 LG29 LG30 LG31 LG32 LG33 LG34 LGEX (Convobat) LG35 LG36 LG37 LG38 LG39 LG40 #40 #41 LG41 #42 LG42 #43 LGEX (Headmaster Black Convoy) LGEX (Magna Convoy) #44 LG43 Targetmaster Chapter: #45 LG44 LG45 LG46 #46 LG47 LG48 LG49 Bonus (Kre-O) LG50 #47 LG51 LG52 LG53 LGEX (God Ginrai) #48 LG54 #49 LG55 LG56 LG57 LG58 #50 LG59 LG60 LGEX (Metroplex) LG61 LG62 LG63 LG64 #51 LG65 LG66 LGEX (Greatshot) LGEX (Grand Maximus) #52 #53 The Road to Legends' Revival Chapter: Revival 1 Revival 2 Revival 3 LGEX (Repugnus) LGEX (Grotusque) LGEX (Blue Big Convoy) Revival 4 Revival 5 LGEX (Sonic Bomber) LGEX (Roadfire) LGEX (Dai Atlas) Epilogue

	Additional Transformers Legends comics
—Spin Off— Deadlock Convobat (prequel) Magna Convoy (prequel) Blue Big Convoy Other: "The Beast Wars Road Map" "Rescue the Monorail!"

Legends begins as a four-panel black-&-white comic strip set in a world known as the "Legends World", where Transformers is a franchise of toys and fiction—essentially the real world, but instead of people it's populated by super deformed Beast Wars characters who don't consider themselves Transformers. The main characters of the comics are the Beast Wars Maximals, reimagined as a group of salarymen working at the "Axalon Trading Company" in Japan. They retain their quirky speech patterns from the jovial Japanese dub of the show. Early jokes revolve around the characters being Transformers fans themselves, each representing a different facet of the fandom, the main cast being:

• Rattrap, the company's new recruit who grew up with and unconditionally loves Beast Wars
• Rhinox, a middle-aged man who doesn't care for anything newer than the Generation 1 of his childhood
• Optimus Primal, the serious-minded boss who has no interest in toys himself, but does buy them for his son Minor
• Silverbolt, a young excitable part-timer and fan of the recent live-action film series
• Tigatron, a moe otaku who only likes Transformers franchises with cute girls, like Kiss Players
• Waspinator, an employee of Tera-Kura Co., fan of all things Transformers and expert on minor trivia, he serves to fill the other characters (and readers) in on the more obscure portions of the franchise

Other recurring characters include the lazy, irresponsible Cheetor, hungry Dinobot, and gender-ambiguous office ladies Airazor and Nightscream. Later strips introduce the Axalon Co.'s rivals, the "Tera-Kura Co." led by Megatron. Various other inhabitants of the Legends World are versions of Beast Wars II, Beast Wars Neo, and Car Robots characters.

In its earliest days, the comic revolved primarily around the Axalon employees' everyday misadventures at and around their office, with the full-color toy pack-in strips (Bonus Editions) serving as spotlight adventures for the relevant characters. Over time, the online strips were increasingly used to provide "prologue" and "sequel" chapters for the pack-in comics (often in full color and several pages themselves), creating ongoing serialized storylines. When the toyline began releasing Titans Return moulds and dramatically increased its output, the accompanying comics became more story-heavy than ever before, and told a continuing storyline that saw large numbers of characters from the Generation 1 cartoon universe take up residence in Legends World. Online chapters became almost entirely reserved for linking story material, with the original-format four-panel gag strips a very infrequent occurrence.

Creative team

The series is written and drawn by Hayato Sakamoto, but many others have collaborated with him.

• Josh Perez (color)
• Yūki Ōshima (original plan cooperation, color, pencil, design)
• Gufu Kandagawa (color, ink, additional art)
• Usakomu (color)
• Ichi zero three (color)
• Tasuku Tajima (color, ink)
• DAI-XT (color)
• Kinotukimi (color)
• Kokoa (color)
• Mieko Furuki (color, ink)
• Kamizono (color, ink)
• Derrick J. Wyatt (cooperation)
• James Roberts (cooperation)
• Marcelo Matere (cooperation)
• Tori O'Regan (cooperation)
• Andrew Hall (cooperation)
• Atsunori Takano (cooperation)
• Kouji Nimura (cooperation)
• Bā San (cooperation)
• Hisashi Yuki (original plan, supervision)

Continuity and timeline

The Legends World exists in a complicated place in the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity. Outside of traditional space and time, the Legends World is an ongoing narrative that is visited by Cybertronians from various eras, often decades apart. For simplicity's sake, the major eras involved are listed below.

• 2004:
  • In early Legends comics, Sky-Byte and Jetfire arrive in the Legends World from 2004. This era takes place four years after the events of Car Robots and is roughly parallel to the events of Robotmasters. Jetfire returned to 2004 with Legends natives Whirl and Roadbuster, introducing them to the timeline. LG07 Jetfire Scourge also arrives in the Legends World from roughly the same era, and departs with Sky-Byte. LG-EX Black Convoy However, the two of them resurface circa 2021. Ruination Chapter, Part Two

• 2021:
  • The majority of dimension-hopping characters from the Headmasters/Targetmasters chapters of Legends come from this era. Headmaster Chapter Prologue This is the period of time between the Super-God Masterforce and Victory anime. The Unite Warriors comics take place in the same era, and several characters cross back and forth between Unite Warriors and Legends at this time. Ruination Chapter, Part Two When the Legends World was destroyed, these characters returned to 2021. Targetmaster Finale, Part Two

• 2035 - 2038:
  • Next, several characters emerge from the 2030s, the furthest point in the Japanese G1 timeline prior to the Beast Era (as of Legends' publication). This is the post-G-2 era, briefly chronicled in several e-HOBBY pack-in comics. The resurrection of Ultra Magnus LG14 Ultra Magnus Prologue Part 1: Resurrection Chapter and Megatron being overthrown by Galvatron II date to this era. Legends Vol. 23 When the Legends world was destroyed, these characters also returned to their original era, thereby arriving in the Japanese cartoon continuity roughly 15 years after other characters who left the collapsing world at the same time. The local inhabitants of the Legends World primarily ended up in this time period after departing. Targetmaster Finale, Part Two

• Other:
  • Several examples also exist of "one-off" travels from different universal streams or time periods. The Quintessons of 11 million years ago invaded the Legends World in the present stories with their military hardware drones, including a young Blitzwing. Slipstream also arrived from the Animated continuity, as did an alternate universe Megatron & Starscream from Armada. The cast of Beast Machines also briefly touched upon the Legends World after their series ended.

• Origin:
  • Finally, the Legends World itself emerged from an ontological paradox. The universe was created in the 2030s by the Jumpstarters Topspin and Twin Twist, with the assistance of the Zodiac, proton energy, and the telepathic power of Katsu Don and the Zamojin. The Jumpstarters agreed to help Katsu Don create this world because, in 2004, they had already met and befriended Legends natives Whirl and Roadbuster. Thus, Topspin and Twin Twist knew the Legends World was destined to be created because it had already happened. Trippy, right?

Reception

Not the Combiner Hunters' proudest moment.

Describing Legends' reception is...complicated, to say the least.

Since the Legends manga was distributed as toy pack-ins, it’s hard to measure its overall success in numbers. In terms of fan reactions, domestic fans in Japan generally lapped it up. While G1 callbacks are par for the course in modern Transformers media, Legends regularly went the extra mile in granularity, with regular continuity and story callbacks not just to major fiction like the movie, but specific cartoon episodes; the comic's tendency to tie the long-running timeline together with various continuity fixes and retcons endeared it to nostalgic Japanese fans in a major way. The comedic stylings of the office segments called back the popular gag dub of Beast Wars while also playing on classic Japanese workplace comedy tropes: crazy scenarios, bumbling bosses and exasperated underlings, and so on.

It's not surprising then that western fan reactions were much more mixed. Its nostalgic pulls relied heavily upon an in-depth knowledge of pre-existing Japanese Transformers fiction, and the language barrier cannot be overstated: no complete fan translation into English exists, so most western fans were reacting to comics they couldn't actually read and relying on summaries from those who could. The comic is infamous for much of its humor becoming increasingly sexual in nature as time went on, with narratives regularly finding excuses for its female cast to wear skimpy outfits and end up in compromising poses. It's important to note here that this sort of thing is sadly pretty par for the course for Japanese nerd media, something its target demographic of toy-buying adult otaku had long since become desensitized to.

Much more unpleasant is the comic's consistent use of transphobic and homophobic humor, following on from similar jokes in the Beast Wars dub. Notably, Airazor and Nightscream are depicted as otokonoko "office ladies", whose female presentation while being male is the focus of entire strips, consisting primarily of characters reacting in shock and confusion upon realizing that "feminine" characters were "actually" men. While these depictions are rooted in the characters' original characterizations in early Japanese media, and thus can be interpreted as the author taking their existing personalities to their natural conclusion, this sort of blatant queerphobic humor is much harder to accept in a world where both the franchise and its audience have expanded and become far more inclusive. Unfortunately, however, this sort of thing is also very common in Japanese nerd media—to say nothing of nerd media in general—and again flew over the head of many Japanese readers as being anything worth reacting negatively to.

Finally, it's important to consider where the source of this content was coming from. While creator Hayato Sakamoto was the primary writer and artist, it shouldn't be forgotten that Takara had to sign off on the whole thing, right up until the end of the Legends toyline, implying the contents of the comic didn't matter to them as long as the product was being sold, if not suggesting that Takara actively encouraged it. That said, while trends like these would continue into Sakamoto's Transformers Unite Warriors spin-off series, its successor Generations Selects Special Comic expunged itself of almost all sexual content and comedy in general, largely replacing the "cheesecake" fanservice with "deep fandom lore" fanservice even after Sakamoto took the reins of the project.

Notes

• As is to be expected, the characterizations for the cast are derived from the Japanese version of Beast Wars and Beast Machines. In most instances, these characterizations were extremely different from their Western counterparts. As such, some of the "gags" might fly over the heads of those unacquainted with the radically different Japanese version of the show.
• In the above promotional image, a version of Depth Charge accompanied by an Armada Megatron toy (suggesting that he may have been a fan of the Unicron Trilogy) can be glimpsed, but he doesn't appear in the comic itself until near to the very end of the epilogue chapter.

External links

• Transformers Legends web issues at the TakaraTomy website
• Ongoing unofficial English translation of Transformers Legends by BlazingTL on MangaDex