An Explosive Situation

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"An Explosive Situation" 高速バトル! ゲルシャーク () (Kōsoku Battle! Gelshark) "High Speed Battle! Gelshark"
Production company	TV Tokyo, NAS, Studio Gallop
Airdate	April 12, 2000 (Japanese) September 10, 2001 (English)
Written by	Junki Takegami (Japanese) Tom Wyner (English)
Director	Yoshiaki Tsutsui, Akira Katō
Animation studio	Studio Gallop

Predacons need fuel.
So they steal it from a car.
Sound familiar?

Synopsis

A nighttime delivery of a power cell is ruined by Sky-Byte, who devours the truck and steals away the cargo. But the energy he consumes doesn't satiate the Predacon's hunger.

No Koji, this doesn't count as sex.

Koji Onishi receives a message from Optimus Prime and rushes outside to be retrieved by the Autobot leader, who brings Koji to the Autobots' secret underground headquarters. Prime introduces Koji to the "proactive cybernetic interface program" called T-AI, the Tactical Artificial Intelligence. The two become quick friends, despite T-AI's lack of a solid body. Optimus explains that the Predacons have been responsible for various battery thefts. The three Autobot brothers, Side Burn, Prowl, and X-Brawn, patrol around in hopes of discovering a crime in progress (although Side Burn is easily distracted by his need to "rev up his engine").

They had to visit five Wal-Marts to collect this many.

Underwater, in his own hidden base, Megatron mulls over his energy concerns. The Predacon trio arrives with a proposed solution: flashlight batteries. Megatron is unimpressed at how small his henchmen have been thinking. Sky-Byte uncloaks and presents his own, much better idea for powering the Predacons' base: They simply need to recover an energy bomb that some terrorists have hidden in a red sports car in Metro City.

Have you considered buying a hybrid?

At the docks, Kelly is taking delivery of the last red sports car, which naturally contains the bomb. She takes it for a test drive, and before long is located by Sky-Byte. Unsurprisingly, Side Burn quickly arrives to hit on the car, prompting Sky-Byte to begin his attack. Prowl and Side Burn block the fish, but he swims/flies away and meets with the Predacon trio, who are trying to take the credit for recovering the bomb for themselves. Sky-Byte bites into the car to take it from Dark Scream, shattering the car's structure. Trying to save the automobile, Side Burn unintentionally saves Kelly from certain death. Prowl apologizes to Kelly for letting the Predacons ruin her day.

With the explosive device in his teeth, Sky-Byte gradually floats back towards the Predacon command center, but X-Brawn steals the bomb right out of Sky-Byte's mouth. The rough handling causes the device to arm, and Sky-Byte warns X-Brawn of the impending explosion. Koji suggests taking the bomb somewhere high up, and X-Brawn uses his grappling hook to swing from building to building to the radio tower where he begins his ascent.

His bosses didn't like him so they shot him into space!

Realizing that the blast radius would be larger than the tower is tall, Optimus Prime rushes out of the base. In the city, X-Brawn tosses the bomb from the top of the tower as far upwards as he can. Using his "Power Stream" attack, Prime fires a blast of water at the bomb, carrying the explosive (and Sky-Byte) out of the Earth's atmosphere. Miles above the Earth, Sky-Byte triggers the explosive. The explosion fills the city's sky with a yellow glow, but no buildings are destroyed.

Once he's recovered, Sky-Byte begins a study of human culture but is frustrated by the combined power of the works of Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Predacons	Humans
Optimus Prime (5) T-AI (6) Side Burn (7) Prowl (9) X-Brawn (10)	Sky-Byte (3) Megatron (11) Slapper (12) Dark Scream (13) Gas Skunk (14)	Truck Driver (1) Truck Passenger (2) Koji Onishi (4) Kelly (8) Dorie Dutton (15)

Quotes

Megatron: How is this energy being stored and how long will it take to convert?
Dark Scream: It's stored in little round canisters.
Gas Skunk: They're used in something called "flashlights" and we've got thousands of 'em! Ahahahahahahahahahaha!
(Prolonged evil laughter from Dark Scream, Gas Skunk, and Slapper)
Slapper: Great score, huh? Of course, we'll have to convert it to energon, and that'll take a while.
Dark Scream: I don't think it'll take more than a week or two.
Gas Skunk: Welllll... three at the most.
Megatron: SILENCE! We... need.... massive-quantities-of-energy-not-little-batteries!!
Slapper: Sorry, this is all we could find!
Gas Skunk: Anywhere!
Megatron: .........YOU HAVE FAILED ME! BEAST MODE! DID YOU REALLY THINK THAT THE ENERGY IN THESE PUNY BATTERIES WOULD BE ENOUGH TO RUN THIS BASE?!
Slapper: ....well.... yeah. Sorta.
Megatron: FOOLS! I SHOULD ADD YOUR ENERGY CORES TO THE CONVERSION VATS!
Sky-Byte: You've wasted your time, Megatron. One of those flashlights is brighter than the three of them combined.

-The Predacon Trio at about the height of their competence

"Here's a tip for you: Never ignore a warning from a shark!"

—Sky-Byte

"Sorry, ma'am. I do apologize for the inconvenience. Are you all right?"
"For someone who's been attacked by a giant flying squirrel and a huge toad, a maniacal shark and a monstrous skunk...sure, I'm just fine."

—Prowl and Kelly

"What sort of nonsense is this? 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'? Best or worst, make up your mind!"

—The subtleties of human literature are lost on Sky-Byte.

Notes

Differences with Car Robots

• As Koji comes running out of his house at the start of the episode, Car Robots has him calling Optimus Prime on his communicator, while Robots in Disguise flips the scene, and has Koji responding to a summons from Prime.
• Car Robots is set in Tokyo, while Robots in Disguise is set in the fictional Metro City. As such, Robots in Disguise has to refrain from naming the tower X-Brawn scales, which is quite plainly the famous Tokyo Tower. Later in the episode, T-AI gives the tower's height as 500 feet; Tokyo Tower is actually 1093 feet tall (333 meters).
• In Robots in Disguise, X-Brawn merely scales the tower to get a better vantage point, and grumbles about his shocks as he takes the stairs in vehicle mode. In Car Robots, on the other hand, he is actually just goofing around, and enjoys the "rough terrain" of the stairs. This is just how X-Brawn is in Car Robots, as shown as early as last episode.
• Car Robots explicitly identifies the nationality of the terrorists. They're Korean.
• In Car Robots, Slapper, Gas Skunk and Darkscream are worried about human police. In Robots in Disguise, they're more concerned with the bomb going off prematurely.

G-G-G-G-Ghost shark!

• Robots in Disguise cuts out two shots of Sky-Byte pursuing Kelly, probably because they involve the slightly confusing use of a "ghostly" image of Sky-Byte, to show the audience that he is underneath the bridge. A few moments later, though, the show extends the chase scene by repeating footage of him chomping at Kelly's car's tail.
• In Car Robots, Sky-Byte doesn't realize Prowl and Side Burn are Autobots until they transform. In Robots in Disguise, he recognizes them on sight.
• In Car Robots, Side Burn extends his arm to catch Kelly and her sportscar before they fall. Robots in Disguise reorders the scene to place this shot after the she starts plummeting.
• Robots in Disguise combines some pieces of footage to create a new scene of Prowl telling X-Brawn to take the bomb to the top of the tower; in Car Robots, X-Brawn comes up with this plan on his own initiative.
• Car Robots has X-Brawn turn his head and spot Optimus Prime just after Prime rolls up. Robots in Disguise moves the scene to just before the audience sees Prime arrive.
• In Robots in Disguise, the Predacons make fun of Sky-Byte for reading human books and not understanding them. In Car Robots, however, they're actually quietly impressed at his ability to survive the explosion, but they then giggle when Darkscream points out he's still a show-off (the implication being that Sky-Byte reading books is nothing new, and the failure to comprehend them being a creation of the dub). Robots in Disguise also extends the scene by repeating the shot of Sky-Byte leaning over his book and grumbling in the middle of the Predacons' whispered exchange.
• Scenes lengthened in Robots in Disguise by looped and repeated footage include:
  • Koji's introduction to T-AI, allowing the show to make its well-known "daughter of Teletraan I" reference
  • Sky-Byte's explanation before he plays Dorrie Dutton's news report
  • Slapper and company's worries about the bomb
  • Sky-Byte's warning to Prowl
  • Kelly and Prowl's exchange after he catches her
  • X-Brawn and Sky-Byte's argument over the bomb

Animation or technical errors

• Megatron pronounces the Transformers' preferred fuel source as "ener-gone."
• The colors of most of Prowl's Autobot insignia are inverted when he catches Kelly, and full-on miscolored yellow-orange when tries to think what to do about the bomb.

Real-world references

• As Sky-Byte approaches the rear of the truck and begins to take bites out of it, the soundtrack starts playing Jaws music.
• The book Sky-Byte reads from is A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. It's also Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Even the book can't make up its mind!

Transformers references

• T-AI introduces herself as the daughter of the Teletraan I program. She mispronounces it "Teletron" in typical Beast Wars style.
• The Predacon base is powered by Transwarp cells.
• Megatron requests that the batteries be converted into Energon cubes.

Trivia

• This episode about terrorist bombs in cities first aired the day before 9/11. It SO never aired again.
• Also, referencing a bomb exploding in a major city in Japan is equally tasteless...
• Sky-Byte's dramatic entrance inside the Predacon base suggests a power of invisibility or teleportation, or both. Whatever it was, he never used it again.
• The truck delivering the fuel cell has a license plate G39-20.
• Kelly's car which is destroyed at the beginning of the episode has a license plate J38-57.
• Kelly's custom XZ-12 sports-car, which she seems surprisingly willing to drive considering it's "the only one left that hasn't been searched" for a bomb, has a plate number J-68-85 (and sometimes J68-85).
• Side Burn is able to extend his arm while in vehicle mode.
• Optimus Prime's "battle mode" debuts in this episode, though he announces "Optimus Prime, Optimize!". For future episodes it's standardized to "Battle mode!"
• The highway damaged by Sky-Byte's entrance mysteriously disappears.

Home video releases

All releases listed are in English audio unless otherwise noted.

DVD

2000 — Transformers: Car Robots — Vol. 1 (Pony Canyon) — Japanese audio only.
2004 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Volume One (Maximum Entertainment)
2004 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Three-Disc Box Set: Part 1 of 2 (Maximum Entertainment)
2007 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Battle Protocol (Maximum Entertainment)
2007 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Special Edition 2-Disc Set (Maximum Entertainment)
2007 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise / RoboCop: The Animated Series / M.A.S.K. (Maximum Entertainment)
2007 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Season One (Maximum Entertainment)
2007 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Ultimate Collection (Maximum Entertainment)

External links

• "An Explosive Situation" transcript on RiDForever.info