Burning spirit
| “ | The secondary heroes stand around and watch, calling on their burning spirit and heart of justice to empower the main hero from afar. | ” |
For lack of a better term, "burning justice" refers to the mysterious power conveyed on some Transformers by positive psychic reinforcement—that is, by belief, either from the subject's own self-confidence and righteous indignation, or the championing power of an adoring crowd cheering them on, or some other ambient psychic effect. The actual mechanism by which the beliefs are transmitted and converted into energy are unclear, and are often inconsistent between circumstances.
Far from a simple emotional state, when a Transformer is endowed with "burning justice", they often show undeniable physical alterations—e.g., color changes, physical growth, new weapon attachments, or abilities they possess at no other time—which in turn can include powers that are all but miraculous, such as repairing grievous bodily injury, raising the dead, or temporarily suspending the laws of thermodynamics.
Fiction
Super-God Masterforce
God Ginrai (and to a smaller extent, the other Godmasters) lives and breathes burning justice. While in-fiction the Godmasters were deliberately designed to have these miraculous powers, God Ginrai lives up to the stereotype by becoming encased in a flaming aura on several occasions when his sense of justice becomes particularly riled up. This includes the final battle with Devil Z, where he and the Headmaster Juniors pooled their energy to finish the villain. A Battle... and Then...
Beast Wars II
When the legendary warrior Convoy was pulled out of space-time by a warp gate, he joined forces with Lio Convoy against Majin Zarak. Together, they activated the power of their Energon Matrixes to achieve new color schemes and powers as Burning Convoy and Flash Lio Convoy. Lio Convoy in Imminent Danger!
Lio Convoy and Lio Junior also learned to merge the power of their Energon Matrixes, becoming a single warrior glowing green with internal energies. Legend! The Green Warrior
Robots in Disguise
When he found out that the Decepticons had lied to him about switching sides, Optimus Prime glowed green with burning justice, and he delivered a brutal smackdown which had the Decepticons retreating with all haste. X-Brawn claimed the glow was simply the heat generated by Optimus's cyber-matrix. The Test
Galvatron scientifically determined that the most powerful energy source in the universe was the optimism and hope of human children. He intended to use his swarms of mind-controlling bats to allow him to harness and control this power. Fortress Maximus was later restored to full functionality when all the children in the world logged onto their computers to send him their well-wishes. The Final Battle
In the original Car Robots dub of Robots in Disguise, one of Fire Convoy/Optimus Prime's catch phrases in dire times, though omitted for the RID dub, was "Nothing is impossible for a burning spirit." This was literally Fire Convoy's way of saying that burning justice is the solution to all of the Autobots' problems. Spiritual, man.
Armada
Energon
Cybertron
As moments of burning justice were abundant in Galaxy Force, perhaps to a greater magnitude than any other piece of Transformers fiction, the English-language Cybertron dub was somewhat flummoxed by them. As such, on a regular basis, Cybertron would desperately attempt to make these instances make sense or at least acknowledge how bizarre they were. This was done through the insertion of dialogue that explained where the power boost was coming from, or just altering dialogue so that the characters would be amazed and/or mystified by what was happening to them, as opposed to the Japanese versions' nonchalant reactions that presented it as the most normal thing in the world. (This is a rare case where Cybertron's somewhat lackluster facial animations paid off.)
It COULD be through the power of the Cyber Keys, somehow activated or called upon during moments of desperation, also triggered energon auras to give the visual effect, sometimes accompanied with the Omega Frequency.
The episode "Cybertron", when faced with a particularly inexplicable example of burning justice, gave up and just flagged up the inexplicableness for laughs: Leobreaker casually stating this just keeps happening to him and he no longer questions it, and a stunned Crumplezone double-checking with Ransack:
Animated
The AllSpark Almanac II referred to Safeguard's powered-up mode as his 'Burning Justice' mode.
The Japanese title sequence features Optimus Prime surrounding himself with a blue aura as he launches himself at Megatron who is practically a silhouette within his own Transformers: Cybertron-style red aura.
Notes
As you can guess, burning justice is a slightly snarky way of describing the tendency of protagonists (especially in Japanese media) to become stronger through seemingly nothing more than sheer force of will. Sometimes, the media in question will attempt to explain these instances (e.g. Dragon Ball and its various ki auras), but it is usually implied that it is simply the character's determination that causes this effect.
Despite the name, it isn't necessarily the good guys who can pull burning justice off. The major difference is that in heroes, it is brought about by positive emotions (such as faith, courage or love) while in villains it is generally anger or ambition. For example, in "Revelation", Megatron's anger at being bested by the Autobots powers him up to the point he nearly kills three of them. Later, his fury allows him to attain an entirely new form with vastly increased powers, enabling him to defeat almost every Autobot in his way.
Note that the major difference between burning justice and good old-fashioned grim determination is whether or not there are any real, physical changes that occur. A mortally wounded Optimus Prime using the last of his strength to strike Megatron? Desperation or determination. A battered but defiant Optimus Prime turning gold to strike down Galvatron? Burning justice all the way, baby.
Incidentally, burning justice is an easy way to show off just how awesome and cool a character is. You can guess why.
