Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity

The Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity is a great and terrifying beast.

In America, Transformers had multiple continuities right from the very beginning, with the cartoon and comic going off into very different directions. In Japan, on the other hand, they didn't have those comics—they just had the cartoon, and of the copious amounts of additional media that have come out of Japan in the last twenty-five years, nearly everything has taken place somewhere in the timeline of the cartoon universe—either by design or as the result of retconning—creating one mighty behemoth of a chronology that reaches from twelve billion years in the past to thousands of years in the future.

In-universe dimensional observer Vector Prime blames the often-convoluted, occasionally-contradictory nature of this universe on quantum shockwaves caused by the destruction of its Cybertron by MegaZarak.

As of 2019, Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity includes:

• The first three dubbed seasons of the original American cartoon series
• Its numerous Japanese sequels and spin-offs:
  • "Scramble City: Mobilization"
  • The Headmasters
  • Super-God Masterforce
  • Victory
  • Zone

• Assorted manga:
  • Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers
  • The Transformers
  • The Great Transformer War
  • The Headmasters
  • The Battlestars
  • G-2

• TV Magazine story pages for all of the above, plus:
  • Operation Combination

• The anime of the Beast Era:
  • Beast Wars
  • Beast Wars II
  • Beast Wars Neo
  • Beast Wars Returns

• The storylines of numerous 21st century anime, manga, and toylines:
  • Car Robots
  • Micromaster
  • The Battle of the Star Gate
  • Robotmasters
  • Binaltech and Binaltech Asterisk
  • Kiss Players
  • Alternity, kinda sorta (it takes place in an alternate future that explicitly spins out of the cartoon universe)
  • United EX
  • Legends
  • Unite Warriors
  • Generations Selects

• Several comics exclusively available with various e-HOBBY toys
• Numerous story points plucked from assorted toy bios

And some other stuff the guy who wrote this timeline made up to make it all work.

Phew.

Generation 1

Things were pretty straightforward in the 1980s. In addition to creating assorted manga storylines that slotted into and around the continuity of the American series, the Japanese went on to continue to the story of the cartoon universe after the show's cancellation, with its original animated series The Headmasters, Super-God Masterforce, Victory, and Zone. As with the American series, manga and story pages based around these series ran concurrently with their broadcast in the pages of TV Magazine (the Masterforce and Victory offerings presented an alternate versions of the stories, which were not part of the cartoon continuity), and when production of Transformers cartoons ceased in 1991, this type of print media was used to tell the stories of the subsequent series Return of Convoy, and Operation Combination. A few years later, when the series returned as Generation 2, story pages and pack-in mini-comics provided fiction for the renewed line.

Beast Era

In the United States, Beast Wars does not explicitly follow on from either the cartoon or comics, picking and choosing select elements from both to form a “mythological” Generation 1 background for the series. Not so in Japan, where the series was treated as part of the cartoon timeline. As with Generation 1, the Beast Era was also expanded through the creation of exclusive sequel series, in this case Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo. Each of these series had companion mangas, although these were explicitly not part of the same continuity as the cartoons. And thus did the cartoon timeline continue to grow in a linear, sensible fashion, until...

The 21st Century

With the dawning of the 21st Century, Japanese cartoon continuity went crazy as a bag of starving cats in heat.

In 2004, Takara copped on to the worldwide resurgence in the popularity of Transformers, and began producing numerous series starring the Generation 1 characters, setting them in the built-in intermezzos of the cartoon universe which had up until this point gone undetailed. This year saw the commencement of Robotmasters and Binaltech, which took place in the twenty-year gap between the conclusion of the second season of the cartoon, and the movie. Then, two years later, Kiss Players slotted itself into the five-year interval between the movie and the beginning of season three (an interval that does not exist in the American timeline, owing to the Japanese moving season three from 2006 to 2010).

And that's when things went flat-out nuts.

In 2007, a paperback collection of the Kiss Players manga available exclusively at the Japanese convention Wonder Festival included an extensive timeline chronicling the ins and outs of the cartoon universe, incorporating all of the material covered above, while in the process propagating several dramatic changes to things as fans knew them. The timeline integrated series and stories that had previously been either discreetly separate from the Generation 1 cartoon timeline, or at least apathetic on their relationship to it; infamously, Car Robots (the Japanese cartoon dubbed in 2001 as Robots in Disguise) was retconned into being part of the cartoon timeline, along with the manga Battle of the Star Gate and many small story points from assorted toy bios. On top of this fusion of numerous existing sources, the timeline committed several extensive retcons to existing stories, mostly centered on reinterpreting Primacron's assistant and tying him into several other characters from various different series.

You may read this timeline here.

At your own peril.