Beast Wars: Transformers (cartoon)

Beast Wars

Beast Wars: Transformers is a Daytime Emmy award-winning computer-animated television series produced by Mainframe Entertainment that premiered on April 22, 1996 in syndication in the United States.^[1]

Though reviled by many Transformers fans when it first hit the airwaves in 1996, Beast Wars is now considered by many to be among the finest examples of Transformers storytelling, striking a happy balance between character, humor, and story.

Overview

Beast Wars opens at an unspecified time and place, where two warring factions of robots have crashed on a strange planet populated by animals like those on Earth. The planet abounds in mystery, with vast deposits of raw energon and evidence of alien activity. The Energon forces the newly arrived Transformers to take on protective beast forms to shield themselves from the ambient Energon radiation. And so begin the Beast Wars...

Rattrap and Airazor conspire to ruin school picture day.

Though at first the show seemed to be in an entirely separate continuity, by the end of the first season's 26 episodes, viewers had been treated to a number of classical Transformers references, such as Unicron and even the reappearance of Starscream, last seen as a ghost in the third season of the original cartoon. These ties to the original story increased as the second season progressed and the planet was revealed as prehistoric Earth, the characters having been thrown back in time. The third season was entirely structured around the Maximals defending their dormant Autobot ancestors aboard the ancient crashed Ark.

The show won over many viewers through fun, intriguing stories and generally high production values. Strong characterization, top-notch scripting and voice acting, and complex, overarching plot threads are among the reasons cited for the show's enduring popularity. Some of the show's mysteries and machinations still remain topics for fan debate decades after its conclusion.

The show's CGI, though somewhat primitive by today's standards, was revolutionary by television standards of the time (and puts some later shows to shame). Mainframe's animators took pains to ensure their characters gestured and emoted in great detail, and the "camera" work often took creative advantage of the format's flexibility.

The show was immediately followed by a sequel series, Beast Machines, which was infamously received much less favourably compared to Beast Wars.

Episodes

Main article: List of Beast Wars episodes

Beast Wars had 52 episodes over 3 seasons.

Season 1: 1996–1997

Season 2: 1997–1998

Season 3: 1998–1999

Credits

For further information, see: Beast Wars: Transformers (cartoon)/credits (season 1)

For further information, see: Beast Wars: Transformers (cartoon)/credits (season 2)

For further information, see: Beast Wars: Transformers (cartoon)/credits (season 3)

Characters

Because developing new CGI character models was, at the time, an expensive and time-consuming process, the number of on-screen characters in Beast Wars was relatively small compared to most other Transformers shows. It is thus practical to list all the Transformers who appeared in the cartoon. They are listed in order of appearance. (The stasis locked Autobots and Decepticons aboard the Ark are not on this list.) Note that many characters besides these are also full-fledged Beast Wars characters, having appeared in other media.

Maximals

Predacons

Others

Main Cast

Others

Transmutate (Susan Blu)

Main Cast

Tripredacus Council

Ram Horn (Lee Tockar)
Sea Clamp (Ian James Corlett)
Cicadacon (Scott McNeil)

Others

Ravage (Lee Tockar)

Vok (Blu Mankuma, Richard Newman)

Decepticons

Starscream (Doug Parker)
Megatron (Garry Chalk)

Anthropoids

Leader Neanderthal (Garry Chalk)
Una (Susan Blu)
Chak (?)

Computers

Sentinel (Ian James Corlett)
Predacon Computer (Carol Savenkoff)
Teletraan I (David Sobolov)

* Allied with the Maximals, nominally a Predacon.

† Became a Maximal towards the end of the series, though originally a Maximal protoform.

Awards and nominations

1998 Daytime Emmy Awards

Outstanding Achievement in Animation - Clyde Klotz (WINNER)

International releases

Japan

In Japan, the Beast Wars: Transformers cartoon was split into 2 separate 26 episode series.

Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers

Japanese Generation 1 continuity

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Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers

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Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers ( ビーストウォーズ超生命体トランスフォーマー Beast Wars Chō Seimeitai Transformers) aired in 1997, consisting of the North American season 1 episodes. In charge of localization was Yoshikazu Iwanami, an audiography director whose resume included shows such as the TV Tokyo dubs of Saban's X-Men and the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Iwanami's signature style of localization and dubbing relies heavily on satirical comedy and ad libbing, most commonly turning the programs into self-referential parodies of themselves. While the early episodes of Beast Wars were fairly innocuous in their ad libs, as time went on their inclusion became progressively more intrusive and by the last third of the series there was a severe tonal shift.

The ad libbing in Beast Wars primarily consisted of "noise"; talking for the sake of talking and reducing atmospheric silence or visual subtlety to a minimum. One particular trait of the dub was that each character had their own unique vocal tic with which they would punctuate their sentences or, more commonly, chant incessantly for no apparent reason. For instance, Waspinator would chant "bun", Scorponok would chant "orya", Blackarachnia would hiss "chā", Rhinox would ramble "dana" and so on. This gimmick was especially pronounced during fight scenes, when characters would repeatedly and comically shout their vocal tics every time they pulled the trigger of their weapons, reducing firefights to a cacophony of unending gibberish.

Many characters underwent considerable changes in personality and characterization. Some of these changes were gradual; Megatron began the series as a gravelly voiced and uncharismatic slob who would loudly cough sickly after fits of maniacal laughter. That trait was phased out in exchange for him becoming an effeminate, mood-swinging goofball; his tone of voice transitioning from a ferocious baritone to a silly high pitch at the drop of a hat. He was also made quite a humorous coward, shouting out whiny excuses while retreating (including the claim that he was late for piano practice).

Other characters were altered right from the get go. NAVI-ko, the Predacon computer, gained a girly and fitful personality and characters would talk with her rather than at her. Tigatron was made into a humorous samurai ronin parody. Airazor had her gender changed, becoming a young male and Tigatron's trusty ward (and later, his lover).

All 26 episodes were aired without any edits for time or content (unlike the Japanese broadcasts of The Transformers and many future imported Western Transformers shows). However, the episodes were aired out of their original sequence: "A Better Mousetrap" and "The Probe" were switched around in accordance to their production order, while "The Spark" and both parts of "The Trigger" were all moved up earlier to come before "Victory". As a result, Sentinel appeared in "The Probe" before its proper debut in "A Better Mousetrap", while "The Spark" comes before "Victory", making it seem like the Maximals were abandoning Airazor in their attempt to leave Earth.

Beast Wars aired on TV Tokyo in the Wednesday 6:30 PM timeslot. As the second season of the North American Beast Wars: Transformers was not ready for localization by the time Beast Wars ended in Japan, a pair of domestically produced cartoon series, Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo, were commissioned to fill the gap. The opening theme for Beast Wars was "War War! Stop It" by Banana Ice while the ending theme was "FOR THE DREAM" by Mickey.

Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Metals

Japanese Generation 1 continuity

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Beast Wars Metals

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Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Metals (超生命体トランスフォーマービーストウォーズメタルス, Chō Seimeitai Transformers Beast Wars Metals) aired in 1999, consisting of the North American season 2 and 3 episodes. While Beast Wars had been fairly judicious in its self-referential humor, even in its last stretch of episodes, Beast Wars Metals was an unrestrained self-parody, constantly breaking the fourth wall and demonstrating awareness of its own status as a TV series.

Ad libbing was cranked to the max and many characters received major personality adjustments to reflect the aggressively comedic nature of the series. Depth Charge became a goofy old man who enjoyed singing fishing songs while transforming, for example, and Rampage spoke with the rough-and-tumble dialect of a Japanese street punk. The show was unrelentingly self-aware, regularly acknowledging the camera, the TV channel and, in one of the more obnoxious gags, Rattrap would constantly smell what the audience was eating (making remarks to the effect of, "Oh, that's Sato-san's curry" as he sniffed). For good or ill the show proved a shot in the arm for the franchise, and this success catapulted Iwanami into a brand mainstay. Iwanami's dubbing style has become synonymous with imported Transformers cartoons in Japan, and he continues to voice direct most series to this day, all with the same heavily "punched up" direction.

The distribution of episodes for Beast Wars Metals was complicated. Japan included selected episodes in two separate theatrical releases:

Beast Wars Special Super Lifeform Transformers (premiering the episode "Bad Spark")
1999 Summer Toei Anime Fair (premiering the episode "Cutting Edge").

Since the above episodes were released theatrically, they are not included in the show's proper 26 episode list, with their places being taken by two original clip shows:

Episode 14: "Where Is the Banana?"
Episode 26: "Remix: I Forgot the Banana!"

As with the other installments in the Beast Wars franchise, Beast Wars Metals aired on TV Tokyo in the Wednesday 6:30 PM timeslot. The series had two opening themes, "Tamashii no Evolution" and "Sennen no Soldier" by Hironobu Kageyama, and two ending themes, "BA-BI-BU-BE Beast Wars" and "HALLELUYAH" also by Kageyama.

United Kingdom

When originally aired on GMTV in the United Kingdom, Beast Wars was only screened on school holidays, usually in double bills on Bank Holidays, and one episode per morning on half-term weeks, meaning that only a few episodes were shown a year, with wide gulfs in between (most prominently, three months passed between the airings of "Other Visits" parts 1 and 2). In a sign of things to come, "Beast Wars (Part 1)" was shown some 25 minutes earlier than billed due to rescheduled news reports, meaning many fans missed the entire opening episode. Things went from bad to worse when "Equal Measures" was skipped, and only continued when, after "Victory", the series skipped directly to "Other Voices, Part 1". The entirety of the second season followed the conclusion of the first, but the channel never aired the third season; although it was subsequently released on VHS, the cliffhanger-resolving "Optimal Situation" was only available as a free gift with purchase at Toys"R"Us.

Additionally, these GMTV airings were modified in various ways. The first and most foremost alteration was the removal of the word "Transformers" from the series' title, which was only reinstated with "Other Voices, Part 1". With regard to the actual content, the earliest episodes generally had nothing more extreme than the removal of uses of the word "slag" (as it is effectively a synonym for "slut" in English slang), but with the beginning of the second season, edits were steadily made to episodes for no readily apparent reasons. Additionally, any scenes featuring flashing images were routinely put through a filter that slowed such scenes down to comical levels. This culminated in a butchered version of "The Agenda", which snipped out many short scenes throughout all three episodes for no reason, from inconsequential moments like Tarantulas cackling and driving out of his lab in Part 1, to key scenes such as Silverbolt and Optimus Primal's "office talk" in Part 2, and in what was the last straw for many fans, the complete second half of Megatron's speech (the part explaining Megatron's entire motivation), also from Part 2.

During the time they had the rights to the series, GMTV also showed the entirety of seasons one and two on the then-obscure digital-only channel ITV2.

Channel 5, a terrestrial channel, showed the entire series in its complete form in 2003. Thankfully. This got rerun too, leading to the Beast Wars comics getting used as reprints in Titan's Movie-based comic.

France

In France and (French) Belgium, the show was called "Animutants" and had a good-quality dubbing, rather close to the original voices. But while the first two seasons of the show were aired, the third one never was; the show always ended with "The Agenda (Part III)", leaving the viewers in the area with the worst case of cliffhanger ever.

However, the French dubbed episodes that can nowadays be found on DVD and VHS stop at "Other Visits (Part 2)", but we can assume that the TV broadcast reached the end of the season.

Belgium

Beast Wars aired under its original name with Dutch subtitles, but like the French broadcast, it stopped abruptly after "The Agenda (Part III)".

China

In China, the show was localized as Chāonéng Yǒngshì (超能勇士, "Super-Powerful Warriors") and released in a good-quality dubbing by the People's Art Theatre of Liaoning. It was very successful on the TV station and once won a very high audience rating. Like the Japanese dub, Season 2 and Season 3 episodes were also merged into one season called Chāonéng Yǒngshì: Jīnshǔ Biàntǐ (超能勇士：金属变体, "Super-Powerful Warriors: Transmetals"). Neither title included "Transformers", leaving some of the audience unaware that this was a sequel to their childhood. Following the Chinese release of Beast Machines, the People's Art Theatre of Liaoning re-dubbed the show with character names changed into the Chinese translation of Beast Machines, I.E. changing the name of Optimus Primal from Hēixīngxīng Duìzhǎng (黑猩猩队长, "Captain Chimpanzee") to Xīngxīng Jiāngjūn (猩猩将军, "General Gorilla").

Vietnam

In Vietnam, the show was called Chiến tranh quái vật vũ trụ ("Galaxy Monster Wars"). The show was released on VHS tapes with a very good Vietnamese dub, then it was copied to VCD. Unfortunately, as happened in France, only the first two seasons were aired. It ended with "The Agenda (Part III)", and left the fans with a cliffhanger.

Germany

The German dub used the original title, Beast Wars. The show was initially very successful on the TV Station RTL2 and was released on VHS. However, only the first season was shown and dubbed. Furthermore, the TV broadcast had many fight scenes censored to comply with Germany's strict laws against TV violence; however, the VHS Release was uncut. After many reruns the show was cancelled and the second and third Season were never shown in Germany.

Italy

The toyline was already renamed Biocombat, but the cartoon got the long and unusual title of Rombi di Tuono e Cieli di Fuoco per i Biobombat ("Thunderbolts and Flaming Skies for the Biocombat"). Such long titles were indeed a tradition for cartoons dubbed in Italian in the '90s. The theme song was replaced with the homonymous "Rombi di Tuono e Cieli di Fuoco per i Biocombat".

The dub made many changes—much dialogue was simplified, and every silence was filled with either a narrator describing aloud what just happened or Megatron having inner monologues.

For some reason, "Gorilla Warfare" and "The Probe" were switched around in the airing order. To patch this, the former begins with the narrator stating that Optimus Primal is searching around for another probe after last time's failure.

The Beast Wars dub is the first time the terms "Autobots" and "Decepticons" were kept as such in an Italian dub. While "Decepticons" was kept in subsequent series, to hear "Autobots" again, Italians had to wait until 2007 when the first live action movie was released, since Robots in Disguise and the Unicron Trilogy went back using "Autorobot".

Spanish America

The show aired in many Latin American countries, mainly through Cartoon Network's South American feeds, as well various local TV stations. The dub was recorded at Audiomaster 3000 in Mexico. Apart from some name changes (Optimus Primal became Optimus Primitivo, to name an example) the dub was completely uncut.

Home video releases