Masakatsu Saito

Masakatsu Saito (斎藤まさかつ) was a prolific mechanical designer and illustrator who provided TakaraTomy with concept art for the Transformers brand for nearly twenty years, usually alongside legendary designer Takio Ejima. Coming on to the company in 1982, he started out working on sticker sheets for the pre-Transformer line Micro Change and bounced around the office working on properties such as Dunbine and the Transformers - adjacent Blockman before coming on to the Transformers brand proper around halfway through The Headmasters supplying rough markups for the packaging artist. He was promoted to full-on concept artist for the next year's Super-God Masterforce and just kept going from there, having a hand in the development of wide swathes of TakaraTomy Transformers from the headliners of 1989's Victory all the way through Dark of the Moon. Some of his most noteworthy contributions include Armada Unicron, the Generation 1 Action Master assortment, and, most significantly, pretty much the entire Western Beast Wars toyline. He retired in late 2011 citing declining health.

Known Transformers work

Toy deco

Micro Change

• Jaguar (pre-Ravage)

Packaging illustration

Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers

• Sixshot

Toy design

Generation 1

1988 - Super-God Masterforce

• Pretenders
• Pretender Beasts
• Overlord
• Grand Slam
• Needlenose
• Quake

1989 - Victory

• Pretender Classics
• Mega Pretenders
• Ultra Pretenders
• Pretender Monsters (shells by Keita Amemiya)
• Star Saber (with Kunio Okawara)

1990

• All Action Masters

1991

• Action Masters
• Action Master Elites

1992

• All new items (Europe)

1993

• All new items (Europe)

Generation 2

1993

• All new items

1994

• All new items

1995

• All new items except Powermasters

Beast Wars

• All new items barring Mach Kick, Galvatron, Arcadis

Car Robots

• Build Team
• Train Team
• Car Brothers
• Fire Convoy
• God Magnus
• Gigatron

Armada

• Unicron

Energon

• Rodimus Prime

Cybertron

• Starscream

Henkei! Henkei!/Classics

• Jetfire

Animated

• Optimus Prime
• Lockdown
• Starscream

Device Label

• All items

Revenge of the Fallen

• Jetpower Optimus Prime
  (Optimus Prime and Jetfire)

Dark of the Moon

• Thunderhead

Gallery

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Extended Masakatsu Saito gallery

Notes

• Some of Saito's work outside the Transformers umbrella include the Transformers-adjacent Brave series, the original incarnation of the popular Gridman franchise, and the 90's incarnations of both the pre-GoBot brand Machine Robo and the foundational 1950's scifi franchise Tetsujin 28.
• Double Punch anecdote go here

References

• Most of this article comes from the Transformers Generations 2011 Volume 2 feature on Saito commemorating his retirement (p84-95)
• The Beast Wars Reborn Golden Disk

External links

• Masakatsu Saito at Chinese Wikipedia
• We don't know why he's only on Chinese Wikipedia either