The Story of Super Robot Lifeforms: The Transformers issue 2
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 Okay guys, who let Furman out again? | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Kodansha | ||||||||||||
| Published in | TV Magazine | ||||||||||||
| First published | January 1987 | ||||||||||||
| Writer | Masumi Kaneda | ||||||||||||
| Penciler | Ban Magami | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | TV Magazine continuity | ||||||||||||
The Autobots are under attack by a horde of Megatrons!
Synopsis
[edit]Rodimus Prime, Arcee, Blurr, Kup and Springer are caught off-guard when their base is attacked by five Megatrons, calling themselves the Megatron Corps. Thoroughly confused, Rodimus Prime orders the Autobots to roll-out.
On the way to battle, Rodimus recalls how Megatron went missing five years ago during the War with Unicron. Meanwhile, Kup mentions how none of this makes sense, since Galvatron is supposed to be the same guy as Megatron. Springer suggests that perhaps this is another plot by the wily Quintessons.
The Autobots are then taken by surprise by the Megatron Corps, who combine the power of their individual fusion cannons into a single, devastating blast.
The Autobots plummet to the surface of a small moon and realize they're horribly out-gunned. In a moment of trademarked self-doubt, Rodimus wonders how he's going to take down five Megatrons when Optimus Prime could barely handle one. Springer and Arcee tell Rodimus to retreat while they stay behind and draw enemy fire.
Rodimus is outraged by their plan and immediately comes up with his own. He orders the Autobots into a scrum-formation and tells them to drive head-on into the Megatron Corps (some strategy). As he collides with one of the Megatrons, causing it to fall apart, Rodimus realizes that all the Megatrons are in fact clones being controlled by Galvatron.
With this knowledge in hand, Rodimus decides to "hop", "step" and "jump" directly into the lead Megatron, who is really Galvatron in disguise. Rodimus trashes Galvatron, who retreats and swears vengeance. With Galvatron's hold over the Megatron Corps broken, the Megatron clones fall to pieces.
Featured characters
[edit](Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons |
|---|---|
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Notes
[edit]- This issue takes place some time after "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 5".
- Beginning with this issue, Ban Magami draws Rodimus Prime with Hot Rod's more youthful face (no robo-wrinkles). He will continue to draw Rodimus Prime this way for the rest of the series.
- Rodimus directly references the 5-year gap between the events of The Transformers: The Movie (which wasn't released in Japan until 1989, but had its events summarized in TV Magazine) and Transformers 2010 (the Japanese name for season 3 of the Generation 1 cartoon). This 5-year gap was exclusive to the Japanese continuity, as the US version of season 3 took place in 2006 and not 2010.
- Though early TV Magazine story pages and other advertisements presented Galvatron as a character separate from Megatron, this issue seems to go out of its way to make it clear that the two characters are, in fact, the same guy. For more on this, see here.
- Despite that, untranslated scans of this issue were batted around the internet for years, often being touted as "proof" that Galvatron and Megatron were separate characters in Japan by individuals who could not read the text. A version of the issue existed for several years with the speech bubbles humorously "captioned" with English dialogue and not actually translated, further confusing Western fans as to the real plot of the story.
