Transformers: The Battle of the Star Gate
Transformers: The Stargate Battles (トランスフォーマー スターゲート戦役 Transformer Stargate Sen'eki) is a manga written and drawn by Naoto Tsushima and published from issues 11 to 14 of Super Robot Magazine in 2003. The story is set in the 1990s, in the intermezzo between the end of the second season of the original cartoon series and The Transformers: The Movie. Cut short by the cancellation of Super Robot Magazine with its fourteenth issue, "The Stargate Battles" is something of an obscure "forgotten adventure", but was nonetheless incorporated into 2007's Japanese cartoon continuity timeline, its open ending helping to incorporate Car Robots into continuity.
In 2009, Brain-Navi compiled all four chapters into one volume.
Overview
In the mid-1990s, the Autobots formally enter into an alliance with United States government, and begin sharing their technology with them in a mutually beneficial program. This upsets the socio-political climate of Earth, however: other world powers like Japan and the Soviet Union object to the alliance and began plotting with the Decepticons, while many citizens hold anti-Transformer rallies, wishing the robots and their war off the planet.
Among the technological advancements that are born from this new partnership is the "Trigger", an interstellar teleportation system housed in a space station currently being constructed in Earth orbit, which will help connect the planet to Cybertron. Naturally, however, the Trigger becomes a target for both the Decepticons, who stage an attack on it with the help of the Soviet Union. In the process, the villains narrowly avoid being teleported away by the Trigger, activated through the heroic efforts of crew member Makoto and violently shut down by a blast from Megatron. The Decepticons are eventually routed the Autobots, but the Trigger's activation and sudden deactivation does have one unexpected effect: the ghost of Starscream from over a decade in the future is plucked out of his time and dropped into the middle of the conflict.
In the months that follow, Starscream's ghost causes havoc during a test run of the new C-X battle drone, possessing the robot and causing it to run amok, and whispers in the ear of his present-day counterpart, leading him to arrange an alliance with the Prime Minister of Japan that grants the Decepticons license to gather energy in the country. Using the energon cubes they gather, Starscream's ghost is able to fuse both himself and his present-day self with the Trigger space station, transforming it into a massive, misshapen robot body that he uses to attack Autobots and Decepticons alike. The battle concludes when Megatron and Optimus Prime join forces, and Prime channels the power of the Matrix into Megatron's gun mode for one destructive blast that obliterates Starscream's new body. But while the threat is ended, the Transformers are all caught in the backwash of the cosmic explosion and sent tumbling to Earth in flames...
Issues
Characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
Collected edition
ISBN 4904293266
ISBN 978-4904293263
Title: The Battle of Star Gate (printed in English on the cover)
Pagecount: 192
Publisher: Brain-Navi Comics
Date published: June 29, 2009
Price: 1,751 yen
Notes
- The collected edition features a reversible dust jacket cover, as shown in the above two pictures, with Optimus being the default side while Megatron's side lacks any of the ISBN information and bar code.
- Disappointingly, the collected edition did NOT keep the first several pages colored in "First Contact" as they originally appeared in Super Robot Magazine, Brain-Navi Comics opting for a gray-scale version of the pages.
