Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity
From Transformers Wiki
The Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity (often referred to as JG1 for short) 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 forty 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 before the Big Bang to the universe's dying breaths.
Contents |
Overview
The 1980s - Generation 1
Things were pretty straightforward in the 1980s. In addition to creating assorted comic book storylines that slotted into and around the continuity of the American series, Takara and Toei Animation went on to continue the story of the cartoon universe after the show's cancellation in Hasbro markets, with its original animated series The Headmasters, Super-God Masterforce, Victory, and Zone. Running alongside all this was a short-lived sister franchise called Beastformers, Takara's version of Hasbro's Battle Beasts toyline whose story was chronicled via prose in its catalogs and two special edition mooks. As with the American series, comics and story pages based around these series ran concurrently with their broadcast. Unlike their American counterparts, the material in the pages of TV Magazine was broadly intended to align with the continuity of the cartoon. 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 G-2, story pages and pack-in mini-comics provided fiction for the renewed line.
The 1990s - 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, Beast Wars Neo, and even the franchise's second theatrical release in the form of Beast Wars Special. Each of these series had companion comics, 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 2000s
2000 saw the release of the first Transformers cartoon of the 21st century with the infamous Car Robots, released in America as Robots in Disguise, the franchise's first hard reboot. The cartoon's original incarnation was confidently announced by Takara as a continuation of the established cartoon continuity in early promotional materials, but the western continuity reset, along with a lack of translated material in and around the Japanese Beast Era obfuscating its (fairly slight) connections to prior Japanese seasons led the show's continuity placement to confound Western toy robot scholars for over half a decade.
As the decade progressed, Takara copped on to the worldwide resurgence in the popularity of Transformers with the Unicron Trilogy, and began producing numerous series starring the Generation 1 characters to accompany their return to toy shelves, setting them in the built-in intermezzos of the cartoon universe which had up until this point gone undetailed. This push began with Binaltech and Robotmasters in 2003 and 2004, analogues to Hasbro's Alternators and Universe lines respectively, 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, another component of Takara's Alternators rollout, slotted itself into the five-year interval between the movie and the beginning of season 3 (an interval that does not exist in the American timeline, owing to the subfranchise Transformers 2010 moving season 3 from 2006 to, er, 2010).
Also released in 2004 was Beast Wars Returns, Japan's much belated Beast Machines import that threw a second wrench into the works by dramatically transforming Cybertron into a post-machine techno-organic paradise, a poetic ending to America's Beast Era that nonetheless made things very awkward for the Japanese Beast Wars seasons reliant on the Cybertron of the original Beast Wars cartoon remaining more or less the same for generations into the future.
The Generation 1 continuity made its first significant contact with the wider multiverse in 2006 with Beast Wars Reborn, in which the sparks of Optimus Primal and Beast Wars Megatron were dragged from the great beyond into a cosmic conflict between Unicron Trilogy characters Logos and Vector Prime after the events of Beast Wars Returns, the first of many such misadventures for the duo.
In 2007, a paperback collection of the Kiss Players comic 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; Car Robots was bluntly plopped on the chart to the shock of the English speaking fandom, along with the comic 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.
Meanwhile, 2007 was also the year Binaltech fiction stopped playing nice, as the previously introduced Beast Era time traveler Ravage succeeded in derailing the events of the movie and irrevocably branched the timeline, producing the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity's first intentional branch universe. This inflection point, the film, proved a canny mechanism to paper over production inconsistencies between the events of the film and Japan's extra cartoon seasons via traffic between the two universes.
The 2010s
With a new decade came new toys, and as the collector-oriented product we know today as the Generations imprint ramped up, so too did the efforts of Japanese creators to fit stories about these toys into the rapidly dwindling holes in the cartoon timeline. United took a sort of "Side B" approach, with Macrocosmic Seekers and United EX following different characters during the events of the third season of the original cartoon and Operation Combination respectively. TakaraTomy's confusingly named Generations line (not to be confused with the modern supertitle) situated its Wars series in the gap between Operation Combination and G-2. Next, Legends—
Oh, Legends.
Legends, the largest of Takara's Generations-equivalent lines encompassing Hasbro's Thrilling 30 and Titans Return product from 2014 to 2017, employed a significantly more convoluted branch universe framing device to bop all the way up and down the cartoon timeline, patching holes and dropping characters from one era to another and back again. Some of the highlights included narrative somersaults to justify the various characters introduced twice between the Scramble City special and season 3, concluding the Beastformers story after some thirty years, and smoothing over the pretty dramatic changes in setting between the end of Beast Wars Returns and the beginning of the Japanese Beast Era cartoons set after it in the timeline. The primary era where Legends planted its flag, however, was the big enchilada: the famous time skip between G-2 and Beast Wars, where it more or less chronicled the period from Generation 1 Megatron's exile into space at the end of G-2 to the final ceasefire recorded in Maximal and Predacon history books.
Co-running with Legends was Unite Warriors, Japan's Combiner Wars equivalent which told a relatively restrained story between the Masterforce and Victory cartoons. Also around this time, Beast Wars Reborn and Binaltech scribe Hirofumi Ichikawa was given the opportunity to contribute to the 2015 edition of the long-running English language feature Ask Vector Prime, where he took the opportunity to tie up some loose ends from the Binaltech era as well as taking his own trip up and down the timeline, fleshing out the backstories of a variety of characters and plot devices from the Japan-exclusive cartoons.
2017 saw an international brand restructuring as Hasbro and TakaraTomy made the decision to unify their collector-oriented franchises under the Generations branding from Power of the Primes forward.
And the rest was silence.
...until 2019 when Legends and Unite Warriors author Hayato Sakamoto returned for the Generations Selects franchise and picked up where he left off, delivering something of an epilogue to his previous run by definitively plugging the Generation 1 era into the backstory of the Japanese Beast Wars cartoons, placing the sealing of Unicron at the Triple Z Point pivotal to Neo's plot between season 3 and Headmasters and illuminating the abandonment of Earth by humanity and the Transformers that sets the stage for its transformation into the mysterious future planet Gaia, the setting of Beast Wars II. Oh, and Sakamoto did one more thing: place an obscure setting from about three comics from Takara's boutique retailer e-HOBBY on the cartoon timeline before season 1. WAAAAAY before season 1, heaping retcons upon the previous retcons concerning Primus and Primacron to tell their origins in the previous universe before that of the Transformers. This sweeping plot twist essentially repeated the Beast Wars trick, building out a new setting in cartoon continuity following the adventures of a new cast of characters, an organization of warrior monks known as the "Primus Vanguard" separated from established fiction by a huge time skip.
What awaits the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity as we enter the fifth decade of the Transformers brand? There's no way to say what zag the plot will take next, but if we can say one thing for certain, it's that it will be significantly more complicated than whatever Hasbro is doing.
Media
As of 2024, the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity includes:
Generation 1 cartoons
- The first two seasons of The Transformers, dubbed as Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers
- The third season of The Transformers, dubbed as Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers 2010
- The Transformers: The Movie, dubbed as Transformers: The Movie (no "The")
- Further Japanese sequel series and OVAs:
Generation 1 comics and story pages
- An extensive run published in TV Magazine (mostly, see below) including:
- Assorted comics:
- Story pages for all of the above, plus:
- Also the story pages included in the product catalogs for Beastformers, Japan's release of Battle Beasts.
- Yeah you read that right.
Beast Wars cartoons
The cartoons of the Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers franchises, including:
- The dubbed first season of Beast Wars
- The second and third seasons of Beast Wars, dubbed as Beast Wars Metals
- Beast Machines, dubbed as Beast Wars Returns
- Additional Japan-exclusive seasons and a feature film:
Legacy media
The storylines of numerous 21st century cartoons, comics, and toylines, including:
- 2000s:
- 2010s:
- Alternity, kinda sorta (see below)
- Macrocosmic Seekers
- United EX
- Wars
- Legends and Unite Warriors
- Ask Vector Prime
- Masterpiece
- 2020s:
- Several comics exclusively available with various e-HOBBY toys
- Several more comics exclusively available in various guidebooks
- 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.
Splinter continuities
Despite its creators' extensive, extensive efforts a continuity does not get this big and this old without making a few omelettes along the way. The Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity counts a variety of smaller fictional universes as part of its fabric, both by happenstance and by design. Some of the biggest fish in this small pond are:
1984 - TV Magazine comics and story pages
Originally conceived as in-continuity supplements to the co-running cartoons, the original Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers comics and supporting story pages of the 1980s have received peculiar treatment by future stewards of the continuity. While produced as a discrete work by head cartoon writer Masumi Kaneda and character designer Ban Magami from the first season all the way up through Operation Combination, the first cracks began to show in the Masterforce chapter, where Kaneda and Magami opted to retell slightly more fleshed out versions of the cartoon's events rather than entirely avoiding the content of episodes as had been their previous strategy. For many years, the Masterforce and Victory chapters which took this tack were considered outliers of dubious relation to the main timeline until later writers' timeline micromanagement shenanigans shouldered out the TV Magazine comic entirely, producing an isolated continuity that nonetheless still dovetails with mainline continuity beginning with Zone, for the practical reason that there was no longer any other media to draw from for the final few years of the Japanese Generation 1 toyline.
Hidetsugu Yoshioka's 1995 TV Magazine run picked up right where Kaneda and Magami left off with G-2, and was similarly folded directly into the cartoon timeline by future authors as the only fiction associated with Takara's version of the Generation 2 toyline.
1996 - Beast Wars pack-in material
Not unlike its western counterpart, the Japanese Beast Wars continuity began as a direct continuation of the Generation 1 cartoon continuity starring Optimus Prime and Megatron on present-day Earth in new organic alternate modes. Just like its Hasbro equivalent, this setting was quickly dropped to pivot to the plot of the nascent cartoon. Unlike Hasbro's version of the story, however, TakaraTomy very much did connect the continuity of the Beast Wars cartoon directly to Generation 1, leaving this peculiar little cul-de-sac of pack-in fiction dangling ambiguously until nearly three decades later when the Japanese Generation 1 era and Beast era timelines finally connected, muscling it out into the same micro-continuity status as its western cousin.
2007 - Binaltech and Alternity
The pack-in fiction of the Binaltech franchise began simply enough, selling Japan's version of the Alternators toyline by giving a fairly down to earth accounting of the comings and goings of the Autobots and Decepticons in the gap between the second and third seasons of the Generation 1 cartoon. This all changed when the Autobots unearthed the spark of Beast Wars Ravage, having survived his apparent death in the Beast Wars cartoon and taken the long way home. "Battle Ravage" took immediate and dramatic action to spare the Decepticons from the events of Transformers the Movie with his second chance, and this change created a branched timeline and a new universe referred to as the "BT World." The citizens of the BT World eventually discovered how to travel freely between their dimension and the main cartoon timeline, providing an elaborate in-universe explanation for the reappearances of various characters in Japan's extra cartoon seasons after their deaths in the film.
When Binaltech was greenlit for a sequel toyline in the form of Alternity series author Hirofumi Ichikawa really went ham, as the next chapter of the story chronicled how the inhabitants of BT World ascended to become the titular Alternity, god-like multidimensional beings aggregating all the iterations of a given Transformer across the multiverse into a singular collective consciousness. As the war between the "Protectors" and the "Hytherion" across space and time raged the combatants frequently flitted in and out of "universal streams" considered part of the primary cartoon timeline until the Alternity sacrificed their enlightenment to end the conflict, largely returning BT World to normal and ending its active influence on the primary Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity, barring the occasional escapade in Fun Publications's Ask Vector Prime feature to which Ichikawa was a contributor.
2014 - Legends
Initially presented as an out of continuity gag comic to move TakaraTomy's Generations product via a scenario where super deformed versions of the Beast Wars cast worked as salarymen and collected Transformers toys themselves, the setting of Transformers Legends was eventually built out not only to be part of the cartoon continuity, but somehow the backbone of an alarming amount of the timeline.
Let's back up.
As the comic wore on, Transformers from the Generation 1 continuity began physically appearing in the gag comic setting, known as the "Legends World," through various sci-fi means. In short order, they began bopping back and forth between the Legends World and points all along the main timeline, filling in gaps and patching up continuity errors left and right. In the bizarre finale, the Legends World was revealed to be a pocket dimension created by the Jumpstarters of all people as part of a ploy by powerful aliens from a single episode of the Generation 1 cartoon to harvest the kung fu energy from Masterforce. Through a series of events too convoluted to get into here, the relationship between the Legends World and the world of the Generation 1 cartoon ended on a happy note when a reformed Generation 1 Megatron stepped down as its ruler and guardian and returned to his own dimension to forge the second Cybertron Alliance.
2016 - Spin Off and Generations Selects
The universe of the color-coded warriors known as the Primus Vanguard was conceived as an independent continuity for e-HOBBY's comics, inhabited by a smattering of new exclusives along with a population of repurposed old toys. That all changed when this once obscure little continuity was the subject of a sweeping retcon in the pages of the web comic for the Generations Selects franchise that repositioned it not only on the timeline of the Generation 1 cartoon, but as the universe before that of the Transformers, with the setting fated to eventually be destroyed in a Big Bang to produce the familiar world of Optimus Prime and friends in a sort of Ragnarok situation. Furthermore, this "Precursor World" was elevated to the Japanese equivalent of Marvel's old realms with the reveal that it was also the primordial home reality of the Unicron-creating scientist Primacron and the Transformers' god Primus himself.
With the events leading up to said Big Bang left thus far intentionally unrevealed, the Precursor World can at present be thought of as a sort of baroque analogue to the Japanese Beast Era of the 1990s: confidently placed in the Japanese Generation 1 timeline but far enough away from established fiction to functionally present a fresh setting for storytelling without concern for the built up minutiae of the past forty years.
For now.
Notes
- It bears remarking that thanks to TakaraTomy's resident Hasbro lore-master Hirofumi Ichikawa expounding upon a series of easter eggs by Sunbow Productions staff,[1] the world of the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon theoretically encompasses all six seasons and change of G.I. Joe's A Real American Hero cartoon continuity. That said, given TakaraTomy does not hold the license to G.I. Joe as of this writing (and little of that franchise made its way to Japanese shores in the first place) don't expect to see Snake-Eyes and pals bounding into your pack-in comics any time soon.
- 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.
See also
- The in-fiction article for this continuity
- The full chart of this mess, if you dare
- Everything else in the neighborhood of the original 80's franchise
Footnotes
- ↑ See our articles on Marissa Faireborn, Old Snake, Hector Ramirez and the Concurrence for more information.
