I've been reading through Kozo Morishita's autobiography and it reveals some fascinating details on G1 Transformers production when he was directing it
>He was brought on to Transformers while he was working on Albegas
>Apparently, Morishita was appointed director of the Transformers TV show after he impressed Sunbow and Hasbro with his GI Joe toy commercials
>It was animated by Studio No.1 for most episodes, the studio responsibile for their most famous series like Harlock, Mazinger, and Dangaurd Ace. This also explains the large number of important anime industry people who worked on the show.
>Morishita frequently had to travel between the USA and Japan during production, advising production phase.
>G1 Transformers brought so much money to Toei (both from Hasbro and Takara) that it helped fund the Saint Seiya adaptation, with Saint Seiya borrowing many creative elements from Transformers as another toy driven anime series
Tl;dr G1 Transformers is pretty important to 80s anime and the impression that its just another outsourced US cartoon to Japan that Japan had no creative input on and was viewed as such there is sorely mistaken misinfo. There's so much production info on the Sunbow show (especially with how it relates to directly to Saint Seiya) that I'm surprised none of this has been translated and shared before. I understand its a rare book, but its been around for so long now.
>Morishita was skeptical when using the More Than Meets The Eye mini series as a means of gauging America's interest in a robot-anime styled show, since Americans were little familiar with anime in 1983. The fact it was a resounding success was a pleasant surprise.
>Kaname Productions (home to Yoshinori Kanada and Mutsumi Inomata) were commissioned by Toei to create the initial mecha designs for commercials and animation. The mechanical designer Shohei Kohara (who Western TF fans know as creating the models which Floro Dery slightly altered) was a founding member of Kaname who designed mecha and vehicles on most of their anime and OVAs. Toei and Morishita would further commission Kaname Pro to create animation models for their 1984 anime Video Warrior Laserion
>>He was brought on to Transformers while he was working on Albegas
kidnapped?
lol. Hasbro just hired him and Toei's studio no. 1 while his show Albegas was airing
That’s funny since one of the Hasbro guys said they kept adding non Takara toys to Transformers to “keep them out of the hands of the Voltron people!”
The whole debacle of Takara and non-Takara toys appearing on screen is immensely confusing. I assume the reason why non-Takara Omega Supreme and Sky Lynx appeared in the show is because they were big price point items that needed the TV appearance to justify selling. While Shockwave appeared, it was because Takara did license it in Japan from Korea, and the whole Jetfire/Skyfire thing was to completely avoid advertising the Valkyrie toys competitor Bandai was still selling after the explosive popularity of DYRL. The rest of the non Takara toys not appearing makes total sense, since they couldn't be sold by Takara and were at smaller price points, so it seemed less sensible to show them to Japanese audiences on TV.
Omega Supreme and Sky Lynx appearing in the cartoon wasn't much of an issue because their toys were never sold in Japan until the Encore reissues. Transformers was always an atypical series in that nearly everything featured was sold as a toy, but for Japanese audiences some characters being omitted was standard practice. Plus the pre-Transformers Omega Supreme was a bit obscure and Sky Lynx was never released as anything but a Transformer.
Yes, like I believe Sunstreaker wasn't even sold until he got bundled in a 2 pack with Skids. Then you have cases such as Reflector being sold as a retail wide release in 1985, while over here it took until 86 to get him as a preorder.
Source?
They were trying to keep Japanese toys away from Tonka and Matchbox.
https://www.tfarchive.com/fandom/interviews/george_dunsay/george_dunsay_interview.php
>G1 Transformers brought so much money to Toei (both from Hasbro and Takara) that it helped fund the Saint Seiya adaptation, with Saint Seiya borrowing many creative elements from Transformers as another toy driven anime series
That explain this
By similar creative elements they mean it's a show with barely any women and dudes being bros.
I think it means moreso visually, as the switch from Toei to Akom for the animation allowed Toei to invest more into Saint Seiya according to this book. Amongst the studios involved in G1 are Toei Studio 1, Ashi Pro, Anime R, Kaname Productions, Nakamura Production, Studio Giants, Bebow, Studio Look
And primarily on the American side, marvel productions, formerly known as DePatie-freling studios of pink panther fame, co founded by animation legend friz freling of looney tunes fame(he already left by the early 80s anyway before transformers). I believe I’ve mentioned this before but that’s still fricking funny
One of the directors on the Western side of things was Norman McCabe whose previous major directorial experience was on Looney Tunes back in the early 1940s.
Ironically enough he did a metric crapton of wartime shorts that mocked the Japanese in one way or another
The production of G1 is an absolutely bonkers /m/-Cinemaphile crossover and the connections you can trace back through people on both sides are really wild
And Cinemaphile with a few of the animators being involved later on some toei anime such as the saint saiya and sailor moon movies. Also this shows producer who also came up with the Gi-joe real American hero pilot was a writer for bewitched and gilligan’s island….what the frick
Told ya it was pretty damn wild. Golden Age Hollywood animators, classic TV writers and some of Japan's greatest mecha creators.
Seconding this. You've got lineage going back all the way to Walt Disney himself (through McCabe who worked for Freleng who in turn was one of the original Disney animators during the 1920s) on the Western side and anime connections through everybody who worked at Toei, Obari, Urushihara and many, many others. Transformers is both incredibly American in the writing and yet also truly Japanese thanks to the animation style (which really shows in the Movie - it's probably one of the best pieces of mecha animation ever made given it's practically non-stop sakuga).
>Transformers is both incredibly American in the writing
You say that but honestly the show translated really well to Japanese to the point where the G1 dub feels like you’re watching a classic Tokusatsu or mecha team series. Japanese and American media were so influenced by each other it wasn’t hard to bridge the cultural gap. If I recall Japanese fans said the show felt like a bit of a throwback when 80s anime was moving in its “cool” phase. The biggest difference was there was no death and they had to pull back on how the Decepticons could menace humans though the show did some surprising things like the well animated Conehead flyover in Megatron’s Master Plan. The Japanese dub added at least one or two human deaths through audio cues. In the episode Chaos, Blast Off fires the Crystal bazooka at what the English dialogue says is an unmanned shuttle but in Japanese you clearly hear a couple guys screaming as it’s destroyed. Headmasters was pretty bland writing wise even if the animation got more consistent. I wonder if Japanese fans noticed the change.
I've heard some Japanese fans describe it as being a mix of Gold Lightan and Goshogun, and they surprisingly are rather similar
I always thought the original G1 Transformers Japanese dub was a cult classic in Japan due to how outlandish their dialogues are. To them, it didn't feel like the typical heroic character dialogue of Japanese-made shows. And the VA (especially the narrator) is having fun with the roles, which is similar to the dub of Beast Wars a decade later (though that dub is more like "What if 4kids but Japanese" dub)
That was mostly in the dialogue itself, like the constant name calling. The plot lines and lore aren't off key, save for some REALLY weird episodes like the King Arthur episode or the Sea Change episode
One of my favorite Japanese artists on the internet's favorite Autobot is Perceptor
He said in the Japanese dub he sounds noisy
G1 Optimus is also a meme, to the point whenever his VA appear(Tesshō Genda) people always react with "Commander Convoy", especially if explode
私にいい考えがある
What's funny is they're mostly streamlining the several times Optimus says, "I've got an idea/a plan/etc" into a catchphrase. Tessho Genda really nails the tone and swagger Cullen has too. Considering they were working from unfinished English scripts this was quite a feat for its day.
On that note, I genuinely think the Japanese dub of Starscream is better. He actually sounds like a really insufferable douche. The original US ones just sounds too whiny to me on hindsight. It's probably because Bright Noa's VA is voicing it.
There's a part in "Auto Berserk" where some of Smokescreen's smoke is clearing from Starscream's view and rather than just have him say that like in English the Japanese dub gets Hirotaka Suzuoki to shout "YATTAZE BABY!"
IIRC the scene where his truck form falls down a hill gets memed on and the Famicom game is like Japan's equivalent of Superman 64
Mystery of Convoy is one of the more infamous examples of Kusoge. Arino played it on one of the Game Center CX DVD specials, and it is just a painful experience.
>which really shows in the Movie - it's probably one of the best pieces of mecha animation ever made given it's practically non-stop sakuga
Its easily one of the best Toei animated movies ever. Apparently, Toei was given a budget of nearly 40,000,000 yen, but returned over half of it due to the sheer excess (Ghibli movies weren't even a fraction of that). Morishita notes this TF The Movie money helped fund Saint Seiya, considering it was a pretty involved job for him living in the USA. Hidetoshi Omori and Kazuhiro Ochi were assistant animation directors. While Ochi was credited, Omori wasn't (probably because he was working on Zeta/ZZ and probably popped in to see what his friends were doing?)
GI Joe was a typical affair of outsourcing ala Batman TAS or Simpson, nobody from Takara/Toei etc was creatively involved.
I never knew there were this many studios involved in the old Transformers cartoon. Was it the same for the GI Joe cartoon as well?
Yeah and satoshi urushihara was one of the uncredited animators for both
Presumably, but a lot of the animators and their friends from around this time were able to reveal this info. I think Beebo worked on GI Joe too. Kia Asamiya and Nobuyoshi Habara apparently met at Ashi Productions while assigned to Transformers, having worked on episodes 7 (SOS Dinobots) and episode 10 (Heavy Metal War) together. Obari started his professional career on the pilot episodes, designing the Nemesis, and Urushihara was drawn to anime due to Obari
Pretty damn wild
I want to see a chart that illustrates the Sunbow Transformers rabbit hole
One day I'll assemble a comprehensive list of all the famous anime and cartoon people who were involved with Transformers G1, because its extensive. Funnily enough, it gets less interesting as G1 shifted into the Japanese only shows
Do any of the studios mentioned give a clue to who the unknowns are?
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Unknown_Filipino_animation_studio
No, all of them are Japanese, save for a couple of other Korean outsourcing studios.
Speaking of the Korean outsourcing studios, that reminded me of how some of the Akom materials went into the phoenix king bootleg movie and another one that stared reflector
I thought Phoenix King predated Transformers a bit, Wikipedia says it came out in Jan 1984 while TF premiered in September. Was there a different Korean anime that did this?
iirc there was a lolROK with one of the Diaclone baddies, the gattai humanoid bug thing
I was under the impression they mostly drew original footage of designs, usually based more on the toy, like I think in Space Gundam V there's a few bits where it clearly is a transforming Takatoku Valk toy from those leg supports on the nose and the way the legs swing around
dunno about specifically using footage from non-Korean works, just concepts and designs, and the Galaga noise
Phoenix King definitely predates Transformers. Even the earlier more detailed model for Inferno never looked quite like Phoenix King.
Early inferno looks different from the final model, like Dery didn't make the original model and simplified it. It has Dery's typical perspective but the hands and face and line work look nothing like his.
I'm saying Phoenix King doesn't look like a season 2 Transformers character at any stage of development. It looks far more like it was based on the toy or the box art directly.
What's great is they didn't even take the fists out or flip the head around to hide it for truck mode.
Wasn't Saint Seiya adapted from a manga?
It's been argued that part of Transformers success over Gobots was the stealth underpinning of Japanese design and animation which the latter seemed to actively avoid. Even if the staff at Wang Film Productions (a Taiwanese studio) did anything for anime I'm guessing Hanna-Barbera told them to dial it back.
Yeah, it can look pretty dynamic when everything falls into place.
Anime ja nai!
Reminds me of this pic
Probably didn't help that the toys themselves just didn't look cool. Early Transformers aren't astounding in retrospect but very Gobot robot mode being some spindly limbed slab wearing half a vehicle on its chest with nothing to disguise it wasn't exactly strong competition.
There was a /toy/ thread discussing Go-Bots non Machine Robo toys not helping
Transformers was a clusterfrick but Shockwave, Omega Surpreme, and Sky Lynx still looked better than this
Is any of this translated anywhere?
To my knowledge, no.
If you wave the book at the TFwiki or TFRaw guys they might be interested.
Fauxnime is an interesting sub genre on its own. Written and scripted in America, animated in Japan and near indistinguishable from fully fledged anime at first glance. G1 Transformers, the later seasons of Voltron and Saber Rider, and the new ending for Megazone 23 made for the Robotech Movie all fall under this category.
>the later seasons of Voltron
>animated in Japan
Idk, only a few of the later Lion Voltron stuff counts (the first episode with Cossack was animated in Japan) and the crossover special. Idk about Saber Rider's exclusive episodes. Even so, funny precursor to MMPR getting original footage from Toei for their own exclusive use.
Beside Shoji Kawamori and Shinji Aramaki, which famous Japanese mechanical desginers worked on G1?
anime:
Shohei Kohara (Kaname Pro)
Urushihara
Obari
Habara
Hidetoshi Omori
Kia Asamiya
Shin Matsuo
Shinya Ohira
toys:
Mika Akitaka
Kunio Okawara
Thanks! It kind of makes sense for Asamiya and Obari to both show up, but I've no idea tha Akitaka had a credit. The guy was everywhere in the mid- to late-80s. And didn't Omori also work on Monkey Hyperforce?
I had no clue Omori worked in full fleged Western animation that's sweet. Also getting Robot Carnivan vibes from pic
>Decided to check his anidb profile and turns out he was a guest key animator for the 6th DBZ movie
Wow this explains why cooler’s cycloptic guards were so detailed, they got one of sunrise’s senior animators for them
Meant to mention omori my bad