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earthstellar · 8 months

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Transformers: Lost Media Post!

So, as with any long-running franchise, there are a few bits of Transformers media lost or presumed lost (might exist but has not been publicly released, is in private ownership, was never included in a final cut or broadcast copy, etc).

The Lost Media Wiki has organised some of this lost media into helpful pages, which I will link and summarise here for anyone interested! :)

The Transformers: The Movie (1986) - Missing Scenes

The movie itself obviously isn't lost, but there are scenes from the film that appeared to be fully animated but not included in the final release of the film that have never been located.

At least one scene was fully storyboarded, suggesting it made it far enough into production to possibly have been animated which may have then gone missing as it was never made available as part of any final cut or subsequent release.

[The screenshot above is taken from the YouTube video of the scene, available on the Lost Media Wiki page; The link in the paragraph above goes to the collection of Sunbow Animation storyboard archives, which includes other missing script-only or storyboarded-only sequences from the film during various stages of development.]

Some scenes/shots shown in trailers for the film were at least animated in part but never included in the final version of the film.

G1 Transformers Missing Japanese Clip Show Episodes: 戦え! 超ロボット生命体トランスフォーマー

11 unique clip show episodes in total were made for the Japanese release of G1, none of which have ever been found.

The content of the clip shows is unknown, only that they re-used animation and possibly scenes left intact from prior/other episodes (it is unclear how exactly they may have been edited or re-dubbed to make a unique clip show episode), and they have never been included on any Japanese regional DVD, VHS, or other official collections of Transformers Japanese language media.

Transformers Victory: Japanese Language Clip Show Episodes

Although the English dub versions of Transformers Victory by Omni Productions have been made available by Shout! Factory, as with the prior G1 missing clip shows, there are 6 unique Japanese broadcast only clip show episodes of this series which have been lost.

There are an additional 6 Japanese only home video/VHS episodes, five of which have been found on the Pioneer DVD releases, but one of which remains missing.

Found Missing Media: Transformers RID - Spychangers to the Rescue

This one is an example of the types of edits made to many animated shows following 9/11, in which many shows featuring anything involving explosions, city settings, planes, the Twin Towers themselves (or references to any of these things or anything similar) were heavily edited to remove any such content, with the originals never getting re-broadcast or re-released.

(Shows that could not be edited, for example shows that entirely took place in New York where backgrounds would constantly show the Twin Towers etc., were never re-aired in most cases, or only re-aired many years later/released on a direct to DVD basis.)

The reason this episode was re-dubbed is because the original plot involved a generator which would explode if impacted and release gas across the city, which may have resembled or otherwise brought to mind the large dust clouds caused by the collapse of the Twin Towers a little too closely for the broadcasters to feel comfortable leaving the original dialogue about gas and explosions intact.

It was changed in an attempt to lessen the emphasis on explosion and potential harm to the city.

The threat of explosion featured as a major concern in the episode also may have resembled the initial belief that perhaps a bomb had gone off in the Twin Towers, before most people realised it was actually a collision from a plane that caused the first visible damage to the first tower-- It took a moment for people to figure out what was actually happening on 9/11. Initial reports assumed it had been a bomb.

Much of the episode also involves the cast getting caught in traffic in and around the city, which may have resembled or evoked thoughts of the notorious difficulties in evacuating/clearing out roads during the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when everyone was, to put it lightly, fucking panicking.

I remember this all very clearly, but I'm explaining this stuff for those of you who may not have clear memories of the day or for those of you who may be from outside the USA and never saw the initial American news broadcasts which were covering all of this live.

Without this context, the edits made to this episode and why this episode was scrutinised so heavily following 9/11 may not make sense! But I hope it makes a little more sense now.

Any of these "pre-9/11 edit" episodes of pretty much any animated series are hard to find, as almost none of the original episodes are available except on personally owned taped versions, many of which are sadly poor quality owing to VHS recorder tech not being super amazing in general.

Thankfully, AnonyTF over on YouTube had a VHS recording of this episode featuring the originally broadcast English dubbed version, so everyone can enjoy it in it's originally intended state!

The Transformers (2007) - Lost IMAX Edition

The IMAX release of the film had some known alterations, edits, and alternate/new scenes added to it.

However, since Michael Bay has said he will never release these IMAX exclusive scenes or release the IMAX cut on any home media, it is safe to say that they do exist in some form, but will not be made publicly available.

Yet another reason to dislike Michael Bay, but I digress.

Conclusion: Lost Media Can Be Found!

Just because these bits and pieces are missing at the moment, doesn't mean we'll never see them, if they do still exist (or in some cases, if they ever did in the first place).

I get the feeling that with the Japanese language missing media, this might partially be a language barrier issue; It'll be harder for any English speaking only fans to find Japanese language only media, same as with trying to find any foreign language media when you don't necessarily speak that language and therefore might also be missing certain regional resources or other context that would help find it otherwise.

(Not to say there aren't Japanese fans also looking for these episodes-- There almost certainly are! But English speaking only nerds might find themselves struggling to aid in the search.)

Plus, other mecha shows were (and generally have been) more popular than Transformers in terms of Japanese broadcast TV ratings. To be fair, Japan has a very broad selection of mecha shows, all of which are pretty good! And it's not like Transformers isn't popular in Japan, it just isn't as popular as quite a few other mecha genre staples which tend to top the charts in that region.

At the time of airing, G1 Transformers had some hot competition in Japan-- It's very possible that if someone only had a couple blank tapes on hand, they may have simply chosen to record something else that they were a little more interested in. (Remember that it wasn't as easy or as cheap to record stuff back then-- Choices had to be made!)

(TakaraTomy, Hasbro's Japanese partner, seems to be very aware of the persistently strong regional competition; Remember the Transformers x Evangelion crossover they made? It's fucking great. And they knew it would have broader appeal as a crossover to Takara's local Japanese audience/figure collectors than just releasing a plain ol' repaint of Optimus Prime. There aren't many mecha shows/franchises in the west, but there sure as hell are in the Japanese media market, so competition remains pretty tough in that region.)

There may not have been as much interest/incentive for Japanese audiences to record these G1/Victory clip shows at the time of original broadcast for various reasons, or if someone did record it, they may not even realise they're sitting on a valuable piece of lost media!

It's also entirely possible that it's all floating around somewhere, and nobody's realised it yet. The original broadcasting networks might have copies in storage that nobody's had to mess with in years. And so on.

There's all kinds of reasons for media, even popular media or niche appeal media with a strong fanbase, to go missing.

But you never know; Stuff can pop up in personal collections, local media archives, library video storage, defunct websites, in broadcast network/studio storage, and all sorts of places!

So I do hope that one day, we do get to see some of the missing Japanese G1/Victory episodes. :)

And it would be cool to get a hold of any of the original movie scenes as well, if any of them were ever fully animated (or saved anywhere, if they were)!

As for the IMAX edition situation, well, that's just Bay being an asshole. At least we know that version of the film does still exist though, even if it's not available publicly! So hey, maybe one day he'll give up and let it be released in some form. Who knows. lol

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Anyway, this got way longer than I thought it would be-- Mostly because I had to contextualise 9/11 media edits to explain the whole RID episode situation, but hopefully all of that context is helpful and makes the re-dubbing of that episode make a little more sense.

If you read through all of this, thank you as always!!! :) <3

If there are any Japanese TF fans out there reading this, I'd love to hear from you, if you might have any thoughts on the Japanese missing media! :)

I have very little experience with any Japanese Transformers material out there (primarily due to language barrier and lack of access to Japanese releases, in my case), so it would be lovely to speak with fans who have a much better idea of Transformers Japanese media in general.

#lost media #RID 2001 #RID #transformers #long post #transformers g1 #g1 #maccadam #maccadams #robots in disguise #transformers victory #transformers lost media #transformers the movie #transformers 1986 #bayverse

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favesgrave · 2 years

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things i remember from the first draft panel of the g1 movie!!!

the movie was originally going to open during a battle at a steel mill

magnus's entrance was going to be very different, a lot more badass. his name was originally just magnus, no ultra, and his design was like orion pax's mold

kup's original name was tanker

there was going to be a human character named rusty steel who was daniel's father figure. spike was not his father and his mom had an active role in the movie

there was a train named rails that could transform into an awesome snake and fought devastator

ratchet was ready to call it quits on optimus early on, but i think it was magnus who said they could still save him

the decepticons flew back to cybertron and fought for leadership there. megatron died and his ghost rose up from his body. boom galvatron

the other decepticons get unicron powers too

unicron destroys cybertron (like, disintegrates it). the decepticons are pissed about that

optimus still died, his ghost rose up from his body too

when the autobots had to leave earth, daniel and his mom got whisked away onto the shuttle during all the panic. bumblebee died from getting blown up

hot rod and the autobots he got split up with led a slave revolution on quintessa

the junkions reveal they built unicron as a protector

during the battle there was some weird thing that happened and galvatron tried contacting starscream, who was in a bit of a situation because his response was something alone the lines of "it's not me! i've been fused with lesser lifeforms!"

blurr, magnus, and a character who didn't make it into the movie die (i think galvatron killed them?)

daniel's mom takes down galvatron or something by tackling him i think

daniel defeats galvatron and is actually the hero (nobody in the room liked that)

hot rod doesnt get the matrix, but still stepped into a leadership role in magnus's absence

list of characters hasbro told rod friedman he could kill off: gears, buffer, windcharger, sunstreaker, sideswipe, hound, trailbreaker, ironhide, ratchet, prowl, mirage, wheeljack, bluestreak, thundercracker, skywarp, and shockwave. there was one more but the photo i took is too blurry for me to read the name

pretty much the only note hasbro gave ron friedman was to make the decepticons less interesting

he casually dropped the fact he has five pages of a unicron movie written and if people show enough interest in it, he'll finish it

#i'm sure there's someone out there who can recap it better than me #but here's what i remember #transformers #transformers g1 #transformers the movie #transformers 1986 #tfcon #tfcon 2022 #tfcon chicago #optimus prime #ultra magnus #galvatron #unicron #maccadam #maccadams

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