Four videos tonight, but the same two episodes in different formats.
Beast Wars II: Super Robot Lifeform Transformers is a Japan-produced sequel to the Beast Wars: Transformers cartoon, produced while waiting for season two (known as Beast Wars Metals over there and comprising the last two seasons of Beast Wars). Using toys that didn’t make it into the previous show as new characters as well as some Generation Two and unreleased figures from the time, Beast Wars II only had two original molds until later in the series, that for Lioconvoy and Galvatron. Everyone else were previous molds not seen in the US show.
The plot finds the Cybertrons (the joint name for Autobots and Maximals in Japan) learning of a Destron (Decepticons and Predacons’ shared name) operation on the planet Gaia. It’s up to Lioconvoy and his team to stop Galvatron and his team from uncovering the Angolmois energy and using it for evil, while two mechanoids named Artemis and Moon bicker and usually serve no use in the plot in the episodes I’ve managed to check out. I think they were supposed to be watching over Gaia and the mysterious energy within the planet.
So why are there two episodes for four videos? The first two are fan-translated subtitles while the others are two different fanDUBS, neither of whom got past episode two but I thought seeing the difference between the two groups would be interesting. The fansubs are unique among fansubs I’ve seen in the past as they actually translate the credits of the people and companies who worked on it. Some official subs don’t even bother doing that. The dubs we’ll get into. This way no matter how you prefer your anime, you have options. Enjoy!
I’m a bit disappointed the subbers opted to use the more literal translation for “henshin”, metamorphosis, instead of the more fitting “transform”. Since they’re using the Japanese names for everything else I don’t mind not having “maximize” and “terrorize”, but it’s one of the details that I always like seeing that they know the franchise at least enough to add those elements. They do at least explain why they chose this for the Cybertrons and later “Insectrons” (the Tripredacus team reworked into an outside faction in the Japanese version) in episodes we won’t be seeing today: “Since the Beast Wars II series uses both Henshin and Transform, we wanted to differentiate between them using a different word for the command code. Thus we’re using the term Metamorph for the Cybertron and Insectron transformation sequences. Funny enough though, in the Beast Wars II manga, Henshin (変身) is written, but beside it in katakana characters, they’ve written Transform (トランスフォーム).”
They also dropped this piece of trivia: “The word Angolmois comes from a real-world reference of the most frightening prophecy of the 20th century. Nostradamus, who had predicted a significant event would occur in July of 1999, where a great “King of Terror” would appear in the Middle East to start the battle of Armageddon. This was obviously incorrect as nothing happened. Many experts blamed Nostradamus for this error, and re-translated the scripts as follows.” With that let’s move on to episode two before doing it again in English.
An extra piece of trivia: “Starscream refers to Dirge and Thrust as an oobokeconbi (大ボケコンビ) which is literally a funny man duo. However in this situation he’s actually referring them to be a not-so-funny duo. Usually a Japanese comedy duo or a double act is called a manzai (漫才). How it works is that there are two comedians, the boke (ボケ) who is the funny man, and the tsukkomi (突っ込み) who is the straight man. Most of the jokes revolve around mutual misunderstandings, double-talk, puns and other verbal gags. In recent times, manzai has often been associated with the Osaka region, and manzai comedians often speak in the Kansai dialect during their acts. This is reflected in both Dirge and Thrust’s characters as they both speak entirely in Kansai dialect.” The subs were produced by Karyuudo Fansubs. Find more on their YouTube channel.
I once saw a different fansub that explained one pun that isn’t translated the same way here because it doesn’t work in English. “Squid” and “cool” have similar sounding words in Japanese, and there are instances when both Tasmania Kid (based on Snarl and my favorite BWII Maximal/Cybertron) and Scuba (based on the Claw Jaw figure) both use it in these two episodes. Kid uses it and Scuba calls it a bad pun and starts fainting while in this episode they use the pun in place of the “squidtastic” bit seen in the sub. It’s one of those puns that don’t translate and is one of the few times the joke was more important than the accuracy. We’ll see this in the following two dubs as well.
The first one comes from TF Cog, a website that started doing fandubs of Japanese exclusive shows. Some of the G1 shows have since been subbed and released by Shout Factory (I wouldn’t mind owning a copy of those, especially Transformers Victory) but none of the Beast War shows have. Some of the fansub VAs has since become a professional voice actors. See if you recognize their names in the opening credits. Being Transformers fans the dubbers leaned in a bit more on Transformer terms than the primarily-anime productions from the other versions seen here. This includes the US faction names instead of the Japanese names, though the characters retain their Japanese names, technically being different characters from their US toy mold counterparts.
TF Cog only produced five episodes of Beast Wars II and for some reason did the first two episodes of the follow-up series, Beast Wars Neo. Being the early years of fan projects like these they don’t really mix the text in too well and not everybody had the same quality audio recording setup at their homes, and all of that shows in the end product. Some sound effects were taken from the original cartoon via Sunbow stock sounds, and others came from wherever foley sound effects came from back in the early 2000s. while the music would come from released soundtracks from this show. For it’s time it was rather well done, however. For some reason these episodes are not up on their YouTube channel as of this writing so I used another fan’s upload. They are uploading their Victory and Robot Masters dubs so I may tap those for future Saturday Night Showcase entries. You can also check out (last I knew) downloadable versions on their website, along with some other bonuses.
Times change, software changes, and fan products improve to get closer to professional work. Compare episode 1 by TF Cog with episode two, produced by Dingle Dubs. They only have two episodes of Beast Wars II as of this writing, though the reason I chose to do the first two episodes is to get a complete introduction to the characters and concepts of this series. I’m not sure why they didn’t use the actual theme song, and using clips from the full series allows us to meet other characters from later on, but the guitar instrumental they used just isn’t the same. It is upscaled but seems to be going more for a US TV feel than TF Cog simply using US terms for the factions. They at least do use the “right” faction names and transform activation codes, but G1 sound effects sound strange from a Beast Era show. The end result may have better audio and upscaled video but the end result doesn’t have the same feel as the rest of the series.
It’s kind of strange that it’s the newer dub that takes more liberties with the dialog and music, given the feelings of the modern anime fandom to changes, even ones that are necessary between cultures and languages. Take your pick as to which you prefer. I don’t know if TF Cog will resume their dub and many of their VAs are now doing professional work and for whatever reason might not return for a Transformers fandub unless they’re really huge fans instead of looking to build a resume. Personally, I prefer TF Cog’s take, since they work more on the details, but this isn’t bad a replacement if they get the series completed. Follow Dingle Dubs on their YouTube channel to find out.
I would love to see this get an official release, with the right sounds and music, or even just a subtitled release like Shout Factory has had with The Headmasters, Masterforce, and Victory. Seeing the full series is recommended before diving into Beast Wars Neo since the mystery revealed in Beast Wars II plays into the plot of Neo, meaning watching Neo will spoil a surprise from II.
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