I was going to use Gaijin Goombah‘s latest Which Ninja episode on Nightbird, from the original cartoon, for a Daily Video, but then he ran into some trouble with not being able to use voiced clips due to Hasbro complaining. That’s the first I’ve heard of them doing that, but that’s YouTube life for you. So why not allow you to see the context he had to put in text by showing you the actual episode from Hasbro Pulse‘s official channel? (I’d use the official Transformers channel but YouTube also has an issue with letting you scan kids entertainment channels because they totally don’t understand why they got in trouble with the government for data mining kids.)
For the uninitiated, “Enter The Nightbird” was an episode of the original The Transformers. Airing in season 2 of the syndicated cartoon, a roboticist in Japan creates a Cybertronian sized robotic ninja named Nightbird. Why? He was bored. Megatron sees potential despite lacking the ability to transform, making Starscream worried about his job because it’s a safe bet. Thus the Autobots must retrieve two pieces of stolen property; the one stolen by Megatron and the one stolen by the other stolen property.
Meanwhile, Gaijin Goombah’s audience requested a ninja analysis of Nightbird because even now 80 robot ninja fans just really like her. I wonder if I can get him to do an episode on Ninjzz from The Bots Master, if only as punishment for being part of the crowd that gets Batarangs confused with shurikens thanks to Christopher Nolan. First we’ll watch the episode, then the analysis, and as a bonus, Chris McFeely‘s history of Nightbird after this from Transformers: The Basics. I think I posted that one before, but it came up in YouTube’s suggestions so why not make this a Nightbird festival? Enjoy.
Now that you’ve seen Nightbird in action, Gaijin Goombah and Little G go over Nightbird’s ninja depiction as well as portrayals of Japanese culture in the 1980s, 80s ninjas versus real ninjas, and Starscream trying to save his job.
Transformers was made for a US audience originally, but it was animated by Japanese studios, mostly Toei unless they needed help to make a US length season once they switched to a weekday schedule in season 2. It does make sense that the animators would pick up on the little things about Japanese society…being Japanese and all.
Michael Bell is surprisingly good at doing any nationality’s voice. Optimus not wanting to hurt Earthlings’ stuff isn’t new. In the comics he didn’t even want to involve them in the war even though it was taking place on our planet.
Hope to see Animated Prowl (who someone else pointed out is technically a different character with the same name) at some point. For now, let’s see what happened to Nightbird after her lone G1 appearance. Of course he’ll summarize the episode at first, and we just watched it, but the important info will follow.Odd
Odd that Gaijin Goombah had trouble with clips when Chris McFeely never does. Hopefully this won’t be the last Cybertronian ninja they go over.
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