For whatever reason Japan did not get past season two of Transformers Prime. Like in the original series and “The Rebirth”, the rest of the series was ignored (the cliffhanger of season two removed) and a different series took its place. Triple Combination: Transformers Go! also didn’t air on television, released only on DVD through magazines TV-Kun and TV Magazine. Produced by Tatsunuko, the story was released in two different but coordinated “volumes” following two different Combiner teams exclusive to Japan’s Aligned continuity, the Swordbots. One team operated as samurai and the other as ninja. Yet oddly it was the samurai team who got the alternate modes that best serve as a disguise–a police car, fire engine, and fighter jet, while the “shinobi” team gets a lion, a bird, and a shark of all animals. Did the guys behind Science NINJA Team Gatchaman forget how ninjas work or is someone at TakaraTomy to blame?
The enemy in this series were Predacons, which doesn’t fit the Aligned status of the Predacons. They’re still ancient and hostile dragon-like Transformers like in Prime but, and granted I still need to catch the rest of the “Beast Hunters” season, they’re all supposed to be dead or clones created by Shockwave. How did five of them end up on Earth? I’m only up to episode two of both volumes so maybe that’s explained, but that’s for another day. This is supposed to be an intros series, and given how little the TF Wiki discusses the behind-the-scenes on this one (if it wasn’t for the subtitles in these videos I wouldn’t even have lyric translations) it’s time to get right into that. Both volumes use the same song, “TRANSFORMERS-Go!” by Daiki Ise, but they have different visuals. So let’s check them out.
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