Transformers Anime Video Celebrates 40 Years Of The Robots In Disguise
Robots in disguise are officially turning 40 this year, and a new teaser video from Studio Trigger, the studio known for Kill La Kill and Ninja Slayer, commemorates the Transformers anime’s 40th anniversary. However, what’s bizarre about the newly released trailer is that the original is, for whatever reason, regionally locked to Japan only.
What truly makes this short promotional video exciting is that it shows glimpses of Optimus Prime and Megatron battling across different generations in the Transformers anime. It even shows Armada Sparkplug holding the legendary Matrix of Leadership in front of a G1 Rodimus Prime doing the very same thing.
The short special movie features over two hundred characters from across 40 years of not just Transformers anime but the entire media franchise, including Beastformers (not to be confused with Predacons), Optimus Primal, and even Galvatron.
The recently released Special Movie contains nearly all characters and concepts except for a few, the most notable of which is the War for Cybertron trilogy.
And now comes the moment where we disappoint the Transformers fans; sadly, the released Trigger Transformers video is essentially an animated music video. Despite being named “Special Movie,” the video has no discernable plot, and it’s not a teaser trailer for any upcoming long-form content.
Instead, its main draw is that it features characters and concepts from basically every major Transformers anime to ever grace the small screens in Japan, plus the live-action film series. With that said, there are some drawbacks here.
For those who aren’t familiar with franchise origins, Transformers began with a toy line…
The recently released Special Movie contains nearly all characters and concepts except for a few, the most notable of which is the War for Cybertron trilogy. Admittedly, the characters from that particular line really resemble Generation 1 transformers in terms of aesthetics, so there was really no need to include them in the AMV. Other missing shows include Rescue Bots and BotBots, as well as the Prime Wars trilogy, while the Beast Era characters have been depicted as being considerably smaller than most of the other Transformers.
What truly makes this short promotional video exciting is that it shows glimpses of Optimus Prime and Megatron battling across different generations in the Transformers anime
Though the initial video was uploaded with Japan-only regional locking, it was reuploaded to Twitter some 12 hours later, from where it found its way to YouTube thanks to fan posting and sharing. Also, despite the great cast of characters present in the short animated video, the human cast from the live-action film series hasn’t appeared in the movie, which can be chalked up to actor-likeness licensing issues—one of those rare copyright things in which Japanese are actually much stricter about than Americans.
With everything said, this is truly a fantastic homage to the Transformers anime and Transformers media. For those who aren’t familiar with franchise origins, Transformers began with a toy line complemented by an animated series that would boost toy sales—much like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—with many story iterations based on different toy lines during and after the 20th century. The franchise grew thanks to our love for giant robot battles and now encompasses different media.
This includes the aforementioned Transformers anime, toys, live-action movies, comics, novels and books, and several dozen different Transformers video games—we strongly recommend the War for Cybertron trilogy.
