I've been looking to get into the Transformers G1 series by watching it in its entirety, including the movie, on LD but I'm unsure as to which episodes/seasons these box sets feature

Convoy Set
Cybertron Box/Cybertron
Destron Box
Megatron Set

I know the ones labeled 2010 is comprised of season 3, but do the other sets feature seasons 1 and 2 in the same packaging? Also, which one has the rebirth episodes aka season 4?

From vague memories….

The OG series is two boxes. They were later redone by Pioneer. Rebirth never came out in Japan in any form since Japan has an entire series for Headmasters that’s totally different. Headmasters, Victory, Masterforce, Zone, Scramble City, all of those never hit LD.

IIRC, while I would love to have them, these boxes kinda suck aside from the packaging since they mostly only have Japanese dialogue. Transformers is originally an English language creation. I’m not sure about the episode sequence or if they are even all there since Japan had Transformers packaged differently.

The OG LD for The Movie is good but it’s colossally stupidly priced now. The reprint is mono and not worth the ¥3000 it originally cost because of that.

Honestly I’d just get some US DVDs for likely hundreds of dollars less. The best thing on the old LDs is probably the OG Diaclone and Microman ads.

Headmasters is on LD.

Transformers: Headmasters (1996) [VSL-2]

Everything else is pretty much correct. The LDs feature the Japanese versions of the episodes, which are not only dubbed but also edited for length to accommodate the longer OP and ED. I think they also include the clip shows, and all the Skyfire episodes are at the very end of season 2 I think because of all the legal tangles behind that character.

There's pretty much no point in getting any of them, since I think Pioneer actually released the series on SDBD in Japan, and it's the same Japanese versions that are on the LD. The only thing you'd get is the commercials and I'm not 100% sure if those aren't on the Japanese DVDs too anyway. The Western DVD releases of Headmasters omit pre-title card sequences, eyecatchers and NEPs and I'm pretty confident the JP DVD has those, too.

The Destron Box and Megatron Set include the English audio. But if those are the Japanese versions that have cuts made to them, then it's not worth getting. I always thought it was just the Japanese dubbing and extra seasons that made them different.

Only "Day of the Machines" and "Attack of the Autobots" on the Megatron/Destron sets have English audio, since those episodes weren't broadcast in Japan back in the day for whatever reason, so they were dubbed in Japanese for the LD box but weren't edited, so they could include the English audio.

"The Rebirth" was included on the The Headmasters LD set and the Pioneer version of the 2010 set, it too has English audio since it was similarly released for the first time in Japan on the LDs.

Another perk of the JP LDs is that they use the original broadcast masters (albeit with most episodes only having JP audio and edits, as already mentioned). I believe even the Shout Factory US DVDs have some of the mistakes first introduced when Rhino did the remaster from film for their DVDs. The Shout DVDs also have a good bit of aliasing/jaggies in pan shots, but the JP LDs don't.

The JP DVDs use the same masters (and have the same lack of English audio and edits for most episodes), but they're from 1999 and have a good bit of MPEG-2 artifacts (even the SD on Blu-ray set uses these same MPEG-2 encodes). So the LDs would be a better choice for those with a decent player.

But yeah, I doubt many non-Japanese fans will actually want to watch these. More people probably buy them for the booklets and cover art.

Just buy the DVDs, you will save a lot of time, money and wear and tear on your LD player.

While the scrolling on the Movie is great and all its not worth the premium people are selling it for, I had it and the same version minus
the scrolling is on the 25th anni DVD and the Bluray release.

Will do.

I have both of the Shout factory Blu's for the 1986 movie and i prefer the Pioneer Japanese DVD. Yeah the sound mix on the English track is dual mono but it looks like the correct colors to me, not overly bright. It hasn't been grain scrubbed, it hasn't been made into fake widescreen. It hasn't been at all prettied up like the new 4K release has. It looks like the era it was produced in a quick and dirty 35mm print. With all the animation errors left unfixed.

Is there a version of this movie with fixed animation? TV show, yes, but movie?

I wouldn't exactly call it "fake" when it was matted into widescreen for its theatrical presentations anyway. I would like a HD transfer of the full frame version as well though.

Not completely on topic but this boxset family deserved to be mentioned.



I think it finished convincing me that these releases had no obi.

Julien