Transformers: The Headmasters

Ditching lost in spacer US final act The Rebirth, Transformers manga writer turned TV plotter Masumi Kaneda and product forebears Takara forged on with their own Japan exclusive divergent series Transformers: The Headmasters. The Robots in Disguise were on their last legs in the 'States, not so in Japan. They just couldn't get enough of those shape-shifting robots.

The sustained cultural interest is no surprise when you consider that the first wave of toys in 1984 were cherry picked from two ongoing Japanese toylines Diaclone and Microchange. Hasbro and Marvel Entertainment took the Car Robot sub-line of Diaclone for the Autobot faction and the spy-change paraphernalia of Microchange for the Decepticons. A gang of Marvel editors cooked up a backstory and the mutant brand of Transformers was born. Naturally, it was promptly exported back to its creator country. The Transformers brand enjoyed several years of kid mugging success, taking in three lengthy animated series, an animated movie and on-going comic. In 1987, responding to a waning interest in the franchise Hasbro pulled funding for their animated series, allowing Takara to run with the concept. So began the first of three region restricted series. Hooray!



The Japanese Generation 1 shows are each characterised by a key gimmick concept that forms the backbone of the (nominal) narrative. In the case of The Headmasters it's technology from Master, a Cybertronian colony. At the height of the civil war, a gang of small, fairly useless, non-transforming transformers hightailed it from their home planet. These infant bots were sick of being kicked about! Seeking peace and respite, they instead crash-landed on planet Master and were forced to eke out a fraught Darwinian existence. Most died. Those poor cowards! Surviving several ice ages, a few junior transformers eventually mustered enough thinks to cobble together massive vehicle bodies called Transtectors - with the tot robots morphing into pilot heads.



Suitably bluffed up from this size increase, these Headmasters lark about the galaxy being brash and uncompromising, eventually falling in with their brethren and stealing the show.

The opening credits animation tells you all you need to know. Old favourites rendered useless and frail compared to Headmaster might!

The Headmasters TV series has a pretty dire reputation. Seen by few, hated by most. Despite the whiff of arc outlined above, and the massive 35 episode running time (38 if you count a trio of encore clip episodes), there's a distinct lack of over-arching plot. Individual episodes are similarly cavalier with story, rarely adequately wrapping up any dangling threads. The whole series has the effect of a child rummaging through his toy box. Dead characters / toys reappear with zero explanation. Mainstay heroes and villains are cruelly sidelined, or even turned into bumbling arm waving stooges, to make way for this season's hot new product.



I'd love to cry foul, but this isn't anything new for the Transformers franchise. The 1986 Movie spends a third of its running time rending and trashing two seasons worth of favourites just so the US designed next generation could have a money spinning feature adventure. Naturally this is all dressed up by adult fans as the harrowing realities of war, which it sort of is, despite the best efforts of greedy paymasters. Plus, of course, I've really enjoyed this series so far!

Transformers: The Headmasters is the closest real life approximation of The Simpsons in-show parody series Battling Seizure Robots that I have ever seen. Headmasters also neatly encapsulates and exaggerates every uncharitable parent group opinion of Japan authored children's entertainment. To wit: an endless series of incomprehensible battles and situations, designed purely to shift wallet draining kid crack. Vacuum vapid toy whoring. Don't you want to create your own adventures little kid?



A typical episode will feature no less than several entrenched no-thrills gun fights with as many toys as can be mustered. The same mechanically 'Heroic' music will blare over nothing. With no clear conclusion in sight the scene will switch rapidly to somewhere else - a senior bot is saying something grave. Failing that the omniscient narrator will plug logic gaps with glib proclamation / literal explanation. The battle will only be resolved when the Decepticons get really bored and fly away. Their plans usually only barely compromised.

Headmasters operates on the unfathomable logic of children. How do you defeat Galvatron, the all-supreme Decepticon Emperor of Destruction? You hold hands with your friends, and spin around really fast until you bump into him and knock him under an iceberg. Of course!



This is what Headmasters has to offer. There are no minutely textured narratives. Zero three act structure. Characters are not developed, and foreshadowing is just completely elsewhere. Instead you get 20 minutes of total fucking mayhem. Characters die FOR NO REASON. Planets nearly blow up FOR NO REASON. Planets DO blow up FOR NO REASON! Decepticons are really polite to each other FOR NO REASON. Minor Hasbro hologram toy franchise Battle Beasts pop up mid-series for a starring role FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON!



Headmasters is an imagination pile-up. An every-toy-for-himself fender bender, fuelled by sugar sweets and E numbers.

I hasten to add, this is not a knowing, Generation Y, post-modernist wink winker. I'm not investing any irony in this. Nope. I'm not ashamed to say that I thoroughly enjoy seeing cackling robots flying around, mindlessly shooting at nothing. This is for all intents and purposes a dreadful cartoon, somehow blessed with just enough lack of interest from its designers to mutate it into something inexplicably enjoyable. The Transformers themselves, and more specifically their war, at last feels like an intrusive, impenetrable alien conflict. We are merely bystanders to this unfolding forever fight!


WE CAN NOT OBJECT! THEY ARE MIGHTY ROBOTS!