Beast Wars II/Neo availabilty?

Undead Scottsman

Undead Scottsman

Well-known member
Citizen
So I've recently been on a kick of watching all of the Transformers shows I never got around to. I recently completed the Unicron Trilogy (I had seen Armada and a smidgeon of Energon before, but that was it) and rewatched Robots in Disguise 2001 for the first time since, uh, 2001. I've seen G1/Beast Wars/Machines a million times, Animated twice and went through Prime/RiD a few years back, caught Cyberverse as it aired and then rewatched it recently (it's a short series) and did the same with the War for Cybertron trilogy. I've also, unfortunately, watched the Prime Wars trilogy. :( So I'm basically done with mainline US Transformers shows, besides Rescue Bots and BotBots. I'll get to them eventually, but looking into the Japanese exclusive series for now.

I've had Headmasters/Masterforce/Victory on DVD for ages already, so that's no problem there, but as far as I can tell the same treatment wasn't given to Beast Wars II or Neo, though I swear I recalled Shout Factory saying they had BW2 on the schedule, but that was years and years ago. Is there any legitimate place to buy or stream these shows? Or am I just going to have to go find them on Youtube like I did with RiD2001?
 
ZacWilliam1

ZacWilliam1

Well-known member
Citizen
Never had an official release in the west. There have been official Japanese releases but all the ones I've seen are quite expensive.

-ZacWilliam, I do not believe there have been any announcements of that changing.
 
Sabrblade

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
Karyuudo Fansubs did the fandom a great service by releasing complete English subtitled versions of Beast Wars II, Beast Wars Special, Beast Wars Neo, Car Robots, Legends of the Microns, and even Scramble City, Zone, and Beast Wars Metals: Convoy's Great Transformation (the elusive Japanese dub of "Cutting Edge")

Scramble City:

Zone:

Beast Wars II (plus its movie, which is best set between Episodes 32 and 33):

"Clash! Beast Warriors", "Beast Wars: Metals", and "Convoy's Great Transformation" (albeit, listed in reverse order in this playlist):

Beast Wars Neo:

Car Robots (which has several notable differences from its English dub, Robots in Disguise):

Legends of the Microns:


Their next forthcoming release is a complete English translation of... Kiss Players.


As for The Headmasters, Super-God Masterforce, and Victory having been released on DVD by Shout! Factory, the only reason that happened in the first place was because they had already been released on DVD before in the UK by Metrodome and in Australia by Madman. The subtitles used by Shout! were preexisting, originally taken from the Metrodome/Madman releases. The big translation work had already been done, so they could just use those as a base. Whereas Beast Wars II and Neo didn't even get released on DVD in Japan until 2011 and 2012, respectively, so there were no preexisting English-subbed releases for Shout! Factory to pilfer use at the time.

What's more, the subtitles used by Shout! Factory were not only taken from Metrodome/Madman but were further rewritten by Hasbro to be made full of lies, inaccuracies, and unnecessary Westernizations (like, adding in references to the Allspark, changing all uses of "Cassette" to "Deployer", changing Chokon Power to just Energon, and throwing in a ton of stuff from both IDW1 and the Aligned lore that didn't even exist until decades after the time when these three shows were first broadcast in the 1980s).
 
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Haywire

Haywire

Collecter of Gobots and Godzilla
Citizen
Headmasters in particular always bugs me, because they subtitled Fortress as Cerebros. It's still jarring when I try to follow along listening to the Japanese.
 
Sabrblade

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
UndeadScottsman said:
Oh wow, the Jointrons suuuuuuuuuck. I think I'd rather have Fred from Armada than these three complete screwups.
Click to expand...
Aw, they're just a bunch of harmless, over-enthusiastic doofuses.

They do get a really great, big hero moment toward the end of the series, though. ;)
 
Undead Scottsman

Undead Scottsman

Well-known member
Citizen
A few episodes into Neo and I'm really enjoying Big Convoy. He gives off pretty entertaining "Wolverine finds himself in charge of a bunch of kids" vibes. I especially like how his energon matrix makes him give some kind of moral lesson at the end of the episodes, only for Big Convoy to immediately go "Wait, that was pointless."
 
Sabrblade

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
Bad news update on the availability of one of the shows I linked to above.


After having had the series uploaded on YouTube for seven years, Karyuudo got hit with a copyright strike from TVTokyo eleven days ago and had to take down all 39 episodes of Car Robots from their YouTube channel.
 
Princess Viola

Princess Viola

Dumbass Asexual
Citizen
At least you can still torrent their Car Robots subs on the cat website, so it's not a total loss.
 
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