Is It Just Me, Or Does Beast Wars II/Neo Make Space Look CREEPY?

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

Even without Unicron there... it just feels like a place where it's like, "Okay, where's a good place to dump Unicron? How about here? No one wants to go here, anyway."

Even the title has an air of creepiness to it, though that might be the musical riff that plays during this part of the intro...

Oh, and let's not forget this. Granted, it's not exactly "space," but I'm counting it anyway.

The weird thing is... I'm kinda here for it? I like space stuff, and it's usually pretty neat and wondrous, but having a version that adds a sort of scariness, or at least dread to it... I dunno, I find it kind of fascinating. Most times, it's like "hey, space exploration seems like it would be neat," but then looking at some of this, and it's like, "nope, I'm good staying right here, thanks."

I feel like there's some other element to how it looks that makes it seem foreboding, too, but I can't quite describe it. Like something in how the stars, or even just the darkness is rendered.

I love it.

I think it even goes back to Season 3 of the G1 cartoon. Sometimes space there just seemed very... cold. The soundtrack they used (which I love) probably helped in some cases, too.

Anyway, I just had to put this out there. Anyone else feel the same way? Got any good shots I missed? Does it extend beyond these two shows? I was just watching the intros and reading some TFWiki articles when I thought to talk about it here. Micron Legend's didn't seem so bad, though, as a point in the "others didn't seem this way to me" column, but I haven't seen all of JG1, either.

 

[Cybersnark]

I've been saying for years that Transformers has a lot of Lovecraft vibes if you look past the 80s toy robots. Space as a realm of eldtritch terror filled with mindless and uncaring abominations is the key element of Cosmic Horror.

 

[Sabrblade]

What's funny about this is that this is literally right next-door to Cybertron.

 

[Dekafox]

What's funny about this is that this is literally right next-door to Cybertron.

In JG1 continuity they moved the other remains of Unicron to a "Point Zero" or something like that as I recall. Probably to explain why that ISN'T right next to Cybertron at this point, and tie in a few other things given how self-referential JG1 gets.

 

[Sabrblade]

In JG1 continuity they moved the other remains of Unicron to a "Point Zero" or something like that as I recall. Probably to explain why that ISN'T right next to Cybertron at this point, and tie in a few other things given how self-referential JG1 gets.

The "Triple Z Point", you mean.

And, no, I meant what I said. When Big Convoy's team goes to the Triple Z Point to inspect Unicron's remains, it is literally right next to Cybertron in that episode.

 

[Dekafox]

Ah, forgot that part. Fair enough!

 

[Stepwise]

"Triple Z Point" . . . I've never heard of that, so it's another thing to research. To the wiki!

 

[Sabrblade]

"Triple Z Point" . . . I've never heard of that, so it's another thing to research. To the wiki!

Admittedly, it's a page that still needs a little bit of work.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

I'd love to know how exactly he's "sealed" there, as so much of the lore around seems to describe it.

 

[Sabrblade]

I'd love to know how exactly he's "sealed" there, as so much of the lore around seems to describe it.

Re-watching the episode of Beast Wars Neo that the Triple Z Point appeared in, Vector Sigma said this about it:

"During the first galactic war, called the Great War, Unicron's energy was pulled out from his enormous body, which was then sealed in a sacred area called the Triple Z Point, which is close enough to be monitored by Planet Cybertron."

At the time Beast Wars Neo was written, this was meant to refer to Unicron's destruction in the 1986 movie:

However, you may notice that the movie ends with Unicron's body being completely obliterated, with only his head remaining intact. There was nothing else left of the body to be sealed away. Yet, as seen in the second image at the top of this thread, a huge chuck of the body is clearly seen in a heavily wrecked state at the Triple Z Point.

How, exactly, his body was sealed there wasn't actually shown until just two years ago in April 2021, in the final chapter of the Generations Selects manga.

The Selects manga actually fixed this discrepancy by revealing that, in the year 2011 (at a point set after "The Return of Optimus Prime" but before The Headmasters cartoon), Unicron briefly returned to life via a bunch of his never-before-seen minions coming together to build him a new body by fusing themselves together. The result was a new body based on the real-world design of his HasLab toy (Takara needed to promote that toy with some kind of Japanese fiction, so this is how they did that). It is this new body that, in the final chapter of the manga, gets blown apart into large pieces and then sealed away in the Triple Z Point.

Thus, Selects retconned all of the times Beast Wars Neo referred back to Unicron's destruction to not refer to the movie, but to instead refer to his defeat in the Selects manga.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

JG1 continuity may be the most complicated storyline of all time at this point.

 

[Platypus Prime]

Only in ONE timeline, in another caused by Unicron and Cthulhu having a few drinks during the game, Japanese G1 becomes the simplest one to understand, it starts out with anime girls and robot penguins being turned into-(insert 49 volumes of manga only included in Lucky Draw exclusives and one Takara-Tomy Mall release)-and then the gold chrome flaked off to reveal that under it, Optimus was still alive the whole time!

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

Re-watching the episode of Beast Wars Neo that the Triple Z Point appeared in, Vector Sigma said this about it:

"During the first galactic war, called the Great War, Unicron's energy was pulled out from his enormous body, which was then sealed in a sacred area called the Triple Z Point, which is close enough to be monitored by Planet Cybertron."

At the time Beast Wars Neo was written, this was meant to refer to Unicron's destruction in the 1986 movie:

However, you may notice that the movie ends with Unicron's body being completely obliterated, with only his head remaining intact. There was nothing else left of the body to be sealed away. Yet, as seen in the second image at the top of this thread, a huge chuck of the body is clearly seen in a heavily wrecked state at the Triple Z Point.

How, exactly, his body was sealed there wasn't actually shown until just two years ago in April 2021, in the final chapter of the Generations Selects manga.

The Selects manga actually fixed this discrepancy by revealing that, in the year 2011 (at a point set after "The Return of Optimus Prime" but before The Headmasters cartoon), Unicron briefly returned to life via a bunch of his never-before-seen minions coming together to build him a new body by fusing themselves together. The result was a new body based on the real-world design of his HasLab toy (Takara needed to promote that toy with some kind of Japanese fiction, so this is how they did that). It is this new body that, in the final chapter of the manga, gets blown apart into large pieces and then sealed away in the Triple Z Point.

Thus, Selects retconned all of the times Beast Wars Neo referred back to Unicron's destruction to not refer to the movie, but to instead refer to his defeat in the Selects manga.

Much as I appreciate the explanation, I feel like my initial statement might not have been interpreted correctly.

What I meant was, how is having a giant trashed floating planet robot god-thing just floating in space "sealing" it anywhere? We've seen everyone from Cyclonus-pregnant-with-Galvatron's-head to Big Convoy's group come and go from the place freely, while "sealing" something in a place usually implies that they're bound to it or otherwise can't come and go.

I mean, granted, I don't know how they'd move it, but supposing they had a way, what is keeping it bound to the Triple Z Point?

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

JG1 continuity may be the most complicated storyline of all time at this point.

As I've said before, there are reasons why I have used the following image in association with Toei-G1's recursively convoluted, more-referential-and-requiring-annotations-than-a-best-of-Dennis Miller-retrospective continuity....

 

[GodSentinelOmega]

JG1 continuity is pure 6th dimensional madness because it tries (and succeeds) in incorporating EVERYTHING into one(ish) connected universal timeline.

Kindof.

And we all enjoy it.

Has JG1 ever tried to tackle Lord Imperious Delirious?

 

[Sabrblade]

Has JG1 ever tried to tackle Lord Imperious Delirious?

Nope.

And it has left alone the Unicron Trilogy, the movies, Animated, the Aligned cartoons, Cyberverse, the Prime Wars Trilogy, the War For Cybertron Trilogy, EarthSpark, any non-Japanese comics/books/other print media, and any non-Japanese video games. None of those are part of JG1.

 

[NovaSaber]

JG1 continuity is pure 6th dimensional madness because it tries (and succeeds) in incorporating EVERYTHING into one(ish) connected universal timeline.

It's just an expansive continuity that includes the majority of Japanese-original Transformers fiction.
It doesn't really merge in anything that was originally separate.
And if anything it has fewer contradictions and retcons than either Star Trek or UC Gundam.

The Transformers "continuity" that would be closest to "6th dimensional madness" would be the Ask Vector Prime Facebook page.

 

[GodSentinelOmega]

Ha. Thats a good point.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

Has JG1 ever tried to tackle Lord Imperious Delirious?

To my surprise, they haven't.

I mean, just look at him:

He can't make any less sense than Devil Z or "Violin Juggler"....

 

[Sabrblade]

He can't make any less sense than Devil Z

I don't follow. The origin we finally got for Devil Z feels like it something that could have been written back in the 1980s, as it's based entirely on information from the G1 cartoon.

Specifically, from "Five Faces of Darkness" and "The Return of Optimus Prime".

or "Violin Juggler"....

What is this, the mid-2000s?