Why would it not?
Why was there a lack of fanfare for the 20th anniversary of a Beast Wars and could have this have caused Primal to win the prime fan vote?
- Thread starter Soundwave2.0
- Start date
Well, then how do you explain all of the other guys with Optimus Prime's head and other Matrices in their chests running aorund at the same time as Lio Convoy?
That is Japanese continuity.Well, then how do you explain all of the other guys with Optimus Prime's head and other Matrices in their chests running aorund at the same time as Lio Convoy?
This is about the Legacy Leo Prime Toy.
They could have Leo as a prime with the Matrix of the leadership in a different continuity.
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But it's the Japanese character that the Legacy toy represents. They just couldn't legally use the Japanese name for trademark reasons.
So you don't think Leo Prime is a Prime?
The one thing people in the Western fandom seem to overlook is that the name "Rodimus Convoy" is actually the exception to the norm of literally every other character to have the word "Convoy" in their name.
As in "Convoy" isn't a suffix added to the characters' first name, it is the first name.
Words like "Star", "Battle", "Beast", "Powered", "Lio", "Big", "Fire", "Grand", "Galaxy", "Nitro", "Flame", "Live", and "Megalo" are all descriptive prefixes added to the first name of "Convoy", just like how Ginrai is the first name of that character, while "Super" and "God" are prefixes added on to make his enhanced forms "Super Ginrai" and "God Ginrai". Same with Saber's upgraded forms being named "Star Saber" and "Victory Saber" with added prefixes. (Though, two other exceptions similar to Rodimus Convoy would be Fortress and Grand being upgraded to "Fortress Maximus" and "Grand Maximus", gaining suffixes instead of prefixes for their respective super robot modes).
In the specific case of Lio Convoy, he was just "Convoy" before he scanned his lion beast mode, and only renamed himself "Lio Convoy" afterward, adding the "Lio" prefix in front of his name.
This is the opposite of how "Prime" has come to be treated by western Transformers fiction, in which it is indeed a suffix added to the character's first name as a title. "Optimus", "Rodimus", "Sentinel", "Zeta", "Nova", etc. are all first names, with "Prime" added on at the end of each of them.
It's backwards to how "Convoy" is treated by Japanese fiction. If anything, "Convoy" would be more appropriately equated to "Optimus", but the West has gotten so used to how it uses "Prime" as a title that having a bunch of different characters running around all with the name "Optimus", distinguished only by a descriptive prefix, would sound silly to us westerners. So we just used different first names for each Prime instead. And we sometimes even have Primes who don't even have "Prime" in their name, like Alpha Trion, Liege Maximo, and Prima.
In further contrast between "Prime" and "Convoy", "Prime" is treated as not just a title but a rank in western fiction. In Japanese fiction, the rank is 総司令官 (Sōshireikan), while "Convoy" is the personal name of those who bear that rank (barring the known exceptions like Fortress, Ginrai, Saber, and Dai Atlas).
And by the time of the Beast Era, there's lots of guys named "Convoy" (each using their own descriptive prefix to distinguish themselves), yet none of them have nearly as much authority as the Great Convoys of the Convoy Council (which is comprised of at least nine different Great Convoys), making all those lower-ranking Sōshireikans feel like a dime a dozen. BWII and Car Robots even explained why there were so many Convoys running around. When first introducing the concept of the Energon Matrix, BWII said that the Energon Matrix is wielded by those belonging to the "Shireikan Class", and Car Robots later said the same thing, but renamed it the "Convoy Class". The latter also included God Magnus as part of this class of Transformer (and he doesn't even have "Convoy" in his name!). This was also implied in the BWII manga, in the scene where the Convoy Council presented pre-Lio Convoy with his Matrix and gave him the name "Convoy" as just a name, not a title.
Meanwhile, over in the Unicron Trilogy, there was Convoy (later "Grand Convoy") and Rodimus Convoy. Their ranks were 総司令官 (Sōshireikan) and 司令官(Shireikan), respectively. Grand Convoy was even often referred to as just "Convoy" by Kicker, as if he was calling him by his name rather than his title. And then there's the five different Convoys of Galaxy Force, all having variations on the rank of Shireikan, and their own prefixes to describe them differently from each other.
As in "Convoy" isn't a suffix added to the characters' first name, it is the first name.
Words like "Star", "Battle", "Beast", "Powered", "Lio", "Big", "Fire", "Grand", "Galaxy", "Nitro", "Flame", "Live", and "Megalo" are all descriptive prefixes added to the first name of "Convoy", just like how Ginrai is the first name of that character, while "Super" and "God" are prefixes added on to make his enhanced forms "Super Ginrai" and "God Ginrai". Same with Saber's upgraded forms being named "Star Saber" and "Victory Saber" with added prefixes. (Though, two other exceptions similar to Rodimus Convoy would be Fortress and Grand being upgraded to "Fortress Maximus" and "Grand Maximus", gaining suffixes instead of prefixes for their respective super robot modes).
In the specific case of Lio Convoy, he was just "Convoy" before he scanned his lion beast mode, and only renamed himself "Lio Convoy" afterward, adding the "Lio" prefix in front of his name.
This is the opposite of how "Prime" has come to be treated by western Transformers fiction, in which it is indeed a suffix added to the character's first name as a title. "Optimus", "Rodimus", "Sentinel", "Zeta", "Nova", etc. are all first names, with "Prime" added on at the end of each of them.
It's backwards to how "Convoy" is treated by Japanese fiction. If anything, "Convoy" would be more appropriately equated to "Optimus", but the West has gotten so used to how it uses "Prime" as a title that having a bunch of different characters running around all with the name "Optimus", distinguished only by a descriptive prefix, would sound silly to us westerners. So we just used different first names for each Prime instead. And we sometimes even have Primes who don't even have "Prime" in their name, like Alpha Trion, Liege Maximo, and Prima.
In further contrast between "Prime" and "Convoy", "Prime" is treated as not just a title but a rank in western fiction. In Japanese fiction, the rank is 総司令官 (Sōshireikan), while "Convoy" is the personal name of those who bear that rank (barring the known exceptions like Fortress, Ginrai, Saber, and Dai Atlas).
And by the time of the Beast Era, there's lots of guys named "Convoy" (each using their own descriptive prefix to distinguish themselves), yet none of them have nearly as much authority as the Great Convoys of the Convoy Council (which is comprised of at least nine different Great Convoys), making all those lower-ranking Sōshireikans feel like a dime a dozen. BWII and Car Robots even explained why there were so many Convoys running around. When first introducing the concept of the Energon Matrix, BWII said that the Energon Matrix is wielded by those belonging to the "Shireikan Class", and Car Robots later said the same thing, but renamed it the "Convoy Class". The latter also included God Magnus as part of this class of Transformer (and he doesn't even have "Convoy" in his name!). This was also implied in the BWII manga, in the scene where the Convoy Council presented pre-Lio Convoy with his Matrix and gave him the name "Convoy" as just a name, not a title.
Meanwhile, over in the Unicron Trilogy, there was Convoy (later "Grand Convoy") and Rodimus Convoy. Their ranks were 総司令官 (Sōshireikan) and 司令官(Shireikan), respectively. Grand Convoy was even often referred to as just "Convoy" by Kicker, as if he was calling him by his name rather than his title. And then there's the five different Convoys of Galaxy Force, all having variations on the rank of Shireikan, and their own prefixes to describe them differently from each other.
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On the Hasbro con video 2022 Day one one of the guys may have called the Matrix the Matrix leadership so what do you think about that?
Simple. To err is human. And those guys were human.
So we should not think of Leo Prime as a Prime?Simple. To err is human. And those guys were human.
Dude, are you just trying to get people to agree with a point you're never explicitly making?
If a character is called Prime then some people may think of him as a really Prime.
Dude, I don't even understand what point you're trying to make here.
Do YOU PERSONALLY consider Leo Prime a Prime, yes or no? Stop asking people for their opinions and then challenge those opinions. Take a position yourself. All you keep doing is asking questions and then when you get answers, asking further questions to challenge those answers. Are you just trying to stir up controversy for giggles?
Two thoughts:
1) Big Convoy was named Big Junior before taking the name of Big Convoy, so that follows the Rodimus Convoy convention.
2) For the longest time, I (and I'd guess others, going by western fiction, iirc) saw Lio Convoy and Big Convoy as effectively peers to Optimus Primal, in terms of prominence and Maximal hierarchy.
1) Big Convoy was named Big Junior before taking the name of Big Convoy, so that follows the Rodimus Convoy convention.
2) For the longest time, I (and I'd guess others, going by western fiction, iirc) saw Lio Convoy and Big Convoy as effectively peers to Optimus Primal, in terms of prominence and Maximal hierarchy.
I could want Leo to be a prime myself.
I still think Optimus Pride would have been a more fitting name considering how other Western Beast Wars names went. Drawing on a blank on what a fitting Optimus-style rename for Big Convoy would have been, though. (And I actually kind of prefer the Ultra Mammoth repaint there, honestly, outside of Big Convoy's show presence. It feels to me like a good fit alongside S1-timeframe BW characters, concept-wise.)
That was also a retcon, made decades later, based on the naming scheme of Lio Convoy and Lio Junior. The original implication in Beast Wars Neo and Car Robots was that all Cybertronian Transformers were born into the world by their creator-god Vector Sigma (protoforms and stasis pods like in the American Beast Wars cartoon were never featured in either BWII or Neo). The specific case of Lio Junior's birth was treated as something unusual, an anomaly. The later "Big Junior" retcon just muddies the waters further, since unlike how Lio Junior was the son of Lio Convoy, it was never explained how Big Convoy is the son of Blue Big Convoy.
For all intents and purposes, that was likely the original intent at the time that BWII and Neo were made, but it all came about with only a partially-complete picture of what the American Beast Wars cartoon was doing, along with seemingly a big misunderstanding about Optimus Primal and Megatron on Takara's part.
When Takara first brought Beast Wars over to Japan in 1997, they gave the Maximal and Predacon factions the same Japanese names as those of the Autobots and Decepticons: "Cybertron" and "Destron", respectively, as though there was to have been no difference between the Autobots/Decepticons and the Maximals/Predacons besides the new insignia (as had previously been the case in the transition from G1 to G2). Takara even gave Optimus Primal the same Japanese name as Optimus Prime: "Convoy". Not "Beast Convoy" or "Gorilla Convoy" or anything to distinguish the two. Just "Convoy". The Japanese toy bios for Optimus Primal and Megatron's Basic class and Ultra class toys even hinted at their being the exact same characters as Optimus Prime and G1 Megatron, complete with special redecos of their bat and crocodile toys featuring bios that explicitly stated that the two had previously been a tractor trailer and a Walther P-38, respectively.
All of that most likely stemmed from Hasbro/Kenner's original plan of making Optimus Primal and Megatron being the same characters as Optimus Prime and G1 Megatron simply in new beast bodies, per the original 1996 Hasbro/Kenner toy bios and pack-in comic that presented the Beast Wars as taking place on modern-day Earth with human cities and such. But when the Beast Wars cartoon started up, all of that was ignored and the cartoon instead went in its own different direction with the story and characters, presenting the Maximals and Predacon not as just the Autobots and Decepticons with new forms, symbols, and faction names, but instead as the Autobots and Decepticons' distant descendants from the far future. Optimus Prime and G1 Megatron were now the ancient ancestors of Optimus Primal and BW Megatron, instead of being the same people.
Evidently, Takara didn't get the memo on those changes in time, and so went with the toy bios mentioned above that instead leaned into the discarded idea of Primal being Prime and Megatron being Megatron. But when the cartoon's first season got dubbed into Japanese, the dub (despite all the comedy-based ad-libs added into its scripts) remained more or less faithful to the English version and never outright stated whether the Convoy and Megatron of Beast Wars were the same or different people from the Convoy and Megatron of G1, all thanks to the subject simply never coming up in the English version during the first season (which was because the show never needed to since it went without needing to say in the English version that Optimus Primal and Megatron were not the same people as their G1 namesakes).
In hindsight, this ambiguity in the Japanese dub was its saving grace for what all was to come next.
(Post was too long. To be continued next)
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When Seasons 2 and 3 of the American BW cartoon were held back from being dubbed in Japan until later (since there weren't enough episodes in Season 2 alone to run for a full year in Japan), Beast Wars Second and Neo were created to fill in the gap during the wait. But, both were going off the world-building done only by the first season of Beast Wars, completely unaware of all the retcons that Seasons 2 and 3 would come to later make. In Season 1, Megatron was presented as the sole ruler of the Predacons, who likewise were said to be a faction of conquerors bent of ruling the galaxy. Thus, BWII and Neo featured Galvatron and Magmatron as powerful emperors with spacefaring starships and vast resources at their disposal.
No one making those shows knew anything about Beast Wars season 2 having revealed the Predacons to instead be second-class citizens under the Maximal government, Megatron to instead be viewed as lowly criminal with delusions of grandeur by his own people, and the Predacons to actually be ruled by the Predacon Alliance during a peacetime known as the Pax Cybertronia. All of which flew right in the face of how the Predacons were depicted in both BWII and Neo. All because Season 2 and 3 Beast Wars had changed so much about Megatron and the Predacons from how they were presented in Season 1.
And then there's the whole thing with Optimus, or "Convoy". The first toy catalog for BWII was still going off those early impressions that Takara had had about Beast Wars Optimus and Megatron, and so depicted them as the immediate predecessors to Lio Convoy and Galvatron, with the catalog saying that Convoy and Megatron were immediately succeeded by both of them when Convoy and Megatron left Cybertron to go fight in the Beast Wars. This was further illustrated in the BWII manga, in which Convoy was shown to be a high-ranking member of a military council on Cybertron. A short bio written for him even described him as "A fierce fighter who has fought against the Destron army for thousands of years." He then guest-starred in the BWII movie, in which he was revered as a "legendary Supreme Commander", complete with his own Matrix! That's a far cry from the lowly science ship captain Optimus Primal actually was in the English version, sounding an awful lot more like Optimus Prime instead.
When Seasons 2 and 3 finally reached Japan in 1999, everything Takara thought they understood about Beast Wars was turned on its head by all the new reveals mentioned above. The Japanese dub of Metals leaned into the English version's way of thinking, making it clear that BW Convoy and Megatron were NOT G1 Convoy and Megatron after all, Megatron was not the ruler of all Predacons but just his own small gang of criminals, and the Predacons themselves were not galactic conquerors but merely disgruntled citizens ruled by their own government subservient to that of the Maximals. In other words, BWII and Neo were suddenly very incompatible with the show they were originally created to be spinoffs of.
When Car Robots was made, it seemed like Takara tried to backtrack things a bit in order to make things align a little better with what all had been said and done in Metals, in an attempt smooth things over between it and BWII and Neo. Instead of continuing to call the Predacons the same Japanese name as the Decepticons, "Destron" was changed to "Destronger", evoking the change from "Decepticon" to "Predacon" in the western world. Stasis pods and protoforms (which had both been absent in BWII and Neo) were brought back in, complete with an ancient ship based on the Axalon containing them. And elements like the Energon Matrix and Vector Sigma being the Transformers god were worked in to better tie things together with BWII and Neo.
BUT, all that was still done without any awareness of what was going on with Beast Machines, which itself wasn't brought over to Japan until 2004! In Beast Machines, Vector Sigma was not the public figure it was in Beast Wars Neo, it was ancient long-forgotten legend that had been hidden away deep down far below the surface of Cybertron. And it wasn't even remembered by its original name, but instead by the name of its evolved form, "the Oracle". There was no way Beast Wars Neo could take place before Beast Machines if Vector Sigma was supposed to be this long lost legend in BM, when it was instead a very well-known thing placed high up in a very open-to-the-public city tower in Neo. To make matters worse, BM ended with Cybertron being reformatted into a technorganic state when both Neo and Car Robots had presented the planet in its traditional metallic state, both shows having been unaware of the reformatting that was going to happen at the end of BM.
So, what Takara was left with was a great big mess of their own making to clean up. They had made two shows spun off from the first season of one show whose second and third seasons would later upend everything Takara was led to believe about this shared universe from what was first told about it in the first season. So when they tried use Car Robots to bandage some the discrepancies, Beast Machines made the Takara shows even more incompatible. So what was Takara left to do? They stuck to their guns by adhering to the truths established by the American cartoons, and then cordoned off and relocated the Japanese shows to instead take place somewhere else far off and away from the American cartoons that they no longer fit in with.
And they did so by also leaning into what was true in those Japanese shows. In BWII, the planet Gaia is shown to be a post-apocalyptic Earth, stated in Episode 36 to have long been abandoned by humanity for tens of millennia. Even before Metals was dubbed in Japanese, this already contradicted the BW episode "Dark Designs", in which it was stated that the Great War between the Autobots and Decepticons was "three centuries ago". That discrepancy automatically pushed BWII to come way later than intended. While one could make the argument that the Great War could have continued for many millennia into the future, Beast Wars Neo would later state that the "Great War" (referred to by that name spoken in English, no less) officially ended with the destruction of Unicron in the 21st century. Not to mention the fact that Beast Wars Neo's first episode opens with full Maximal and Predacon armies openly engaged in all-out war, which is completely at odds with the peace accord of the Pax Cybertronia. Combining all that information, Beast Wars and Beast Machines had to take place in the 24th century, while BWII and Neo had to instead come eons later.
But then, how exactly would that fit with technorganic reformatting at the end of Beast Machines? Well, that would eventually be patched up by a Legends pack-in comic that showed the reformatting undone eons later when Vector Sigma sensed the looming return of Unicron, with the planet being re-mechanized to better defend itself against Unicron's coming threat, all in foreshadowing the events of Neo. So the planet stayed technorganic for many thousands of years until the danger posed by Unicron forced Vector Sigma to change it back in better preparation for the cosmic devil's return.
This relocation of BWII and Neo also kind of fits with other little details in those shows. The pre-beast forms on the cast of BWII always looked weird and alien, almost organic-like even, which matches up with the technorganic designs of Beast Machines. The BWII cast could scan beast modes with built-in DNA scanners, when the cast of Beast Wars had to use external devices to do that. Beast Machines introduced the concept of DNA scanners being built into Cybertronians as something brand new, with BWII showing them as something ordinary now suddenly making sense as a distant continuation of that. Neo would even go as far as to say that organic beast modes are commonplace on Cybertron, when flashbacks in Beast Machines show that to not be the case. Neo coming long after BM suddenly makes that statement line up very well with BM's technorganic reformatting. Neo even further showed Big Convoy to have special abilities attuned to organic nature, coincidentally not unlike those displayed by the technorganic Maximals (Botanica especially) in BM.
And what about all those other things from before that treated BW Convoy and Megatron as if they were G1 Convoy and Megatron? Well, the Japanese toy bios are now their own little micro-continuity (much like the English toy bios that did the same thing), so too is the toy catalog, the BWII manga was always its own separate continuity from the cartoon, and the BWII movie revering BW Convoy as a legendary hero suddenly now jibes very well with his heroic sacrifice at the end of Beast Machines, as he was the last living good guy on Cybertron and gave his life to literally save every life on the planet. That's certainly a legendary feat of accomplishment. And interestingly, the cast of Beast Wars Neo would also revere Lio Convoy as a "legendary warrior" when Big Convoy and his team first meet him in that series. Heck, Big Convoy himself would even be treated as a "legendary warrior" in his own series, as early as the first episode even!
Essentially, being "legendary" in Japanese Transformers fiction isn't all that special. It's just something typical of long-running children's action series in Japan whenever the current cast of one series gets to meet a member of the previous series's good guy cast and treats them like they're so cool (like in Super Sentai team-ups or Kamen Rider team-ups).
I think that's everything.
No one making those shows knew anything about Beast Wars season 2 having revealed the Predacons to instead be second-class citizens under the Maximal government, Megatron to instead be viewed as lowly criminal with delusions of grandeur by his own people, and the Predacons to actually be ruled by the Predacon Alliance during a peacetime known as the Pax Cybertronia. All of which flew right in the face of how the Predacons were depicted in both BWII and Neo. All because Season 2 and 3 Beast Wars had changed so much about Megatron and the Predacons from how they were presented in Season 1.
And then there's the whole thing with Optimus, or "Convoy". The first toy catalog for BWII was still going off those early impressions that Takara had had about Beast Wars Optimus and Megatron, and so depicted them as the immediate predecessors to Lio Convoy and Galvatron, with the catalog saying that Convoy and Megatron were immediately succeeded by both of them when Convoy and Megatron left Cybertron to go fight in the Beast Wars. This was further illustrated in the BWII manga, in which Convoy was shown to be a high-ranking member of a military council on Cybertron. A short bio written for him even described him as "A fierce fighter who has fought against the Destron army for thousands of years." He then guest-starred in the BWII movie, in which he was revered as a "legendary Supreme Commander", complete with his own Matrix! That's a far cry from the lowly science ship captain Optimus Primal actually was in the English version, sounding an awful lot more like Optimus Prime instead.
When Seasons 2 and 3 finally reached Japan in 1999, everything Takara thought they understood about Beast Wars was turned on its head by all the new reveals mentioned above. The Japanese dub of Metals leaned into the English version's way of thinking, making it clear that BW Convoy and Megatron were NOT G1 Convoy and Megatron after all, Megatron was not the ruler of all Predacons but just his own small gang of criminals, and the Predacons themselves were not galactic conquerors but merely disgruntled citizens ruled by their own government subservient to that of the Maximals. In other words, BWII and Neo were suddenly very incompatible with the show they were originally created to be spinoffs of.
When Car Robots was made, it seemed like Takara tried to backtrack things a bit in order to make things align a little better with what all had been said and done in Metals, in an attempt smooth things over between it and BWII and Neo. Instead of continuing to call the Predacons the same Japanese name as the Decepticons, "Destron" was changed to "Destronger", evoking the change from "Decepticon" to "Predacon" in the western world. Stasis pods and protoforms (which had both been absent in BWII and Neo) were brought back in, complete with an ancient ship based on the Axalon containing them. And elements like the Energon Matrix and Vector Sigma being the Transformers god were worked in to better tie things together with BWII and Neo.
BUT, all that was still done without any awareness of what was going on with Beast Machines, which itself wasn't brought over to Japan until 2004! In Beast Machines, Vector Sigma was not the public figure it was in Beast Wars Neo, it was ancient long-forgotten legend that had been hidden away deep down far below the surface of Cybertron. And it wasn't even remembered by its original name, but instead by the name of its evolved form, "the Oracle". There was no way Beast Wars Neo could take place before Beast Machines if Vector Sigma was supposed to be this long lost legend in BM, when it was instead a very well-known thing placed high up in a very open-to-the-public city tower in Neo. To make matters worse, BM ended with Cybertron being reformatted into a technorganic state when both Neo and Car Robots had presented the planet in its traditional metallic state, both shows having been unaware of the reformatting that was going to happen at the end of BM.
So, what Takara was left with was a great big mess of their own making to clean up. They had made two shows spun off from the first season of one show whose second and third seasons would later upend everything Takara was led to believe about this shared universe from what was first told about it in the first season. So when they tried use Car Robots to bandage some the discrepancies, Beast Machines made the Takara shows even more incompatible. So what was Takara left to do? They stuck to their guns by adhering to the truths established by the American cartoons, and then cordoned off and relocated the Japanese shows to instead take place somewhere else far off and away from the American cartoons that they no longer fit in with.
And they did so by also leaning into what was true in those Japanese shows. In BWII, the planet Gaia is shown to be a post-apocalyptic Earth, stated in Episode 36 to have long been abandoned by humanity for tens of millennia. Even before Metals was dubbed in Japanese, this already contradicted the BW episode "Dark Designs", in which it was stated that the Great War between the Autobots and Decepticons was "three centuries ago". That discrepancy automatically pushed BWII to come way later than intended. While one could make the argument that the Great War could have continued for many millennia into the future, Beast Wars Neo would later state that the "Great War" (referred to by that name spoken in English, no less) officially ended with the destruction of Unicron in the 21st century. Not to mention the fact that Beast Wars Neo's first episode opens with full Maximal and Predacon armies openly engaged in all-out war, which is completely at odds with the peace accord of the Pax Cybertronia. Combining all that information, Beast Wars and Beast Machines had to take place in the 24th century, while BWII and Neo had to instead come eons later.
But then, how exactly would that fit with technorganic reformatting at the end of Beast Machines? Well, that would eventually be patched up by a Legends pack-in comic that showed the reformatting undone eons later when Vector Sigma sensed the looming return of Unicron, with the planet being re-mechanized to better defend itself against Unicron's coming threat, all in foreshadowing the events of Neo. So the planet stayed technorganic for many thousands of years until the danger posed by Unicron forced Vector Sigma to change it back in better preparation for the cosmic devil's return.
This relocation of BWII and Neo also kind of fits with other little details in those shows. The pre-beast forms on the cast of BWII always looked weird and alien, almost organic-like even, which matches up with the technorganic designs of Beast Machines. The BWII cast could scan beast modes with built-in DNA scanners, when the cast of Beast Wars had to use external devices to do that. Beast Machines introduced the concept of DNA scanners being built into Cybertronians as something brand new, with BWII showing them as something ordinary now suddenly making sense as a distant continuation of that. Neo would even go as far as to say that organic beast modes are commonplace on Cybertron, when flashbacks in Beast Machines show that to not be the case. Neo coming long after BM suddenly makes that statement line up very well with BM's technorganic reformatting. Neo even further showed Big Convoy to have special abilities attuned to organic nature, coincidentally not unlike those displayed by the technorganic Maximals (Botanica especially) in BM.
And what about all those other things from before that treated BW Convoy and Megatron as if they were G1 Convoy and Megatron? Well, the Japanese toy bios are now their own little micro-continuity (much like the English toy bios that did the same thing), so too is the toy catalog, the BWII manga was always its own separate continuity from the cartoon, and the BWII movie revering BW Convoy as a legendary hero suddenly now jibes very well with his heroic sacrifice at the end of Beast Machines, as he was the last living good guy on Cybertron and gave his life to literally save every life on the planet. That's certainly a legendary feat of accomplishment. And interestingly, the cast of Beast Wars Neo would also revere Lio Convoy as a "legendary warrior" when Big Convoy and his team first meet him in that series. Heck, Big Convoy himself would even be treated as a "legendary warrior" in his own series, as early as the first episode even!
Essentially, being "legendary" in Japanese Transformers fiction isn't all that special. It's just something typical of long-running children's action series in Japan whenever the current cast of one series gets to meet a member of the previous series's good guy cast and treats them like they're so cool (like in Super Sentai team-ups or Kamen Rider team-ups).
I think that's everything.
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Would have the Beast wars Dreamewave series called Shell Game have been a prequel to Beast machines or would it have been a alternate path after season 3 and would it have been in canon with Dreamewave G1?
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We'll never know, because Dreamwave went belly up leaving its stories unfinished!!
But was it confirmed in anyway at all at any time?