¶ Transformers
 |
| The Characters that shaped most of our childhoods. |
Background Information:
Transformers is a toy-centered franchise that began in 1984 which has since spawned dozens of cartoons, anime, video games, around a thousand issues of comics, and a line of successful if ~controversial~ live-action movies. Adjacent to the traditional mecha genre, the titular transformers are able to adapt and take nearly any shape to disguise themselves, in service of the four million year long civil war between the heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons. As the franchise grew and writers continued to experiment, the series accumulated a large amount of convoluted lore that tends to have a deteriorating effect on the mentality of anyone who tries to map it too closely.
Transformers has an unusual stance on canon, in that essentially everything is canon that has ever been officially published. In some cases, even things that weren't published or were outright rejected, still get folded into the overarching storyline. Unlike other large franchises, it is extremely rare that Transformers retcons out information, resulting in minor plotlines from decades past sometimes jolting back into relevancy with some new revelation. The sole silver lining in attempting to analyze its power, is that the series leans heavily on self-contained parallel universes to solve a lot of these discrepancies. Got a tie-in comic that doesn't fit into the movie in any logical way whatsoever? Congratulations, you have a whole new universe on your hands. Adding to the confusion is that often-times the lore will even be deliberately contradictory, presumably in order to provide a more mythological and speculative experience. If that was too simple for you, Transformers also tends to take every crossover it's ever had as fully canon internally, resulting in things like Takara's Brave series of anime having pivotal lore points for the franchise. Even its predecessor toyline Diaclone is still considered a part of the tapestry.
It's a lot of fun.
Standing in the Battledome:
Transformers has characters ranging just about the entire spectrum of the tiering system. The primary “gods” of the setting, Unicron, and Primus, are multiversal abstract beings that are sometimes even characterized as threats to the Omniverse. On the opposite end lay many more grounded and down to earth Transformers series, such as the ongoing Skybound comic run, where traditional military weaponry poses a serious threat to the super robot life forms. Many continuities feature Transformers that can bust planets or even universes, in general there's always a matchup somewhere to be had. In comparison to other major franchises however, it tends to have less focus on speed feats (they're definitely there, just in smaller quantities compared to the superhero genre etc) for many of these interim series, which should be taken into account when evaluating a character for a matchup.
Resources
Transformers Feats & Discussion Thread
Transformers Calculation Archive
Respect Threads
Unicron (Singularity version, all continuities)
The Headmasters (Japan G1 anime continuity)
Unicron Trilogy (Armada, Energon, Cybertron)
List of major Transformer Continuties:
- Generation 1
- Japan Generation 1 (A massive mega-continuity still being updated to this day)
- Generation 2
- Beast Wars (usually an offshoot of Generation 1)
- Robots in Disguise
- Unicron Trilogy
- Armada
- Energon
- Cybertron
- Transformers Live Action
- Transformers Animated
- Transformers Prime
- Dreamwave Comics run (2002-2005)
- IDW Comics run (2005-2018)
- “IDW2” (completely unrelated to the above run) (2019-2022)
- Skybound Comics run (2023)
There are many others and nuances within each continuity that add confusion and detail, for example Generation 1 includes the original cartoon and comic, which are both entirely separate from each other, but then the comic diverges further with itself at multiple points and has several different canonical end points, the G2 comics being one of them. Toy bios are also considered a canonical part of the lore, which this community generally judges separately from the series they're tied to as they are not always intended to match.
Supporters of the series:
- C. Hook
- Blade
- Crimson Dragoon
- Hadomaru (mostly Beast Wars and Robots in Disguise)
- Hellspawn28
- Garv
- Gig
- Tranquil Fury
- Ultimate Deathsaurer
-OtherGalaxy ( to the point of unhealthy obsession)
-Grillmaster
-Thirteen Prime
-Optimus prime 654
-Kighter
Character Profiles:
-Unicron