The confusing timeline of Japanese G1 Transformers

The various versions of Transformers does have confusing timelines. I did another article about that.

However there is one timeline that is very confusing. The Japanese G1 cartoon timeline.

While America fans had both the G1 cartoon and Marvel comics growing up, Japan didn't have the comics, they only had the cartoon and only the cartoon. They see it as the main timeline and they didn't think about reboots and alternate universes till way way later on.

Hasbro's business partner in Japan called Takara had dubbed the 1st two seasons of Transformers. They didn't dubbed the movie right away and started dubbing the 3rd season and renamed the show, Transformers 2010. This is one of the differences between American and Japan's versions. The 3rd season took place in 2006 in English speaking countries but in Japan, it's 2010.

They didn't dubbed the 4th season and final season of Transformers. Instead, they had an alternate season 4 called the Headmasters.

It never came out in America and Transformers fans didn't know about this series till the internet got big in the late 90s. I kinda prefer Takara's version of Headmasters over Hasbro's.

Let me rip off my own head to make peace between our two species as you place my sentient head on a bookshelf.

The human-looking aliens take their heads and turned themselves into their transforming heads. How you feel if your own head is a separate person?

Takara's version was that small robots transform into heads to connect to larger bodies to survive harsh environments. That sounds far more better than's Hasbro's. Even their version of Pretenders(Transformers disguised as humans) where they do a Power Rangers morph to turn "humans" instead of being a 25th foot tall Human in bulky armor.

There is an English version of the show but ehh...It was downright laughably bad. It was done by a cheap Hong Kong studio and their dub mostly aired in the English speaking areas in the Pacific.

Here is a scene of Galvatron "screaming in rage" over the death of Soundwave. 

I never seen the wrong use of words and emotions since Dreamwave's infamous "Dull Surprise" or Energon Ironhide screaming, "Hurry, Get in the Ship".

Here's a collection of the Headmasters laughably bad dubbing.

As bad as Armada and Energon dubs are, it is nothing compared to the Headmasters dub. Armada/Energon were at least done alot more professionally. However you can argue that at least Headmasters dub is enjoyably bad while Energon is a bore to watch on both sides of the Pacific and the English dub makes it more unwatchable than it already is.

After the series of Headmasters. It had several sequels in the late 80s. The central cast from the 1st 3 seasons of Transformers and Headmasters disappear and let other people command the Autobots and Decepticons with their whole new cast of characters.

They were called Masterforce, Victory, and a one episode OVA(or Direct-to-tape), called Zone. After that, there was no more Transformers shows.

Transformers still continued in toys and TV magazines.

One year, they had a storyline told in TV magazines called the Return of Convoy(or Return of Optimus if you want to go by his American name). Optimus comes back from the dead(again). A unknown mysterious space entity called Dark Nova resurrects Megatron and they all battled.

Next year was Operation: Combination where a bunch of combiners duke it out where the Cons is lead by some unseen figure called Scrash. There are fan theories on what he looks like but no official answer at the time. Tho there was retcony stuff that came around in the 21-century media.

Then afterwards, G1 was all over across the globe.

After a long hiatus, Transformers was back in the G2 revival in the mid-90s. While America had the classic show re-edited with ancient CGI transitions, terrible rap commercials, and totally violent 90s comics, Japan didn't have that and told their original story that's a continuation. They did like what they did in the tail end of their G1 days and told their story in TV magazines.

Basically Optimus and Megatron made peace and because buddy buddy and formed the Cybertron Alliance. One day, a bunch of distrustful humans fired on them and Megatron's friend was killed. 

Angry on what happen, Megatron went back to his old ways and the war between Autobots and Decepticons begins anew.

Interesting development there but it's told very briefly though these story pages. It's like reading a brief summery on Wikipedia. Same can be said on the other previous stories told within the magazines.

Then Japan dubbed Beast Wars and well, they made the characters too goofy. Most of the characters were re-written heavily and greatly different than their English counterparts. Megatron went from your average calm and collective Lex Luthor to Jesse Eisenberg's goofy Lex Luthor. Optimus makes banana puns. Rattrap sound like Pikachu. Tigatron was a cheesy samurai stereotype. The female Airazor was now a dude.

Beast Wars in the Western world is seen as both a sequel to the G1 cartoon and not a sequel. It referenced events from both the cartoon and Marvel comics and treated it as an Arthurian legend. However Japan never had those comics, so how they going to explain the Maximals swearing to Primus? Also there were hints on Tartantulas and the Vok having it's origins to the US G2 comics, what where they come from?

Beast Wars Season 1 ended in Japan and Seasons 2 and 3 weren't ready at the time. So Japan made up whole original shows called Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo.

A different crew of Maximals and Predacons(descendants of Autobots and Decepticons) land on a mysterious planet called Gaia an fought over an power source called Angolmois Energy. It's widely believe the Maximals and Predacons come from the same time period as the cast of Beast Wars that's 300 years after the events of G1. Some say they come from a different period that's centuries after the events of Beast Wars/Beast Machines.

Anyways, it turns out that Gaia is Earth in the distant future and humanity abandoned the planet due to how dangerous the Angolmois Energy on the planet is. It turns out Angolmois Energy is the life force of Unicron himself.

Way back in during the events of the Transformers movie(2005), when Rodimus Prime was destroying Unicron with the Matrix...

To most people, they think that's the holy light coming from the mythical Matrix to destroy the dark god. Nope, that's retroactively Unicron's demonic blood pouring out. His blood(Angolmois Energy) was blasted out to the far reaches of time and space which will end up on Earth/Gaia.

Remember the show at the turn of millennium called Robots in Disguise that aired on Fox Kids and that was a complete reboot and had no connections to the other Transformers shows. Guess what, it is retroactively in the same timeline as G1.

Great, I feel like I'm reading fanfics back in the day that tried to make RID part of G1 before fanfic writers stopped due to the coming of the Unicron Trilogy, the live-action movies, and Animated came around with their reboots and they started to become common thing on Transformers.

As far as America is concerned, RID is a reboot. In Japan, it isn't. For one thing, it most of the cast don't exactly share the same names on both sides of the Pacific.

In English speaking countries, both of these cop cars are named Prowl. In Japan, the guy in the 2nd pic is Mach Alert.

In Japan, the original Optimus is called Convoy for some reason. In Robots in Disguise, the leader is called Fire Convoy and he is a different "Convoy" from the original "Convoy". 

English-Megatron/Galvatron

Japan-Gigatron/Devil Gigatron

So even it is a completely different cast, how in the world did this cast of characters manage to avoid the original Optimus and Megatron and their war on Earth during the turn of the millennium?

Well the answer is in an obscured 4-issue manga that took place in the late 90s called, The Battle of the Star Gate.

In it, the Transformers battle on a warp gate in space and a time-traveling Starscream's ghost comes in during the fight and possess the giant machine. It ends with the Transformers blasted by the explosion from the warp gate. All the Transformers were either missing in deep space, or badly damaged. This means the cast of RID2001 can come in on Earth and not bump into any of the members of the original cast.

It wasn't implied in either the English or Japenese verisons of Robot in Disguise(2001) but retroactively, the cast of RID2001 come from the distant future. The evil Predacons time traveled to the year 2000 to steal the transforming citybot, Brave Maximus who is hiding underneath the Earth's crust.

In America he is called Fortress Maximus and can be seen as a rebooted/re-imagined version of the G1 guy but in Japan, he is called Brave Maximus who is a separate but similar dude.

The guy from G1.

Brave Maximus retroactively was sent to ancient Earth to guard the Angolmois Energy. Back then, was simply green water before it retroactively became a part of G1.

You can't blame the obscure manga that retcon a reboot into the G1 timeline. Nope, that came from a later story written years later. Takara just took a look at the obscure story and used it as an excuse to explain how it fits in the timeline. The stories that did the retconning is *sighs*....One of the worst things to happen to Transformers and it's....No I'm not talking about Micheal Bay. He may be the most mainstream hated target but there are far more worse things in the franchise.


Behold, the awfulness known as Transformers: Kiss Players

In the mid-00s, the Unicron Trilogy was over and the 1st ever live-action movie wouldn't be ready for another year. Takara needed a filler set up during this period and they came up with something terrible. The concept is the robots get powered up be getting a kiss from little girls. Technically they are old enough to drive but they are drawn to resemble 10-year olds. It's full of phallic tongues, girl on bot kissing, girls covered in slime, bots look like they are covered in fleshy bits, and the images of naked girls inside the robots when they "fuzed", technically their naughty bits are covered but still.

The author of the series admitted he wrote and draw this, just to make people's jaws drop.

You can see why everyone hates this. Transformers combined with some of the weirdest and creepiest things that came out of Japan. Even Japanese fans despise it and hate this makes them look bad overseas. The worse part, it's canon within the G1 timeline.(Well Japan's G1 timeline but to them, this is the "main" timeline)

This suppose to be the same blond girl that was kissing Optimus 5 years after Kiss Players. I have a hard time imaging that.

The story is that at the end of the animated movie when Galvatron was thrown in space, instead of landing on the planet Thrull as seen in the opening of season 3, his body crashed on Earth and caused the destruction of Tokyo. This ruined the relations between the Transformers and humans and this got all the robots got kicked off the planet. Galvatron's cells were unleash from his body and they fused with animals and objects, creating Megatron look-alikes called Legion as they roam the streets with their phallic tongues

Some of Galvatron's cells fused with some girls that grants them the powers to power up Transformers when they kissed them on the mouth.(Eww)

Rodimus goes back into Hot Rod and Optimus comes back from the dead.

It all ended with Galvatron's cells return to his body and he was sent back to space where he would end up in the planet Thrull as seen in the opening of season 3. Hot Rod becomes Rodimus again and Optimus dies again, all for the sake of continuity.


There was a sequel called Kiss Players Position where three of the girls teamed up with some transforming cassettes.

It's not as downright terrible as it's prequel. It simply has the three girls from the previous series. It has some fanservice on occasion but it's like nothing like it's prequel.

There is a spinoff series called Teletraan 15 Go Go

The series is about the Autobot's supercompter, Teletraan 1's info mysterous got deleted and it sends out a humanoid computer, Teletraan 15 to go out and time travel to other periods to gather data on Transformers.

Like Kiss Players Position, it stars cute girls and has occasional fanservice moments but nowhere near the level of the original Kiss Players.

Anyways, both series crossover and they have time-traveling adventures. One of them had Brave Maximus crashed on the planet Master in the past. This made the resident Fortress to study the design of the giant city bot and come up with his giant city bot and the headmaster technology.


There is a series called Binaltech and it's sequel Alternity. In the show Beast Wars, Ravage from G1 time-travel to prehistoric Earth and died. Well in Binaltech, the Decepticons found his head and used the info to change the timeline. Thanks to a time-traveling Optimus Primal, the story of Binaltech ended up as a split off universe while the "main" timeline continued.

Binaltech's sequel, Alternity had the Transformers evolved and become higher beings that can send their avatars in different universes.

Another problem with Japan is they didn't get the Transformers movie till 1989 and this created plotholes in their originally made sequels.

Wheeljack, how are you alive? You died in the animated movie.

Characters who dead like Wheeljack and Prowl were seen alive in the Japanese exclusive series. Later stories clarify this by saying that those two came from the alternate timeline of Binaltech and travel over to the "main" universe.

There is a manga series called Transformers Legends.

It's Beast Wars re-imagined as cartoonish businessman. Rattrap is a huge BW fan. Rhinox is a G1 purist. Sliverbolt is a new fan through the movies. Tigatron is a creepy pervert who enjoys female transformers and kiss players. Airazor is a crossdresser because they made her into a man in Japan.

It started out as a comical series but soon, visitors from the Japanese G1 timeline visited Legends world and I mean like alot. Legends ended up becoming more about G1 visitors themselves than the comical shenanigans of Legends cast.

The Legends universe were creations of the Zamojin

A one shot race of aliens that we only saw in one episode from the original cartoon's 3rd season.

They were unhappy of the universe, so they send their creation, Windblade to destroy the universe but she had a change of heart.

Unlike most versions of her being a cityspeaker from Cadimus that's seen in all the recent comics, shows, and awful web-series, this version of Windblade is a creation of the obscured alien race.

The story of Legends,  I mean good gosh, it's full of crazy lore, retconning, and focusing on small obscured tidbits.

• Things like the SpringerXArcee ship being sunk.
• Skids being a protector of the multiverse
• Trypticon dying in an lesser known OVA that took place between season 2 and the movie and then get rebuilt in season 3.
• A evil group of humans led by Cobra Commander.
• Obscured evil Optimus clone from Energon's lesser known comic.
• Blitzwing's forgotten history with the Quintessons.
• Greatshot being retconned into a reformed renamed Sixshot.
• Retconning the Quintessons origin story and putting in the god-like being Primus in the mix.
• A completely different Galvatron who is the time-traveling dimensional-hopper from Marvel comics.
• The origins of the lesser known cosmic evil beings and demons of Devil Z(Matrix's dump out evil), Dark Nova(Vok creation), and Majin Zarak(A copy of Scorpionok built by Devil Z). 
• And many more.

*phew* That's lot. You really need a flowchart on this. It keeps referencing every little thing. The Japanese timeline is still going on to this day and there were always something new in toylines or manga, or anything.

So why is this timeline is a complete headache to figure out.

According to Ask Vector Prime that was ran on Facebook a few year back. One asked why the Japanese G1 timeline is confusing, Vector Prime than gave us an answer. When Scorponok destroyed the planet of Cybertron in the show Headmasters, we got this...

There is no one stream that contains all of what is listed, but a vast network of tributaries and distributaries weaving in and out, to forge something approximating a vast, twisting, winding river.

The "source" of the river would be Primax 785.06 Alpha. This seems the foundational reality, though dozens more dip in or split off from there.

Interestingly, there seem to be two more, slightly competing streams that wend their way through the entirety of the reality system; Primax 1206.0 Beta and Primax 807.11 Zeta. It almost seems as if some extra-dimensional being or beings attempted to impose order on a system shattered by MegaZarak's destruction of the stable axis of this reality; perhaps The Source or the Chronarchitect or the Alternity or even the Swarm or an evolved Humanity tried to pick up the broken pieces of these timestreams and haphazardly glue them together.

and

The death of any deity is virtually guaranteed to send shockwaves rippling forwards and backwards through the quantum foam underpinning that reality. Witness the impact on timestreams near what you might refer to as Primax 787.3 Alpha. An omniversal reality was pulled into quantum-string vibrational alignment with their reality, allowing the people of the distant reality of Planet Sandra to make contact. Beings especially attenuated to the lifestream matrices of Vector Sigma, such as Godmessenger and Godmaster, acquire multiple conflicting histories and futures. Other streams that might otherwise be unrelated are pulled into probability vortex left by Cybertron's absence, their string vibrational eigenstates orienting to create one massive unified timeline where before there were many. Dimensional fragments from other clusters were duplicated wholecloth in this OG Reality, with completely different fermion modality, creating entirely new dimensional streams identical but for cosmetic details!

You got all that? Yeah that sounds complex.