The weakest of the trinity.

Ayatollah

(A few spoilers.)

Western Transformers fans are captivated by the Holy Trinity of Japanese Transformers shows: "Headmasters," "Masterforce," and "Victory." Why? Because we never got them, obviously. Well, thanks the Star TV, we have them...sort of. Ignoring the poor dubbing, this is actually a fairly solid show. Don't let the fact that I call this the "weakest" of the three G1 Japanese-only series taint your perception of it: "Headmasters" must have been brilliant stuff at the time.

Some background: after the third season of the original Transformers show, we in the US got stuck with the miserable "Rebirth" 3-parter. In the East, however, they were fortunate enough to get this series. A lot happens here. We are introduced to both the Autobot and Decepticon Headmasters. Blaster and Soundwave kill each other in mortal combat but are then resurrected as Twincast and Soundblaster, respectively. Optimus Prime dies again. The planet Cybertron is destroyed by Scorponok and the Decepticon Headmasters in a failed attempt to assassinate Galvatron. Ultra Magnus is killed by Sixshot in a climactic battle. Galvatron is killed by the Autobot Headmasters and Scorponok assumes command of the Decepticons. The only real problem is that there is no coherent plot to string it all together. It's a lot to absorb and events just sort of happen over time for basically no other reason than Galvatron (or whomever) doing something nasty. However, there was a strong sense of continuity (no matter what some reviewers say) from episode to episode and there weren't many errors at all in the writing of the series (one important thing to remember is that Transformers The Movie had not been released in Japan at that point and you can't exactly fault them for making errors based on things that hadn't even happened as far as anyone in the country knew).

One reason why I say this series is weak is not because it's bad but simply because the other two are so good. Please keep that in mind when pursuing "Headmasters."

score /10

Ayatollah 12 December 2003

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0498475/