So, recently, I've been doing some major translation work on the Japanese guidebook Beast Wars Universe, and working on its Beast Wars Fandom section led me to search WayBack for this, Ben Yee's original Beast Wars Homepage from way back before BWTF.com became the all-encompassing Transformers website that it is known as today. The book even features a black-and-white screencap of this very webpage.
What's more, the book specifically led me to search for this old site to look even deeper for one of Ben's old articles titled "In Defense of Beast Wars", written during the infamous era of "Trukk not Munky" debates. I wanted to find this article because the book went as far as to include its own Japanese summary of said article, and I felt said summary should be fact-checked for accuracy (it likely is accurate, but I wanna see how accurate and which parts of the article it specifically covers).
This is the page from the book that contains this old fansite content (as well as some BotCon 1998 coverage):
EDIT: And here's my translation of this summary, to compare it to Ben's original article:
What's more, the book specifically led me to search for this old site to look even deeper for one of Ben's old articles titled "In Defense of Beast Wars", written during the infamous era of "Trukk not Munky" debates. I wanted to find this article because the book went as far as to include its own Japanese summary of said article, and I felt said summary should be fact-checked for accuracy (it likely is accurate, but I wanna see how accurate and which parts of the article it specifically covers).
This is the page from the book that contains this old fansite content (as well as some BotCon 1998 coverage):
EDIT: And here's my translation of this summary, to compare it to Ben's original article:
■"IN DEFENCE OF
BEAST WARS: TRANSFORMERS"
When the BW toys were first released, many fans who were familiar with previous vehicle-transforming toys said, "There's no way a toy like this would sell,'' but BW toys have a variety of excellent features, such as the following. First of all, they have an average of nine points of articulation, which is unthinkable for normal American action figures like Spawn, Star Wars, and Batman. Some fans complain about the "quick spring transformation" of the regular size, but this is easy for young children to play with, and the image of quick transformation in battle is exciting for them, and for children who are accustomed to transformation, it is balanced with "multi-step transformation'' in the Deluxe size and above. As for the TV show, the rationale for why Transformers now have biological elements is convincing. There are many works that ignore these aspects, but if these points are ignored, the viewer will not be able to immerse themselves more deeply into the world of the work. Also, many fans feel uncomfortable with the coupling of living organisms and robots, but the fusion of living organisms and robots is a theme that has been frequently pursued in TF, and there have been many Transformers with partial living elements, such as the Headmasters and Pretenders (the overseas version setting). But one question is: "Isn't 300 years after the old series a mere blink of an eye compared to the millions of years of the Transformers' lifespan, and too short a time for drastic changes to take place?" In the 20 years between the first and second seasons of the old series and the movie version, the planet Cybertron was completely taken over by the Decepticons, while the Decepticons were also completely removed from the Earth. The Autobots had built two moonbases on Cybertron and a giant transforming fortress on Earth, and were also joined by new members like Hot Rod. In the one year period between the movie version and the third season, the leaders of both armies changed, and a battle against Unicron, a gigantic TF the size of a planet, took place. Thus, even in the world of TF, various changes can occur in a short period of time, and it is quite possible that changes such as the emergence of the Maximals and Predacons and the loss of Earth's memory can occur over the course of 300 years. As for the opinion of "The world of the toys seems to be a direct continuation of the old series, but isn't it ridiculous that the Transformers would suddenly take on the form of animals when they had previously been in cars and airplanes?" it is quite conceivable that if the Transformers' battles were to take place in nature, as depicted in Kenner's Comic 2-Pack, they would adopt animal forms more suitable for action in nature, just as they had done in their vehicle forms before. However, the reason why their battle was moved to be set in nature is not revealed, but this could be said to leave room for fans to freely imagine and enjoy.
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