New "Wildocking" Animal Limb Combiners from TakaraTomy

[Tuxedo Prime]

Some thoughts, at long last....

"Killbison" would have been a more comparable example.

Back in the day, it would have been the more famous example -- Battle Beasts' Eagle Killer/Harrier Hawk was quite obscure even compared to the Victory cast!

But the name (first deployed two years before what they had to change to Ironbison) got a reuse/boost in Car Robots for the character known as R.E.V. in America. And I'll just head off the argument to point out that while yes, the intent likely was more akin to "Killer Eagle", given the bio card description, neither Japanese nor English grammar work as the name was used....

Episode 4's fansub. This one took a little longer due to Hydrophant's verbal tic making some of his dialogue tricky to understand:

First of all, I probably don't give enough thanks to translators from the Japanese that aren't Doug Dlin or Juniper Walters -- I've sent a couple of e-mails to Doug, but no response so far. So I'll start by remedying that, and offering some kudos....

One thing I note is that Optimus Prime is, in fact, called Optimus Prime in the original audio, and not Convoy (or Ginrai) as one would expect. I believe the live-action movie continuity (when dubbed into Japanese) is the only other case for Takara. Which is not to assert that Wild(do)King(dom) is in a Movie verse, just noting the curious distinction.

Vocal quirks were big in the Japanese dubs of Beast Wars, so it's not surprising that Lightlong and Hydrophant are keeping that tradition. I admit I probably would not have transliterated "rai", but then you only get two-thirds or the wordplay. Humour is often one of the first things to suffer when translating, unless you do a wholesale rewrite as with Samurai Pizza Cats or Takeshi's Castle/Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.

Anyway, Hydrophant puts out some cute vibes, Spirituan evokes early Dinobot, Lightlong is starting to grate a bit but that could be due to my not being the target demographic. Ignite Leo is... there, but I'm sure the next episode will give him some business. It's a solid effort, and I must put aside my provincialism to give thanks to the team for making sure new audiences can appreciate it.

 

[Sabrblade]

One thing I note is that Optimus Prime is, in fact, called Optimus Prime in the original audio, and not Convoy (or Ginrai) as one would expect.

Ginrai's a very specific character in Japan. Takara, on their own initiative, wouldn't just casually use his name for anything that wasn't precisely the Masterforce-original character.

I believe the live-action movie continuity (when dubbed into Japanese) is the only other case for Takara.

Every mainstream piece of Transformers media in Japan uses the Hasbro terms now. The only ones that still use the old Takara names are old-time collector-aimed stuff like Masterpiece and such. Animated, Prime, Go!, Adventure (Japanese RID 2015), Cyberverse, the Netflix cartoon, EarthSpark, and even the Transformers Go! Go! manga aimed at toddlers all use "Autobot", "Decepticon", "Optimus Prime", "Maximal", "Predacon", etc. in their Japanese-language versions.

Vocal quirks were big in the Japanese dubs of Beast Wars,

And lots of children's anime/manga in general.

It's a solid effort, and I must put aside my provincialism to give thanks to the team for making sure new audiences can appreciate it.

Much obliged. It's a lot tougher to get things both accurate and understandable than we initially thought, as the dialogue in the first two episodes was really simple and basic, while Episodes 3 and 4 became a lot trickier to understand.