Yeah, with so many contradictions with different 'official' versions, and even within the same series, I think it's up to the individual fan to pick and choose what works for them.  The problem is when it comes to these online debates with other fans, but ultimately the one thing we all agree on is that too many contradictions exist for any clear cut cannon to exist, so these debates regarding cannon are to be taken with a whole truckload of salt. 

 

I've taken elements from the G1 cartoon and comics, G2 comics, BW (the closest thing to unbreachable cannon there is in my opinion - and this is just BW, not BW2, BWNeo or any other mindless Aeon crap), a little bit of BM (with the Oracle being a construct of the Quints to pacify the Cyb populace with its Utopian environment), and made a few changes (different origin for Dinobots, Omega Supreme and others).  I've even tried to lay it out in fanfic, and have hammered out 47 chapters.

 

At the risk of sounding ethno-centric, I consider nothing from Japan.  I'm unfamiliar with the latter G1 series, and from what I've seen and read I consider the Japanese Beast Wars series to be absurdly stupid (and it's clear that the creators of the real BW had no interest in incorporating them into their storyline).  And I don't waste a moment's thought on the CR/RiDverse, Micron/Armadaverse and GF (not part of Micronverse).

 

I suppose that we can hope that the movie and tie-in cartoons are good enough to cut our losses and start over from scratch.

The Japenese Beast Wars shows are stupid but so is G1....

P.S. I'm not sure what my Stance on Car Robots is... The Cybertrons and Destrongers apear to native to "the" Contuity but...

I look at it as cartoon G1, G2, BW, BM, Wreckers, Universe as the original universe. All the others are alternate universes to me

hey dont mix comic and cartoon

for anime:season1,S2,S3,S4,headmasters,masterforce,victory,zone,bw,bm,rid/cr,armada,energon,cybertron

RID, and A-C arn't part fof the G2 contuity

To me, Dreamwave doesn't really have lots of original writing. Take for example "The Fallen". One of the first creatures being made, but switches allegiance to the evil side. It's been done so many times. For example in the Bible, where half of the Angels fall to Evil. Or in Lord of the Rings, Melkor, later renamed as Morgoth.

Or take Sunstorm, an overclassed, practically unbeatable Transformer. He was defeated, but always came back. Very rediculous.

Or take Grimlock, who I believe is an avatar for Furman himself. No offense, but Grimlock seems to be the most important Autobot, holding the entire camp together, first on the frontline, highly intelligent and skillful tactician...He's practically Primus himself.

 

Botcon/Wreckers: Throw as many characters in a puddle, and forget about the story. Doesn't matter if it contradicts previous set notions, as long as it's Transformers, it will sell to the fans, right?

 

And Tarantulas is a G2 Transformer, because that would be original. Like I said, wouldn't it be more interesting to have the Ultimate bad guy for a change NOT be related to Unicron? Space is limitless, so why does every bad guy always have to be part of Unicron's legacy? That's why I liked G2, because the threat was different.

don't know who made it, but this might come in handy:

 

Various continuities depending on what I'm watching. It all gets too confusing and stupid if you try and force everything in together, so I just remember certain "rules" for each continuity that I watch.

 

American G1:

 

G1 Cartoon seasons 1&2 -> TF: The Movie -> G1 cartoon season 3 -> Rebirth -> Some elements of G2 comics (the Swarm, G2 Decepticons, etc) -> BW -> BM

 

 

Japanese G1:

 

G1 Cartoon seasons 1&2 -> TF: The Movie -> G1 cartoon season 3 -> Headmasters -> Masterforce -> Victory

 

Japanese BW:

 

G1 Cartoon seasons 1&2 -> TF: The Movie -> G1 cartoon season 3 -> Rebirth -> Some elements of G2 comics (the Swarm, etc) -> BW (season 1) -> BWII (as a seperate entity occuring at roughly the same time as BW) -> BWNEO.

 

The new stuff.

 

Armada -> Energon (well, Micron Densetu -> Superlink technically)

 

Galaxy Force = it's own continuity, with plenty of references and fan service towards G1 and Armada/Energon.

M sipher of the Allspark made that.

Interesting topic but a nearly impossible to answer one at that.

 

I too would rather disgerard the Japanese series whenever I can. I never liked their cartoons much.

 

G1 I liked a lot as a kid because it was so awesome to see transforming robots duke it out. I mean I loved that to no end. Of course the show is not that good but back when you were a kid there was nothing better.

 

The Japanese shows all seem to revolve around humans controlling machines fighting evil robots. Even Lego is starting a subline revolving around that. I always hated that, even as a kid.

 

It seems stupid. You have this huge war machine and out comes a human. Or a human giving orders to a machine that could crack his spine without even trying.

 

And they want to give Transformers the same treatment by constantly having humans in every series and letting them boss Transformers around. The humans in G1 had a side role and I did not mind that at all. I mean there was no internet so it was not as if the Transformers could hack into a computer and learn all they needed. So they needed a guide which explained Spike and Sparkplug.

 

But they only provided a side role and knew their place. In the Japanese cartoons Daniel is ever present even when he really should not. The same goes for the Armada kids and Kicker.

 

So I try to forget about those shows as much as possible. I mean Headmasters contradicted Rebirth (which in turn contradicted the comic somewhat). But I liked Headmasters a lot because the Nebulans were real aliens which was cool.

 

In the Japanese series, aliens were apparantly as difficult a concent for the Japanese to grasp as sentient machines. We saw those "bee-people" but they still looked very human. I liked the Nebulons because they were different.

 

The same with the later shows. BW makes no mention of the Japanese series, something that I can completely understand.

 

Cybertron is also a completely different continuity than Galaxy Force. I think Hasbro got the idea right with their idea to make it a continuation from Energon.

 

The execution is all wrong. Each show was made by a different studio and writing teams which did not help and gaps were caused. They should have had a single studio (Mainfraime) and writing team making all 3 series and the end result would have been so much better.

 

The main problem is that there are people wanting to link every series to eachother. That simply does not work. You should just enjoy the stories an think as little of things as possible.

 

Even concepts do not work the same. Beast Wars introduced the idea of the "spark". In later series it was also used but not always right. In Energon, Skyblast flies close to a sun in order to retrieve Inferno's spark.

 

A spark is like a human soul. It is not something physical that can be retrieved. Yes, Rhinox did retrieve Primal's spark but had to travel into the Maxtrix for that which was a very difficult procedure.

 

The retrieval of Inferno's spark was more like a salvage mission which really bugged me and proved to me that the Japanese simply do not "get" certain aspects of Transformers.

 

So whenever I read a comic I do not really try to link it to any of the other series, I just enjoy it. I mean if I think of the awful Energon show, I do not even want to read the comic. But the comic is quite excellent and even Kicker was tolerable.