Season Four may have marked the end of the American series of Transformers [Gen One] but Japan had many more stories to tell! Transformers: Headmasters replaces the Gen One 4th season and begins one year after the end of Season Three. Optimus Prime lives again, the energy of the Matrix has been released, and peace reigns on Cybertron...but all that is about to change with the startling arrival of the newest bred of Transformers warrior - the Headmasters!
Back in February we
passed along word that a "
Transformers Takara" group of DVD releases was in the works for North American release by Shout! Factory, with the possibility that we would see the first of them by later this year. For those of you who are not in-the-know, the so-called "Takara" group of
Transformers shows is generally considered to consist of 1987's
Transformers: The Headmasters, 1988's
Transformers: Chôjin Master Force, and 1989's
Transformers: Victory...these Japan-aired programs are considered to be the natural continuation of the original "G1"
Transformers; they were simply never picked up for broadcast in the USA (and hence were never given English translations with the official cast members). The group of Autobots and Decepticons called the "Headmasters" were seen in the USA via the 3-part story "The Rebirth," which was all that had ever been produced by Sunbow of the G1 show's 4th (and final) season. However, the story told there is very different than the one produced by Takara for Japanese audiences.
When will fans in the USA finally get the chance to own that? Overnight Amazon.com has answered that question with a pre-order listing that is currently labeled "
Transformers Japanes [sic] Collection - Headmasters." This 4-DVD (765-minute) release shows a street date of
July 5 (just a few days after the latest movie hits theaters). Cost displayed is $29.96 SRP, but you can pre-order it right away at a discounted price. We're not the only ones who noticed Amazon add this entry overnight; reader Chris Coughler wrote in to make sure we had seen it. Thanks, Chris. He was concerned, though, because he noticed that Shout! Factory was not listed as the studio; it says "Uni Dist Corp (Music)." That actually is Amazon's way of saying Universal Music Group (UMG), the parent company of Vivendi Entertainment. As we've noted many times in the past, Vivendi Ent. is Shout!'s distributor to retailers in the USA (and north of the border they use Vivendi Canada, where this title will be released on the same day, at a similar price). In turn, UMG is owned by the French conglomerate Vivendi S.A., an international concern which owns many other corporations (such as videogame company Activision Blizzard, for example). No worries, Chris; "Uni Dist Corp" is just Amazon using the distributor (probably temporarily), rather than the actual studio; happens all the time!
Fans have been wondering how this Japanese-produced program will be presented to American audiences, language-wise. Early information to retailers from Vivendi Canada, who also provided the studio description quoted at the top, shows that the original Japanese audio tracks will be included (in stereo) along with English subtitles and full-screen video. Will there also be an English-language dub? So far we're just not sure, honestly; the Vivendi Canada info doesn't make that completely clear. Shout! has not formally announced this title yet, so we don't have any other details at this time such as bonus material (we assume there will be some), package art and so forth. Nor do we know what the plan is for SF to release the other "
Transformers Takara" productions on DVD (for instance: "will there also be a big box set now along with
Headmasters, or will it come later after
Master Force and
Victory are available separately?"). Shout! Factory certainly knows that we're interested in passing along the answers to all of you fans about these questions, though, so hopefully we'll have something for you in the not-too-distant future. Stay tuned!
