Toransufômâ: Scramble City Hatsudôhen

This OVA is split in two parts: the first half is just recap and recycled footage from the American cartoon episodes 'More Than Meets the Eye' and 'Master Builders', resulting in slightly over 10 minutes of actually new footage.

Even if the original Transformers cartoon was basically just half-hour toy commercial, it was never quite so blatant about it as Scramble City is. SC basically uses that 10 minutes of new "story" to show nothing but big robots fighting, which it uses as an excuse to throw all the season 2 gestalts on the screen, silently telling children "do you have these yet?".

Scramble City was meant to bridge the 20-year gap between season 2 and *The Movie* and not season 3 as you are most commonly told. The Movie actually IS part of the Japanese continuity, and although it didn't make it to the far east until 1989, most people did know the basic premise of the film, thanks to generous coverage by TV Magazine which published much of Transformers printed material at the time.

However, it does not fit into the American continuity for one big reason; the episode ends with Trypticon making his debut, and if you've seen Five Faces of Darkness, you know that he hasn't even been built yet (the Japanese dub of the cartoon changed this). Scramble City was meant to be the first part in a series, but for some reason, no other parts were made. "Scramble City 2" is not a sequel, but merely a retelling of this one using the actual toys with stop animation.

Despite having received something of a cult status in the west due to being a part of Japanese G1 Transformers that never made it into the English-speaking territories, I have to say that you'll be better off not having seen this. Like I said, there's only about 10 to 12 minutes of actually new animation, and the storyline is nonexistent.

Of all the Transformer spin-offs, this Japanese-language one shot is the one that feels closest to G1. Of course, this is mostly because it was produced in the G1 era and uses the same Animation models and style as the classic series, in addition to a lengthy prologue consisting of footage taken straight from the American cartoons.

"Scramble City" isn't deep, even by Transformer standards. It is a Toy commercial on a level perhaps unrivalled in Transformers at least until the brief Fourth Season. The main purpose of it is to sell the Gestalt (combiner) teams (Constructicons/Devastator, Stunticons/Superion, Aerialbots/Superion, Protectobots/Defensor, Combaticons/Bruticus) and Autobot (Metroplex) and Decepticon (Trypticon) cities. But the sequences showing these characters are fun and exciting, and its engrossing and extremely enjoyable for a Big G1 fan like me just to watch these characters, some of which were underused in the original series, in action. The show is also noteworthy for the first appearance of Ultra Magnus, one of the most beloved Transformer characters.

"Scramble City" is a great watch for all G1 fans, and makes a superb bonus on the DVD of the classic animated movie.

This Japanese only episode introduces Metroplex, Trypticon, Ultra Magnus, the Arielbots, Protectobots, Stuntacons, and Combaticons. Note that this episode's plot conflicts with that of the American series, so it should be viewed as independent of its American counterpart.

The episode itself is good, however, this episode was meant to be a first of a running series - this episode ends in a cliff hanger - Metroplex and Trypticon are about to face off. Sadly, no other episodes were made.

It's quite unfortunate because the first episode showed potential of a strong series.

Well, ok, I lied. You'll still be confused. Ostensibly, this piece of work serves to sort of bridge the gap between the end of the second season and the beginning of the third (this is referred to as an entirely separate series, "2010," in Japan, however). This is important, given that the events of "Transformers the Movie" do not occurr in the Japanese timeline. The premise is pretty simple: Convoy tasks Ultra Magnus with overseeing the construction of a secret superfortress (alternately referred to as Scramble City and Metroflex) to combat the Constructicon combiner Devastar. Megatron catches wind of this and dispatches multiple Destrons to destroy it. Hilarity ensues. As the other reviewer mentioned, this doesn't fit into the American cartoon continuity. What he did not mention, however, is that it also fails to fit in with the Japanese continuity for which it was made. With the exception of "Transformers The Movie," everything that happened in the US cartoon continuity up until the 4th season 3-parter "The Rebirth" happened in the Japanese continuity. This means that Starscream would have no reason for being totally unaware of the Stuntron unit as he was very much present for the construction of it in season 2. Likewise, how is that Dinosaurer is present in the timeline before his own creation which occurred in "2010?" This one-shot video does not do much to clarify anything. Quite frankly, it's a showcase for the third-year figures like the Aerialbots and the Combaticons.

As a one-off episode, however, Scramble City is pretty decent. Fair characterization and great original animation make it come together really well. Not counting continuity, the only major gripe I have with this episode is the voice work. If you can get past the fact that a lot of the voices sound exactly the same, then you're confronted with the fact that many of them are really, really annoying. The combiners have these incredibly low voices that make their words virtually indistinguishable. Convoy is far too melodramatic. Bumble sounds like a 4-year-old child. This is a good introduction to the Transformers mythos, but I honestly can't see myself recommending this to someone who doesn't have at least a little knowledge of the original Transformers series.

In many respects Transformers Scramble City is like the Prequel to The Transformers The Movie in which you see characters that made their first appearance in the movie also make their debut in this episode.

Also Scramble City features characters that didn't get to appear in the movie and this episode makes up for that.

This episode was only release in Japan in fact it was made and created in Japan to help fans over there know what was going on in Transformers before the movie was release since the film wasn't release in Japan until 1989 close to three years after the film debut in America.

Also this episode features a great fight that would get your attention for sure. It is one makes the episode shine the most and I'll let you see for yourself

The animation in this episode is actually well balance and of course it has the anime style since Japan has a different animation style also the episode features sound effects and music from The Transformers Cartoon which adds that more awesome factor.

I enjoy the whole plot of the story and we get to see characters before and after the movie.

Now this is a super rare Episode and if you can find it watch it and any fan of The Transformers will love this episode for featuring many fan favorite characters like Optimus Prime, Jazz, Ironhide, Tracks, Bumblebee, Megatron, Soundwave, Thundercracker, Starscream, Skywarp, The Stunticons,The Airelbots, The Combaticons, Ultra Magnus and more

I give Transformers Scramble City an 9 out of 10