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Transformers - First Season Collector's Edition

Transformers - First Season Collector's Edition

List Price: $59.95
Your Price: $47.96
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: More Than Meets The Eye
Review: Transformers is the epitomy of all that is great about cartoons. Watching this collection of Transformers episodes makes me want to break out my old Transformers and relive childhood experiences of recreating the struggle between Autobots and Decepticons. And if you are thinking of buying this, you might as well pick up Transformers:The Movie. When I first saw this masterpiece of animation, I almost cried at the death of Optimus Prime. Anyone who hasn't seen this movie should be forced to feast their eyes on this banquet of art.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: G1 goodness in all its glory
Review: My only question is: When does season 2 come out? These episodes look fantastic and the bonus disc is a nice added touch. The picture and sound are much improved compared to their VHS counterparts. If you are into transformers, this is a must buy.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Where it all began...
Review: After watching all three of Sunbow's animated series of the mid-80's, I would have to say the best would be Transformers. I say this not for it's high merchandising growth or increased underground popularity, but because it is a cartoon that is appealing to both the lower age audiance and the intelligent audiance making for one great show.

The show starts off with Autobots being intercepted by the Decipticons on their way to Earth to find a new source of energy to make Energon (you'll catch on). Once they arrive on Earth, the Autobots wage a war against the Decepticons who want to plunder the Earth's energy for Energon. Transformers is most entertaining during the battles. Especially when you have so many robots running around with the great voice acting of Scatman Crothers, Peter Cullens, Chris Latta and the amazing Casey Kasem (He played Mark on Battle of the Planets). I'll list a few.

CHARACTERS:
Optimus Prime: Leader of the Autobots and an honorable warrior.
Wheeljack: The mechanic of the Autobots. Has a lot of inventions.
Ratchet: Repairer of the Autobots. Obviously can transform into an ambulance.
Megatron: Leader of the Decepticons. Transforms into a gun.
Starscream: A former-scientist Decepticon who has dreamed of overpowering Megatron since day one.
Soundwave: The most loyal of Megatron's army.
Shockwave: The Decepticon that stayed behind to guard Cybertron.

The DVD has some great picture quality with the addition of some scenes that weren't included in the original broadcast (for better or worse). There are a few problems with the sound but not many. These are the only problems:
-The last couple of episodes on the first disc has the music louder than the voices.
-The second disc doesn't allow you to listen to the original mono soundtrack, but the rest of the discs do.
-The last two episodes have quieter sound-effects on the mono track.

The extras are quite good. They're basiclly lengthy videos of openings, closings, bumpers, cut-animation, comparisons and much more. Probably the best extra would be the Botcon footage where you can get a good idea of how kids grew up with Transformers. The packaging is the best I've seen on a DVD yet. This compact little package folds out to hold four discs and the manual. That's five DVD packages long if you lay it all out. Nice work, Rhino.

Overall, Rhino did an okay job at brining the original series to DVD. So, in other words, it's the original Transformers, it's on DVD, be happy. That's all I can say.

Side Note: One memorable person on the staff is the storyboarder, Peter Chung, who later directed Aeon Flux.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Horribly Remastered. Rhino Butchered this Season
Review: i only gave this DVD 1 star, in order to pull down its 4.5 star rating. Rhino did a horrible job remastering this season. They added sounds, and altered the coloring! at times, there were 2 starscreams on the screen! and this wasn't an isolated event! i hope rhino does a better job on the second season. i personly dont care too much & enjoy the dvd presentation, but if you're extremely picky about the episodes then do not buy this dvd.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 5 Stars for Content, but ZERO Stars for Sound!!
Review: In response to wash98c's oh-so very inspiring comments on July 3, you are completely wrong! Re: "and the sound is not distracting in the least. In fact, the sound is probably what will stoke the fires of nostalgia the strongest!" What in the heck are you babbling about here?! YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVEN'T YET MADE YOUR WAY TO THE LATER DISKS. The SOUND MIXING/REMIXING (whatever!) in some of the later episodes (including the last 2!) is TERRIBLE!!!!!!! The Voice vs Music vs Sound Effects Balancing is ABHORRENT!!! In some episodes the MUSIC IS OVERPOWERING THE VOICES (or the voice component is too quiet, take your pick). This equals hellish viewing!! Almost as annoying are the episodes (LAST 2 of season) where the SOUND EFFECTS are TOO QUIET!! All you hear is the voice track. If you turn up the volume in a futile effort to compensate, the speech deafens you as your reward!!!! What does this mean? It means that while the earlier episodes were sound-mixed/remixed well, some later episodes were either completely botched or TOTALLY IGNORED!!! This set was VERY EXPENSIVE and they cheaped out in many things!!!

So Mr. Wash98c, the sound isn't distracting??? They added a very loud, very unnecessary, speech-drowning explosion/blast sound effect that never existed in the original series which the brilliant rhino brains decided to PLACE EVERYWHERE!?! It's the same sound effect!!! You keep hearing it OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, in every episode, heck - they even stuck it in the commercial bumpers.....not annoying???

I got no beef with the animation. Besides multiple Starscreams appearing in several episodes and voice-over mistakes and the like, it's quite live-withable. But the sound in some episodes is "to die for" -- literally. Blahhhhhhhh.

Transformers is great but the sound (re)mixing ain't. They ruined a perfectly good idea.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A must have
Review: Growing up there were certain things you missed, but watching Transformers was not one of them. Finally one of the greats have come to DVD in this must have Complete First Season Collector's Edition. This is more than just a cartoon, it is truly "More than meets the eye...."

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not what we've seen on TV
Review: First of all, let me state that it's great to finally have the first season of Transformers in a DVD collection like this. The 1st season is easily the best season where Toei in Japan was the studio providing the animation. There are moments in each episode of true brilliance where you can see the animators are doing their job with pride and flair. In the subsequent seasons after this, Marvel cheaped out and used Akom animation in Korea with far inferior results.

The problem with this collection is that the animation is incomplete in many episodes (if not all). Rhino restored the 35 mm prints with all of the animation errors. These ARE NOT the episodes that we've seen on tv. Many of the scenes here were practically works-in-progress which were later fixed and replaced before they made it to the air. Rather than to replace these incomplete scenes (which DO exist on Beta, although with inferior quality), Rhino decided to, for the most part, leave the scenes with errors in-tact.

The problems are extremely apparent in the final episode (which, interestingly enough and to their credit, Rhino points out on the bonus outtake disk with a split screen of the aired episode and the one we have here). Camera moves are incorrect, animation levels are missing/out of order, and effects animation is incomplete.

It is nice to have this series on DVD, but I would much rather see these episodes closer to what was aired and what the animators intended. When dealing with limited money for restoration I suppose you have to choose your battles and Rhino decided the the quality of the image was more important than the quality of the animation.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Four and a half stars would be more accurate
Review: As a guy who grew up loving this cartoon, there was no doubt that I would enjoy this set. However, after I ordered it, I began reading all of the other reviews and got somewhat nervous about my purchase. Complaints seem to appear pretty frequently among the reviews, ranging from poor coloring to bad sound effects to miscolored segments.
I am writing this to help clarify some of the claims and complaints about this DVD set. I found most of the complaints about the sound and color to be either unfounded or unnoticable. The colors are bright, impressive, and the sound is not distracting in the least. In fact, the sound is probably what will stoke the fires of nostalgia the strongest!
That being said, there is a lot of truth to the fact that Rhino did not seem to take the necessary time to reproduce these beloved cartoons. I remember a few coloring mistakes from the original series, but this set has more than quite a few! At times it can be really distracting and irritating, especially since they seem to have dismissed Thundercracker and Skywarp completely, in favor of one Starscream with multiple voices. It is not something that only the incredibly die-hardest of fans will notice (I have read some of the other reviews, and I am not at all as equally obsessed, but I do have a spot in my heart for the Transformers).
Overall, I am really pleased to own the set, although I wish the quality had been improved upon. It is something that can be kind of irritating, but does not take away from the fact that the art is beautifully drawn, the stories more involved than I remembered, and the characters developed astonishingly well for a children's show. The value of owning this set far outweighs the occasional errors found within it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Finally
Review: It's about time. I have been waiting for this for along time. I just hope that it does not stop here and they continue to realease all of the seasons. Transformers is the greatest and if rhionomation is reading this you need to bring out al of the seasons.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Good Transformers DVD set but with flaws!
Review: This is a good Transformers Season 1 Box set but it has many flaws! During many of the Transformers scenes and sequences you will notice a-lot of coloring mistakes! The original the Transformers shows that aired on Saturday Morning did not have as many coloring mistakes as this DVD set. The mistakes start with Disk 3 which has the Episode "The Ultimate Doom" Part 1 and continues to the end of Disk 3, the last episode of the DVD set,"The Heavy Metal War" But the Heavy Metal War episode has the most coloring and editing mistakes. These episodes are not how it was original presented on Television in 1984 or the original video releases by F.H.E. during the 1980s. Rhino Home Video Messed up this DVD set big time! The Only reason I giving it four stars is because this Transformers DVD set is better then nothing at all!

Rhino Home Video better fix the mistakes with the Transformers Season 2 DVD box set or some Transfans will get very angry!


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