Beast Wars Universe
From Transformers Wiki
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 Behold: Mirror Universe Primal! | |||||||||||||
| ビーストウォーズユニバース
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| Publisher | SONY Magazines | ||||||||||||
| First published | March 18, 2000 | ||||||||||||
| Written by | Hirofumi Ichikawa, Fumihiko Akiyama | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Beast Wars | ||||||||||||
| ISBN | ISBN 4789714845 | ||||||||||||
| Page count | 112 | ||||||||||||
Beast Wars Universe is a Japanese-exclusive guidebook, licensed by Takara and published by Sony Magazines on March 18, 2000. It features a wealth of information about the Beast Wars animated series, toyline, and production process.
While this book is in Japanese, it deals only in Hasbro characters and continuity, referring to appropriate characters as "Optimus Primal" and "Cheetor" rather than "Convoy" and "Cheetus". It has no mention at all of Japanese sequel series such as Beast Wars II, except for the few Japanese toys that were sold through HasbroCollectors.com's American mail-order offerings.
The book was reprinted in July 2023.
Contents |
Contents
Character Information
This section features all the in-show characters, divided by factions. Major repeating characters get full-page profiles depicting their Mainframe character models and showcasing their signature special powers or episodes in which they played prominent roles. There are also smaller profiles for cameo characters such as Starscream and story-relevant objects such as the Golden Disks. This section also specifically names the members of the Tripredacus Council as being those who form the Tripredacus toy.
Toy Database
This section has thorough photo spreads and commentary about the entire U.S. Beast Wars toyline as of 1999 (thus, obviously, it cannot include later releases such as the Mutants and a few BotCon and Walmart exclusives). It also discusses undocumented or cancelled toy features, such as Transmetal Rattrap's wheel-like leg ornaments that apparently at one point were supposed to be fully functional. There is a brief "teaser" treatment of early-wave toys and promotional art from Beast Machines.
Each character's content features not only the text and tech spec on the bio card, but also includes commentary about gimmick, naming origin, and other aspects.
Episode Guide
Covers all three seasons of the Beast Wars animated series. Each episode guide has a brief story digest and commentary.
This section also includes the plot summary of "Dark Glass", the un-produced episode replaced by "Go with the Flow".
Beast Wars: Transformers Glossary
Some of the terms in this section are canonical, and others are not. The non-canonical terms might exist only in original scripts, come from ideas that were never used, or may have been hinted at but were later changed/retconned in Beast Machines or Universe by other writers.
Information from producers
Aside from reproducing a lot of information that was previously available elsewhere, the book also contained some new tidbits from those involved in the creation of the series.
For example, one section which has been translated into English by fans[1] presents background information from Larry DiTillio concerning his ideas for the Vok. This is one of the few sources of information about the aliens and their connection to the strange "Matrix" and "Pit" facilities that were occasionally mentioned by DiTillio and Bob Forward in their days posting to alt.toys.transformers. However, it should be stressed that most of the ideas DiTillio discusses were never incorporated into the series itself, and some were even explicitly contradicted by later material. Further, Forward and DiTillio disagreed with each other about many background issues, including the nature of the Vok. This means that the information in this section can be helpful for shedding light on events of the series, but is not established canon.
