RomanceFormers Season 2 Set7

NOTE: These pictures can also be seen over at Mrcappy’s gallery mrcappy.deviantart.com
He was very gracious and gave me permission to upload his drawings here…seeing as I’m Mrcappy.
In other words, these aren’t stolen unless you think I plagiarized myself.

WARNING: Your childhood is under attack with the second season of RomanceFormers cards!!
Set one, going in for the kill:
(Reflector, Gears, Omega Supreme)
[link]
Set two, going in for the kill:
(Wheelie, Tracks, Powerglide)
[link]
Set three, going in for the kill:
(Kup, Voltron(?), Ironhide)
[link]
Set four, going in for the kill:
(Grimlock, Wreck-Gar, Skyfire)
[link]
Set five, going in for the kill:
(Warpath, Brawn, Blurr)
[link]
Set six, going in for the kill:
(Silverbolt, Devastator, Rumble)
[link]
Set seven, going in for the kill:
(Quintesson, Arcee, Alpha Trion)
[link]

Check the first season of my RomanceFormers sets, if they don’t offend you then I didn’t do my job!
[link]

Help me destroy the new generation by checking out season three of my RomanceFormers as I obliterate the ‘Animated’ show
[link]

Prepare For Awesomeness: Lylix’s RomanceFormers set needs your attention!
(Hound, Tracks, Ironhide)
[link]

Oh, by all means, I’d be ecstatic to have you print these out and give ‘em to the ones you love…or hate. Cuz really, why else would you do that to their childhood?

====================
Cappitron’s Short-Circuited Rant
====================
Pretty much for this whole series I hadn’t done any ramblings, but I figured I just HAD to talk about this. I owe it to the artistic community! Anime. It’s no secret that I’m a vocal hater; I grew up when anime first splashed on the scene, and what made anime transcend the usual animation medium of the day was its ability to tell profound stories and molest your retinas with ungodly smooth quality. Over the years, anime has become a paint-by-number, add a bishie here and a spackle of cleavage there, and animate it all with what looks like a total of ten frames of flash animation.

So I’ve actively avoided looking at the anime section for years now, seeing as almost every third boxart repeats the same theme. I only stumble upon it when places like Wal-Mart and Circuit City have a horrible filing system of mixing it up with the action category. And about a week ago I grazed over the updated 2004 Astro Boy series boxset.

TIME TO SCHOOL YOU WHIPPERSNAPPERS: The original Astro Boy was considered the birth of the anime style. I can sense many an otaku tugging at their beard furiously screaming “Nani?! Jason you are soo baka! That style looks like white devil Americana animation!” Such charming social skills, and you still haven’t a clue why you don’t have a girlfriend? Astro Boy indeed looks like old American cartoons, because it’s believed the manga artist was heavily influenced by Betty Boop. That’s right, AMERICAN CARTOON Betty Boop inspired anime. That sound you hear is the breaking of thousands of weeaboos’ jingoistic hearts as their world comes crashing down around them.

Truth be told, I’ve seen the original black-n-white Asto Boy series, and it has WORSE quality animation than Speed Racer, I know hard to believe. Heck, there’s even an 80’s Astro Boy show that’s less to impress. But sometime in the 2000’s I believe Fox Kids promoted the new and improved Astro Boy series. Like most of Fox’s planning, the scheduling was retarded, assuring the show be doomed into cancelation like most of its programming. I saw the complete boxset at Wal-Mart: fifty episodes, almost THIRTY of which never made it to American playtime. The “screenshots” on the back I assumed were production art, but I took a gamble and purchased the set.
And oh my gawd.

I’ve just made it past the first disc of the five disc set, and am in love. The animation quality, not to mention the CG integration, is leagues better than even the “Metropolis” anime movie which was inspired by the manga artist’s work and themes. Each episode has me fear that there will be a sudden drop in quality, but each episode thankfully makes me a horrible psychic. I hated the look, character design, and Dreamcast budget CGI of “Metropolis”, but with the new Astro Boy, it’s just drawn so dang well that you can’t help but fall in love with every quirky design. With such quality, think of it as a twenty-one minute movie. FIFTY twenty-one minute movies! My jaded little heart grew three sizes by writing that.

You definitely get a sense that Astro Boy is its own world with its specific style and story. And you definitely realize that the Mega Man games were ballsy rip-offs on Capcom’s part of the themes that Astro Boy laid down (good robot needing to protect humans, the kind robot-building scientist and the evil robot-building scientist who’s anti social, the first rule of robotics is to never harm humans, even the arm cannon). Once again proof that there are no copyright laws in the land of the rising sun.

Mega Man really missed the mark for some great moralistic depth that Astro Boy’s been hitting out of the ballpark. In fact I’m kinda questioning whether I saw the adverts on Fox Kids…if so, it must’ve been edited down to about five minute blocks. One such episode has a billionaire who keeps commissioning Mr. Crazypants Scientist to rebuild a robot that resembles his dead son because he needs an heir to the corporation. Being the evil scientist, he doesn’t tell moneybags that he uploaded ALL of the son’s memories; like being too busy for birthday parties, and even each iteration of the robot son’s memories, so the newest model is well aware that he’s been scrapped a few times before. But the problem with all of the show’s robots is that they mysteriously retain the essences of the deceased kids they were based on, so these’s some heartstring plucking as the robot remembers how his theoretical dad used to be kind when they were dirt poor, having huge dreams and aspirations.

We should all be ashamed for letting this series die in America. ASHAMED! If you listen to only one thing I ever tell you, it should be to go and buy the revamped 2004 Astro Boy boxset. Especially as an anime fan, you need to realize just how capable Japan really is at blowing down PC story barriers and constraints of animation, and finally understand what us old fogeys are whining about when you shell thirty bucks for two episodes of guys in drag dry humping each other. This series has utterly and wholly rejuvenated my interest in anime and I’ve never been more proud of my atrocious lack of impulse control. Japan, Astro Boy almost makes up for all the crushing porn you manage to churn out!
Well, almost.

Here is the Japanese opening (of course it’s missing from the American DVD release) because some of you can’t enjoy animation unless it begins with some shrill woman screaming into your eardrums
[link]
Watch it cuz I wanna make sure you get the right set, and not the inferior black-n-white or 80s version of the show. Keep in mind, most anime intros look all snazzy and then it becomes clear they blew the whole budget on it, but Astro Boy LOOKS THIS GOOD throughout (even the CGI work). And since most of you embody the term “starving artist”, it would seem all the episodes are uploaded to YouTube.

====================
The Lowdown On The Download
====================
It’s usually around this time when I write “This is the last set ever so cry your eyes out!!” but that would be about the sixth time I’ve made such a claim. So let’s just assume I’m done for awhile, and will draw more if I can come up with the puns. But we’re kinda running out of characters here!
Sixteen sets, times three characters per set, minus a Voltron, equals forty-seven characters?!

QUINTESSON: Like the old saying goes, if you marry one Quintesson head, it’s like you marry all five of them! Once again, you should give props to the art buddies beating this premise to death by willing to suggest more characters. PaperBerry paperberry.deviantart.com suggested a Quintesson.
A QUINTESSON!
It took me a couple seconds to come up with an idea, and then I had to create support cards to make a set. So here we are with the final set! Wouldn’t that technically mean PaperBerry has ended the series? GET HER!!

It’s been years since I’ve watched the third season, so I’ll do my best to recall what the crap was up with these guys. I believe the Quintessons originally created the Transformers as prostitute bots. At some point, the Transformers became autonomous and revolted, to make sure the sexy vision of the Quintessons never produces an Orion Pax Fudge or a MegaTongue in the future. So the Transformers managed to drive their floating tampon creators off into space. The interesting this was, instead of being egotistical crybabies wanting the Transformers back, the Quintessons decided to spend the rest of their days just dicking around with them:

“Why don’t we resurrect the Autobot’s dead leader and have him act a total ass to them?”
“You so bad!”
“So bad it’s good!”
So bad that it’s good to be bad!”
“Hey…which of our faces do you suppose is the ‘ass’ of us?”

Fun fact: in the series, the faces of the Quintesson judge weren’t given official names. Apparently this irked fans, so they managed to appoint descriptive names to the faces, and that was commonly accepted. In the IDW book that I use for my references, they finally established the names of the faces as thus:
Skeleton face: Death
Green turban sultan face: Bitterness
Orange starfish-on-his-head face: Laughter
Red devil face: Rage
Green porcupine face: Doubt
So that’s…not really all that impressive.

ARCEE: I can assume Arcee benefitted from Smurfette Syndrome: when you’re one of the only females around, it makes you the designated hot chick by proxy…even if you’re not that pretty to begin with. You’ll notice this tactic in a lot of cartoons and series. A bunch of guys, one girl, girl causes guy group to act retarded for her. Heck, try it out in real life! Be the token gamer girl of the group, and you’ll be surprised how much funnier/smarter/OMG you’re hella skilled at this game even though Chad just did the same moves…but you’re talented, I really need you to know that you’re awesome.

But with great power comes great responsibility. Go ahead and be a ho, just be a good ho. Otherwise you better have a good ho memory on who’s the baby’s daddy. That’s why the Smurfs just had little inbred cousins popup during one season. I guess Arcee’ll make a guest appearance on the Jerry SPRINGER show!! Get it…Springer was the green helicop…whatever I know I’m funny.

I didn’t think I had issue with Arcee. Mostly, I was perturbed with her “hairdo”, it was painfully obvious she was the illustration to a Star Wars geek’s fantasy. “Real women won’t love me, so I’ll program a robot who has to, kee yuk yuk!” But when I had watched the episodes more recently, I was a little taken aback at the awkward relationship they made her have with Daniel How-Did-My-Dad-Score-With-A-Real-Woman Witwicky. It was sometimes hard to tell if you were seeing a maternal bond or an Oedipus complex.

ALPHA TRION: I felt this series should end in the dignified and befitting manner it deserves. So I made fun of a geriatric robot’s broken dipstick. Mini rant time: you know, scientists still have no cures for AIDS, headaches, the common cold and flu, or diabetes, but by golly, your grandpa’s gotta have an erection that can puncture holes in tires! I like how this one comedian said, now that we have a pill to get an eighty-year-old’s penis erect, they need to make a pill that will make women actually turned-on by the sight of some wrinkly man’s gnarled twig. Blech.

Alpha Trion is the oldest robot on Cybertron. I can’t really recall his purpose, other than he revamped Orion Pax into Optimus Prime, and I think he was the caretaker for the Autobot’s disco ball god Vector Sigma. DANCE FOR YOUR DEITY!

So this is at least the end to season two. I’ve killed my marker set on this project, but it was worth it huh? These were EASILY the most popular things I have ever uploaded to my gallery; I think I gained a few dozen watchers just because of these cards! I big hearty thanks to the art buddies who supplied the colorful commentary that could rival anything I could have possibly illustrated; I was mainly motivated to upload these because I couldn’t wait to see reactionary text. Still waiting to get an indignant response from a Transformer purist!

Another friendly reminder: if you’d like to try your hand at coming up with your own RomanceFormers cards, I’m more than happy to link your set here and also at the end of the season one set. You’ll be part of the official series, and hey, it’s nice to mooch some free publicity from my accommodating art buddies. You can pick characters I haven’t touched on (good luck with that) or give a different spin on a pickup line from a former Former. I eagerly await your results!
-The “Just Like Herpes These Things Will Probably Flare Up Unexpectedly” Cappitron

For the copycats: Micron Pigma pen 05 (linework), Prismacolor markers, bristol board.
References: IDW’s “Transformers: The Ark” book (essential for character reference sheets), using Wikipedia to find specific episodes and watching YouTube for character color schemes.