Originally posted by MooCowofJustice
Oh. I dunno, Scythe made it. Of course I can't tell the difference either way.And I think we both thought it was Chinese. Lol.
There was a large misunderstanding when I made the request.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji
Kanji are Chinese characters used in Japanese. There's about ~2000 that are used in Japanese. At one point I knew about 100 of them 😛
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Soundwave was part of a very elite roster of characters from that era of children's fiction that impressed the more discerning fan, a topic I can expand upon at length if required.I don't have many Transformers toys though- but having Prime and Soundwave is a good catch.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Specifically never wanted him!
Though honestly my desire is out of respect for the history, not the design. His robot form was extraordinarily bad, even for G1.
Out of curiosity...
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Soundwave was part of a very elite roster of characters from that era of children's fiction that impressed the more discerning fan, a topic I can expand upon at length if required.I don't have many Transformers toys though- but having Prime and Soundwave is a good catch.
Yeah- I specifically never wanted him as the gun transform was rubbish and, I seem to remember, prone to breakage.
-
Ok, well, growing up in the 80s led to growing up in an era that really started to be bombarded with cartoon heroes of a certain sort for really the first time- from Battle of the Planets to Masters of the Universe to Defenders of the Earth.
And ok, explosions fights etc- fine. Pleased the masses. But I was always the intellectual thinky sort and frankly I (and many others) became very very bored with identikit villains, motivations, plots and activities.
Masters of the Universe was the worst offender- all the villains were shit. What possible drama or point was there in anything when the good guys just completely outclassed them at every turn? He-Man always beat Skeletor; Beastman was utterly inferior to... anyone on the good side and it got worse from there.
Not that kids shows of that sort need to be Tolstoy, but SOME kind of edge to the characters was very welcome. Bland good guys were just as culpable- looking at He-Man again there. And having seen the Doctor Whp episode Caves of Androzani, all this stuff just looked... appalling.
So certain characters stood out as breaking the mould. Take Thundercats, and the good guy role. Lion-O- boring hero. Cheetarah- fast girl (often the rule- guys are strong, girls are fast. Superman and the Flash are fast men but that was too early for this to count). Panthro was a strong man. Yawn. But TIGRA was a smart guy. He was not a common archetype. I liked him.
(I know Man-At-Arms was meant to be the brain of the outfit... but I never really got that impression).
When it comes to Transformers, the bad guys again suffered from extreme incompetence. Megatron was out and out worse than Prime, and as for frigging Starscream... he was like the Italians to the Nazis.
Bui Soundwave was awesome as a comparative concept. He seemed competent, he had a purpose which generally didn't exist in bad guy ensembles in any kids' series, and even better he wasn't even just a crapper version of a good guy. No version at all- the autobots had no real equivalent.
So he was distinctive, different and (relatively) effective. That;s why he scored.
I haven't seen all of the original series, but it seems to me like Soundwave was the only one who was ever beaten simply because he was outclassed, instead of doing something stupid, like Megatron and the rest of the gang were prone to do. He'd always stood out to me when I saw it as a kid, I'm assuming now for that reason...
I think that was the appeal of Beast Wars, since it got a lot smarter and applied that level of cool intelligence to the leader himself, instead of his second-in-command.