Transformers: The Battle of the Star Gate

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Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers
You know what's he's going to say.
Transformers: The Battle of Star Gate [sic] トランスフォーマー スターゲート戦役 (Transformer Star Gate Sen'eki)
Publisher	Brain-Navi Comics
First published	April 20, 2003 (single issues) June 29, 2009 (collected)
Manga by	Naoto Tsushima
Herausgeber	TakaraTomy
Continuity	Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity
ISBN	ISBN 4904293266 ISBN 978-4904293263
Page count	192
Price	1,751 yen

Transformers: The Battle of the Star Gate is a manga written and drawn by Naoto Tsushima and published from issues 11 to 14 of Super Robot Magazine in 2003. The story is set in the 1990s, in the intermezzo between the end of the second season of the original cartoon series and The Transformers: The Movie. Concluding in the final fourteenth issue of Super Robot Magazine, "The Battle of the Star Gate" is something of an obscure "forgotten adventure", but was nonetheless incorporated into 2007's Japanese cartoon continuity timeline, its ending helping to incorporate Car Robots into continuity.

In 2009, Brain-Navi compiled all four chapters into one volume.

Übersicht

In the mid-1990s, the Autobots formally enter into an alliance with United States government, and begin sharing their technology with them in a mutually beneficial program. This upsets the socio-political climate of Earth, however: other world powers like Japan and the Soviet Union object to the alliance and began plotting with the Decepticons, while many citizens hold anti-Transformer rallies, wishing the robots and their war off the planet.

Among the technological advancements that are born from this new partnership is the Trigger, an interstellar teleportation system housed in a space station currently being constructed in Earth orbit, which will help connect the planet to Cybertron. Naturally, however, the Trigger becomes a target for the Decepticons, who stage an attack on it with the help of the Soviet Union. In the process, the villains narrowly avoid being teleported away by the Trigger, activated through the heroic efforts of crew member Makoto and violently shut down by a blast from Megatron. The Decepticons are eventually routed the Autobots, but the Trigger's activation and sudden deactivation does have one unexpected effect: the ghost of Starscream from over a decade in the future is plucked out of his time and dropped into the middle of the conflict.

In the months that follow, Starscream's ghost causes havoc during a test run of the new C-X battle drone, possessing the robot and causing it to run amok, and whispers in the ear of his present-day counterpart, leading him to arrange an alliance with the Prime Minister of Japan that grants the Decepticons license to gather energy in the country. Using the energon cubes they gather, Starscream's ghost is able to fuse both himself and his present-day self with the Trigger space station, transforming it into a massive, misshapen robot body that he uses to attack Autobots and Decepticons alike. The battle concludes when Megatron and Optimus Prime join forces, and Prime channels the power of the Matrix into Megatron's gun mode for one destructive blast that obliterates Starscream's new body. But while the threat is ended, the Transformers are all caught in the backwash of the cosmic explosion and sent tumbling to Earth in flames...

Characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

And you know what HE'S going to say.

• In the colossal retcon-heavy Japanese cartoon-based timeline revealed in the Kiss Players/15 Go! Go! compilation book, the Star Gate manga is used as the key to wedging the Car Robots cartoon into the time between the second season of the original cartoon and the events of The Transformers: The Movie. How? Well, virtually all of the existing Transformers end up missing at the end of Star Gate, thus allowing for Fire Convoy and his crew to be operating on Earth without bumping into any of the old cast. Admittedly, how everyone was brought back does not appear to have been addressed, or just where Fire Convoy and company went at the end of the series, but... look just go with it, all right?
• The collected edition features a reversible dust jacket cover, Optimus being the default side while Megatron's side lacks any of the ISBN information and bar code as seen on right.
• Disappointingly, the collected edition did not keep the first several pages colored in "First Contact" as they originally appeared in Super Robot Magazine, Brain-Navi Comics opting for a gray-scale version of the pages.

External links

• Transformers: The Battle of the Star Gate at Japanese Wikipedia