Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Ark Addendum - Ginrai's Transformation

It's that time again, another installment of The Ark Addendum. This week, I was feeling Masterforcy! And so I bring you Ginrai's Transformation sequence.

I remain perpetually impressed with how cool most of these sequences are. Even just the establishing shot of him in truck mode, barreling along, is full of action and life. And the triangular panels, though no doubt in place because there are more than 8 steps, help break up the monotony of the normal grid pattern.

That said, I've always found it odd how faithful to the toy Ginrai's model is. Even as a kid, I always just assumed that the whole false front thing to the Powermaster Prime toy was to make Prime look more like his character model, not to indicate that he actually had a false torso in his chest somewhere. I'm reminded of the Gobots cartoon, where the cars would roll over a ditch where someone was hiding and they'd look up and see a gobot face in the undercarriage. Taking liberties with the toys isn't always a bad thing.

Hope you enjoy!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even though I've never really watched more then one episode of Masterforce, these transformations MS's are pretty awesome. I love the drama of the anime aesthetic- check out the smoke & speed lines and the angularity of the shots. Classic.

Anonymous said...

This, my friend, is the most amazing thing you've posted so far! I'm really hoping you'll post Super Ginrai/God Ginrai transformations soon :D

Also, I really dig how toy faithful the Ginrai model is. Actually, toy accuracy is one of the reasons I love Animated and Galaxy Force so much (I cant recall the accuracy of Super Link, but I KNOW Micron Legend was shoddy shoddy shoddy)

Hans said...

Heh, I just remembered the Gobots thing. You're right, I particularly remember the cop-car (Cuffs?) landing on it's side, and the robot chest and face were clearly visible. Heh, wacky cartoon :)

Anonymous said...

I'm feeling "masterforcy" too... everyday xD but you aldeady know that :P

Thanks for posting this, Jim :)