Less than meets the eye

There are two kinds of Transformers fans. There're the kind that know and love the American material — and there're the kind that additionally know and love the Japanese material.

That latter breed is given to talk about such odd things as "Headmasters" and "Masterforce." The words "Victory" and "Zone" also hold special meaning for the group. Why? These are the four classic seasons of "Transformers" shows to air only in Japan. The seasons, which picked up where the American series ended, at first resemble the 1980s show you know. But the seasons get progressively weirder, eventually becoming nigh unrecognizable. Trust me. I've seen "Zone." It looks more like a "Voltron" reject than anything from the "Transformers" universe.

Many hardcore fans consider these seasons the Holy Grail of "Transformers" animation. The seasons were never officially released in America and are tough to find unless you know where to look. But there's good reason for that. The seasons are so dissimilar in tone and style to the show American audiences remember that I doubt they'd go over well.

Fans of these obscure seasons were nonetheless whipped into a frenzy last week after Brian Ward of Shout Factory wondered aloud if he should pursue securing an official DVD release of the shows for America. As you might imagine, there was a small but loud chorus of affirmation.

I wonder, though, whether Shout Factory can turn a profit on this endeavor. There's no good English audio track available for these shows — just a very bad voiceover that was done by hobbyists years ago. Discarding that awful translation and resorting to subtitles would be the only realistic way to go, but how well would such a product be received by anyone other than the hardest of hardcore fans? I question whether Shout Factory could convince stores to stock these incredibly obscure items. That would leave only direct sales to consumers via Shout Factory's web site. Could that approach move enough copies to recoup the mighty costs of licensing, film restoration, translation, subtitling and adding special features? Maybe, but I doubt it.

As cool as it would be to see "Headmasters" finally available on DVD in America, the realist in me has to acknowledge the whole project is probably cost prohibitive.