#atari hitotonari

[stargirlintermission]

I read Train wars: The origins and now I'm thinking about Nightbird again.

I will never find not disappointing that few appearences she has gotten recently make her a transformer, because I believe that she not being one has way more interesting implications. Transformers, while technically robots, are aliens. Nightbird is not an alien, she is a human made robot, and something the transformers as a whole look down on. Even the autobots can help but crack jokes at her expense.

So, upon gaining a conscience, where does she stand?

I don't know if this was the intention of the comic, but with the way it's framed it makes it seem like Shouki's "who am I?" is also Nightbird's, like Atari's words resonated with her in some way.

And who is Nightbird?

"Not good enough."

In her debut episode, Dr. Fujiyama says that Nightbird is "a bit primitive by autobot standars". In Train wars, he is able to create transformers, which leaves Nightbird as nothing more than a prototype. Even if Shadow (an IA created by Dr. Fujiyama) tries to help her by "upgrading" her, she is pretty much doomed to an existence of not feeling good enough, always being "less than".

And I think that would be something interesting to explore, how much of an outsider she is between transformers.

[kiss-players-rewrite]

The drawings of the Kiss Players in their robot forms! (Excuse the low quality of the camera; this was taken on my laptop.)

= - = - =

ATARI HITOTONARI - TECHCROSS

TRANSFORMATION QUOTE: "Techcross, TRANSFORM!"

Loves sweets despite being vegetarian

Good with research and technology

Easily terrified of everything (but manages to flesh herself out and be brave later on...)

Overpowered and couldn't control it, plus dealing with a power unfamiliar to her (that power being Techbreaker, and also the ability to create spirit balls of spatial void...)

First character drawn for this rewrite before getting to the others, after all, she is kind of the story's main protagonist if you think about it, especially when you look into the tropes that make up her fighting style and also character.

= - = - =

MARISSA FAIREBORN - HIBISCUS

TRANSFORMATION QUOTE: "Hibiscus, TRANSFORM!"

#1 Optimus Prime Fangirl

Pure definition of genki

Born to sing

Eats human food because she's a human (or really, regardless of what form you take, the person is still human and can still eat human-made food)

Fast Runner (a la Joseph Joestar... "RUN AWAY!")

= - = - =

SHAOSHAO LI - KICKBACK

TRANSFORMATION QUOTE: "Kickback, TRANSFORM!"

Has very high kicks (obviously)

Loves bao buns so much, but doesn't have the chance to eat one

Will kill anything if it goes against her own "code of honor" (or really, anyone who dares lay a finger on those she's close to, she will annihilate them)

Terrified/Has a fear of anything with tentacles (and in the drawing, just an octopus wanting to say Hi to Shaoshao)

FUN FACT: She was initially going to be paired with Hot Rod (like she did with Rodimus in the original), but was changed to Dinobot because of more interesting dynamics and wriggle room to write some interesting dialogue.

= - = - =

THE KISS PLAYER COMPACTS!

The typical item that you'd see in any magical girl show: The magical compact! Here in the Kiss Players Rewrite, it grants the user, typically a human girl with some association with a Cybertronian, to transform into a giant Cybertronian robot, a la magical girl style (with magical girl transformations and magical upgrades to boot).

ATARI'S COMPACT: Basic design for a compact, blue and white, with some technological aspects to it to sell the techno, almost webcore aesthetic to it.

MARISSA'S COMPACT: Basic design, except it's pink and cutesy, with hearts on it symbolizing Marissa's passion, or it's just selling the pink-girlypop aesthetic, which still works.

SHAOSHAO'S COMPACT: The only design that takes allusion to Hot Rod/Rodimus, fire patterns, and a red-and-orange color palette, not only is it very Hot Rod/Rodimus, but it also symbolizes Shaoshao's fiery temper if left untreated, and also sells the idea that, if she's given any form of magical-type, she's definitely fire-based.

= - = - =

KISS PLAYER MAGICAL-TRANSFORMATION UPGRADES! (KISS PLAYER UPGRADES, FOR SHORT!)

FUSIONS: Not an upgrade, as it is a feature of being a Kiss Player, but anyway, it's easily explainable; it's sort of like Fusions in the original Kiss Players mixed up with the Fusions from Steven Universe. Basically, how it works is that one Cybertronian and one Kiss Player can fuse together to make a form that combines both partners' powers into one, creating a formidable opponent/fighter. Example: Borboletta/Malva-1 (Fusion between Elita-1 and Hibiscus/Marissa Faireborn), Velocikick/Dinokick (Fusion between Dinobot and Kickback/Shaoshao Li), and Starcross/Techscream (Fusion between Starscream and Techcross/Atari Hitotonari)

CASSETTES: Ah, yes! The Cassettes! Consisting of Popstar Rosanna, Medic Glit, and Tetrahex Ripper Sundor/Sunder. How they work is kind of similar to how the magical girl transformations in Heartcatch Precure work, albeit differently, of course. They would have a device that looks similar to a cassette player, called a "Kiss Deck", that would have the holder of the deck emit a glow, and then have that glow transferred over to their respective Cassette, where they say a phrase and then transform into their cassette forms, letting the holder take their cassette, say their own transformation quote, and then place the cassette into the Kiss Deck, initiating their transformation. The changes that come with the transformation are pretty minor, outside of weaponizing certain parts of their body to make good weapons out of, like a bladed leg for Shaoshao or a multi-barrel shotgun arm for Marissa (inspired by Polyurethane and Polyester's weapons from NEW Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt).

SPARKBOTS: My Aspect babies! Consisting of Girlypop Lion Angela, Stoic Falcon Zangetsu, and Insecticon Star Dust. How they work is that, when the Sparkbots are in their ball form, to initiate the transformation, the person must draw a symbol onto it with a special drawing implement, typically a paintbrush (the Spark Brush), a marker (the Spark Marker), or even a digital artist's pen (the Spark Pen), whatever it is, when the user draws their respective symbol and says their transformation quote, the Sparkbot in their ball form would launch themselves upward, transform into their own forms, and then shine a beam of light that engulfs the user, initiating the transformation (in a similar manner to the transformations in Kira Kira Precure a la Mode). Much like the Cassettes, changes are pretty minor, but in the sense that the user emits a hue that corresponds with the color of the Sparkbot, like Pink for Angela or Green for Star Dust, alongside having the Sparkbot beside them as a keychain/charm connected to the user's hip, and the symbol they've drawn on the bot being on their chest.

= - = - =

If you think that's not enough magical stuff for these girls to have, don't you worry, I have more currently in its testing stages, and if you think none of them have anything to do with kisses, don't you worry, I have just the thing that can live up to its original concept and bring in a design concept/idea that was featured in many other magical girl shows, another form of makeup outside of the compact.

But enough hinting, hope y'all like this dump of lore and concepts, and also like the low-quality pictures of the girls and their magical robot forms, and I hope y'all have a good day.

[cleverthylacine]

Japanese G1 continuity is absolutely not normal about girls but damned if they don't give us some of the best ones

There was a significant amount of Transformers continuity released between 1987 and around 2007 that was produced in Japanese and is really only known to most English-speaking fans through fansubs, dubs that were only released in Australia, and the like. Shows like Headmasters, Victory, and Zone. Manga like Victory and 15 Go Go Go Teletraan (which was really mostly Kiss Players). Radio shows like Kiss Players.

I'm gonna be super up front. Japanese G1 is not normal about femmes in any way, shape or form. At the same time, it gave us some of the BEST and most underused female characters in the Transformers universe.

Headmasters, which came out right after the US G1 show ended, is particularly egregious. In Headmasters, Arcee has been reduced to Fort Max's administrative assistant, uses ridiculously polite and subservient language, and is also the only medic. And being a medic would be kind of badass if they let her be as badass as Ratchet, you know? But they absolutely do not.

Also, in Headmasters, Carly (now married to Spike) allows her son--a freaking child, not even a teenager--to go on missions when Spike can't and a human is needed, because uh, for some reason it's better for a 12 year old boy to go, not an adult woman?

But most of the good femmes don't come from Headmasters. And some of the best femmes we have are from Japanese G1.

Super-God Masterforce made it up to us by giving gave us Minerva, a human girl who is a Headmaster with a robot body (transtector) making her basically a bad ass mecha pilot, and who actively does fight.

The Victory manga gives us Esmeral, Deathsaurus' incredibly classy wife, and Lyzack, Leozack's twin sister, who is in charge of defending the homefront but really does want to go out and fight. Illumina appears in both the Victory manga and the anime. She's a little human girl who has a crush on Jan Minakaze and is always trying to get people to choose nonviolence.

(Lyzack later appears in an English-language comic - the Wings Universe--wherein she's basically Deathsaurus' servant and Starscream hits on her. I don't like that.)

There are a number of great femmes who were only ever toys. The Cobalt Sentries set gave us Howlback, leader of the Decepticon military police (called the Cobalt Sentries). She is basically Ravage's twin sister but instead of being super stealthy she can turn your attacks right back on you.

(Later she appears in several English language comics and in at least one she is canonically trans. I'm not a fan of her depiction in the SG Recordicons Batman tribute arc, though.)

The Unite Warriors toyline - Takara's response to Combiner Wars, basically - gave us the combiner Megatronia, made up of Megaempress, and her four guards, Lunaclub (sometimes called Luna Clover or Luna Trefle), Flowspade, Moonheart, and Trickdiamond. They are incredibly awesome.

(IDW 2019 used Trickdiamond, but none of the others. Tricky was one of Swindle's contacts.)

Then there's the elephant in the room that everyone pretends isn't there...Kiss Players.

So, okay. There is nothing normal about Kiss Players whatsoever. On the other hand, I'd rather listen to KP than watch RID2015 which is just blatant copaganda from hell.

Kiss Players had an interesting plot involving little bits of Galvatron and Unicron getting into humans and creating the Kiss Players--humans who could give TFs a powerup by kissing them and then merging with their internals somehow. Then there are the Legions, the dick-tongued monsters that everyone who hasn't actually listend to the show or read the manga thinks are Megatron.

The dick-tongued monsters are gross. It is also gross that some of the Kiss Players are barely teenagers and definitely not adults and are constantly ending up in Situations.

But the plot centres around the apparent rise of Convoy, or Optimus, from the dead, and his transformation into a weird groomery dude, which many people don't understand there was an actual reason for, because it's not Optimus, it's someone else riding around in his body.

Melissa Faireborn is like if you chopped Marissa Faireborn's IQ in half, dyed her hair blond and threw out any pants or skirts that covered her knees. She is nothing like Marissa and I treat them as cousins, but Xiaoxiao Li is amazing and her real lover.

Anyhow, this female scientist (Dr Amaou) lost her mind over the loss of her daughter during the events of the 1986 movie et sequelae, and she's got to be stopped from turning Atari and her Autorooper robot pal into a permanent fusion to reincarnate her daughter Shizuku (whom for some reason I always want to call Setsuna instead).

It's a little confusing because most of the really good parts of the plot got jammed into a few episodes near the end of the season, although once you know what it is, it's clear that it's being set up. That artist just likes borderline lolicon way too much.

The second season of KP is very squeaky clean and sends the girls out to collect what they think are Allspark fragments, and they are very annoyed because Ravage, whom they call "black panther man" keeps getting in their way and fucking with them, only to later find out that the bots who gave them this task are Unicronian heralds and Ravage is trying to stop them from helping Unicron do what Unicron does.

Rosanna, everyone's favourite robot pop idol, comes from the second season of KP, although you don't see very much of her or her companions Glit and Sundor.

Incidentally KP sets up the Unicron Trilogy and some of its characters end up in the UT--which did come to the US, and gave us Alexis Thi Dang.

(This post is brought to you because I just wrote an Esmeral thing and someone was musing separately about Megaempress as a parent and I almost ended up writing this post while reblogging them, because I'm a nerd with a hyperfixation).

[m00nb04rd5]

Atari Hitotonari, Shaoshao Li, and Marissa Faireborn (Transformers Kiss Players)

[yumi-draws]

My redesigns of Ringo and Atari

I tried to give Ringo a more gyaru vibe, not sure if you can tell but she does have some makeup

Also I tried to make them look older, Atari is supposed to be 18 while Ringo is 21-22

Trying a new rendering style as well

[askvectorprime]

Dear Vector Prime, A long time ago your incarnation from Axiom Nexus told us about how a team of scientists worked to create the Trainbots, and each of them named a different member of the team. Since then we've learned about two other Trainbots, Yamabuki and Ginou - who named them?

Dear Densha Denominator,

They named themselves, as it happens—though not without some outside influence.

As with the majority of the prototype "G Liner" Trainbots, Yamabuki was not given a formal name upon her creation, instead going by her development codename "Yellow" or her nickname "Doctor". It was under this name that she met fellow medic Atari Hitotonari of the Earth Defense Command, who helped Yellow to work through her complicated feelings about her position as the Trainbots' doctor, and the two subsequently became close friends. One evening, Atari remarked that Yellow's paintwork reminded her of her favorite flower, the Japanese kerria; during her time as a member of the EDC's Kiss Players, Atari would look at those flowers to take her mind off of the stress of her experiences, and she now found that looking at Yellow gave her the same feeling of comfort. Touched by Atari's kind words, Yellow decided to rename herself "Yamabuki" after the flower, as a tribute to her friend.

Ginou, meanwhile, was originally known as "Silver" for the layer of silvanite—a unique, reactive metal—that covered his superstructure. After discovering his ability to manipulate silvanite to create protective barriers, Silver travelled to the New Energy Resource Research and Development Laboratory where the substance had been discovered, wanting to learn more and master his strange powers. Doctor Ōgaki, head of the laboratory, took Silver under his wing; he had more experience with silvanite than most, as his friend, the late Ginnosuke Minakaze, had discovered the mineral while the two were working together. With Ōgaki's guidance, Silver became a proficient combat nurse and defensive warrior, and took the name "Ginou" to honor his mentor's old friend.

[yumi-writes]

I don't know why, but I've been drawing Atari a lot lately. She's just fun to draw ^0^

[fleshandwires]

October 14

Head Injury // Climbing a Mountain

for the @tfrarepairing fest ;3!!

arrived in time (AT LEAST IN MY TIMEZONE LOL)

rambling below the cut

kiss players should have been transformers yuri because why is shaoshao like that towards melissa, why is she so possesive, SHE GETS JEALOUS OF CONVOY WHEN MELISSA IS THINKING ABOUT HIM.. theyre so,, one-sided crush and sort of doomed, thats the perfect combination ever but they never touch the theme EVERRRR.

ALSO. WHY DOES ATARI THINK OF KISSING HER TEAM MEMBERS (WHICH INCLUDES KAYU).

in a perfect universe kiss players is a transformers manga with canon wlw relationships (coping). these two recently started rotating in my brain after listening to one of the podcast episodes:

LIKE. why why why. why would you do this to meeeee,,

theyre just. so cute,