Brave Series - Relationship To Transformers

Relationship To Transformers

The initial concept designs for Brave Exkaiser, the first Brave Series, were intended to be Transformers designs. While the Brave robot Ultra Raker was very far along at this stage, the Max team and King Exkaiser bore little resemblance to their final designs.

There are also similar design elements between the Brave toys and Generation 2/Beast Wars Transformers, which were released around the same time as the Brave toys. For example, many of the Da-Garn toys have light-piped eyes thanks to transparent pieces of plastic in their heads, a design element which many Generation 2 Transformers share. The Goldran DX toyline contains many projectile launchers, something Generation 2 shared as well. In particular, the Goldran toy "Advenger" contains a rotor-launching gimmick identical to that of Rotor Force from Generation 2. Lastly, the elbows of Leon from DX Leonkyzer contain ball joints, a design element that gained much broader use during Generation 2 and even more so during the Beast Wars toy line.

The Brave Series also reused character designs and toys from previous Transformers series. (A complete listing of those reuses follows in the section below).

Similarly, subsequent Transformers lines have also been influenced by the Brave Series. The Japanese Mini-Con Kingbolt's coloration and characterization are homages to the Brave series Exkaiser. Also, the Cybertron cartoon featured many homages to the Brave series King Of Braves GaoGaiGar, most notably the way Optimus Prime combines with Leobreaker and Wing Saber, which is similar to the way GaoGaiGar combines with Goldymarg (Who coincidentally shares a voice actor with Leobreaker) and Stealth Gao and the fact that Hot Shot was identical to Volfogg because of his appearance and transformation. The cinematography for Energon Optimus Prime's stock-footage combination sequence with his Prime Force limbs is also very reminiscent of Brave series stock footage. Transformers Animated characters Jetstorm and Jetfire's combination into Safeguard is a direct homage to the GaoGaiGar's symmetrical dockers, specifically HyoRyu and EnRyu who form ChoRyuJin who themselves are a homage to Exkaiser characters Blue Raker and Green Raker who combine to form Ultra Raker. Transformers Energon character Omega Supreme is also a homage to the symmetrical dockers. One striking difference between the Brave Series and Transformers is that very few villain robots were released for the former. This is in sharp contrast to most of the Transformers series, for which heroes and villains were and are released in relatively equal numbers (with the exception of Zone and Battlestars). Generally speaking, the lack of villain toys is more the norm for such toy lines in Japan, with the various Transformers lines (save for aforementioned two) being the exception there rather than the rule.