One of the reasons I kept getting Comics BonBon was for the Beast Wars II,
Beast Wars Neo and Beast Wars Metals manga installments. While I don't read
or speak any Japanese worth mentioning, the manga were aimed at kids and the
storytelling was generally good enough that I could figure out what was going
on without being able to read the words. However, I did get help from
various sources to clarify points.
Beast Wars II
Prefaced by a brief (2 page) piece in June 1998, the Beast Wars II manga ran
for eight installments. Like all the manga series, it has its own storyline
related to the anime, but not exactly following the anime. This is largely
due to the fact that the manga has something like 200-300 pages to tell a
story that covers around forty anime episodes, so some compression is
inevitable. Oh, the episode titles are my own for the most part. I
generally didn't bother getting the official titles translated.
"Getting A Head": The two sides land on Gaea and
Megastorm comes up with a scheme for using his leader to power a
super-weapon.
"Angolmois Hoard Part 1": Galvatron has found a city
of the original inhabitants of Gaea and hopes to tap it for power. Lioconvoy
wants to stop him...but can he?
"Angolmois Hoard Part 2": The giant Galvatron has
Lioconvoy on the ropes until Lioconvoy absorbs the Angolmois energy
himself...which makes him powerful and insane. Will Convoy be able to save
him from himself?
"Cybertron de Bergerac": A light-hearted episode.
Bighorn has fallen in love with the Seacon pirate Scylla, but he's too shy to
woo her in person. So he sends Scuba as his intermediary...and Scylla falls
in love with the handsome squid Cybertron. Wackiness ensues.
"Enter the Kangaroo": A former prize-fighter named
Star Upper (the winner of a fan character-creation contest, and secret
character in the BWII Gameboy game) comes to Gaea, trying to regain the
courage he'd lost in the ring.
"The Cyborg Kid": Immersion in angolmois energy has
turned the Destrons into cyborb beasts, and now they plan to bring the
Tasmanian Kid into their group....
"The Coming of Nemesis": The endgame begins as
Galvatron summons his starship Nemesis to Gaea to harvest the planet's
angolmois energy. That the planet will die in the process doesn't bother him
at all.
"Beast Wars Second - THE END!": It's a big knock-down
drag-out as the Cybertrons and Destrons battle on the surface of Nemesis for
all the marbles. Megastorm gets a great death scene.
Beast Wars Neo
Another 8-episode manga. While I haven't seen much of the anime, it appears
that this manga diverges quite radically from it, linking more closely to the
end of the BWII manga and taking a spiritual bent.
"Beast Wars Neo: Prologue": On a primitive planet with
fauna similar to Terran dinosaurs and Ice Age critters, one of the angolmois
energy capsules spread by the explosion of the Nemesis has affected the
locals. A gang of evil dinosaurs have been transformed into Destrons, and
a battered Lioconvoy is too injured to stop them. So he transfers his energy
into a mammoth named Big, charging him with continuing the good fight.
"The Rookies": Set some years after the previous
story, Big Convoy is given command of a rookie task force and sent out to
seek the angolmois capsules and stop Magmatron, Big Convoy's nemesis created
out of the dinosaurs. But Magmatron has allies of his own....
"The World Is Hollow...": Inside a hollow asteroid is
a worldship containing an angolmois capsule and a strange menace of sand.
"Crisis of Infinite Clones": In a continuation of the
previous episode, the sand turns out to be infested with microbots which
quickly learn to mimic the Cybertrons...
"The World Ash": The Cybertrons come to a forest world
known as Greengard, only to find it a frozen wasteland due to the presence of
the evil angolmois energy. Stampy must overcome his fears or the mission is
doomed.
"The Great Old One": Inside a colony worldship of
Corahda's people, the young Cybertron must relive his greatest shame and
overcome it, as their mission starts to look more and more important.
"The Chaos-Master": After a montage of collecting the
remaining angolmois capsules, the Cybertrons are lured into a trap by the
being whose energy the angolmois truly is...UNICRON!
"Our Darkest Hour": It's everyone versus Unicron and
his Blentrons for all the marbles, and Big Convoy is finally free of his
obligation to Lioconvoy.
Beast Wars Metals
The last manga series in BonBon (to my knowledge, anyway...I haven't heard of
any Car Robots manga) was a six-parter covering Beast Wars Metals, which
itself was a translation/rearrangement of the second and third seasons of
ther U.S. Beast Wars series. The manga is VERY brutal....
"Aftermath": A terrible space battle between
Cybertrons and Destrons over a primitive planet has left scattered handsful
of both sides stranded, and Metal Convoy's body has been shattered almost
beyond repair...and captured! Can a desperate journey by Rhinox into the
Matrix bring Convoy back?
"Protoform X": On a crashed Cybertron ship, a hidden
danger lurks...Protoform X! It costs Metal Convoy an arm and a leg (and some
other body parts), but he manages to exile the monstrous Transformer to
orbit.
"Code of Assassin": Jaguar, a psychopathic Destron
locked up by his own people, decides to finish off the Beast Wars by killing
everyone who survived the initial battle!
"Web of Deceit": Tarantulas has taken over the mind
of Tigatron, and is forcing him to kill his beloved Airazor. But she's able
to fight back....
"The Future Ends Now!": Megatron has discovered the
Ark, and the fact that this planet is primitive Earth. He wants to destroy
the original Convoy's sleeping form, but is betrayed by Blackarachnia. Bad
move...he merges with the original Megatron, and then funky stuff happens,
with Protoform X exploding and releasing all the sparks he'd consumed. The
dead walk....
"Unity": With the birth of New Convoy (Optimal
Optimus) and Tigerhawk from the ashes of dying Cybertrons, the tide shifts
and the day is saved!