Unicron Perishes
From Transformers Wiki
| |||||||||
| See, we're not going to kill him, just destroy him a bit. | |||||||||
| "Unicron Perishes" (Unicron Shōmetsu) "Unicron Extinguished" | |||||||||
| Production company | TV Tokyo, NAS | ||||||||
| Airdate | 1 October 2004 (Japanese) November 17, 2004 (UK) November 26, 2004 (USA) | ||||||||
| Writer | Shōji Tonoike | ||||||||
| Director | Mitsuru Kawasaki | ||||||||
| Animation studio | Actas, Studio A-CAT (3D) | ||||||||
| Continuity | Unicron Trilogy | ||||||||
Giant-sized Unicron faces off with giant-sized Optimus Supreme. The crowd goes wild.
Contents |
Synopsis
A recap covers recent events, including the arrival of Primus's power, the recoloring of the Autobots, and Optimus Supreme's rescaling to planetary size.
A vast disk of energon light erupts behind Optimus. It's energon, as Misha explains, which will help protect Optimus and the Autobots. It also allows the two giants to walk around space as if it were a flat planet. The powered-up Autobots attack to back up Prime.
Scorponok is about to blast the Autobots, but Starscream stops him, pointing out the uneven odds. Starscream tells Scorponok that Megatron no longer needs them, as his dreams of uniting with Unicron have come to fruition. Within, Megatron remains infected by Unicron; his Decepticon followers are bound up somewhere within him.
Optimus Supreme and Unicron continue slugging it out. Unicron blasts him with his chest energies, causing him to fall. Within, the real Megatron gloats; his Unicron face tells Unicron not to interfere. During the course of the battle, the imprisoned Decepticons are freed.
The Autobots continue attacking; Prime revives and channels new energies through himself.
On the Miranda II, Rodimus, Roadblock, and Wing Saber have left sick bay, determined to help. Rodimus reminds Kicker that he himself wanted to revive Unicron not long ago. Signal Flare comes looking for his missing patients, who ask for energon stars to heal themselves.
A stray shot from Unicron burns three planets, reminding Kicker of their promise to defend the surviving planets. They prepare to use the energon grid; the Earth cities launch their energon towers into space. Unicron briefly overpowers Optimus; tentacles are involved.
Unable to overcome Optimus Supreme, Unicron begins randomly targeting planets instead. Optimus engages Unicron at close range; they begin firing at point-blank range. The energon towers arrive and begin powering up; Optimus urges Kicker to defend the planets, insisting he can finish Unicron himself. As the grid builds toward its full power, Optimus insists that he must stay, to make sure Unicron doesn't escape.
Optimus gives a final speech to his team, and reaches his maximum power. He fires on Unicron. Lots of energy flies around. Optimus Supreme unleashes a final blast, blowing Unicron to smithereens.
The surviving Decepticons despair. The gigantic Optimus Supreme seems to vaporize, and Kicker hurries to track his coordinates.
And somewhere, Alpha Q rejoices that his planets were defended... but despairs that the sun is gone.
And somewhere else, Megatron has survived... as has the mind of Unicron within him.
And somewhere else again, green energy balls coalesce into a sphere.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
Quotes
"Unngh!... Am I alive? Oh. Yes... I survived. I made it."
"And so did I. Hahahahahaha..."
- —Megatron and Unicron.
Notes
Lost in translation
Shockingly little, perhaps due to the heavily visual nature of this episode not requiring a lot of explanation for what is going on.
- In Super Link, Misha explains the spreading disk as "Primus's light". In the dub, she just says "it looks like energon" with no indication as to where it came from.
- The dub omits Starscream explaining to Scorponok that Megatron has been taken over by Unicron.
- A second shot of the first 3 planets disintegrating is missing from the dub, which instead features a random flash of yellow light.
- As the Energon Towers are being moved and Omnicons scurry to and fro, Strongarm calls for everyone's help. In Super Link, he was actually telling them to head to another city.
- When Unicron destroys his second round of planets, in Super Link, the characters simply cry about how Alpha Q raised them. In Energon, Misha speculates that he's targeting them because he has figured out they're trying to protect them.
- In Super Link, when Optimus seizes Unicron and gets blasted point-blank, Hot Shot cries out "What are you doing!" and Jetfire joins him by pointing out to Optimus that he's not likely to survive the manoeuvre. In Energon, this gets warped into Hot Shot asking not what he's doing, but "What's happening?", leading to Jetfire actually answering the question with the complete nonsense-response that the two combatants have become fused together.
- The atypical "my heart is strong" foofiness of Super Link is toned down for Energon, in which Prime merely talks about how protecting peace has been his life's mission, which he can only accomplish with the help of his troops. Compare this with Super Link, where he claims he will use the power of his "strong heart" to destroy Unicron, and that it is not just his power, but the power of all he feels for, and the power of all who feel for him, and blah blah BLARGH...
- In Super Link, as Optimus's Final Speech concludes, Kicker continues yelling at him to get out of there, escape, get away, etc. The dub changes this to a peppy "You can do it! Go Optimus Prime! Rah rah rah!" in clear defiance of the animation, which shows an angry/shocked Kicker. Jetfire and Prime himself get similar changes.
- Almost unbelievably, the Energon dub actually retains the use of the Super Link opening and closing theme tunes as background music for the first and final stages of Prime and Unicron's fight respectively, albeit in an instrumental form, sans lyrics.
Pain count
- "Uh?": 4
- Stock footage: 1
- "It's time to": 1
- We're a team: 1
Animation and technical errors
- Up to this point, Energon has tried to animate Unicron as though he were truly a planet-sized being. It goes out the window with this episode, however; Optimus and Unicron throw down as if they were normal-sized guys... on top of a... cloud... that they can... walk on. Uhm.
- What truly destroys the sense of scale, however, is that the rest of the Autobots are easily able to fly around well beyond either of the planet sized combatants and be seen next to them. The shots they fire also have far more impact on Unicron than they should.
- Since Unicron took over Megatron's body, the cartoon has used a patchwork of green patterns on Megatron's face and body to represent his Unicron-controlled self. They seem to be a bit mixed up in this episode, however, as (in both dub and original) the Unicron-face tells Unicron to stay out of the way.
Continuity errors
- The exact nature of the giant cloudy surface that Unicron and Optimus are standing on is never made clear, but its existence sure is convenient for the animators.
Trivia
- A large part of this episode involves energy flying around in space doing things for no clear reason. Chalk it up to the amazing power of energon!!
- The pose Optimus strikes as Unicron explodes is reminiscent of the poses that most of the main characters throughout the Brave Series struck after their final attack as their enemies exploded.
Foreign localization
Italian
- Title: "La fine di Unicron" ("Unicron's End")
- After Jetfire makes Hot Shot notice that he changed, in Ironhide's line: "Well, you should take a look in the mirror, bro!", "Well" is changed to "You're right", which makes the line totally meaningless.
Home video releases
- DVD
2005 — Transformer: Super Link — Volume 010 (Interchannel) — Japanese audio only.
2008 — Transformers: Energon — The Ultimate Collection (Paramount)
2014 — Transformers: Energon — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)