Super-God Masterforce was broadcast between April 1988 and March 1989. It is the second Japanese exclusive series, and takes place an undisclosed amount of time after The Headmasters. Masterforce has a very different feel to all of the other Transformers series, as the main concept of it is that humans are the Transformers -they merge with their transtectors to become robots. The main villain is also, for the first time, not a robot, but a mystical energy-being called Devil Z.

The Headmasters had a lot of problems, but Masterforce fixes almost everything. By giving the series a fresh start, and having a much smaller cast, it just means the audience actually gets to learn about the characters and actually see a lot of character development. Almost everyone in Masterforce gets a decent amount of screentime to flesh out their personalities, and characters like Ginrai, Giga, Hydra and Buster are likeable and interesting.

The writing is also better than in The Headmasters, with better stories which have a lot more going on that just plots about the Destrons stealing energy. But there is one problem with the scripts: characters repeat things said to them far too often. Like this:

This "statement followed by repeated statement with a ? on the end" happens far too often, and it just starts to get laughable at how many times it happens throughout the series. I don't know why the writers thought characters needed to repeat things said to them, but thankfully they got the hint that it wasn't needed for the next series.

The only major problem Super-God Masterforce has is that it sometimes does not give out enough information about certain things. For example, nothing is ever revealed about Devil Z's origin within the series itself. A direct-to-video clip show states that he was a "super-energy lifeform" from "the far reaches of the universe". That's it. Another good one is BlackZarak -whilst most fans were going to make the connection between him and MegaZarak, it still would have been nice for some kind of explanation to why he has become Devil Z's puppet.

Aside from these faults, Masterforce is a good series, and the best of the ones exclusive to Japan. I was initially put off when I first read about it, but I'm glad I watched it. If you watched The Headmasters and didn't like it, be sure to try this.