City of Steel

The Transformers episode 19
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For a detailed overview of this episode, click here.

The Decepticons take over New York City.
Original USA broadcast date: October 17th, 1985

Contents
1) Synopsis
2) Notes
3) Errors


Synopsis

The Decepticons are working on a major construction project underneath New York City. They start taking down buildings and replacing them with new, Cybertron-style structures, as Megatron intends to make the city into a new Cybertron. The Autobots learn about what's going on and head to New York, where they battle the Decepticons. Optimus Prime falls when Scavenger bashes apart the ground under him. Megatron severs Prime's motor relays and then has Hook cut the Autobot leader up into pieces. The Constructicons start making use of Prime's various body parts. Despite this, Prime is still alive.

Megatron orders the Autobots to leave the city, but a group of them return and sneak into the subway. There, they are attacked by what appears to be a robot alligator -not knowing the beast is made from some of Prime's body parts! Hound uses his scanner to locate Prime, but they only find his head. They realize his body parts are elsewhere, and that the robot alligator they just ran from was most of Prime's body. They go back and subdue the robot alligator, allowing Ratchet to mostly repair Prime -although he's still missing an arm.

With their leader safe, the Autobots all return to the city, where they deal with some of the Decepticon's defenses -including laser turrets and "battle taxis". Prime notices his missing arm is being used as a weapon on a building, so he, Ratchet and Ironhide start scaling it. The Constructicons transform into Devastator, who goes after Prime. He manages to grab Prime, but Prime is able to control his missing arm, making it shoot Devastator in the back. He falls, whilst Ironhide and Ratchet catch Prime.

Devastator smashes into the ground, and reverts back to the individual Constructicons. They fly away and retreat, as Megatron tells Soundwave that whilst the Autobots may have destroyed their new city, they aren't defeated yet -they will return. As the rest of the Decepticons leave, Prime gets his arm back into place and tells the Autobots to transform and roll out.

Notes

-Unlike the first season, which was entirely animated by Toei Animation, season two has several different animation studios animate episodes. This episode was animated by a company called AKOM, who unfortunately didn't do very good work. They would thankfully only animate a total of 3 episodes for this season (with The Autobot Run and The Core being the other 2) but sadly would be heavily involved for the third season. AKOM's episodes are usually filled with very noticeable errors, and whilst Toei's episodes usually have lots of errors, AKOM's always tend to stand out a lot more. Layering errors, coloring errors, off-model characters... you name it, AKOM episodes will have it. AKOM episodes also tend to have characters doing weird little things that probably weren't in the script, such as this, where Megatron nicely holds his hands in a strange manner, that makes him look like a choir boy.

-This episode also sees the debit of a new character: Buzzsaw. The production bible for the series has a simple note about Buzzsaw, which is written under Laserbeak's bio:

Buzzsaw doesn't even get his own bio! It seems that, because Buzzsaw's toy came packaged free with Soundwave's toy, there was no need to advertise him in the cartoon. That's why Laserbeak was so heavily pushed throughout the first two seasons of the show, as his toy required a separate purchase. Buzzsaw would only appear in a total of just 4 episodes of the second season.

-This episode also marks the starts of some of Megatron's dumber plans that pop up this season. Watching him order Soundwave to send in the "battle taxis" is always funny.

Errors

-During this shot, Soundwave's shoulder cannon is colored red instead of blue.
-When the Autobots arrive at the park, Ironhide overlaps Optimus, but what's much more noticeable is that Bluestreak overlaps Ratchet and Ironhide.
-A unknown, yellow-colored Decepticon is seen standing next to Soundwave during this shot.
-As Scavenger starts bashing the ceiling, the cracks appear over him instead of just on the ceiling.
-When Megatron tells Prime the rest of North America will fall to him, his hand overlaps Prime's smoke stack.
-The blue lighting effect over Prime's eyes is slightly misaligned during this shot.
-When Soundwave sends Laserbeak and Buzzsaw out, the Buzzsaw cassette is initially colored the same as Laserbeak.