Transformers is an odd franchise in general as you might expect from a multimedia franchise dedicated to a toyline where depending on the character robots of all kinds of shapes and sizes can be contorted into cars dinosaurs rocks a toaster maybe even baseball capshttps://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/3/3d/CapBotsCapticon.jpg. But theres a unique whimsy to just about anything Transformersrelated made in Japan sometimes its to its detriment Beast Wars an entry widely beloved for touching upon some serious topics like the ethics of euthanizing a malformed mentally stunted being with a destructive power was given a gag dub that completely neutered many of its more serious elements Kiss Players featured weird evil robots with sausageshaped tongues that squirted mysterious goo onto the questionablyofageheroines and mindbroke the Englishspeaking internet so badly that it became impossible to discuss Japaneseexclusive TFs without it being brought up sooner or later but more often than not it results in spins on the franchise that truly bring something new and fun to the table. Mission GTR thankfully falls into the latter category. The basic premise is just as my summary implies hey what if some notable faction leaders from Transformers decided war is stupid and pointless and decided to change into cars and take part in fun friendly races instead? but given its Japan and moe sells they were all given race queeninspired partners worth noting: designed by someone who worked on the Microman franchise in the past. Indeed the same Microman that had a very weird Kancolle figurine tiein line at one point and we get to see how each of our giant robot protags bounces off a human? lady helping them in the race. Yes even Megatron the big bad of most iterations of the franchise gets a race queen partner as you can see in the top left corner. https://files.catbox.moe/lbcsv1.gif And theres also an OC designed just for this comic named Safety Prime the best Japaneseexclusive Transformer OC name we got since Yokohama Convoyhttps://anilist.co/character/326459/YokohamaConvoy clearly who was marketed as a mascot for this collaboration so extensively that he even had a whole official costume made of him. 500https://files.catbox.moe/qwifdn.png Sadly given this was a oneoff short manga there isnt much to talk about in the way of character development arcs and all that but its just a fun concept that gives you a brief glimpse into what the Japanese can do with the basic robots transforming into cars concept. The story itself is extremely basic and the art is very nice as per usual with anything Transformers drawn by Naoto Tsushima even if its as silly as the tiein manga I got with my Henkei Henkei Suntreaker back around 2009 where if I understand correctly Sunstreaker has to save a boy whos about to get shot to death by the Destrons for doodling on their plane parts but if youre looking for something more complex than doing things for fun is better than being an asshole about them this aint it still its not bad by any means. It does what it sets out to do and that is showing you that theres a cool line of Transformers figurines with little articulated race queens bundled in and these iterations of these characters kinda just have fun races all day instead of doing whatever the hell happened in the average IDW comic. Nonetheless I can easily recommend this regardless of whether youre a Transformers fan a racing queen aficionado or the concept sounds funny/cool to you. If you can find the raw or fan translation anywhere that is a pattern youll notice with a lot of these Japanexclusive Transformers manga is that theyre hardly ever archived on sites that dont die within five years. But if you can get your hands on it it sure aint a bad read.