Zangetsu

Zangetsu is a Sparkbot from the Kiss Players portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Zangetsu (残月, "Morning Moon") is one of the three Sparkbots, who are secretly agents of Unicron. Zangetsu can fly, communicate telepathically and transport others through time when activated by a kiss. Zangetsu transforms from a flying, glowing sphere into a robotic hawk.

Deep down, Zangetsu begs to be noticed and to share his deep well of knowledge... but he's also almost terminally shy. However, this does help him not be noticed and makes him an excellent air-strike ninja. He has "attached" himself to Shaoshao Li, who believes that he has ninja transformative powers.

Fiction

Kiss Players

Voice actor: Yui Kano (Japanese)

In the year 2007, Zangetsu, Angela, and Star Dust suddenly appeared in the sky above the "Kiss Players" singing group at the Brave Maximus Fortress concert of their world tour. The Sparkbots introduced themselves to the performers telepathically and insisted that the three humans in the group kiss them.

When Shaoshao Li, Atari Hitotonari, and Marissa Faireborn complied, they and Brave Maximus were engulfed by a bright light and taken on a journey through time and space. At each destination, one of the girls encountered and kissed (while remaining unseen, unfelt, and undetected) a famous Autobot or Maximal leader of the past, causing a fragment of the Allspark to emerge from the Transformer's body for the Sparkbots to collect.

After a particularly narrow escape on the planet Quintessa, the girls decided to decorate their "partner" Sparkbots; Shao used her calligraphy skills to write the kanji 忍, signifying "ninja", on Zangetsu.

Following a brief shunt into the MD World (with Zangetsu and Shaoshao traveling through a latter timeframe), the Kiss Players came face to face with the Transformer god, Primus... and the Sparkbots' true allegiance to Unicron was revealed. Having tricked the girls into assembling the chaos god's Angolmois Energy rather than the "Allspark", the Sparkbots fled back in time to Earth's prehistoric past and resurrected their master.

Defeated by Primus's might, Unicron was again reduced to Angolmois Energy and, together with Zangetsu and the other Sparkbots, locked away within the planet with Brave Maximus assigned to watch over them for eternity. Or at least until 2007. Kiss Players

Toys

Kiss Players

• Kiss Players Sparkbot x3 (Multi-pack, 2007)

• Known designers: Yui Kano, Masaki Maruyama (original tooling)

Available only in the Sparkbot three-pack with his teammates Angela and Star Dust, Zangetsu is a bright white clear-plastic redeco of the Eggbird/Dark Eggbird mold (itself a retool of Micro Change Metal Hawk MC-16), transforming from a sphere into a robotic bird of prey of some kind. He has a keychain attached to his breast.

The original Micro Change toy also included a base and 2 guns that could be mounted in either configuration. These were excluded for all Transformers releases.

The Sparkbots set was only available at the Tokyo Toy Festival 2007 on March 18th, and is the final release in the Kiss Players toy line. The set also came with a new CD.

• Zangetsu toy gallery at Transformertoys.co.uk

Notes

• Zangetsu's name, color scheme, and decoration were created by his voice actor Yui Kano, who also designed Glit's deco. Zangetsu is also the only one of the three Sparkbots to have been given any form of characterization by his creator.