occupants stripped of their sparks. An encounter with the ancient Cybertronian computer, the Oracle, sees them reformatted into new technorganic bodies that blend their mechanical natures with the organic material they acquired on Earth, and as the story of the show develops, an organic past to Cybertron is steadily revealed, as is the story of the Maximal's missing memories and friends. Influences from the original Transformers began to creep into the show as they had with Beast Wars before it, until more obscure concepts such as the key to Vector Sigma and the Plasma Energy Chamber played major roles in the series, each one exemplifying one of the mantras espoused - Primal's dedication to seeing the organic flourish, and Megatron's desire for unfeeling, unthinking technological perfection. The clash between these two powers marked the end of the first season, and served to provide Primal with the revelation that drove the second - that he had been wrong, and that the Oracle desired not the domination of one power over the other, but a balance between the organic and the technological. The second season of the show dove headlong into the storyline, with Megatron body-swapping repeatedly, and the concept of the show allowing for such left-field creations as an entirely organic Transformer that changed from beast to beast, and a Maximal who transformed into a plant. The series concluded with a drawn-out battle between Primal and Megatron, which ultimately concluded with their deaths, allowing the planet-wide reformatting of Cybertron into a technorganic paradise. Beast Machines was not exported to Japan for several years, finally reaching the country in 2004 under the title of Beast Wars Returns. Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2001 series) After the conclusion of Beast Wars Metals, it was necessary for Takara to once again produce an original Transformers animated series and toyline, as Beast Machines had not yet amassed enough episodes to make importing it viable. To that end, the new cel-animated series Transformers: Car Robots (occasionally referred to by the misnomer, Transformers 2000) was produced for broadcast in Japan for 2000. The series, however, ultimately proved duly unsuccessful (to the extent that there was no Transformers animated series broadcast in Japan in 2001) and following both the conclusion of it and the second season of Beast Machines, Takara and Hasbro opted to co-produce the next series for the first time. With this decision made, Hasbro scrapped their