First impressions? Ooh, that's going back many years as I first watched Masterforce back in 1993 - albeit that was the horrific StarTV dub. That confused the hell out of me thanks to it's complete incompetent translation of the script. :/

I got a fan subbed version about a year or two ago, and I really enjoyed that. The story does involve humans a lot - humans effectively controlling/piloting transtectors, which is a new concept to get used to - but once you get used to it it's a very decent story.

The advantage of having humans controlling Transformers is that the humans aren't completely useless bystanders like in so many other Transformer series (e.g.: Daniel, Rad, Sari etc). They're actually participating with the Transformers and making an actual contribution to the Transformers' war - after all, it's being waged on their world with their people as casualties. And Masterforce makes the threat to humanity abundantly clear, even in the first episode with the Canadian passenger cruiser being attacked by Decepticon Pretenders and of course, with Dr. Gou (Shuuta's father) being a direct casualty. It's not as good as the binary bonding between Transformers and Nebulans in the G1 comics - which was an actual symbiosis between Cybertronians and Nebulans. The problem with the Headmaster Jr concept is that only the human or Transformer is ever dominant at one time whereas in the Marvel comics both minds were conscious with both minds eventually merging into one.

The animation is really good... although Victory is just as good (arguably better toward the end) and nothing beats the animation in Zone.