Episode 1 of the Japanese Transformers: Beast Wars II: Super Robot Lifeform Transformers, aired on the 1st of April 1998. It's title was ?????! which translates into The New Forces Arrive. It was written by Junki Takegami and directed by Susumu Kyoda

In December 2011 Beast Wars II was finally released on DVD in Japan in a box set form for 29,000 yen. The series consisted of 8 disks and included a booklet which had interviews with the some of the creative forces behind the show, along with character bios and episode summaries. At the time there was 150 yen to the pound, meaning the disks cost 160 pounds (around 250 dollars).

We had waited for 13 years for the show to be released in a format that we could get it on. We already owned 12 episode of fan-subber episodes, and had also ripped them to DVD as we did not have a VHS (video) player. The quality of those videos were poor, so as soon as Super Vision annouced they would be releasing the show we knew that the most expensive DVD set that we would purchase would be Beast Wars II (until Beast Wars Neo is released). The show is entirely in Japanese, with no sub-titles. We were asked by some fans where they could get the disks from, we purchased our direct from Amazon Japan having a Japanese colleague of Dave's bring them back to the UK for us. If you live outside Japan getting hold of this set can be very tricky, though we expect that Shout Factory will eventually release the series after they have made their way through the better known series.

Cybertrons:Lioconvoy, Apache, Scuba, Bighorn, Diver, Tasmanian Kid Destrons: Galvatron, Megastorm, Thrust, Dirge, Starscream, BB Guides: Artemis, Moon