Peter Cullen Introduced Me to Anime
The legendary voice actor, who died this week, was best known as Optimus Prime, but for a generation of millenials, he heralded the Toonami boom of the late '90s.
Is it sacrilege that my first exposure to Peter Cullen's Optimus Prime was the first Michael Bay movie?
Despite being an unabashed lover of giant robots from a young age, I was never really a Transformers kid growing up. A 1991 birth year was that weird limbo, just too late to catch the G1 cartoon and a little too early for Beast Wars spinning up. It was a blind spot that missed me until the Bayhem of it all, and even then (or perhaps because of the general qualities of those movies; I only really saw the first one because a boy I had a crush on at school wanted to go see it) Transformers has managed to pass me by, whether it's the shows or the endless litany of action figures Hasbro has churned out over the years.
That isn't to dismiss the cultural impact of the franchise, nor Peter Cullen's legendary performance as Optimus Prime in light of his passing this week. Transformers just wasn't "mine" like it was for a whole bunch of kids around my age. It didn't stop Peter Cullen from playing a crucial role in introducing me to the giant robots that would change my entire fandom life, though.