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Re: Animated Series discussion thread (spoilers allowed)

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 1:29 pm
by JediTricks
Onslaught Six wrote:
and they didn't even get a planet-wide heroes welcome.
The word came down that S3 would be the last while the last few episodes were still in production. The "return home to Cybertron" was (very clearly) a last-minute addition to give the series some closure.
Bringing home Megatron without fanfare would have been dull and felt hollow, IMO.

Re: Animated Series discussion thread (spoilers allowed)

Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2020 7:29 am
by andersonh1
I never binge-watch shows, but my oldest daughter often does, and over the past week she's watched most of Transformers Prime, which put her in the mood for more Transformers series. Normally that's fine since I have a lot of them on DVD, but since we're moving in a few weeks they're currently packed up. We discovered a number of series can be viewed for free via streaming on Tubi (though G1 is so low-res and pixellated that it's hardly worth it) so we started watching Animated for the first time since 2014, judging by the dates on this thread. I had forgotten a lot about this series, and so had she, so we got a lot that was "new" out of the first six episodes.

It was interesting to return to 22nd century Detroit (an unusual time and place to set a Transformers series) and to note that the core Autobot cast is essentially the same as the core cast of Prime, albeit with different versions of Optimus, Ratchet, Bulkhead and Bumblebee, and Prowl as the motorcycle bot rather than Arcee. After all the never off-model CGI of Prime, it's annoying at first to go back to traditional hand-drawn imprecise animation. And there are so many references and recycled concepts from old series that jumped out at me. The idea of casting the Autobots as "superheroes" and giving them some human villains to fight (the Angry Archer, Meltdown, Nanosec) also sets this series apart.

I remember being unhappy with the character designs back in the day, but these days they're just another variation on a theme, and both the designs and the story setting do manage to distinguish this show from all the others. I expect we'll binge the rest of the show if I can get her to wait until I'm home and able to watch (which is not likely!).

Re: Animated Series discussion thread (spoilers allowed)

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 6:03 am
by andersonh1
We're nearly to the end of season two already.I have to say, I appreciate this series more now than I did at the time it was first airing. The character designs and the setting make it stand out among all the various Transformers series that we've seen, and the writing holds up pretty well. I can't believe that I never noticed how Sari's key looks a lot like the key to Vector Sigma.

Re: Animated Series discussion thread (spoilers allowed)

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2020 9:26 am
by Ursus mellifera
Frankly, I think Hasbro deserves huge points for making such accurate 3D toys from such stylized 2D characters. Either that or it was black magic.

Re: Animated Series discussion thread (spoilers allowed)

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 6:29 am
by andersonh1
We finished Animated last night, and though we enjoyed it, my daughter was not quite sure whether to be happy at the ending or not, because her two favorite characters died in the last episode, namely Starscream and Prowl. She was just staring at the screen with a "I'm not sure how to feel about this" look on her face.

I enjoyed the re-watch quite a bit, and would love to have seen more. I think there's potential in this version of Transformers for further storytelling and development and that the show could have gone on. But it had a good run over three seasons. Characters mostly grew and developed over time, they gave us a new and different setting with 22nd century Detroit, there were versions of characters from many different continuities (G1, Beast Wars, the movies, Beast Machines), new and returning voice actors for various characters, and some enjoyable human characters. I loved the cameos by Spike, Carly and Daniel, including a new kid by the end of the series. Sari just goes to show that precocious kids in Transformers shows can work if they're written well, and I like that the writers took the interesting choice to make Optimus Prime young and inexperienced so he could grow into a stronger leader. I guess in the end they left me wanting more, which is usually a sign that they did something right.

Re: Animated Series discussion thread (spoilers allowed)

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:11 am
by Ursus mellifera
I think that might be my favorite Transformers show, honestly. I can't think of one I like more overall. I could be forgetting a few, though.

Re: Animated Series discussion thread (spoilers allowed)

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 11:32 am
by Shockwave
It's definitely in my top three, Beast Wars and Beast Machines being the other two.

Re: Animated Series discussion thread (spoilers allowed)

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 12:57 pm
by Ursus mellifera
I just wish the toys were consistently better for those lines, especially Beast Machines. What the Hell happened there?

Re: Animated Series discussion thread (spoilers allowed)

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2020 1:30 pm
by Sparky Prime
andersonh1 wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 6:29 amSari just goes to show that precocious kids in Transformers shows can work if they're written well,
I wouldn't say Sari was well written... I couldn't stand her character in the first season. She caused a lot of the problems for the Autobots by recklessly using the Allspark key, and never learned from her mistakes, which was only made worst when the Autobots would even remind her about it. She only started to get better around the end of the second season. The Autobots serving as superheroes was an interesting idea, but unfortunately, I wasn't a fan of most of the human villains. They were largely just annoying to me, especially Headmaster with his "lee7" talk, despite otherwise being an interesting villain.

I did enjoy the second and third seasons though.

Re: Animated Series discussion thread (spoilers allowed)

Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2020 7:47 pm
by Shockwave
I forgot all about that, but yeah, I remember hoping she'd get stepped on early in the series. Or maybe that was the girl in Prime? I didn't like her either. Also, does Sari really count as a human character given that it was revealed that she was actually an Autobot?