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The Best of Animated

Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2011 9:57 am
by Onslaught Six
In the interest of maybe reassessing the series, I've decided to make up this hypothetical thread.

Though the norm these days is to release full season or series box sets, there was a time when children's cartoons were best regulated to "Best Of" DVDs; a scant 5-10 episode disc set containing a few episodes. Let's say that you've been tasked with creating this DVD by Hasbro or Cartoon Network or whoever owns the rights.

It's simple. Pick 5-10 episodes of Animated, from all seasons, that compromise what you feel are the "best" episodes of the series. They do not necessarily have to be stand-alone episodes (you can have only one episode from that Sentinel arc at the start of S3 for example and not really be penalized) and you don't have to necessarily target this as an "introduction to" DVD (which would necessitate the entire "Transform and Roll-Out" 3-parter) so feel free to simply pick the best episodes.

This is mostly to give myself a good viewing list and maybe generate some discussion. You all know I wasn't that fond of Animated (I feel like it's potential was never lived up to, etc.) so maybe it's time to change my mind.

Re: The Best of Animated

Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2011 11:16 am
by Sparky Prime
IMO, the best episodes included:

Autobot Camp
TransWarped parts 1-3
Five Servos of Doom
Predacons Rising
Decepticon Air
Endgame parts 1-2

Re: The Best of Animated

Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2011 1:17 pm
by Ursus mellifera
I love me some Animated.

My picks are:

The Thrill of the Hunt
SUV
Autoboot Camp
A Bridge too Close Pt 1
A Bridge too Close Pt 2
Five Servos of Doom
Predacons Rising
This is Why I Hate Machines
EndGame Pt 1
EndGame Pt 2

Re: The Best of Animated

Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2011 1:49 pm
by 138 Scourge
Ohhhh. Five to ten. I was thinking "Five" and thought, "Man, most of my favorites are two-parters".

Well, if you're going with an intro collection to tell people why they should watch more of this show, I'm thinking hit 'em with as much in the way of standalone stories as you can. Yes, every season's got an overarching subplot, but I think you can get away with including that stuff.

So, assuming that said hypothetical DVD collection has a bonus feature that'll give the backstory, I'd go with:

Thrill of the Hunt
Whatever that episode that introduced Lugnut and Blitzwing was
Megatron Rising 1-2
Society of Ultimate Villainy
and This is Why I Hate Machines

Re: The Best of Animated

Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2011 3:46 pm
by Shockwave
And that one where Megatron keeps killing starscream and throwing him in the river. That was hilarious.

Re: The Best of Animated

Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2011 1:56 pm
by Ursus mellifera
Shockwave wrote:And that one where Megatron keeps killing starscream and throwing him in the river. That was hilarious.
That one WAS awesome. I'd forgotten about that one.

Re: The Best of Animated

Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2011 3:57 pm
by Shockwave
Yeah, Starscream is basically the Kenny of the TFA universe.

"Oh my god! They killed Starscream!" "You bastards!"

Re: The Best of Animated

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:34 am
by Tigermegatron
IMHO,The best of animated's cartoon series. were all the final/epic season ending episodes. these I felt were really well done & pure awesome. I wasn't a fan of the majority of the animated cartoon episodes because they were stand alone episodes that weren't tied to the plots/arcs.

The best of Animated's toys in my opinion are as follows:
Leader sized Megatron. Leader sized ultra Magnus. Takara voyager sized Bulkhead. Deluxe Arcee. Deluxe Blurr. Deluxe Lockdown.
Deluxe swoop.

Re: The Best of Animated

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2012 11:15 am
by Gustavo
I'd want something that serves as an introduction to the series, but with "Transform And Roll Out" being three episodes long, I can't justify it as the introduction, even if it is the best introduction. "Home Is Where The Spark Is" does a good job of putting the show on a decent footing.

"The Thrill Of The Hunt" is one of my favorite episodes. It's inclusion means we cannot have "Along Came A Spider", however, since there are too many parallels to Arcee and Blackarachnia's backstory. And thus we miss Sari dressed up in her Optimus costume. Animated really is the story of how different characters deal with regret, and balancing Optimus's youthful desire for adventure against Ratchet's experience of war is more interesting than Optimus leaving Blackarachnia behind. Ultimately, this means leaving Black Arachnia out of the set completely.

"Megatron Rising, Parts 1 and 2" sets up a more traditional Transformers dynamic with Optimus vs. Megatron, and it's a good fun story to boot.

"Mission Accomplished" We need something with Sentinel Prime, Ultra Magnus and the Autobot High Command, and this is a pretty good Optimus episode as well.

"A Fistful Of Energon" Samurai Prowl is awesome, Ratchet gets his Arcee-mangler back, and the many clones of Starscream are a fun cliffhanger to never resolve in this collection.

"Autoboot Camp" A good bit of Bumblebee and Bulkhead here. For their importance to the series, they are getting a short shrift in this collection. This brings up Wasp, has some Sentinel goodness, and the traitor Longarm Prime. It's also a very fun episode. There's a good contrast between Ratchet knowing the harm he caused in "The Thrill Of The Hunt" and Bumblebee not knowing the harm he caused Wasp.

"Five Servos Of Doom" What? Does everyone have a complicated backstory told mostly in flashback? Yes.

So, 8 episodes. There isn't enough space left to bring in Endgame, and enough backstory for Endgame to make sense. We could pull in the Blackarachnia plot, with "Along Came A Spider"and "Predacons Rising" but yet another character having a backstory told in flashback would be too much for ten episodes.

Re: The Best of Animated

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 7:40 pm
by Tigermegatron
the best of animated was all the season ending finale episodes. the dinobots episodes were pure gold.

Their is no doubt,animated will get a full complete series release on DVD by Shout next year. I seriously doubt shout is going to bother only releasing season 3 on DVD.