Cartoon review - Cyberverse season 4

[griffin]

Cyberverse Season 4
Year - 2021
Episodes - 2 or 8 (depending on how you count them - it had 2 stories of 44 minutes each, but Cyberverse was made up of 11 minute episodes during the first 3 seasons, so to be consistent, the entire series could be counted as having a certain amount of 11 minute episodes)
Youtube links - The Immobilizer - The Perfect Decepticon.
Info on Cyberverse cartoon.

Spoilers here are more than likely.

The Immobilizer - A team of Mercenary Decepticons freeze the entire planet of Cybertron to scavenge for valuables, while Grimlock and Arcee were off-world.
When they arrive back on Cybertron, Arcee is immobilised, leaving it to just Grimlock, his newly found Combiner device, and the return of four Autobots called the Dinobots, to defeat the Mercenaries and their boss... Trypticon.

The Perfect Decepticon - Right after the end of the previous story, Astrotrain crashes in from the alternate dimension that featured at the end of Season 3, warning the Cybertronians that something is coming, and it is worse than Megatron X. Soon, powerful Decepticon Super-soldiers from that dimension start appearing all over Cybertron, fighting each other to claim the leadership... with one calling himself Tarn begging for the help of the Cybertronians to help him stop the fighting, by searching for a helmet device that could calm the rage of the others. Unfortunately for the gullible Autobots, as soon as Tarn gets the device, he then uses it to control the super-soldiers to take over Cybertron. Fighting back, the Autobots and Decepticons in this dimension are eventually able to get the helmet device off Tarn, but another major Decepticon is lost in the process.

---------------------

Cyberverse has ended a little bit like Gen1, with a much shorter season than the first 3 seasons, focussing on most of the new toys of that year. The difference though, is that many of the new characters featured in Season 4 don't appear to be getting toys, despite most of them (in The Immobilizer) being just redecos of existing toys.
Both stories seem to be promoting the new Dinobots, and three of them are getting proper toys (Sludge in Ultra class, Snarl in Warrior class, Slug in Deluxe class). Meanwhile, Swoop and Grimlock have the biggest roles out of the Dinobots, and both only get a small gimmick toy (in separate 2-pack combiner packs). And the 2-pack combiner gimmick wasn't even a plot device of Season 4.
Instead of calling the season "Bumblebee Cyberverse Adventures" at the intro, the intro should say "Dinobots Cyberverse Adventures". Bumblebee doesn't even really do or say anything in the first story.

While on the topic of toys (since the cartoon is always intended to advertise/sell toys), considering the 4th year of the toyline has a confusingly small number of new toys (ONLY 13!), it was really surprising all of those new toys didn't even appear in the 4th season...

- Cheetor (Deluxe) - not in Season 4 at all
- Ramjet (Ultra) - appears briefly, featured more in previous seasons
- Dead End (Warrior) - appears briefly, was featured heavily in Season 3
- Slugtron - Megatron & Dinobot Slug (Roll N Combine) - Megatron not in Season 4
- Autobot Hot Rod (Ultimate) - only featured in the second story
- Bumblebee (Roll N Change) - only featured in the second story
- Wheelgrim - Wheeljack & Grimlock (Roll N Combine) - Wheeljack only featured in second story
- Optimus Prime (Roll N Change) - major character, so a toy is expected... only really featured in second story
- Dinobot Snarl (Warrior) - new character, featured heavily
- Dinobot Slug (Deluxe) - new character, featured heavily
- Dinobot Sludge (Ultra) - new character, featured heavily
- Volcanicus (Ultimate) - new character, featured heavily
- Bumbleswoop - Bumblebee & Dinobot Swoop (Roll N Combine) - Both feature in season 4

Now that I have watched these two stories, the Mercenaries deserve toys, as they were clearly planned to be...
- Soundblaster - redeco Soundwave
- Buzzsaw - redeco Laserbeak
- Nightbird - redeco Arcee
- Bugbite - redeco Bumblebee
- Doublecrosser - redeco Rack-n-Ruin
- Afterburner - redeco Ramjet
(Trypticon is the other character, but it wasn't drawn to be replicating any existing toy or show character... we don't even see it transform, so could be anything.)


I liked that they gave both stories slightly different intros, even though they didn't need to. It could have remained generic, featuring the Dinobots, since that's what both episodes focused on.
The start of The Perfect Decepticon felt like deja-vu, as we had start off with Autobots and Decepticons at a unity type event, and something comes out at them from the sky above.
The plot in The Perfect Decepticon was more complex than The Immobilizer, but more predictable, as it was obvious that Tarn was only going to betray them, and that it would take the combined forces of Autobots and Decepticons working together that would prevail.
The simplicity of The Immobilizer had me fast-forwarding bits, and I would have liked to see more happening, particularly with the Mercenaries, or more back-story, but with such a small active cast in that story it really limited what the writer could do, plot-wise.

One thing I didn't like (in terms of plot devices), was how the Super-soldiers were invincible to just about everything when they first showed up, but at the end of the episode they were being easily blasted by the same weapons that were just bouncing off them earlier.
Actually, another thing I didn't like was killing off a major Decepticon at the end of the second story, as it just seemed to copy the death of Megatron just two stories earlier (the final episode of Season 3).... in other words, it was there to have "a death" on the writer's checklist, but didn't need to be, because no one else died after all of those super-powerful super-soldiers were running around, and just one of them should have been able to kill hundreds.
(after all those years of Decepticons being ruthless killers, hating Autobots, it didn't feel right to have them not take advantage of Tarn's offer to join him and destroy the Autobots... particularly Shadow Striker, who should have destroyed Bumblebee and Thunderhowl, and then gone off to betray Tarn later as planned)

There were some nice cameos, like Teletran X, Repugnus and Thunderhowl, as well as the Australian-accented Meteorfire with Cosmos. Wildwheel was there too, but seemed to be underused.
Trypticon was a nice surprise, but also felt a bit wasted... espeically how it ended, as a giant dino statue, instead of giving us a look at a city mode, or having him frozen in city mode so that it made more sense in the next episode (as a shopping mall that Optimus was supposed to be officially opening).

Overall, I felt that both stories had their good bits, but also a lot of flaws, making them a suitable end to the Cyberverse series, as I was rarely impressed by about it over the last 3-4 years... thanks mostly to the 11 minute format limiting story depth and structure, even with multi-part episodes, as they still needed to "end" every 11 minutes, which doesn't give much time to flesh out characters or situations before something has to happen with the plot.