I think Beast Wars set a new bar for Transformers cartoon in terms of delivering a series that simultaneously appealed to young adult and child audiences alike. Mainframe's writers realised that while the show was intended to appeal to the children of the time, the original fans of Transformers - the children of the 80s - were in their late teens or 20s by the time Beast Wars came out. Beast Wars is to the Transformers cartoon world what CHUGUR has been to the Transformers toy world; something that explicitly appeals to both kids and collectors alike.

That's not to say that shows like Animated or Prime are inherently bad - as I said, they're really not much better or worse than the G1 cartoon that we all hold in such regard. Because really, the G1 cartoon utterly lacked character development too (except for Blitzwing in Five Faces of Darkness who went through an excellent personal journey). But G1 still delivered some excellent short stories, and so did Animated and Prime. The difference between a short story and a full story isn't actually the length, but it's character development. A short story has no character journey, but you can still have good short stories. If we look at the better episodes in G1, Animated and Prime, they're all still short stories but they're good ones. An example from G1 is the episode The God Gambit where the Decepticons manipulate a people's religious beliefs via their religious zealots for their own purposes, while the Autobots try to be tolerant and respectful of their beliefs and fight against the Decepticons' abuse of said beliefs. This story is a powerful metaphor about the dangers of abusing religion for political purposes (i.e. the Decepticon cause). There's no character development in it - the Decepticons and Autobots all remain the same at the end of the story as they were in the beginning. But it's still a really great story. And likewise if we see some of the better episodes in Animated and Prime, we see a similar trend. I guess the important thing is that the better episodes still gave the audience a reason to care about what was happening.

One of the better episodes from Animated would have to be "A Bridge Too Close." I remember showing these episodes dubbed in German to a Year 7 German class (it was the last day of term ). These kids had never seen TF Animated before and most of them didn't have a clue about Transformers (at least beyond Bayformers). But the kids were really upset when Omega Supreme sacrificed himself to save everyone. When he stood in front of the collapsing space bridge and said, "I am programmed to protect and sacrifice if necessary." - the entire class were gasping and crying, "No!" and some of them even started crying... one so seriously that we had to get her a box of tissues! This tells you that it's a good story, because the audience cares. There's emotional investment.

I just wish that Animated and Prime could started off on such strength. I found with both series that Season 1 felt kinda meh, then Season 2 felt kinda hot and cold, but then Season 3 really roped me in... and both series ended just as they were getting really good! Robots in Disguise (current) gave me hope that they could pick up where Prime ended and run with that momentum, but alas it didn't. At least, not Season 1. I've yet to get into Season 2 (that's how uninspired I was by Season 1). Transformers Prime did end really well with Season 1 though. The alliance between Megatron and Optimus Prime and ending with Orion Pax defecting to the Decepticons -- phwoar! I couldn't wait for S2. And similarly even Season 1 of Animated ended on a really strong note with the eventual return of Megatron and abduction of Isaac Sumdac. I actually quite liked how Animated prolonged Megatron's return like that (and I hope that RiD can try to avoid having Megatron return (no S2 spoilers please)).