TF Animated General Discussion

[GoktimusPrime]

I just watched ep2 and yeah, it's a lot better than ep1!

The Angry Archer character sh**s me to no end. With the sole exception of Circuit Breaker (I'm not counting Cobra Commander because he's not really a Transformers character), human villains in Transformers have always been terrible... The Robot Master (although he wasn't a true villain, but still extremely lame), The Mechanic, Lord Chumley, the Roadjammers... gah... we can lump the Angry Archer in that basket of atrocious human villains whom we'd all rather soon forget. But thankfully he only lasted for a few minutes, if only Wheelie lasted that long in G1S3 And his attempt at speaking in Shakespearean prose was kinda cute (not enough to redeem the character though).

But aside from that, I really enjoyed the episode. When I first heard that Prowl was going to be a martial artist, I shuddered because "martial arts" is almost always screwed up in shows, movies etc. - in short, I thought he'd be an Autobot ninja turtle. But I like how they focused on the philosophical aspects of martial arts, and it was done well too. In the Martial Arts discussion thread we recently discussed the notion of binary logic in fighting, which is often expressed in through Yin Yang and Ba Gua in Chinese martial arts (and other Asian martial arts influenced by China), so from that perspective I really liked how in this episode Prowl demonstrated the application of binary logic based combat. In this case, Yin (0) = stillness and Yang (1) = motion; and it was only through a sequential cyclical combination of both extremes was he and Bumblebee able to allow the Autobots to win.

We've never seen this level of practical martial arts philosophy in Transformers before. Not in Bugly, Bludgeon, Banzaitron or Dinobot! And best of all, it really makes Prowl actually earn his namesake! Let's face it, G1 Prowl never really did much prowling...

So yeah, right now Prowl is my favourite Animated character.

I didn't mind the idea of Sari's slumber party. It's part of her trying to initiate the Autobots into human culture, which they obviously find baffling - and this is cool. As I mentioned before, even Bob Forward, Larry DiTillio and Simon Furman often made the mistake of portraying the Transformers as being too earthly. I like how Isenberg is portraying the Transformers as being otherworldly - something I haven't seen done so well since the days of Bob Budiansky. The Twister game served as a simple demonstration of the episode's Yin/Yang theme - which is needed to engage a younger audience. Remember that Beast Machines totally ran off philosophies similar to Yin/Yang and Aristotle's Phronesis and essentially was just too adult, flying right over the heads of kids and making it distasteful to some older audiences who disliked seeing it get way too hippie - at least here Prowl shows an immediate practical application behind his theory instead of growing a garden.

As for the "super heroes" aspect... I don't think it's too bad. From most of the Autobot's POV they're just there to help - much like the Autobots in Car Robot (RiD). They're not looking for glory or publicity per se - with the exception of Bumblebee, but his attitude might change after being educated by Prowl.

And that's another thing that I'm enjoying about this series - character development! In the first ep Prowl developed from being an aloof brooding loner into becoming more of a team member. In this episode Bumblebee developed from being impulsive into learning that patience is a virtue.

I also really like what they did with Megatron. I found it both original and, as Prowl would say, "fascinating."

Also, there was a lot less emoting with the Autobots in vehicle mode, which was great to see.