TF Animated General Discussion

[Gutsman Heavy]

I had zero interest in lockdown untill now, Bounty Hunter Lance Henriksen!? EPIC!

I thought Meltdown was ok...

[Saintly]

How do you get these episodes Kup? I went to youtube and typed TF animated and go from there but they usually want a more specific title search to do a search to include the upcoming/next episode. Like when I wanted the dinobot episode. I had to add "Blast form the Past" coz if I didn't it always just shows the very first episodes...

Liege, check this post -> http://www.otca.com.au/boards/showth...=3545#post3545

Griffin posted (#23) a set of links from youtube to all the episodes so far...

[i_amtrunks]

Thrill of the Hunt was far superior to Total Meltdown, but Meltdown wasn't too bad a stand alone episode, Meltdown will be interesting throughout the rest of the show, as they didn't show any way of reducing his threat level once he escapes from the force field.

Thrill of the hunt was excellent, ratchet was already my favourite animated character, and is even more so now, I want a "Great War Ratchet" figure too. Prowl is showing himself off to be quite the fighter, and Blitzwing's cameo was great, I doubt there are many people who don't want him to appear soon.

Hopefully many of the naysayers who reckon the show caters exclusively to kiddies caught Thrill of the Hunt. Might start to change their opinion.

[kup]

Hopefully many of the naysayers who reckon the show caters exclusively to kiddies caught Thrill of the Hunt. Might start to change their opinion

Despite my good review of this particular episode, I happen to be one of those "naysayers". One or a a couple of good episodes does not make a good show.

It seems that the bulk of TF Animated will be the super hero stuff like the Meltdown episode which I personally hate. The next episode in fact appears to be of this sort with the Autobots going against a roller skating villain. I hope that its not as bad as the Meltdown episode as it was on par or worse than Armada's worse offerings.
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[griffin]

Topic is closed temporarly while the Admin reviews the content. It's best to be starting up seperate review topics for each episode anyway, otherwise we have just one over-long topic that is hard to follow or jump into.

[GoktimusPrime]

(from the Ep6 review thread)

Am I the only one who finds it quite funny people get so hot under the collar about a kids TV show based on a toyline for kids? Just enjoy it for what it is, a childs cartoon, I love cartoons so I have no issue with the kiddy nature of this series!

And therein lies in part of the problem with this series. Making it totally kiddie-oriented isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does make its appeal far more limited as it tends to exclude older audiences.

IMO the Japanese Beast Wars and Armadaverse series were pretty ordinary, even for a kid-targetted series. Car Robot (RiD) was quite good as a kid-oriented series, but again, you'll find that most older CR/RiD fans are fans of the toys, rather than the series because it has limited appeal to older fans.

The appeal of G1 (esp. the comics) and Beast Wars was that it had different layers of appeal - to both kids and older audiences. G1 and BW had elements which appealed to both younger and older audiences - like The Simpsons they worked in layers.

Animated fails to do this. And even as a kid-oriented show, it still feels kinda mediocre at best.

As Michael McConnohie (the voice actor for Cosmos and Tracks) once said, you don't need to dumb stories down when writing for children. He attributes the success of G1 as being that they didn't dumb it down for kids. Sure, parts of it were campy/corny and there are glaring continuity issues - but overall the G1 premise wasn't dumbed down extensively for children.

And part of why Season 3 is less popular with many fans is because although in many ways G1 writers did try to smarten up the show (e.g.: putting TFs in a more scifi setting) in other ways the show dumbed itself down (e.g.: Daniel and Wheelie).

As McConnohie argued, kids really find it offensive when people talk down to them. He argued that G1 didn't talk down to kids and cites "The God Gambit" as a good example of a G1 episode which contained heavy adult themes presented in a kids' cartoon story that didn't dumb itself down for its audience. The G1 comics are full of other and better examples of this.

And Beast Wars - wow... I was a uni student when that show came out and I was totally able to relate to it as an adult audience member and G1 fan (as STL is currently discovering ).

When I look at Animated I find that the show is lacklustre in its appeal to me as an older audience member. Other than some glaringly obvious G1 references, there's just nothing about it that appeals to me as an adult.

And kids these days are being more and more exposed to cartoons which engage dual audiences - I've never seen Avatar: The Last Airbender but I've heard from friends that it engages audiences on two levels like Beast Wars. I've heard the same about Digimon too, but again, have never seen the show for myself. A lot of animé series works on dual engagement (sadly none of the JP-exclusive TF animé ).

The live action movie also had layers of appeal too, which helped to make it very successful. The movie had aspects of appeal for:
+ Transformer fans
+ Non-Transformer fans
+ Kids
+ Adults

Yes, I understand that Transformers is primarily targetted at kids - but one traditional strength of Transformers is that it's also targetted older audiences too - which is why Transformers has remained so endearing for such a long time for so many people.

We can't have the series appealing too much toward adults - that's what Beast Machines did to some degree and part of the reason why it failed. But at the same time, G1, G2 (comics), BW and the live action movie have already demonstrated to us that Transformers can be written to simultaneously appeal to multiple target groups.

Writing TFs solely at kids to me reeks of being slack. This attitude of "meh it's just a kids' show" to me feels like they don't really care all that much about Transformers. Despite the fact that Beast Wars was primarily targetted at kids, the producers and writers went to extensive lengths to ensure that the show could still appeal to old school fans. They communicated with the fandom online and directly enlisted the assistance of certain fans like Ben Yee. They did extensive research into G1 and G2... they read comics, watched cartoons. As a result they not only included a multitude of G1 and G2 elements into Beast Wars (in turn allowing Beast Wars to actually enrich and enhance G1/G2) but also threw in a tonne of fandom 'easter egg' references (like incorporating fans' online handles and fan site names into the script, e.g.: Wonko The Sane (also a reference to Douglas Adams), M-Sipher, Hooks, Starbase Rugby et al)! They even got widely beloved G1 writer Simon Furman to write the conclusion of Beast Wars! To me, that is dedication.

And the movie writers had plenty of dedication - on a different level from Beast Wars as the movie wasn't attempting to be in pre-establishing continuity, but there is ample evidence which showed that the writers did do some homework. And Michael Bay himself admitted being "schooled" in Transformers, a process which made him a fan of TFs.

...am I seeing this dedication in Animated? To some degree, yes. As I said, there are plenty of G1 references in the series. But where it falters is in actually making the story endear itself to an adult audience... so far the show has yet to do that for me.

Animated has the potential to do so, particularly with characters like Prowl and Lockdown - I so wish that they would develop other characters in the same vein, especially Bulkhead who still seems nothing more than a goofy cartoon caricature rather than an actual character.

Being really strong doesn't mean you have to be really stupid. Alright, you don't have to be a genius like Rhinox - but look at Brawn - his motto was "might over microchips" and was portrayed as a 'brawn over brains' kind of character - as was Grimlock - but neither was portrayed as being bumbling idiots (except for Season 3 where Grimlock was a clown, which really sucked).

One of my favourite moments in G1 with Brawn was in "The Ultimate Doom" where Brawn went, "I'll get the door," and just walked through a wall!

[kup]

*shrug*

I had a high degree of frustration with this episode. There were nice little moments with nods to G1 and BW but overall too many story elements felt incredibly dumbed down to make it interesting. That infamous villain at the start doesn't need me commenting much more than others here already have.

I was particularly fond of the Soundwave upgrades but what irked at me immeasurably was the key. Like Robzy, I've just about had it with the stupid thing. What they key did achieve in this episode was make me shrug at Soundwave's return. Sure I did like it was happening but it felt so cringeworthy.

I also agree with the sentiment that this is far more Shockwave than Soundwave but ultimately it didn't matter b/c a lot of enthusiasm I had for the good parts were rained on by all those annoying elements someone thought it was wise to throw in.

I agree and that is the primary issue that I have with this episode but for me its also the overall series. The 'cringeworthy' moments are way too common and last way too long hampering my enjoyment of any promising elements that the plot may have.

The core plot of a disembodied Megatron scheming to regain a new body and hamper the Autobots is brilliant storytelling in concept and an excellent twist since Megatron in the past has always been depicted as ever powerful, never vulnerable. However the ever intrusive and time consuming overly 'silly' elements and settings (slumberparty, trickortreating, birthday party, pony princess, absurdly dumb professor, etc, etc) ruin what otherwise would be an excellent plot premise and before long the cringe moments begin to outweigh the good moments making an episode frustrating to watch.

After 10 episodes the tone and mood of the series has been set and it is very unlikely to come away from it and sadly this is not to my taste. This is the first Transformers series that I have found so frustratingly annoying to watch that I am quiting watching it altogether, not even Armada and its dumb Pokamon plot managed that, so this is a first.
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[STL]

After 10 episodes the tone and mood of the series has been set and it is very unlikely to come away from it and sadly this is not to my taste. This is the first Transformers series that I have found so frustratingly annoying to watch that I am quiting watching it altogether, not even Armada and its dumb Pokamon plot managed that, so this is a first.

Come on, Kup, there are disappointments to the stories but they're still pretty decent. I've seen bits of Cybertron and Armada and I think those are far more cringeworthy and I can't be bothered following those. The dialogue is also second rate but here I think it's far better controlled.

Yes the cringeworthiness factor can be high but I think the caricatures are good here b/c I feel each character has a voice. Bulkhead may be dumb but he serves his purpose to the young audience. Bumblebee is annoying and immature but that's cool too. I think you need that rather than everyone's favourite little bot. Making him a little snot actually makes the team dynamics work better. I could keep going but what I think is that between the 5, I think they synch together far better. They're bigger than the sum of their parts. They are strongest when they bounce off each other imo.

I think more of the "Earth" elements birthdays, Halloween in themselves are fine. I think it's good to connect with kids even though they gnarl at me.

Overall, you don't have a perfect cartoon but I think for there is still a charm to it with a small core cast allowing us to warm to the characters. It's just that key that keeps making everything trivial that holds it down for me.

[kup]

That's my point, I am not criticizing the core of the story or the main characters, I am criticizing its overall execution.

The silly moments ruin the atmosphere for me and on top of that several episodes dont even feel like Transformers to me and more like a Super Hero series. Sometimes it even reminds me of Beast Machines in the sense that sometimes it doesn't even feel as if I am watching a Transformers series at all. Thankfully, unlike BM some episodes do go back to form (Thrill of the Hunt) but in most other episodes, even when the plot premise is good, it ends up being ruined by some stupid overhanging silly theme and the solution is almost always that damned key.

I did give this show a good worthy try but overall after watching 10 episodes, I have found it to be a poor attempt at Transformers and overall substandard despite the promising bits.

I am happy that you guys are enjoying it but to me it has become pretty crappy.

In regards to the 'kiddy' themes: I used to hate them when they were used back in the 80s and 90s when I was a kid for basically the same reasons that I am hating them now. They felt out of place and hurt the overall 'inmersiveness' of the fantasy world created. Fortunately back in the 80s it was the odd episode in a series that had this overly kiddy 'birthday!' or 'Halloween!' theme unlike animated which seems to have it every second episode at least.
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[GoktimusPrime]

STL: I find it amusing that you're far more forgiving toward Animated compared to your far less forgiving appraisal of Furman's work at IDW.