TF Animated Ep15 - Megatron Rising part 1

[GoktimusPrime]

SPOILERS AHOY




Sari treating the key like a toy again was really annoying, and also counteractive against previously established development for this character - it's like she just returned to square one. While I could sympathise with Sari's point about having successfully defended the key thus far and about how Optimus Prime should respect her more as part of the team, the fact that she'd just used the key to create toy planes really didn't help her case much. I thought that she was over the whole "key = toy" thing, but evidently not... and that really sucked IMO.

Optimus Prime being so flawed was simultaneously frustrating and interesting to watch. He's was cracking under the pressure/burden of leadership and really didn't cope well at all... but what annoyed me was his sheer stubbornness, which I found was quite out of character for Optimus Prime who'd previously had never been portrayed as being so hard-headed and unwilling to listen to others. So unfortunately he came off as being more irritating than interesting. G1 comic Prime and Optimus Primal were far more interesting as flawed leaders because when they made mistakes it wasn't out of character. There was a lack of decent exposition to explain why Prime felt the need to chew everyone in his team out. It was almost like he was having PMS. (o_O)

Bulkhead was pretty good in this episode, I must say. For once he wasn't portrayed as being moronic. I liked the way he settled the tension between Prime and Prowl and also backed Prowl up when he was dealing with the Dinobots - it showed that Bulkhead was thinking... something which he hasn't done a lot of up till now. I really hope that Bulkhead will get further developed as a thoughtful character.

Sadly I can't say the same for the Dinobots, who once again were portrayed as being stupid savages. *SIGH*

Ratchet was good. It was good how he acted as a kind of moral counterbalance for Prime when he was freaking out, even though Prime didn't heed his advice. His heroic stand against Blitzwing and Lugnut was really cool.

Bumblebee was also interesting... his attitude toward authority is very Generation Y-esque.

The Decepticons in this episode reminded me of most of the Decepticons from the live action movie - lots of cool fighting, but not much character focus. The exception to this was Blackarachnia, who was the best written Decepticon character in this episode IMO.

The scene where Starscream thought that Lugnut was being subservient toward him was amusing.

The animation sequence for Megatron's reformatting was really nicely done. "Teeeeetttssssuuuuooooo!"

Not a fantastic episode, but not bad either. It is one of the better episodes in this series... but erm... that's not saying much. ;p