Quote Originally Posted by SkyWarp91
Yeah I like my flawed characters too - Optimus Prime always making a heroic sacrifice that sometimes doesn't really help anyone
Optimus Prime is a Christ-like saviour archetype, so each time he sacrifices himself he becomes more and more or a martyr. Most martyrs only become martyrs once... Optimus Prime becomes a martyr many times! But Optimus Prime's death was always in defence of something... either the lives of others or in the defence of honour. Like when he allowed Megatron to kill him after losing to him in a LAN game, even though he knew Megatron had used a cheat code to respawn himself. (reference)

Optimus Prime is like "perfect to a flaw" - his greatest strength (i.e. compassion and honour) is simultaneously his greatest weakness. But as his TFU profile states, if he didn't have this great compassion and honour then he simply wouldn't be Optimus Prime. And I think this is evident when you look at the fandom's attitude toward Dai Atlas. In Japan he is a controversial character who is widely criticised by fans for being too ruthless and lacking mercy toward his enemies. Which is true - he has an absolute "take no prisoners" attitude when he fights Decepticons. Look at what he did to poor Predaking! Now tactically this makes sense. You're leading the Autobots in an interstellar war against the Decepticons which has been raging for millions of years -- why bother letting them retreat? All of the Decepticons that Dai Atlas fought against ended up dead. A quick and decisive victory for the Autobots (and a great way to end an entire series in a single-episode OVA ). But yet Dai Atlas is widely disliked by Japanese fans because they see him as lacking the most fundamentally important element needed for an Autobot leader - honour and compassion. The standard set by Optimus Convoy (sic).

Quote Originally Posted by SkyWarp91
Megatron not killing Starscream for betraying him AGAIN and AGAIN until he became Galvatron
Megatron did admit to the stupidity of always keeping Starscream around in G2.

Quote Originally Posted by SkyWarp91
and Ultra Magnus for not being confident enough in himself lol.
To be fair it was only when he prematurely had the mantle of leadership thrust on him in TFTM. After the events of TFTM Magnus proved to be quite a reasonably good character I thought. Yes he constantly got his butt handed back to him repeatedly by Galvatron... but of course, Galvatron was portrayed as a demi-god so ya know... t'was no easy task.