Armada was the third Transformers cartoon I've watched (after Beast Wars and RiD), but was the second one I watched after it ignited my interest for Transformers that started in RiD. Watching it as a kid, the minicon concept where it partners with a Transformers and powers them up was quite cool. I didn't mind the focus on collecting the minicons in the early episodes, and I didn't even notice the errors in animation.
After rewatching it last year, it doesn't hold up as well, and I can see a lot of flaws. Yet it was still enjoyable and there are some really neat concepts here. There's the aforementioned minicons, I loved Sideways' shifting allegiance (with the head gimmick where it changes depending on whether he was an Autobot or Decepticon) and I really loved Starscream's defection to the Autobots (no matter how short).
Armada Starscream is my favourite rendition of the character, he's got a great design, and he's the most honourable out of all his iterations. I liked his wingblade and shoulder cannons. His death scene was also quite memorable. It was this show that made Starscream one of my favourite characters in terms of both design and personality.
I know many say that the series pick up in the latter episodes when Unicron shows up but I still found it to be quite average. There wasn't a real plot and Unicron never really came online (which meant no big battle). I did think that the teamwork between Optimus and Megatron was great. While there were many concepts that I loved, overall, Armada was an average cartoon.
"sometimes the things you see might not be real and the things that are real you might not see"
Reply With Quote
