Cartoon review - Robots in Disguise (2015)

[BigTransformerTrev]

Well I was sick in bed all day Melbourne Cup day so I spent the time with my son watching all of season 2 online as well as the 6 part mini-series (or season 3 - seems to be debate as to what its referred to).

Season 2
I didn't mind the fact that the team got split in half, with Optimus leading his own group (Drift & Minis, Sideswipe & Windblade) to hunt rouge Decepticons while Bumblbee kept most of his core group back (Strongarm, Grimlock, Fixit & the humans) to inviestigate Decepticon island. It made for a bit better variety. However after all the build up to them finding the island, I found the end two-parter somewhat lacking. Steeljaw took over the Cons way too easily but he did provide a good fight for Optimus and Bumblebee (who were having their own Leadership issues). It made the Decepticon hunter weapons look too powerful though - why aren't they mass-producing them so that every Autobot can carry three and be an unstoppable Con-bashing machine? I did like the Mini-Con uprising though.

The cameos by Ratchet and Soundwave were pretty cool. Ratchets felt a bit superflous, like they only stuck him in so as to have a reason to sell the toy. Soundwaves was awesome though, I liked how all the Autobots were scared to death of him and it too a massive combined effort to get him back through a Spacebridge.

Season 3/Mini-Series
Combined the relic-hunting from TFPrime as well as some of the locations, with the Mini-Con powering up from Armada. Starscream was done very well and was very true to form, Sideswipe being obsessed with apologizing got a bit tired and the Mini-Con gangs bid for freedom, whether that be via aligning with Cons or Bots was done well - really portrayed them as their own group rather than on one side of the great war or the other. My son was very upset that Tricerashot did not stay with Grimlock. Besides Starscream and the Mini-Cons all the new characters on show were recolours of previous Cons so nothing too interesting.

Overall the show is getting a bit better, but 2 1/2 seasons in I still find this series lacking compared to Animated and TFPrime. Given this and the lackluster toys I wont be praying for a Season 4.

[SMHFConvoy]

Another season has been confirmed. What I really liked about TFA was that they weren't in hiding and that not all the bad guys were cybertronian, even Prime had Mech.

The last fun episode of RID was the concert where Bee fought the 'Cons on stage, they need to open the world up a bit or get them off planet - it's been three seasons and there has been hints of things not being right on Cybertron.