Cartoon review - Robots in Disguise (2015)

[Paulbot]

The toys are a whole other subject, it's just that the cartoon in just three episodes, through good design and humour, has made me like all the characters a lot so the toys have a lot to live up to.

I hope kids take to it, and I also hope the adult fans enjoy it too. I agree with DELTAprime, the few episodes of TFP I've seen were all grim and serious and that never inspired me to keep watching. While this show is fun and a little silly and makes me want to see more.

[Bidoofdude]

*SPOILERS (duh)*

Just watched first episode. It's a pretty good show. It doesn't feel as intense or cool as Prime was, but it certainly opens up the world a little bit. It reminded me of Beast Wars, with the whole stranded situation.

[Firestorm]

Watched "Trust Exercises" earlier today, still really enjoying this new show.

the plot was fairly simple "Learn to work together" but it felt quite well done.

all five of our main "Autobots" are enjoyable characters so far and their voice acting is top-notch

Russel and Denny still aren't annoying so that's a plus. although I feel Russel has the weakest voice performance out of everyone se far.

Getting to the Villains introduced today.
I feel Hammerstrike was probably a much less interesting character than Underbite was in the previous episodes. both in terms of personality and design. (plus, "FILTHY LAND DWELLER!" hardly compares to "I ATE A CITY!!!" in terms of memorable catchphrase) he did however have an awesome voice (Provided by the wonderful David Kaye)
However the prejudice Sharkticon was completely eclipsed by the other Con introduced today. Steeljaw... cool, charismatic, cunning, deadly. his voice performance was perfect and the character was very interesting (taller than expected too.... dang this line needs a voyager equivalent for all these taller/bigger characters) I'm really looking forward to seeing more of Steeljaw in future episodes.

Russel's plan to distract Steeljaw was pretty simple, but pretty nice, and watching "Grimbee" try and improvise his way into distracting the wolf man was hilariously awkward.

Also there seems to be a bit of a running gag going on of Cybertronians talking to animals (Underbite yelling at a bird in Pilot 2 and Grimlock yelling at a fish in this episode) just an observation.

it's gonna be a long wait till next weeks episodes.

EDIT: Just realised, it was never bought up what happened to the "brother" Steeljaw was trying to awaken from his stasis cell when Strongarm found him. and that's assuming that the other pod fixit mentioned was Steeljaws, otherwise that's 2 decepticons that are unacounted for in this episode. (most likely just the 1 though since I'm guessing the other was Steel's pod) so did Steeljaw go back for his fellow con? did the autobots retrieve it later? or is it still sitting there? yeah thinking too much I know.

[Coldshift]

Love the light joking tone and the chemistry between all the main vast is great. I agree with the beast wars comparison in terms of tone and banter. The art on the other hand reminds me heavily of Tron Uprising a show I loved but sadly ended in 1 season. The sharp eadges and 3d characters against almost cell animation styles backgrounds. Looking forward to more episodes.

[GoktimusPrime]

Skipping past previous posts as I've only seen the first ep (thus avoiding spoilers for any other eps).

I quite like it!

Thoughts:
* Great to see that this story is a direct follow up from Transformers Prime. Interesting to see Cybertron in a Utopian post-war peacetime society (as opposed to the somewhat Dystopian post-war Cybertron in IDW ), and now Cybertron is populated with a whole new generation of Transformers who would've been created when Optimus Prime sacrificed himself.
* I love seeing Bumblebee as a matured adult character and no longer the juvenile kid-appeal character that he was. Of course, we saw him evolving into this during late Beast Hunters, so it is a logical progression from that. I really like seeing characters grow into maturity -- much like Cheetor did in BW/BM, unlike say Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime in G1 who magically matured when he possessed the Matrix (yet magically becomes immature when he's no longer in possession of it *sigh*).
* I find it amusing to see that Bumblebee has become an object of idol worship, understandably as a war hero. The line from the guards about him doing a "bad impersonation of Bumblebee" was pretty funny.
* Bumblebee kinda sucks at being a police officer though. Brazenly ignoring Sideswipe's hoon driving ("It's okay cos I know that guy" <---real professional judgement! ), having Strongarm and Sideswipe end up with him on Earth. Surely Bumblebee knew about the protocol that would bind Strongarm to be by his side (and thus invalidate his instruction to her to return to command). Why didn't Bumblebee call for another ranking Autobot officer to relieve him and escort Strongarm and Sideswipe back to the station? Don't tell me that they're the only TWO cops in the whole city-state!
* I like the Strongarm character. So determined to be a good cop and do everything by the book, yet conflicted and ultimately overridden by her awe for Bumblebee when he decides to break protocol. I actually prefer her to TFP Ultra Magnus because she actually seems more consistent than he was. I'm... not a fan of her voice though. Reminds me of Dot Matrix from Spaceballs.
* Sideswipe is annoying, but at least he's useful (i.e. pro hack skillz, rescued Russell from Underbite). I'll take an annoying Autobot over an annoying human any time.
* Interesting to see that they're putting a little bit of personality into Underbite with his sad desperate cry for celebrity. I hope that future Decepticons will have their own individual quirks. Shame that his vehicle mode looks so stupid though.
* Fixit is annoying too... I'm currently chalking down his stupidity to cerebral circuit damage from the crash.
* Russell is an interesting character. I do like how they've made him more 'real' by giving him personal real-world problems: divorced parents, strained relationship with his man-child father. They did the same thing w/ the humans in Transformers Prime as well; Jack desperate for independence from over-protective single mother / Raf being the isolated over-achiever in a large family / Miko's urge to break the rules because she's an idiot... (okay, 2 out of 3 ain't too bad ).
* On the other hand, I find Russell's father to be devoid of any redeeming qualities so far. The only reason I feel any concern for him with Underbite bearing down is because of how it would affect Russell. The character himself offers me no reason why I, as an audience member, should emotionally invest in him as a character (and therefore give a flying truck what happens to him). He reminds me of Lucas Flannery in Age of Extinction, only that I was cheering when Lockdown killed him. Gawd... that film would've been even more unbearable if we had to put up with him for the rest of the movie! If Russell's dad survives then... umm... he can guard the crash site for the rest of the series.
* Those museum guards were pretty trigger happy. You'd think they'd try to use melee combat techniques to subdue Bumblebee in hopes of not damaging the museum property that th--, what?! Did one of them just blow up a bust of Optimus Prime?!? These guards should get sacked the astrosecond that they wake up from being stunned/crushed!
* Sideswipe and Strongarm transform into Cybertronian hover-cars, but Bumblebee transforms into a wheeled Earthen car. I guess Bumblebee insisted on keeping an Earthen vehicle mode for nostalgia's sake. He is the only member who's been to Earth before while the other two haven't, so it is plausible.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Watched the first 3 ep's today. My thoughts:

*Referencing cool different facets of previous TF lore. For instance:
- Dinobots and Sharkticons (G1, Unicron Wars)
- Mini-Cons (Unicron Wars)
- Bumblebee a yellow sports car (Prime), Sideswipe a red sports car (G1), Grimlock a T-Rex (G1, Animated, AoE)
- A dad and his son are the first to meet the Autobots and with very little questioning join their crusade (G1)
- Steeljaw a blue wolf thing (AoE)


New facets I quite like:
- Strongarm. I think she is going to be quite an interesting character. A rookie uptight cop with a dash of hero worship for Bee thrown in. It makes a nice change as they seem to have made every female character either cynical or a smart arse in the last few TF cartoons.
- Different breeds of Con with different strengths and weaknesses

Things I'm not sure whether I will like or not yet:
- Decepticons with vehicle alt-forms but their robot form is a weird humanoid-animal hybrid. Has possibilities but may become annoying and reeks slightly of trying to shoehorn in a bit of Predacon action without going down the Maximal/Predacon route
- The humans. I usually hate them but I think I may like the dad if they develop the character more
- The animation
- The humor which is not really adult and not really little kid but rather a drab inbetween
- The storyline in general
- Grimlock - not really liking a few of the personality traits I'm seeing from our beloved belligerent Dinobot commander here but the character may grow
- Steeljaw has Defledurmous voice from The Tick. Every time I hear him talk it tears me between joyful nostalgia and wanting to switch the episode off so I can go watch old Tick episodes. I felt the same thing listening to Sentinel Prime from Animated


Overall I'm willing to give this cartoon a try. I didn't like Prime at all when it first started, and it eventually became my 3rd fav series after G1 & Animated so I'll give this a chance. They better provide some damn good toys to go with the cartoon though.

[Paulbot]

I wish they had of come up with a new name for the big green dinosaur guy so people didn't keep comparing him to, or wanting him to be, G1 or FOC Grimlock. I'm enjoying this new not so evil, punch happy, Decepticon-branded character.

Sorry to tell you Trev that the toys are just ok, definitely not damn good.

Just had a thought about the Decepticons with animalistic robot modes (which is the trend for this show). Perhaps it's a form of Cybertronian racism (like in MTMTE's 'bad' reality). All the 'animal' type bots have been branded Decepticons, locked up in prison and shipped off planet. Some actually are bad, some aren't and some we're not too sure about yet...

[Paulbot]

Episode 4 thoughts:

Most human-centric, kid-orientated episode so far. The obvious message was a bit too heavy handed and transparent early on. I liked the new female character, reminded me of Carly from G1.

With the robots, I liked that Bisk was a already in progress villain. Proves the show won't be just about the villain of the week, and there's room for a silly idea like Bisk not to overstay it's welcome. I really liked Chop Shop's design but I think if he'd been an Animated villain we would have a got a good deluxe out of it; don't see it happening in the RID toyline.

Overall the weakest episode IMO but still an ok watch.

[Firestorm]

Just finished episode 4

my (random unsorted) thoughts.
OBVIOUSLY SPOILERS AHEAD

*kinda nice to see more humans to help flesh out the world, and "Hank" feels like a fairly fresh idea so I wouldn't mind seeing her appear from time to time.

*Glad to see that (as I had expected) Bisk wasn't a major villain and was just a quick fight at the start of an episode. I am kinda hoping he'll appear again though since I grew to like his crazy gamer personality from watching and re-watching the preview clip.

*Getting onto our main villain of the day Chop Shop, very cool design, interesting choice for his voice/personality. and we have a decepticon now who just wants off the planet. so it's cool to see the alchemor (sp?) escapees all have their own motives and it's not just decepticons running amok.

*Since one spider got away at the end of the episode it's likely we'll see Chop Shop again in some capacity, which I am all for.

*it was crazy to see Chop Shop just shove Fixit into his arm socket and use him as an arm like that.

*Based on a lot of the dialogue in this episode "Minicons cannot leave their post" "You work for me now minicon" etc it makes it feel like minicon's receive a fair bit of Class based racism in this universe. or I guess it's not that different than it was back in Armada but now that minicons like Fixit have voices and more personality it just feels more obvious that there's some behind the scenes pecking order.

*That said Fixit got to be the hero today and it was glorious (if expected) the little guy is quickly becoming my favourite character in the show.

*the scenes between Grimlock and "Rusty" were rather sweet and really shows that Grimlock is definitely not a bad guy. very pro-teamwork. which is the obvious message of the entire episode "in a team everyone has something to contribute"

*Speaking of Grimlock, it's interesting to see them address the fact that he sticks out like a big green and black sore thumb as a giant t-rex. as opposed to episode 2 where it was ok for him to roll out towards the city with Bee and Strongarm.

*This was a very human heavy episode compared to the last few, and while I'd rather have seen more of Chop Shop it still felt like a good episodes

*I have my doubts we'll be seeing a toy of Chop Shop since it'd be hard for them to make a toy that can separate into 5 identical spiders. he may get a one-step or something that transforms from just the one spider into his robot mode or something, just my thought. in a perfect world Hasbro would announce a new special "class" for RiD combiners (similar to how deployers have their own class) which would give us Chop Shop at maybe a voyager class size that separates into his 5 spiders (although they'd probably all look a little different from each other to make the toy more interesting and to make it easier on them than having an arm, torso and leg all turn into identical spiders) I doubt it will happen but that would be the best Chop Shop we could get. unless they announce voyagers at botcon. but there are other characters I'd like to see as voyagers than Chop Shop.

*Speaking of the toys I expect that Bisk will be a legion or one step at best. if he gets a toy at all. if this was his only appearance in the series then that's what I feel, legion, one step or no toy at all. should he make more appearances and develop into a more major character then I could see him getting a warrior. but not for what little he did this week.

[DELTAprime]

Just watched todays episode. I'm still liking the show. The kids while overused didn't annoy me at all unlike many previous TF series and movies. Still like the Bots and Cons sections.