Where’s the dislike button

 

Animated had a better start and pretty consistently gets better as the series goes. There are a few bad episodes but not really any bad overall seasons.

Prime had a rough start, and while it does get better in later episodes it also goes back down again and some seasons were just kinda boring over all.

Also Animated never introduced any characters I hated as much as Prime Smokescreen. Not to say every character was great just that they weren't super annoying.

The only thing I would say Prime did better was Predacons Rising because there were actual Predacons unlike in Animated where Blackarachnia and Waspiator were never actually referred to as Predacons at any point during that episode. It was like the title was just to reference the BW counterparts and had nothing to do with the actual plot.

 

Prime, animated was terrible and i watched both when i was a kid i even watched beast wars instead of animated

 

Prime all the way. For me, Animated was terrible. Nothing about it was the least bit appealing.

 

Both are among my favorite TF shows, but I definitely prefer Animated. IMO, the only thing Prime has over it is the fact that it properly ended

 

Neither  

Prime was fun for some of the first season and the first few episodes of the second season. I found a lot of episodes rather formulaic and repetitive and it made them rather boring to watch. A lot of character interactions were rather stale and they overdid with exposition on some of the fronts (Ratchet spent half of the time explaining things and backstories to everybody, audience included). It did have some nice moments, but overall I would classify it as boring.

Animated had some nice designs and story arcs. I really liked how they gave all of the characters some backstories and development. Animated gets kudos from me for both character and worldbuilding.

When it comes to shows I usually stay for characters and their interactions. Unfortunately, neither of those shows had characters that I found appealing, so that's why neither.

Beast Wars on the other hand...  

 

Prime was decent to good. I could not stand Animated.

 

I liked them both, but enjoyed Animated more. Which suprised me as the first promotional stuff of Animared looked iffy to me at the time.

 

Animated was my first Transformers series, but at the end of the day, I prefer Prime. Animated had a good story, a unique premise for Transformers, and a lot of heart and love for the characters.

However, with Prime, I felt like it had everything I could want from a serious Transformers cartoon. It isn't held back by being a kid's show too much, because you have characters who die (Cliffjumper, Breakdown, Dreadwing), characters who get injured and don't get better by the next episode (Bulkhead, Ultra Magnus, and Bumblebee from the start), and characters who suffer emotionally (Arcee especially, and clearly Ratchet to a degree). I felt truly invested in the characters and concerned what might happen to them next. The voice acting is perfect, and it was amazing hearing Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime and Frank Weller as Megatron.

At a time when my interest in Transformers was waning (I hadn't discovered the comics yet), Prime kept me coming back to Transformers. While both enjoy high seats in my ranking of the various Transformers cartoons, Prime still sits at the top.

 

Animated. I do really enjoy Prime, and that show probably has my favorite Transformer designs aesthetically, but there were a lot of formulaic episodes in that show. That show also stuck pretty closely to what had been established in other Transformers fiction, and Animated had a pretty unique story to tell. Plus Prime had some problems that I felt were a bit glaring. Miko was one of the most annoying characters ever in the first season to the point that her not thinking things through resulted in danger for the Autobots almost equal to the threat posed by the Decepticons in the same episode. The Beast Hunter season did not deliver on the potential it had, like the dropping of Smokescreen potentially being Prime material plotline and only having one Predacon and two more for the movie totally failing to live up to the Beast portion of the subtitle.

Animated, on the other hand, was a welcome departure from the norm of Transformers storytelling. Having Optimus not being the leader of all the Autobots and instead the leader of an unfairly disgraced crew of a few Autobots that Megatron could barely even bother to learn the names of created a lot of good, unique stories that couldn't have been told in most other TF fiction. I cared a lot about Sari, and her subplot was one of the best in the entire franchise. Making the Earth setting take place significantly in the future made even that common element from across TF fiction feel unique. When Prime ended, I was satisfied, but when Animated ended, I wanted more.

Prime was great but safe. But Animated was amazing and unique.

 

Prime had outstanding animation, easily the best we've ever gotten. The writing was painfully boring. It wasn't actively bad like AEC or anything but there just wasn't much there.

Animated had (despite the name) some pretty garbage animation. The stock footage transformations were nice but most of the show was a poorly animated mess. The writing though, easily among the top-tier. I don't know if it's quite as tight or as good as Beast Wars but it's pretty close. Definitely the best show we've had since Beast Wars and it's not even close.

 

Animated was really good only at the last season (for me anyway). The first season was quite boring, with a lot of annoying human characters that no one cared! I remembered often fast forwarding the show as it was too boring at parts. The last season? It was EPIC! I loved it so much, that if Animated was as good as the last season all this while, I would have chosen Animated.

Prime on the other hand is much more grittier and a bit gloomy. Of course, it isn't Beast Machines gloomy. The first season was a bit slow, but the second season was when I was like "Wow! This show is really good!" I especially loved the final episode of second season. Prime was one of the only cartoon where the bad guys often won. The third season was okay, I loved the idea of Ultra Magnus and Shockwave, but I feel it shouldn't be called "Beast Hunters". It's not really about the Predacons.

Overall, you can guess what I chose.

 

Animated, for me was the better show. Prime was good, not the best, I feel that part of the series didn't work well, not because of the grime and gloom, but the feeling like it wasn't allowing moments where the Bots got to learn about earth. Yes there were some top notch characters, Knockout being a break out for me. But other parts of the show feel, well forced, and kind of like they were trying to be Beast Wars without getting what worked in that show.

Animated I think matched the spirit of G1 and Beast Wars, and got the idea of team work, while mixing Dark with light. I also got a bit of RID -1 in Animated.

So, while Prime was good, I really felt that Animated was the better over all show.

 

Animated. I think while the first season of Prime might be the last time the Transformers have been on a screen and had some value behind it, Animated as a whole was the last good Transformers show, and nothing Hasbro, or anyone has tried after that has really lived up to it.

 

Animated. It's more colorful. The characters have much more personality to them.

I think there's a lot of hyperbole said about Prime. It's not as bad as some people think, nor is it the best Transformers series. It had things I liked for sure, but overall it felt like Bayformers Lite with its McGuffins and tone. But I love Bayformers and greatly prefer it to Prime. Bayformers is unapologetically colorful (not counting the grey, metal shard Decepticons and much of DotM, but the latter fits) and interesting and excessive. The voice acting is often expressive and, at times, moving even. Some of the voice actors sell the crap out of their characters.

Compare that to Prime, where I think most of the Decepticon voice acting is great, but the Autobot voice acting is almost entirely generic and dull. Just compare Cullen's performance as Prime Optimus to AoE Optimus or WFC Optimus. The latter two are much more expressive, emotionally speaking. Even Welker's Prime voice gets better in the movies, as he sounds a little more crazed and fearless as Galvatron and a little more weary as TLK Megatron.

 

It’s kind of like saying which child do you care for more.

In that case, Prime wins. Episodes like “Crossfire” and “Thirst” put it ahead... but just barely.

 

Prime was far better

 

Animated. It was the only Transformers show since RID2K1 that I watched all the way thru and didn't consider dropping. I didn't care about the humans on either show but I actually liked the Transformers as characters better on Animated. Well, except for Bumblebee. He was a twat. Prime just bored me in the second season and I only came back for the series finale. The Beast Hunters movie was plodding as well.

 

I find Animated super overrated but it's way better than Prime

It's not some edgy waste of time made for super cool 13-year-olds.

 

The main thing I talk about with these two shows is the characters they introduce and the problems with that and why some characters work and don't work. Animated brought in characters as easter eggs and nods to older shows which helped with world building. ex: Team Athena, Science council, Elite guard and other background characters.

Prime does this differently, the lack of characters show how the war has destroyed everything but then they break that when they have a bunch of characters come later. The creators where also in a beast wars situation for amount of characters. ex Breakdown for Smokescreen, Skyquake for Wheeljack, Dreadwing for Ultra Magnus and Prime for a New Prime.

I found animated's cast more like able, it had its issues like Bee but was fun, especially the side characters. The only one off prime had (to my memory) was haed shell who was mediocre at best and doesn't compare to animated's. Animated had Wreck-Garr, Blurr, Swindle, SUV, Lockdown, The dinobots, Contructicons and....The headmaster.