So......................
Beast Machines.
For whatever reason, this series has been on my mind lately, and I decided to post and see just what sort of general opinion the community has on this...admittedly off-beat yet very pretty TF series.

Personally, I feel that as a Transformers series, this show fails. It goes without saying that it completely debunks everything that was established in Generation 1 and onward, not to mention that there is no explaination provided as to how Cybertron became totally tech when it was once totally organic, and whatever role the Allspark plays in that...Pretty confusing, and the writing wasn't nearly up to the calibur of Beast Wars...but that's all been said before.

However, I like to think of Beast Machines as a sort of "experiment" rather than anything relevant to either Gen 1 or Beast Wars. That said, it's an incredibly gorgeous series, and the designs are top-notch. Action sequences are exciting, and there's a real sense of drama and dread to go with it.

Well, what say you? I'm simply curious as to the general consensus in light of this show, as well as in retrospect of the Beast Wars anime and Unicron Trilogy (....gosh, come to think of it, Beast Wars was the last really GOOD series we've had....)

 

Beast Machines is my favorite TF series. Seriously. I thought the writing was awesome, very dark and had some pretty cool religious overtones. It was a series that made you think.

Megatron's characterization was interesting. He was a bad guy, yet in his mind, he was restoring Cybertron, so he was actually some sort fo saint. Primal was a fanatic who nearly destroyed Cybertron, an excellent twist.

Nightscream sucked though.

 

When Beast Machines aired, it was lambasted and ridiculed by many.

but after 5 years of lousy anime, it looks pretty damn good.


I'd put it right behind BW as far as general quality of the show goes (with RID and G1 behind that and the "unicron trilogy" circling the bowl)

 

I'll admit that it does have it's good points when it came to writing...though it often became contradictory and tiresome.
Primal's speech to Megatron in the final episode was great, but the whole sense that "machines bad, organics good" was just really hard to swallow when Cybertron's greatest heroes, for millions of years, were all machines.

Granted, on a planet like Earth, that'll fly...but not on Cybertron.
Opinions, opinions, of course.

 

BM = Alternate Reality. Anyway it is for me. I can't stand the thought of Cybertron being turned into a garden.  

 

QFT

It needed more, or maybe just deeper, characters. Nightscream is the only TF character that I can say that I actually hate. He ruined many an episode for me.

 

It was good, it as others have said 'makes you think' and thats what we need.
I'll admit I wasnt fond of the rewrite but it's a good series, but too limited a cast.

 

The highlights of the series were the last three eps of season 1 and the entire last arc of season 2


Megatron being a Diagnostic Drone was so stupid that it was cool. C'mon, only Megatron could still be threatening in that puny body

 

Well I just talked about this in another thread, but to sum up, basically I think Beast Machines wasted all the potential that was built up by BW. I didn't like the writing, or the plot, or the new designs of the characters, or the "yay biological stuff" aspect of it, or the hoaky new-ageyness, or what they did with the characters' personalities. But I'd just ignore all that like I do with unicron trilogy if not for the fact that BW should have had a proper sequel, and we got BM instead. So now I really, really hate Beast Machines.

I didn't like any of the toys either. Except I think Battle Unicorn looks pretty cool, I might see if I can get one of those for a reasonable price on ebay.

 

In contrast to all the other TF shows made thus far, Beast Machines ranks by a razor thin margin #2 next to Beast Wars, then G1 including all the Japanese incarnations, then the rest of the TF shows which are pretty much crap in my veiw.

First thing about how I view BM is I dont put it in the G1/BW universe. Wile the writers very loosely tried to tie it in, its one of the very few things that does not work in the show and I really just ignore that aspect outright. Instead I view it as more or less as an independent TF show which I think makes it more enjoyable.

With that out of the way for me there really isn't all that much I dont like about the show as a whole. The CG animation was spectacular, leaps and bounds better then what Mainframe had done up to that point. The story was a great change, again like other fans of BM will say its very dark and had a much more serious tone then ever BW or any other TF show had. The writing I think was just as well written as BW. Some of the best characters ever can be found in the show, at least some of my favorite's. Jetstorm for example to me is just outright badass, Megatron was evil, Cheetor unlike say a character like Rodimus Prime was actually done right this time with the whole leader in training/waiting theme, and hell the whole brooding Silverbolt thing was great and added so much more depth. Granted and like others have stated Nightscream was annoying, but the biggest issue I had character wise was Rattrap as I think they just got the character completely wrong.

 

I recently started watching Beast Machines again as well nd find that i like itm uch more now than I did when it first came out. Perhaps because I can appreciate it a bit more. Some of the writing was a bit weird though. It seems that they had to keep repeating plot points from show to show. This was probably done for the benifit of kids, but it's annoying when you watch episodes back to back.

Also they would explain obvious things like not being tracked while in beast mode. When that was first shown I think it was explained pretty well without the charactersh aving to say "We can't be tracked in beast mode" and then later "remember, we can't be tracked in beast mode" and then "go to beast mode so they can't track us"...I get it...you can't be tracked.

In all it was a cool twist to the beast wars series. I like the basic idea of it, i.e. megatron broke free and got to cybertron years before the maximals. Certainly cool that he took over like he did. I loved thei dea that the transformers had to reformat and re-learn how to transform and stuff. The whole organic vs. technological thing was kind of weird though. Once Primal started talking about balance it got better for me, butin the end it didn't seem very balanced. Perhaps a maximal that didn't transform into a totally orgain looking form would have been nice, like what transtech lookedl ike it was going to do.

I think had transtech happened, we would have gotten a much more balanced show.

 

I've only just been able to see some episodes of Beast Machines curtesy of a certain public video hosting website.

And I'm hooked.
Yes, even the story where Rattrap betrays everyone for some guns, and Nightscream's intro story.


I can't WAIT until Madman releases the US boxset here in Australia. We're up to season 3 BEast Wars (or will be on November) I'm hoping for a Janurary release for BM.

 

QFT...about the anime

BM Was a great series that did more for Transformers than was possible of Gen 2 and Beast Wars. It introduced people to the new world of transformers that people thought was gone. And they did it with one character: Jet Storm. The buzz that was the new vehicons, I feel it brought a whole slew of collectors back to the transformer mythos (including myself) and developed it to what it is today.

Was it a little weird? Sure
Did it contradict a lot of gen1? Yep, but no more than what was done in Gen 1 and the comics combined.

And although I have nothing but love for the new series (RID included) it was more though out and better written than all of these new series, so much so that adults could easily enjoy it.

 

never got to see the show but love the toys the new ones there doing look so good!

 

had Beast Machines been longer, it wouldve probably been able to tie up the loose ends. And the only loose ends were the whole Cybertron originally being organic thing. Though that could be explained in a way. Primus was kinda organic looking in his original form. But how all those ruins got in his bowels is kinda hard to explain...Unless Cybertron was originally colonized by intergalactic Tapeworms...

 

I enjoyed Beast Machines at the time. One of the biggest Problems BM had in my opinion was it followed BW, and used many of the same characters, so comparisons (and problems) were pretty much inevitable.

One problem I had with BM was that it took itself more seriously than BW, which in itself is not a bad thing, but I enjoyed the witty dialog and funny characters of BW. BM had a relative dearth of truly 'fun' characters. Jetstorm was a fun character to me, but was taken out and replaced by depressed Silverbolt, who was a very fun character in BW, but now had tons of emotional baggage from what he did as a fun character in BM.

 

We also never really found out what happened to Megatron after he broke free in Transwarp. I mean yes thanks to the 3H comics we do, but it still would've been nice to see in animation form

I guess it was a good thing I was only a fledgling reborn Transfan back then   I knew nothing about G1 and my only TF experience was the rerelease of the movie by Malofilm here in Canada. So I watched and enjoyed BM on it's own merrits rather then comparing it to a cartoon I barely remembered

 

same here. I only knew about the TF movie and bits and peices of Season 3 (the return of optimus prime, ghost in the machine). And of course, Beast Wars.

 

I've never seen the show and at first I hated the toys. I still hate most of the toys, but I still want them, because I want every damn thing. Some of them are cool though, I think. Ultra Jetstorm, Nightscream, etc. I had a chance to get an ass load of the deluxes when they were in the KB Express in the mall but I turned it down, as that was during the period when I wasn't yet a completionist and their assness (Silverbolt for example) lead me not to buy them. They were all like...2 bucks though. I regret not getting them. Ugly as they are, I'd still love them~

 

I remembered enough about G1 to remember that it was cliched at parts. And pretty kiddy, if it wasn't for the fact that I got into Beast Wars and Beast Machines (meaning I liked the shows but not the toys) I wouldn't have even bothered picking up Rhino's 12 Volume G1 VHS set. And I liked that set so I bought the movie and the DVDs.

What attracted me to BW and BM was that it wasn't kiddy like G1. I remember back when YTV first premiered Beasties, that I thought to myself "Hmm I wonder if this show is as kiddy as the old cartoon". I liked the serious edge and that people actually died in that show/got seriously hurt