All I'm going to say about Aligned itself is that it had a good running start until it tripped over its own feet, but can we talk about the fact that the Transformers actually STAYED in disguise for the whole continuity?

The government keeping it a secret and a few civilians discovering them don't count, no, I'm talking about the fact that the Transformers never had a big damn reveal and became public knowledge on Earth in Aligned.

That has to be some sort of record, right? To my knowledge the Transformers are either revealed from the start (G1, RID 2001, Animated) or stay hidden for a while before being revealed (Unicron Trilogy, Movie, IDW).

Honestly this really limited what stories they could tell and I prefer the Transformers being eventually revealed, but I gotta commend Aligned for living up to the "robots in disguise" motto.

Thoughts?

 

Megatron fought the US military and leveled a city in Transformers Prime.

Rescue Bots is part of Aligned. Rescue Bots takes place in Griffin Rock, where the presence of the Rescue Bots becomes common knowledge to the residents of the town.

TFP, RB and RID all start off trying to hide them, but they almost (?I haven't seen all of the last season of RID) always end up exposed.

 

A small town in the middle of nowhere is not a city and not every military battle is public knowledge.

The Rescue Bots are known on the island of Griffin Rock, but not to the rest of the world.

Rid 2015 made it a point to stay in disguise and make up a cover story every time.

Across Aligned there are a few isolated cases, yes, but the Transformers were never revealed to the whole world.

 

I never thought about it one way or another. I'm fine with the Transformers staying a secret. I like the focus to remain on the robots as much as possible, not "humanity's relationship with robots", which is a theme that just doesn't interest me.

 

There is that one hidden city in China that not only knew about them, but produced an opera about them. That was inane.

 

I never really thought about that. Commendations to Transformers: Prime and Transformers: Robots in Disguise for living up to one of the series taglines all the way through.

 

Technically they're always being exposed in RID, but for some reason humans keep buying the lame cover-stories. I mean, it's not like we're shown that humans have developed advanced enough technology that they wouldn't bat an eye at the giant robots. The humans of Crown City are surprisingly gullible.

And then there was that monk Grimlock made friends with, whom they decided they could trust.

 

None you didn't have.

 

Well every car had Tron wheels and everything was automated. RID is written and animated to be set in an indeterminate "slight future".

The Rescue Bots crew called it like 5 years or so but according to what Adam Beechen has said on his blog he didn't have a specific time frame but he did have a loose one that he'd call longer than that. And I believe that was all he specified.

So I think that RID exists in a setting where robotics have advanced to such a degree that the Bee Team's explanations are plausible.

 

Rescue Bots is considered part of official aligned canon...and the robots got revealed to the populace of Griffin Rock I believe.

Like, as actually being sentient aliens and stuff, not the whole "they're prototype rescue machines" cover story.

 

That's true but it still isn't global and public knowledge.

Or maybe it is and all the kind citizens of Crown City play along so they don't hurt the Bee Team's feelings.

 

Actually it's common knowledge at this point that giant robots that transform into vehicles exist and it has been public knowledge for quite some time. However the general population is not aware of the fact that they're all actually Cybertronians... except for Nemesis Prime and Morbots except people aren't aware of them, ironically the only Tranformers who weren't a cover up and no one knows about them.

Anyway... Griffon Rock publicly televises many of it's events not just locally but to the entire word. It's well known that Griffon Rock is a testing ground for new technology and the Rescue Bots have been hiding out using that exact cover for years.

What really baffles me is how the Rescue Bots kept their secret for so long. The town was only informed about four experimental robots being built and then when Optimus and Bumblebee show up (among others), without human partners to issue them commands, no one questions it despite the existence of other robots having never been mentioned to anyone and their being able to act on their own without a pilot goes against everything the popular knows about how they're suppose to work. Not only that but the Rescue Bots transform into vehicles made to do specific tasks that go along with their pilots jobs while guest start characters transform into utterly useless vehicles that no human would ever think to design a transforming robot out of or to be on a rescue team. Boulder is kinda questionable himself but at least grant fits with him. Blurr is a freaking race car, even if he had a human pilot he would be a race care driver, what use is a robot mode going to have on a race track and how is it a rescue vehicle? People just accept this without question.

It honestly doesn't surprise me that the people of Crown City are idiots. Griffon Rock is suppose to be home to the greatest minds on the planet and none of them figured it out except for two small children.

 

That second option is just hilarious.

 

Initially, I liked the idea of them not revealing themselves to the public, because logically, it made sense; I mean who would really be alright with the existence of giant taking robotic aliens that can change into a vehicular mode? Plus in Prime, there was a sense that there is danger of going public.
But having watched a few G1 episode and revisiting Animated, I wish they were publicly known in Robots in Disguise 2015, as it could have opened up new plot ideas, and made the show a lot less goofy.

 

Now that the OP brings it up, I'm actually impressed that RID had the Autobots take trouble to keep their cover and not be publicly revealed.

I've not liked how the "public reveals of the Transformers" tend to take away from the Transformers themselves and focus on the human reactions to their existence/war (Bayformers, TFA to a minor degree). I think the avoiding a public reveal worked to RID's benefit as we got a good spotlight on Decepticons in action.

 

To my knowledge, RID01 and Armada did not have them revealed. In fact, I think the only UT series where they were public knowledge was Energon (Cybertron it was just a few select people and some folks in the government, unless I'm mistaken).

And honestly, the only real reason it was never revealed in Prime was they were in such a dang small town out in the middle of nowhere. ...and then they moved to a private military base.

Plus they were accidentally revealed several times despite that, and were only able to cover it up because of Raf.