Yay! It's great to see the show back on the air. I'm getting a distinct Demona vibe from Blackarachnia, but I think some sort of explanation as to how she came to Earth would be in order. (The same could be said for Lockdown.) I also think Sentinel's Cybertronian mode is 'da shit'. It somehow reminds me of the D-Rex from Mega Man X. I sure hope Hasbro consider releasing a toy of it. Anyway, it's great to see the each Decepticon be given a steady introduction instead of a mass attack. Gives more time to focus on each character. Roll on the next one!

 

I just went back and watched a few more episodes on you tube, Thrill of the Hunt and Blast from the Past. I actually think I will have to start easing into this show. I still wish the overall look of them was different but the show itself is pretty sound.

 

I like the show. However this episode was a little hard for me. I guess the alliance change for Elieta was hard for me to take.
I loved Sentinal's Cybertronian Alt. Speakin' of witch does anyone have a decent pick of it?

 

Well, Lockdown was hired to hunt down our team of Autobots, possibly right after the events 50 years previous, and clearly he did so. A bounty hunter as tough as him should easily be able to do what Starscream did   And he DID have some communication with Blitzwing, so if Blackarachnia was still with him, or crafty enough, she could have figured out where the 'bots were as well. Despite her initially suprised reaction at his appearance, it's possible she came here JUST to take a crack at Optimus.

 

Johnator's Quick Review (spoilers ahead)
Pros
Good story line
Good character development
Any decepticon time is definitely a plus

Cons
Sari is really annoying and she should have died. NO way Bumblebee saved her that way.
Art designs as always

Another good episode with an interesting development of character. I liked Black Arachnia's motivation for joining the Decepticons. It actually makes sense. I think this would have been one of my favorite Transformer episodes if the artistic designs weren't so bad. Man what a great show this could have been instead of a decent one.

Overall Grade: B+

 

I believe it's all of the above.

 

Wow, this had such a cool plot twist.

 

Very good episode...Bulkhead's costume was very funny indeed...

Elieta/Blackarachnia's origins are pretty clever...wonder if we will see both toys...?

 

Has there ever been a TF toyline with more than one fembot? Not counting minicons and minibots who really don't look feminine anyway.

 

Meh.

You heard me, MEH. I've enjoyed Animated so far, but I found this ep to be pretty MEH. Sari really irritated me, for the first time so far in the series. The halloween stuff was... lame. I understand why they did it (we need teh jokes to distract from the serious so the kiddies don't get sad) but it was pretty poorly executed. The Elita-1, Optimus, Sentinal stuff was decent, but a lot of the BA / Optimus interactions felt very forced and lacked impact. The key destroying all organics just came out of no where and seemed odd.

 

that was my favourite episode so far. i like origins stories, lots of feeling, a few jokes although I never expected the ubiquitous horrid americanism 'hellloooo' to appear but i should have expected it, being ubiquitous and all.........

 

(watch out for spoilers, 'cause I won't past this point)


I liked the episode quite a bit, though a few plot points and bits of emotional context felt kinda sloppy to me. I might change my mind on that once I've had the chance to watch the ep one or two more times and sort everything mentally a little better (I don't do 10:30 in the morning well)

Elita-1 was a pretty skillful combination of homage and practicality. The design obviously owed more to Pre-Elita Ariel, and instead of pink, she was the same colors as Blackarachnia ... minus the black.

Sentinel Prime is quite the irresponsible douche. He musta had some high-up friends, because I'm having trouble seeing how this guy gets to be a military commander when Optimus doesn't (unless Optimus' washout was self-imposed)

Early on, with Sari spooking Op with the Halloween decorations, I though they might be setting up Op to have some kind of spider phobia, but that wasn't the case. (certainly could have put an interesting dynamic on the story if Op had actually ditched Elita because a mess of giant spider monsters freaked him the hell out.)

Goofy-voice Sari: "I am Optimus Prime! Transform and roll out"
Optimus: "I do NOT sound like that ... do I ?"
Me:  

Also, "Did you just say 'Energonny goodness'?"

Bulkhead as the scary fumigation tent ghost was awesome, moreso because he had the Pigpen-esque cloud of pesticide rolling out from under him the whole time he wore it.

Blackarachnia is being rather obviously set up to be 'saved' one way or another later in the series. It remains to be seen whether she will be saved in a BW Blackarachnia fashion, or a BW Dinobot fashion, however.

One thing I've noticed so far is that (with the exception of Starscream) of the Decepticons the 'bots have encountered so far (Lockdown, BA), none of them seem too interested in KILLING the Autobots - Lockdown was all about catching and harvesting parts, and BA wanted to purge her organic half (though to be fair maybe she thought her venom was lethal - and it turns out it wasn't). In any case, it's a good lead-up to more ruthless 'Cons and Megatron in the future.

 

Best episode so far.

 

*Spoiler heavy*

I just watched it. Yes, it was better than some of the other episodes but it was still lacking in my view due to several elements that made it somewhat rehashed and silly.

About a quarter of the episode is mainly about Sari explaining to the autobots about Halloween and going out Trick or Treating. Bumblebee dressed up as a vampire while Bulkhead tried to dress up as a ghost with a "giant bed sheet" (i kid you not!)

Fortunately the tediousness of the above was broken up a bit through some flash backs triggered throughout the first half of the episode by him coming accross Spider themed halloween decorations. The flash backs told a story in which Sentinel Prime, Optimus and Elita-1 went in an authorized excursion to try to recover Energon from a crashed Decepticon Warship. The strange thing about this flashback story was that the motivation for recovering the Energon was mainly for financial reasons and nothing else. It would have been much more acceptable if the reason for them being there was to help Cybertron with depleted energon reserves or some other more noble reason rather than financial gain, but that's what they did. It was Sentinel's idea but Elita-1 and Optimus (reluctangly) tagged along for some reason. It is also interesting to note that visiting 'Organic' planets is forbidden under Animated Cybertronian law for yet to be explained reasons. As they ventured within the planet to find the Decepticon ship, they were confronted with Giant organic spiders which had made a nest within the ship. During the battle we got introduced to Elita's power of being able to absorve other Autobot's abilities very much like Rogue from X-men. Eventually they were becoming overwhelmed and tried to climb away from the ship but Elita's power gave out in the last minute and fell back into the nest. Optimus saw no other recourse but to leave and abandon Elita as he thought her to be "offline". Sentinel blamed Optimus for the whole incident.

As soon as I saw Elita-1 and the Spiders, I had the whole episode figured out so what happened afterwards was hardly a surprise and took away much from the episode in my view. However since this cartoon is very strictly aimed at very young children (the whole Halloween subplot for example) i decided to look past it as kids may not be able to work it out so quickly although I seriously doubt that.

Now back in the present, we have Bulkhead and Bumblebee trick or treating with all the other kids in the neighborhood (they were sure aiming at a wider audience with this!   ) when suddenly Bumblebee sees a Giant Spider and contacts Optimus who arrives on the scene quickly. The battles were fairly lame as all thet Blackarachnia had to do to subdue Bulkhead was seduce him and the knock him out by absorving his power with her spider fangs. I found this to be cliche and lame. Bumblebee tried to put up a fight but at the end he was just touched by the fangs and fainted.

Blackarachnia then kidnaps Sari and takes her to a building top where Optimus confronts her and then she reveals to him that she is indeed Elita-1 (surprise, surprise). She tells the story on how when she fell back in the Spider nest, she attempted to absorve the organic energy of the Spiders but instead that caused her to mutate into a very Beast Machines type (in concept) Technorganic Spider. BA felt that she would be treated like an outcast among the Autobots due to her new form so she decided to join the Decepticons who are apparently more accepting.

Blackarachnia and Optimus then go for another borring but brief fight and then BA grabs Sari's key and inserts it into her chest in an attempt to purge the organic part of her. Unfortunately for her she instead amplifies her power considerably and begins to absorve the energy of all organic life in the surrounding area, including Sari's. The key is then removed, BA knocks Optimus down and runs away.

At the end she is just seen crying while watching the horizon which I thought was a bit too melodramatic for Transformers. To me, it seems that the writers of this show often forget that they are dealing with sentient robots here, not super powered humans. It was very annoying and unsettling to watch BA cry like that.

Now the inevitable comparison between Animated and the original Beast Wars Blackarachnia:

In my view, the original one was much better. The original was very spicy, scheming and kept stereotype 'girly' emotional behaviour in check. You never saw her crying or anything of the sort. In fact she was often seen trying to best her Predacon comrades and when she finally joined the Maximal side, she did it rather reluctantly and mainly motivated by self preservation and her 'friendship' with Silverbolt. No emo stuff.

Animated Blackarachnia personality wise is very much the contrary of the above. She is more of a traumatized female and behaves as such with lots of emotional outbursts and seduction attempts and the like. Blackaracnia in Beast Wars did use seduction to a degree but it was infinitely more subtle and really open to interpretation and for comical ends, she wasn't emo or overly 'sexy'.

I can't say that I like this Blackarachnia very much and she seems as yet another Super Hero rehash. I kept thinking of X-men characters such as Rogue, Scarlet Witch and even Lady Deathstrike as I was watching her behave and express emotions.

Her looks: Blackarachnia has been given an almost exact (but stylized) body to her TransMetal 2 design down to the detailing and colors. This is not surprising however as that is an Aaron Archer design and its the one he would have chosen for a new incarnation of Blackarachnia. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but TM2s were not exactly the best toys and it is commonly seen as a prelude to an unfortunate period of Transformers history (Beast Machines) in which the 'robots' stopped being robots and more Technorganic creatures.

Overall this episode wasn't too bad but it wasn't good either. Its another 'ok' episode in my book which would have worked much better if they had kept the kiddy concepts down and the Transformers actually behaved as such and not overly like human characters. The writers have to remember that despite their past history, this show isn't Teen Titans.

 

Guess what? It's not supposed to be for 14 years old and above either.

 

Same Here...

"It'll be a long time before I trust an Autobot again, Especially you, Optimus"

That, REALLY tugged on my heart stings..

 

 

Yay~ So glad it's back to new episodes~ *was having withdrawal*

This has got to be my most favourite episode so far! I loved the outfits that BB, Bulks and Sari wore.   I'm surprised people weren't coughing up a lung from Bulks 'tent'   BB scrambling over Bulks was hilarious too hahahah and I thought Sari was so cute~

BA was hot~   I loved the way she took out Bulks hahah it's even funnier when you've just watched the spondgebob movie.  

Also I really like the connection between Prime and BA. ^_^ I really hope they have more scenes together. Prime may be the next Silverbolt.   But it was so sad to see BA crying at the end  

 

I thought this was one of the best episodes thus far. I can understand Prime pulling Sentinal out right before all the energon exploded as Sentinal had no idea how much Energon was really down there, but I wonder why they never tried to go back and find her body and at least take it back to Cybertron (other than it would have prevented Elita from having a reason to join the Decepticons)?

What I'd love to see in future episodes:
1) What happened to Prime and Sentinal once they got back to Cybertron and exactly why Sentinal and Prime are at odds (other than the obvious).
2) How BA met up with the Decepticons.

As for how BA got to Earth, I assume that Blitzwing informed the other Decepticons of his conversation with Lockdown and she hightailed it to Earth to find the Allspark before the others arrived.

 

The last of her crying and such, it was sad really...

 

Oh yeah!

Patrick: You're hot...