Energon was a show populated by missed opportunities and little else.

I found the first half of the series to be watchable, with the first eight or so episodes being particularly great. But the fact that "Megatron Raid" was the peak of the series is incredibly depressing. There were bright spots across the rest of the first half (up to ep 26) the left it watchable, but all the while, it was still sliding down into a world of repetition - build an Energon Tower, build another, build another. Megatron attacks Cybertron, attacks again. Defend a new planet! Defend another one! Build an Energon Tower! Defend a planet! Oh no, Energon gas! It's gone! It's back! It's gone! Optimus is giant! He shrunk! He grew giant again! He shrunk! Oh no, now Galvatron's giant! Now Optimus is again! Oh, okay they both shrunk! Now they're giant again! The finale in particular was a hugely frustrating wasted opportunity, as it had a great idea behind it (taking the concept of Powerlinking to the ultimate extreme) that led to absolutely nothing.

But after the great-to-watchable first half, the third act (defending Alpha Q's planets) was incredibly disappointing, being as it was just a lame rehash of the first, except with planets instead of cities being attacked. It's just not right that the most entertaining episode of this arc was "Crash Course" - the goofy, irrelevant side-story episode. The final battle with Unicron at the conclusion of this arc should have been the end of it - the fourth act was needless, drawn out, boring space-filler.

And character development? Forget THAT. If a character started showing any signs of that, well, by gum, they deserved a killin'. And then being brought back in a new body, often to do bugger all.

Rodimus - from hardcore leader to pussified subordinate in two episodes flat.

Kicker's hatred of Transformers? Completely vanished without any attention.

Demolishor? Aggh, he's the deepest character of the series, quick, kill him and make him a monkey!

Wing Dagger? Hey, he's interesting... woah, and now he's Wing Saber, cool! Yeah, he caught Shockblast, resolution! Oh, wait, Shockblast escaped again? Let's have Wing Saber be doubly dedicating to bringing him in? On second thought, no, let's take away his pesonality and make him Optimus's limbs for the rest of the series.

Inferno sure had an interesting character arc... mmn, and his death was the natural resolution of it. Eh, sod that, let's bring him back a few episodes later and not let him do *anything ever.*

Tidal Wave's a simple kinda guy, and it seems like he's maybe not a bad guy and just just being taken advantage of? Sod that, reformat him offscreen to make him far less interesting! Oh, and make him gay, while you're at it!

It's incredibly dismissive treatment of characters and deaths like this that makes the series so hard to respect.

And the animation! Visually-repellent, amateurish CGI models that flailed their limbs and slid along a pre-set line rather than actually *walk.* It couldn't express emotion beyond "mouth open" and "mouth closed," requiring the animation to switch to standard cel for dynamic or dramatic moments (or even to simply interact convincingly with cel animated aspects of the show), which does *nothing* but show up the gross limitations of the CGI. Awful. When did you ever hear of a cartoon swiching to CEL animation to look more dynamic?

Energon's dub, after the first couple of episodes - in which the actors were emoting and the script made sense - was *terrible,* easily the worst thing I've ever seen that's supposed to be a professional product. While it had less technical errors than Armada's dub (names and so forth), the dialogue was the most stitled, poorly-written, often utterly nonsensical GARBAGE I could ever have wanted to assault my ears, delivered by actors who sounded about as interested as they would be reading the phone book.

I've thus far not watched any Galaxy Force, but I'm hoping Cybertron is able to break TF animation out of this funk...

 

That was funny as hell AND I agree with everything said. Well done.

   

 

I could never get into Energon or even Armada, for that matter. As many have said, they're both just too Japanese. Which is weird because I've always heard that animation is really big amongst adults over there, but the plots and characterizations in these shows have been a bit childish, even though they haven't even been able to keep the attention of many of the kids I know. It seems like they also wasted so much time in each episode just to drag the story out. A serial is fine, but not when you're taking 15 hours to tell a story that could have probably been told in about 2 hours.

 

As someone who more or less got hooked on anime in second grade (when Robotech was on American TV), and has been watching it ever since, I'd like to clarify a couple of the misperceptions about it in this thread.

1) The idiotic plotlines in Armada and Energon are far more representative of kiddie cartoons, with a big Dragonball influence in particular (i.e. powerlinking, color changes, etc.). Armada was derivative of Pokemon to the same extent.

Kiddie anime is a distinct subgenre of anime, the same way not all American animation is like Dora The Explorer. A medium that can include stuff like Captain Harlock, Milennium Actress, Perfect Blue, Ghost In The Shell, Akira, Evangelion, the Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli movies, Cowboy Bebop, Excel Saga, and such kiddie fare as Pokemon and, yes, Super Link, shouldn't be defined by its dumbest examples. I don't like all of the above movies or series but they are all widely admired and liked for different reasons, by different audiences.

2) Part of the problem is that, in the mid-90s, anime was seen to be basically just a load of extreme sex and violence, thanks to the fact that that was what sold. It was very difficult to get people to watch any of it when the first anime most college kids would have heard of was Urotsukidoji, a series I found reprehensible and never watched.

When Sailor Moon and Dragonball finally took off (just before the Pokemon craze), the licensing companies discovered that there was now a significant kid audience for anime; when Pokemon hit, most companies abandoned their emphasis on what might appeal to adults (mostly male adults) and flung their money at kiddie products. (Similarly, when manga publishers discovered a huge teen girl audience, they rapidly switched to publishing lots of shojo manga in translation.)

What burns my ass, is that when before you'd bring up anime to a friend and the only thing he could think of would maybe be Akira or Ninja Scroll, now everybody thinks of the lame kiddie-crap--and its foreign imitators (Totally Spies, Teen Titans, etc.)--clogging up American channels.

Having said that, I'm not sure if there's a way for a good TF show to be wholly produced in Japan, for the basic reason that if the writers, directors, and producers think it's aimed at children, more kiddie crap will be done. Even kids resent this kind of stuff when it's badly done--low ratings for Energon being a case in point.

I thought Full Metal Panic wasn't too bad, so hopefully Gonzo is doing a better job with Galaxy Force than the people behind Armada and Energon. Even if it's not great, it can't be too much worse. (Although I fully expect to see people on here tomorrow night complaining that it's worse.)

 

I think Chris McFeely said it perfectly. I found the first few episodes to be promising. Demolisher and Tidalwave were responsible for most of that promise. I was so disapointed to see them go from very interesting to nothing characters. If the whole show had been like those early episodes, it probably would have been a really good series.

 

I'd liked it when they screwed up and forget the the cells. Like in Inferno Imprisoned, I love that scene when Megatron was tourchering Inferno. But overall, It was not bad. Bulkhead made me laugh.

 

I tried watching it again recently hoping I would be more forgiving in retrospect, but nope. I really can't enjoy it at all.