Did Kicker start out interesting? Absolutely. A kid with a fear/hatred of Transformers and a mysterious connection to energon who is essentially forced to be a kid sidekick because of said connection. It's great. But, at least for Energon, it was mishandled horribly. Kicker didn't mature, he didn't develop, just at one point in the show all his trauma and crippling fear just vanished. Nobody mentions it, nothing was explained, it's just gone. Kicker was an interesting concept that just wasn't executed in any way proper. Maybe Super Link handled him better, but in Energon he was little more than a frustratingly inconsistent whiny annoyance.

I'm not talking about name homages, it's the character that's terrible. He's as terrible an homage to Roadbuster as he is to Ironhide. At least in Super Link he had the relationship with Scorponok that was just glossed over (along with almost all of Scorponok's characterization, including an entire episode) in Energon.

I actually totally agree with this. The moments of 2D animation in Energon were gorgeous. Inferno's screams when Megatron "converts" him, this brief shot of Ironhide, Galvatron and Optimus's final fight, and the like were all fantastically animated and looked incredible. Imagine if Energon had been completely 2D animation? It would've at least looked a hell of a lot better.

Absolutely, entirely disagree. Maybe they were meant to be "tragic" and "horrifying," but they weren't. It was lazy writing, pure and simple. Demolisher has doubts about his allegiances and is conflicted between his friend Ironhide and his leader Megatron? We could write a character arc for him about how he resolves to join one side and leave the other after a great deal of internal conflict... nah, let's just have Megatron mindwipe him into a loyal goon. No further character writing necessary! It turns an interesting, three-dimensional character into one that is flat and boring and a waste of story potential.

A good example of the "reformatting" thing was with Inferno. There was genuine internal turmoil going on with him, and it made a very interesting character arc that ended with his death. Even when he got a new body and he was back to normal, it's fine because he still went though that character change. Imagine if we had seen Demolisher struggling with his allegiances and beliefs? What if it had been him to make the decision to wipe his own mind just to relieve himself of the curse of choice? Or what if he had fought the reformatting from time to time and at the end of the show he broke out of it and saved Ironhide? So many interesting and good what ifs, all wasted by a horrible plot contrivance borne of laziness.

I would be complaining more about the bastardization of Starscream's character from Armada, but I long ago subscribed to the idea that Energon Starscream was just a mad clone of the original, and it's the clone that went on to develop a traditional Starscream personality by the time of Cybertron, and Armada Starscream, the original, stays dead and gets to keep his awesome character arc.

 

Yeah, we could. We ALL could write that. Certainly that was what EVERYONE expected. That was the story every low-rent fanfiction hack had already written in their minds. I mean, come on. Calling that a cliche is an insult to cliches.

To me, it's like the complaining that happened when Breakdown was killed in Transformers Prime. Yeah, his development got cut way short. That can happen. There was a lot more I wanted to see from Breakdown, too. But sometimes it's better to sidestep things playing out the way we want and already all expect.

 

I really want them to try again with Kicker in all fairness. I mean the concept behind him is actually interesting but this time actually have character development.

Brad Swaile was really wasted in that role.

 

Suddenly well-written characters and overall good storytelling is hack and cliche? Well, shit. I guess that explains Stephanie Meyer's success.

But... it isn't. When you write fiction, you don't just randomly cut off character development and interesting stories. The whole point is to develop characters and write interesting stories. It's like if midway through the seventh Harry Potter book, JK Rowling just decided, "You know what, I bet everyone's expecting more development on some of these characters, so I better just drop the whole Horcrux thing. Voldemort just kinda died, and so did Ron, because that stuff can happen." Unless the crux of your story is to subvert, in which case that needs to be a clear theme in your story, that's not how you write good fiction.

Now, if Demolisher had had is mind erased and had his character cut short because it would directly influence Ironhide's character development or serve a purpose in the large scale of the story, that's totally fine! But it didn't. It was laziness and made for shit storytelling.

 

Pfftt!
Energon is awesome.
It's the best out of the "Unicron trilogy", it's better than a lot of the other series, it's WAY better than the movies obviously.
It's better than any twenty things you could possibly name right now.

 

Fantastic troll post, would read again.

 

Energon. Just Energon.

 

Troll nothing bro.
I've been steady up down this board about my love of Energon for a while now.

Long story short, we went forty pages arguing about the animation, I got pulled over and ticketed over it     but that shit is awesome!

My feelings on it are basically this; it strongly rewards repeated viewings, it's something that demands repeated viewings.And no, it's not as immediately, overtly "rewarding" as a Prime or BW type show which just makes it more of an acquired taste in my eyes.
And since it takes effort to acquire things there's far less love for Energon than the Prime or BW types.Not that there's anything wrong with those shows, or similar shows based on other franchises, but look at the cookie-cutter, seen it comin' a mile away direction this sort of stuff seems to have gone in.
Energon is just too anti-convention not to love.

 

Everyone's already said what I was going to say. Armada got good at the end, Energon was a gigantic, smelly turd (with a decent toyline) and Cybertron... I'll be frank, I never really liked Cybertron, but it sure as hell is better than Energon. Cybertron's mediocre, Energon's just bad.

people don't conform to my opinion therefore they have bad taste

 

I grew up on these, and I could see flaws even then.

Armada was really good at the last half, but the first half got a tiny bit repetitive. That still doesn't keep me from loving it though.

Energon, while it did have a moment or two (Inferno's arc), it had bad dubbing, bad animation, and they ruined my favorite character (Starscream).

Cybertron was good, but there were still some flaws.

 

I think Super Link is better than it gets credit for being, but I recognize it's far from flawless. None of the Unicron Trilogy is, by any stretch of the imagination or amount of forgiveness.

But a lot of people here give a complete free pass to RiD, whose flaws are as glaring as the worst of the Unicron Trilogy ever was. And people complained about filler episodes in TFP? Robots in Disguise was a series made up almost completely of filler. The series was created last minute in a super-rush to fill an unexpected gap in the franchise, and there is not a single moment of any episode that does not look it.

I say that as someone whom RiD brought back to the franchise. I watched it religiously, it brought me back to collecting TF toys, and I greatly enjoyed the recent Car Robots fansub. But it's a joke the way the mob can dogpile on one series while ignoring worse flaws in another.

 

TF: Energon.

I actually really like Armada and Cybertron is okay. Overall, the Unicron Trilogy is a decent addition to the Transformers lore

 

True that, and all that.

I guess it doesn't really help to pick at everything, like the kid in that original series episode by episode commentary thread is doing, because really you can sit and pick apart anything.
RID is just great fun. Nothing deep like BM.

 

Nobody's bringing up RID because this thread isn't about RID. Why aren't we talking about Beast Machines's flaws? Or Prime's? I'm not comparing Energon to any other show in my criticisms, I'm pointing out the flaws that the show itself has. You can say, "Yeah, but this show's worse!" all you want, but it doesn't make Energon any better.

 

Honestly, the animation in these shows never really bothered me. The human element is what sucked so hard in the UT. I get that it was a cartoon geared towards kids, (and I was growing up with it at the time), but the whole "motivational" and "learning" themed segments/episodes was quite the drag. Having gone directly from Beast Wars/Beast Machines (and RID) into Armada, I just wasn't feeling the whole "knowing is half the battle" thing. I also stopped watching Armada about 1/4 of the way through since (I thought) all the toys sucked, and hardly captured my eye/imagination like its predecessors, therefore never watched Energon/Cybertron.

Fast forward to just a few years ago when I watched all of the UT.
To sum it up....
Armada: The humans sucked, and really put a bad taste in my mouth for the show as a whole.. The only redeeming factor that show has is Starscream. I find myself going back and rewatching just the Starscream heavy episodes from time to time.

Energon: Again, the human element (Kicker) just killed the experience for me. Also did not like Ironhide - voice/character. Optimus being a Megazord didn't help much either.

Cybertron: Trying to fit it into the UT just makes no damn sense to me. Doesn't help that I haven't watched Galaxy Force, so maybe the Japanese version makes a bit more sense out of it. As it's own stand-alone show, I find it to definitely be the most tolerable of the three. Although it being another scavenger hunt is kind of disappointing. Overall, I like Cybertron. I think the designs are decent, and the toys were among the stronger to be released of the three as well; although Energon figures aren't terrible either. (sorry, it's hard for me not to look back on the toys when it comes to a series I do and don't like)

 

Well, actually, Super Link is better than RiD, imo. But that's not even what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the mob mentality that takes two flawed shows, decides to excuse all the flaws of one, and then essentially decides for the community that the other is to be crucified and that anyone who voices a different opinion is a mental patient to be shouted down.

Although again, I don't know how bad Energon is. I don't know how different it is to Super Link. But still. People are finally starting to come around on Beast Machines. For the longest time, that was another show that was widely dismissed because some fans were butthurt that some characters' arcs didn't play out the happy way they wanted them too, which is why I brought BM up as a comparison to Energon.

 

Armada was the first Transformers show I watched, but looking back at it now I can see why it's not so popular today. The kids were annoying, the animation full of errors, and the dialogue was goddamn-awful to listen to. Plus the "Gotta-Catch-Em-All" main plot was quite boring during the first bunch of episodes.

But you know what? That's okay. Armada did a good job with Starscream's character development, and once Sideways and the Mini-Con weapons were introduced things got a lot better. Plus, I remember finding on Youtube the first episode of the Japanese dub, Micron Legend, with English subs. The kids, as it appears, are not as stupid as the English version makes them out to be.

Simply put, Armada is tolerable, although just barely. It did a good job of keeping young children entertained and selling toys, as my younger brother and I demonstrated (we were eleven and nine). I remember my brother throwing a fit in Walmart because Dad wouldn't buy him Unicron, and I was disappointing when he got Hot Shot for Christmas and all I got was another Barbie for my collection. It introduced me to a whole new world of giant alien robots, and even today, Armada still holds a special place in my heart.

Really, what does it matter how bad the Unicron Trilogy was? Just because we have great series with good writing like Beast Wars, Animated and Prime (although the jury is still out on that one) doesn't mean that every TF cartoon should be at that level. In fact, if anything it only helps us appreciate the good ones more.

That's just my two cents, though. You may not agree, but you're not me.

 

You're presenting your opinion as fact here.

Go right ahead. Name twenty things.
And I'll say Energon is better.
[Except obvious things like BW/M or Lost.]

 

Micron Legends with subs? where?

That show to my knowledge never had subs.

 

im personally a fan of the franchise. but in light of this thread....

my first issue with the UC is that you go from the beautiful animation of armada, to the awful cell shaded wind wakish animation of energon. in fact there are a few scenes in energon that are animated akin to armada and you get a taste of the visual beauty that could have been. then cybertron ... seeing the full CGI transformers, in 2006 look like that after 1996 beastwars season 3 which was far superior, it begs to ask what the budget was for the series. i mean 10 years later we should have better animation that this.

armada: things i didnt like here include, the randomness of overload and the lack of doing anything with him. how rushed the end of the series was, just because everything happened so fast that there wasnt depth to it. (sure it was like omg the whole time but even so.) the minicons beeping. i didnt mind the search quests for the minicons, but they could have maybe scrunched that and fleshed out the end of the story a bit.

energon: animation aside since i said that. kickers story of hating TFs could have had more depth. i would have liked to have seem more decepticons dealing with being sided with the autobots. and a better explaination where the minicons went and where the omnicons came from. and ... arcee ... i wish wing saber, being based on star saber, had more story behind him, and had more character development. ditto with the quints. they showed us all these planets, but they were just in passing i could have done with out that.
i would have also prefered 2 combined with unique robots than what they did. maybe the dinobots too. they have mold for that line but i guess it wasnt meant to be. the unused concepts for the series were much more interesting and are worth looking up since they would have made the series more than just good but rather GREAT.

cybertron: too much time spent on speed planet. i got that they were trying to do both beast and speed planets at the same time. bravo for trying to run multiple plots lines ... but too bad the obsession with drift racing defeated that idea. :/