yup.

 

Oh my god.  

 

Independent game designer here, plenty of animation and rigging experience. This animation is extremely cheap and thoughtless, especially given the fact Machinima are supposed professionals. I understand the reason for the framerate (money), but the lip-syncing and blatant loops are first-year student quality.

That said, the story present, such as it was, was decent enough. Rodimus and Starscream were nicely voiced. The Mistress of Flame sounds like they recorded her talking into a cup.

Windblade continues to act out of character. The show continues to think it can tease Optimus speaking to bring people back.

It's not an improvement over last week, but it's not worse.

 

Well still very disappointing, especially with the time length. I did enjoy Rodimus prime and starscreams voice acting though. Wingblades character......still not feeling her, i like her character though and she wasn't to bad in R.I.D but i find her very dull in this series. Also if each episode is gonna be 5:00 minutes in length, they need to quit wasting time with the intro and that starscream jet scene. Not as boring as the first episode but still not that very good. Lets not even get started with that Optimus introduction, my face was like -_- when he showed up, no exciting at all.

 

That actually was better than ep 1. The animation still makes me think the vid's lagging, and the audio makes me think my earphones are broken. Also, characters' mouths have only three positions, making for poor lip-syncing.

Still, it was sort of interesting hearing the Council discussing how to handle the combiner situation. It's weird seeing peaceful Screamer, tho his voice was actually easy to get used to.

I do have to wonder why everything is so open. It's like they're just begging for someone to take a shot at someone, or something. Also, Rodimus' reaction to Screamer was pure anime.

*Screamer gets shot right next to Rodimus.*

Rodimus: ...

Rodimus: "Hm?"

Rodimus: ...

Rodimus: "Starscream!"

 

YUUUUK!!!

I guess there is always MP-11, closest thing to it that is respectable, though I like this new Starscream a lot, so kinda wish there was a voyagerish version of this new look starscream. As for MP-09, well, I don't want a disintegrating toy, and I guess there is the new MP Hot Rod, but I kinda like something closer to the show and not ape looking.

 

I halfway agree. I agree that we should support the series by watching it, regardless of how we feel, but not that we should pretend we like it if we don't. Hopefully, they'll see by the viewership that there is a lot of interest in the idea, but that the execution was lackluster. I understand that they're scared, and that companies tend to be stupid and take "it was bad" as "the idea was bad and will be unprofitable; scrap it forever", but they need to know that they can't just half-ass it next time. Keep in mind this was just a low budget show seemingly without many experienced professionals working on it, so it's not like they couldn't do any better. Hopefully we can encourage them to try again, with a full budget.

That's a big issue I have so far. The series hasn't really explained much of anything yet, but is just kind of merrily chugging along (heh, frame rate joke) as if it already had. It doesn't even seem like they're going to even attempt to explain, and the things they aren't explaining are parts of the plot's driving force! Even if you do read the comics, this series is different, and even you know what something is in the comics, they never explain what it means in the context of the series.

I'm not saying they need to spell everything out to me immediately, but a series' first few episodes are supposed to set up the rest of the series; this series has established very little in its' first two episodes and doesn't seem like it wants to.

 

Not that this series makes much more sense if you are familiar with the comics. This episode in particular, the only thing similar to the IDW setup is that Starscream is on the Council (of Worlds?)

The Mistress of Flame ought to be too busy guiding her people to be Caminus' representative on Cybertron, and Rodimus is supposed to be captaining the Lost Light!

 

The music was really cool, and I certainly didn't see the ending coming! What the hell?

 

I agree. It wasn't great, but it's undoubtedly an improvement over the first episode, which may not be saying much. The voicework, while not perfect, was better than the horrible voices of the first episode. Starscream being the sane and sensible one while having his evil past recognized was something I actually enjoyed.

I still think it should be longer, and the animation wasn't good.

 

For those feeling confused about the series's background because they don't read the IDW comics, you wouldn't be any less lost having read them, this series is completely unconnected and doesn't follow the same story, like, at all.
Even the elements they have borrowed from the Combiner Wars comic are almost completely changed.

 

This is so Goddamn boring.

What's wrong with establishing personalities, and natural dialogue? Why do these feel like extra shitty video game cutscenes from 2001? Why does everyone communicate in hollow non-sequiturs with nothing seemingly like it's an actual conversation? And that lip-syncing. I feel like the amount of times you'd logically show your entire top row of teeth like that is not as often as these characters do. It's almost comical how over done the lip flaps are.

Also, is there a plot? Combiners are fighting, but what's the setup? I feel like for once we really needed a narration, since the show is too short for dialogue to clue us in over a reaosnable period of time.

Also-also, BOY does the Mistress of Flame look like she's from a totally different show than Starscream and Rodimus.

 

I'm sorry!, my mistake. I meant MP-28 Hot Rodimus, the design is based on him.

Good to know, thanks!. Though that makes this new animated series even worse, specially cause this was supposed to be for us, adult fans, right?, and the writing is kinda hollow and childish  

 

Starscream's alt mode is Combiner War's leader Starscream and his robot mode is Classics deluxe Starscream right down the missile launchers as his null rays.

 

Is the show actually headed in any direction? <strike>Unless episodes 3 and 4 are much longer I have no idea how they plan on ending the show.</strike>
Upon further review the show has at least 7 episodes, now I'm wondering where they got the money for this and how it makes money too.

edit:
Is anyone able to watch it in good quality too? The player on go90 is awful.

 

Would someone get the Mistress of Flame some coffee or something?

I gotta say, this series has been underwhelming. The dialogue stinks; it's as if no one remembers anything past the last sentence that was said.

 

  Too true.

Also too true.

I think I'm about done. I may come back and watch the rest of this series in one go instead of this bizarre piecemeal serving. This series is almost bad comedy; a parody of so many bad story telling tropes that it's like a bad translation of a bad video game.

Every character feels like they're on massive quantities of Xanax. How anyone is supposed to take the sequence of Starscream being shot seriously is beyond me.

10 minutes and we still have no story. We have story fragments and characters who have no established depth or motivation with the character with any kind of an identifiable motivation being so simple that she's what a 12 year old first year english student thinks is deep.

Add to that Windblade has a sword that can somehow cut Combiners to ribbons and a sniper gun that can both zoom in around angles and can clearly hear conversations at that distance. For what reasons?

There could be a good story there, but we needed a proper introduction, we need context and setup, which is what the first episode should've been. Hell, we could've had a cold open with Menasor and Computron fighting then go into a flashback to lead up to that moment.

With 6 episodes left and the level of quality they've established, I have no hopes that they can tell a decent story.

 

five minutes isnt long enough for me to have any opinion of the acting and animation.... Horribly short!

 

Anyone else not getting the link to go90 working, or is it just me? The YouTube video doesn't seem to be working either...

-Lio Kaiser.

 

Dear TFW2005,

PLEASE stop writing that the YouTube link is "international", when it's not. I live in Japan and the video is geo-blocked there. From the comments posted here, it seems other places are blocked, too? Perhaps you could say " for SOME other countries" the YouTube link might work?

Anyway, for the many others who cannot access the video, simply copy and paste the URL into the text entry box of any "online YouTube downloader/converter" (Google, out Duckduckgo search is your friend), download the video and voila- Instant or quality TF related animation can be yours in 5fps HD!

Note: If the link doesn't work, try editing it to "http" instead of "https" and "www" instead "m":

- Transformers: Combiner Wars - Episode 2 "The Council" - YouTube

Anyway, I just watched it and it has similar problems; awful framerate and the intro is too long. Instead of falling robots, we've now got the end scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the intro to Doctor Who for about a minute or so, followed by Starscream flying, then a tunnel, and then slow walking. If this was a feature film, I'd understand, but it's the second episode of a 3-odd minute cartoon, so it's just filler, really.