I believe 8.

Which means we're almost halfway done!

 

Be sure to tell that to his face (metaphorically speaking)!
http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers-general-discussion/1078837-so-im-voice-optimus-prime.html

 

Everyone must have really been expecting something awesome, on par with the comics, and the best thing since G.I.Joe Resolute when this was first announced to be so utterly disappointed in this series.

Someone asked to defend the series, well, ok, I shall list my reasons for why I have enjoyed the episodes up to date and why, in my opinion, this is not utter trash/tripe.

1. Concerning the length of the episodes, yes it is rather short, too short to tell a decent narrative. And it is certainly nowhere near the original Clone Wars level of storytelling, however it isn't that bad. It leaves me wanting more and excited to see what happens next. Perhaps that is why they chose this formula.
2. The voice casting is not terrible, and Jon is not a bad Optimus Prime. Ok so it's Youtube celebrities providing the voices, but in all honesty I doubt Machinima would have gone with professionals. Their budget probably wouldn't have allowed for the likes of Cullen or Welker. And no, Mensaor was not bad, it was a different interpretation. Hell Menasor from G1 barely had much dialogue from what I can recall and he came off as just as generic and dull sounding with a low toned voice if memory serves.
3. Maybe I'm not so good at catching all the subtle nuances or something, but I don't really see anything wrong with the animation. It is certainly worlds better than some of what we got during the UT days, specifically Armada and even Energon to a lesser extent.
4. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is a great adult oriented series. It's still more child oriented with a hint of angst and teen drama considering there hasn't been much going on so far. I'll be brutally honest, I don't hate this. I'm not a fan of the short run time, despite it not bothering me to as much an extent as others, but I can see myself watching this and enjoying it. If nothing else it gives me the itch to take my CW stuff out and display them again. And fuels my own creative side to make something in a similar vein.
5. The plot so far is the weakest element, because it relies too heavily on folks having read the comics prior to the event that was CW and I stopped collecting individual books back before Dark Cybertron and haven't managed to pick up any trades yet. Still it isn't a terrible plot. Just a very poorly executed one.
6. I would probably buy this on DVD to go with my TF Collection, provided it isn't too expensive or some bullshit. Perhaps because I had no expectations as to what it should have been I can enjoy it more. Once I get the trades and read through the storylines I've missed I might change my mind, who can say. Right now, I like it, in spite of the flaws.

Hasbro got Machinima to make Combiner Wars, if you were expecting a riveting 40 minute episode each week with decent plot and animation on par with Hollywood studios than you, my friend, were just deluding yourself. They are an internet based entertainment company, I have no idea what kind of financial situation they are in, but certainly nothing as what you'd expect from a dedicated animation company.

The biggest flaw I would say this has is the run time, only because for an initial creative endeavor these folks have chosen one that is utterly terrible for any sort of proper expositional dialogue, on top of action being stilted and over too quickly. Motivations are not established well enough also, does this mean I hate it, nope, it just means that I will be back next week to see what happens and if more of the puzzle is properly revealed.

My only question is, why did Hasbro not mandate only toys to be involved with the animation for key characters? I can't understand why Prime is all G1 body instead of his CW body, unless he gets it later on, which considering the length of the series seems rather wasteful for animation models and budgetary concerns.

 

I just wanna know... what took them so long to write this?

 

1. Uh, what about Resolute? Exact same length. EXACT same. Yet they told a decent story, not only as a combined whole, but in each individual 5 minute episode. Not only can it be done, it can be done well.
   
   The episodes being 5 minutes is NOT the problem. At all.

 

Yes it is, because the creative team and studio involved here is not the same one that created Resolute, they have not grasped the proper pacing for this sort of storytelling. On top of that Resolute was not animated with CGI, it was flash or something similar, and so didn't take nearly as much time to animate.

You can think what you want, in my opinion Machinima did not treat this story from the proper approach when it comes to making 5 minute episodes, it is painfully obvious from a pacing stand point that this was written and animated as one single special that has been hacked apart to make 5 minute long episodes.

 

The issue with the shorter length is they don't seem to understand how to properly fill it. 1.5 minutes of a panning shot at the start and long gaps in dialogue in the middle of a conversation makes it seem as if they only have content for 2-3 minutes and are just filling time. Which when you're dealing with something that's only 5 minutes a piece anyway makes the shortness of it even worse.

While Jon may not be quite at the ranks of Cullen and Welker, he's still a legitimate professional and not just a YT celeb - the issue with his part is more in the voice direction and the after-effects, because he can do a damn near perfect 80's Cullen Prime. Whoever was doing the voice of Menasor might fall under the same failure at voice direction...but regardless of how 'generic' or dull you feel he may have sounded in the 80's, that's a far cry from him sounding like younger/angst'ier Francis (character of boogie2988)

The issue with the animation is moreso in regards to the framerate. This episode saw a vast improvement over the last, but there are still some choppy sections. The time-wasting pan shot of Starscream flying literally gave me a migraine trying to watch that choppy mess. The models they are using appear, for the most part, to be excellent and I'd even say some of the best we've had, but half the time they move like some really horrible stop motion with bad overdub of mouth animation that is literally them just flapping their mouths from wide open to shut most of the time and not even timed remotely to the dialogue.

 

Go watch Resolute again. It wasn't any stupid Flash or whatever. It was traditional animation. Which takes LONGER and more effort to animate than this half-ass empty world CGI.

lol Flash. Not even close.

 

This took long to write?   The impression feels like a ******ed monkey did it in 1 day (sorry, to me this is THAT bad).

Wholeheartedly agreed.

 

The problem is not the running time but, in this case, they are squandering this time with too much emptiness.

My frustration in this show is equal to if DragonBall Z was originally broadcast in weekly 5 minutes episodes.

 

...and then ended after 40 minutes without ever getting anywhere or telling an actual story.

 

Tune in next season to see if Goku gets to the point.

 

Really not getting any better.

If this was some fan fiction series that people were cranking out in their basement on a shoestring budget I would be willing to give them some credit. But what ever Hasbro paid for this it feels like they got ripped off.

Only way for it to get worse is if the next project is for this same team to make a Kiss Players series of 5 minute episodes.

 

I don't think you're giving enough credit to makers of fanfiction who would do something like this in their basement.

 

You're being a bit unfair in the points I highlighted. She hates combiners because they're wrecking her planet and killed her best friend. (It's funny, you said she had no reason to hate combiners right after listing off a HUGE reason for her to hate combiners!)

 

I don't think you understand what Flash is. Most Flash animation was hand animation where the animator simply used Flash to stitch it together. Later versions of Flash also had some neat tricks you could use to smooth out the animations between cells. It's pretty much the only thing Flash did in it's early days. Not saying that Resolute was done in Flash. Probably not, but using Flash was in no way a bad thing at that time.

......

As for Combiner Wars, there are so many things I do not understand.

Optimus Prime - I swear to Primus, every voice director since 86 only knows one thing about Prime and it's the first 10 minutes of the Transformers The Movie. G1 cartoon prime had so much more life and whimsy in him than any version of Prime I've seen since. All they do now is have Prime posturing and philosophizing in that same cold, stoic voice. It was the main thing I hated about Transformers Prime, too (a show I otherwise loved). Prime always sounds so serious, now. I hate it and I do not blame the voice actors for that.

Windblade - who the hell crafted this character's personality? She seems more like Chromia than anything else and even then it seems off.

I can't help but wonder if they should have picked a smaller, simpler story for this. Set it all on Cybertron and keep the cast tight. The storyline that introduced Windblade that lead up to Combiner Wars probably would have been a lot more interesting, too. Less action and more plot and intrigue.

That said, I don't hate this. It's just not very good, as others have said. The animation is fine and I really like the art style. Maybe once it's done, they'll piece it together as an hour long movie that makes more sense.

side note - I wish Hasbro would go the DC route and do some animated movies of certain IDW storylines. Specifically, a Last Stand of the Wrecker animated film would be awesome.

 

Now why would I do that, when I can safely hide behind internet anonymity?

In all seriousness, I don't hate the guy, and I think he's great in other things that I've seen/heard him in. I don't think he has a lot to work with here.

 

I'm sure he understands, but his point is that Resolute isn't Flash, and no serious animation studio would use Flash when there's still plenty of normal cel-animation studios out there that can produce superior results. If Harry Partridge had the resources of a full-blown animation studio, he probably wouldn't use flash.  

If companies do use Flash for animation, it's only because they're not intending to put effort into the animation to begin with, hence Johnny Test/MLP-level animation.

 

Okay so I finally gave Combiner Wars a watch. Originally I was going to make separate reviews for each episode but after watching the first episode , I realized that I wouldn't have enough material to talk about, so I decided to review all three episode together and continue with that pattern, that way I would at least have enough to talk about. Anyways onto the review for Episodes 1 - 3.

First let me address my biggest problem and that's the animation. Geesh it just like the Season 2 finale of RiD2015 when Steeljaw got the Decpeticon Hunter armor and the animation turned sluggish and jittery. I was hoping that maybe it was only an episode 1 problem since I figured "Maybe Menasor and Computron are too much for the animation to handle." But much to my disappointment the animation continued to have awful quality. Not even the fight scenes are entertaining, fight scenes are not suppose to be slow and boring, they're supposed to be action-packed and fast-paced to give the feeling of excitement and adrenaline. I really hope this can be improved on.

Now as for the story... I'm not sure there's much of a story. It's just fighting and talking, fighting and talking, fighting and talking. Ugh this is frustrating and they cannot hide behind the "Well this is a kid's show so we don't want to go into too much depth." because Combiner Wars was clearly stated to be aimed at the older TF fans. If their story material lies in the IDW comics then that's a bad move, no one should have to refer to a second source in order to understand what's going on, one of the major reasons why the Ratchet and Clank movie flopped all due to the fact the writers did not give enough material to give newcomers an understanding of the characters and their surroundings.

Finally onto the characters... *sigh* and people thought Michael Bay was bad about killing off Transformers with barely any development. I just stared at my screen in confusion after watching the first episode and going "Wait... they killed off Menasor, just like that?! But this is the first episode!" I'm not sure if Computron is dead as well considered he was flashing but still they shouldn't be killing off characters on a whim like that because it makes their appearance severely pointless.

Windblade is very aggravating, I can understand her anger but much like my problem with Optimus in AOE, I felt they went overboard with that rage.

Starscream only spouted exposition so I can't judge how his character was written and Rodimus seems to be suffering from bland leader syndrome. I was crushed that Rodimus showed no sign of his cocky and fun loving attitude, instead they made him come off as Optimus 2.0. That's not who Rodimus is and they shouldn't write him as such.

Optimus oh my god was so boring. I will give credit to the voice actor, he does have that Cullen-esque tone but he just came off so bland. I had my brother watch the third episode to get a biased opinion since he loves Optimus and judges his appearances off of how epic he considers them. I was surprised when after he watched it he uttered these words "I don't like Optimus." He was so bland that my brother who had before this point, loved every single incarnation of Optimus actually found himself disliking it and growing bored much like I did when watching the episode.

So overall, this series seems to have a very poor start and if things continue this way, I don't see myself sticking around and watching more episodes in the future. I think I will watch either 6-9 episodes before making my final decision.

So with that said, I give Episodes 1 - 3 a 4.0

Scores broken up
Episode 1 - 1.0
Episode 2 - 0.5
Episode 3 - 2.5

Series Average Score So Far - 1.3

 

She attacks Menasor and has this rage before whats-her-name died. As far as I know, we're never told that the reason she hates them is because they're destroying it.

(Yeah it's said in the comics, but, um, writers? NOT. EVERYONE. READS. THE. COMICS.)