I really like the show. It's a good tribute to all continuities before it. At least the iconic ones.

 

What I don't get is that I've repeatedly asked for people to link me to other places where Prime is being praised and instead I get snide remarks like this telling me to look up ratings and not reading my posts. Because if you had read my post properly, you would have seen the guy in Discord was praising the show, the whole point of me citing it was that it was the only case of praise for Prime I've ever encountered off this website, and yet you go off and seem to think that I said the opposite.

All through this thread I've pointed out how Prime was a flawed show, and others in addition to me have voiced why they don't like it. The responsibility of providing evidence to the contrary falls on you and others who think Prime was well liked - I'm not going to do your job to defend your argument. Posting a single link in a post isn't hard...unless such things don't exist, which is of course the point I'm making. All you have to do is link me to a place off TFW that praises Prime, is that so much to ask?

 

Dude, I know that you cited Discord as the only case of praise you've encountered. Do you really think that little of others? I can read. The point is that it's irrelevant how many people you've personally encountered.

And, well, imdB, Google user reviews, Amazon reviews, etc... I mean, the moment someone says it's well-liked, you go on this tangent about how these obvious sites don't exist because I didn't cite them and start whining about whose job and whatnot. Nobody's responsible for anything. We're just talking like ordinary people. Is this really your argument? Asking people to link you something rudimentary, and when they don't because they clearly aren't taking you seriously, you say they must be wrong?

Transformers Prime (TV Series 2010–2013) - IMDb
transformers prime reviews - Google Search
Amazon.com: Transformers Prime Season 1: Peter Cullen, Sumalee Montano, Kevin Michael Richardson, Jeffrey Combs, Frank Welker, Adam Baldwin, Daran Norris, Steve Blum, Josh Keaton, Tania Gunadi, Andy Pessoa, Markie Post, Ernie Hudson, Hasbro Studios: Amazon Digital Services LLC
https://www.amazon.ca/Transformers-...=B006JN87UC&psc=1&refRID=3YQ86MWRR489BD5NQQAV

I guess I'm gonna be the first and actually link you freaking imdB, lol! At least maybe you'll stop going around challenging people to forward you the first page of Google results when it takes 2 seconds to find yourself. I will admit that I skipped over some results, not because they were negative reviews, but because they were positive but from individual critics, so it's not really a form of consensus.

And don't go around saying you've proven that a children's cartoon is objectively bad. Even if you're right, that just comes across really arrogant. I wonder if I came across arrogant first in our exchange, so I'm sorry if I aggravated that reaction from you.

Anyways, I happen to think that Life of Pi sucks, but it's almost universally acclaimed, so on the off chance it comes up as a conversation topic, I do have a hard time explaining why I think it's bad to others in the room, but I don't go around saying nobody likes it. For the same token, Transformers: Prime may or may not be a bad show, but it is very liked.

Yeah, I suppose it is important to advertise that something is bad if you truly believe. It would increase standards in the long run. But denying that people like it to begin with isn't as effective as your other methods.

It has nothing to do with quality, but the phrasing of the post, "Was Prime that bad?" really seems like the person isn't aware that most people find it good. A better thread would have been "Was Prime that good?" asking people to challenge the present "tide," as you put it.

 

Isn't debating popular consensus rather...fruitless? Especially with the shifting tides of analysis and reanalysis, if ever their was a more worthless way of gauging artistic merit it's the word on the street.

 

I liked Prime. But at the end of the day weather someone 'liked' it or not is not a measure of abject quality either way, which is what i find hilarious about the direction this thread is going. "What did Tumblr think, what did Reddit think, what did Deviant art think" it's all so reductive.

It's the Rotten Tomatoes aggregate approach, which is pretty much the death rattle of the rhetorical argument.

 

I actually sort of do think that little of people, if only in terms of how far standards of quality have fallen regarding narrative quality. It's just so much more egregious with Prime because it was a key narrative lynchpin for aligned and yet for the majority of the plot, nothing actually happens that really changes things dramatically.

You try living with a lawyer for a parent and see if you can get away with just saying things without providing proof at the time of presenting. It's just like a college paper - you don't simply make baseless claims, you cite evidence and resources in the bibliography to back up your words.

You just proved my point - it takes two seconds to provide links, yet the majority of the time people would rather spend more time whining about why I ask them to do it then actually doing it. It's easier just to give the proof, especially since the argument being posed there is that it's so easy to find - it just looks bad by claiming it's easy to find and then subsequently fail to actually show links.

Fair enough.

What? If I'm right then I shouldn't go around telling people that it's a terrible cartoon they shouldn't watch? Just because the truth isnt what you want to hear isnt a reason to shut it out.

But this is a Transformers forum and noticeably every time I point out the show's crippling flaws, people sometimes say I'm wrong and yet mysteriously never back up their claims when I ask them to elaborate.

Tell that to the people who still defend the bayformers films to this day.

 

Prime had a few flaws but, overall, was a very watchable program. At least I don't feel my brain cells dying like I do when I watch the beginning of Armada.

 

Like I said before, I simply hadn't seen any widespread praise for the series anywhere other than this website. I will admit my focus for searching was more toward fansites than general aggregate places like IMDB (as fake reviews are only too easy to insert there and thus I'm inherently predisposed to avoid the reviews there), but all it would take is somebody showing me a link to such "easily found" feedback to correct me. I only denied that people liked it on such a wide scale (as much as it distresses me given what a low quality product the show is compared to other truly quality shows airing during that time period like Adventure Time and Gravity Falls) because I legit had no evidence to the contrary. Now I do have some evidence, so i cant be as definitive about the matter as I still hold doubts about it, but with hard proof it is much harder for me to argue against it.

 

Prime's graphics were excellent. The show would have been excellent without the human factor.

 

They were. I often imagine how visually exciting the show could've been with a larger budget and more attention to detail outside of the character models. The actual textures and graphical fidelity were excellent.

 

I think it had a sufficient budget, it just got wasted on things the show didn't really need. IE each Transformer had three CGI models created - robot, vehicle, and transforming/inbetween. Airachnid, in addition to being a shit character, only used 2/3rds of her entire animation package TWICE as that's how many times she actually transformed in the entire show. Otherwise, her transforming and helicopter models were complete wasted of money that never got used instead of her simply extending her spider legs on robot mode. Likewise with Cliffjumper, his animation package was hardly used at all and ultimately might have been more efficient to just not have included him at all in favor of giving that kind of development to a more prominent character.

And then the voice acting. Dwayne Johnson and whoever Breakdown's VA was (name escapes me at the moment) were nice, but given the former barely existed (and WASNT voiced by Dwayne in the one full episode he was in IIRC), while in the case of the latter its almost certain Breakdown got offed purely because they couldn't keep paying his VA given his plot threads between Bulkhead and Starscream got axed out of the blue.

Oh, and the relics. Full 3D objects that were resource sinks because the majority only ever got used ONCE before being thrown away and never used again.

 

if there's another thing I'll give credit to TF: Prime, that'll be the visual isn't too bad. The show itself looks pretty nice at times, and the animation isn't ugly.

That said, the budget of the show could've been spent better. There's really no need waste the budget on things like hiring celebrity superstars for VA's like Dwayne Johnson and whoever Breakdown's VA was (There didn't add much to the presentation of the show, and cheaper dedicated VAs could've been just as good), or wasting the animation on Mcguffins that was used only 1-2 times and never been used again.

 

I would have liked to see more characters. Smokescreen was just cringy and should have been replaced by Rodimus, or something if you want a character like they were trying to do.

 

I think the character count is enough already, it's just that the writers didn't really know what to do with this huge cast of characters. Some of the "mentioned" characters like Seaspray and Cliffjumper was mentioned only a few times, but they barely does anything and didn't need to be there.

Smokescreen is alright, but I find Arcee more cringeworthy than Smokescreen. Smokescreen may be an amateur and disobey orders, but at least he does it with good intentions; Unlike Arcee who just constantly disobeys her superior's order just for vengeance, while greater things are going on. She ridicules Smokescreen for doing the same thing as she did while she never get called out for been just as bad, making her a hypocrite.

 

I don't quite understand - Smokescreen pretty much was a G1 Hot Rod type character. What you are asking for isn't so much a different character as you are asking for basically him to get a paint job.

Seaspray never existed. They say he did but he never got a physical model - he is nothing but an abstract concept invented simply to give a reason to hate Dreadwing (as opposed to, y'know, the fact he's a loyal Decepticon and they're in the middle of a war).

And Cliffjumper was a cop-out, given he had the coolest design of the core team and instead he gets offed in five minutes to establish a tone of the show which subsequently is completely reversed, thus rendering the character's existence entirely pointless beyond DEAD PARTNERS for Arcee to bitch about.

In fact, that's one of Prime's critical failings in the plot department: literally all major grudges in the show happen more or less specifically because somebody killed (or almost killed) somebody else and they take it way too personally:

Arcee hates Starscream because he killed Cliffjumper.
Arcee hates Airachnid because she killed Tailgate (who, like Seaspray, only existed to be a token dead character specifically to give another character motiviation to defeat somebody who is already their enemy because they're on opposing sides of a war!)
Wheeljack hates Dreadwing because he killed Seaspray
Wheeljack and Miko hate Hardshell for almost killing Bulkhead.
According to the producers in a TFCC magazine interview, the whole, rather one-sided animosity between Bulkhead and Breakdown? DEAD PARTNERS once again.
Dreadwing hates the Autobots for killing Skyquake (then he figures out Starscream was really the one reponsible there - granted, given they were brothers, Dreadwing actually has an excuse).
Predaking hates the Autobots for destroying the Predacon protoforms...then he finds out from Ratchet that Megatron ordered them destroyed, so he immediately turns around and hates Megatron instead.


With the exception of the last two (Skyquake and Dreadwing being brothers, Predaking finding out Megatron lied and destroyed the one thing Predaking wanted in return for giving Megatron unquestionable loyalty for...really no actual good reason), its like the only thing that ever made the robots actually hate each other was if another of them died, except as proven in the case of Bulkhead, nobody actually important could die so they made up a bunch of disposable characters to fill that role instead. Because apparently, they all forgot they were in a war where people die because the enemy is trying to kill them.

 

Now that you mention that, I agree. It's been a long time since I watched transformers prime, and Arcee...she was just as you describe. I didn't really like her.

 

I didn't like her, either. All of her actions make her character unintentionally unsympathetic, and the only reason nobody ever dare to call her out for her stubborness is because everyone is supposed to side with her; If Prime Arcee is in any other TF continuities like the Unicron Trilogy, G1, Bayverse...... even the most honorable of the Autobots won't tolerate her for too long.

Now that you mentioned it, the fact that the only reason why someone hates someone ie because they kill their comrades in a war is bizarre. People die in a war which sucks, but this is a war and it's unreasonable to think that everyone will make it out alive. At least in other continuities, characters actually hates someone for actually legitimate reasons other that "REEEEEE HE KILL HIM IN A WAR!!!!!!".

Some Examples:

• In Armada, Starscream wants to get rid of Megatron because Megatron never acknowledges his achievements like ever despite doing a lot for the Decepticons, and Megatron wants to enslave the Minicons (not to mention, Starscream grew fond of his own minicon and a human child, making Megatron's plan even more personal for him)
• In DOTM, Optimus Prime wants to defeat Sentinel Prime because he tricked him, kills Ironhide, causing human casualties with property damages, and betraying everything a Prime and the Autobots should stands for.

It's not great, but at least it's more than just "REEEEEE YOU KILL HIM!!!!!!!!! I HATE YOUUUUU!!!!!!!"

 

Moreover, to tie in with both parts of your post, it's why I find the fact Arcee not killing Airachnid entirely unjustified. She spouts some 'higher road' bullshit and stuffs the spider bitch into a tube which the show constantly teased and ultimately pulled Airachnid's revival more out of a need to tie up that plot point more than actually have a purpose for her still being alive. They spent 1.5 seasons of Arcee bitching about Airachnid, the sole reason Airachnid existed, and yet Arcee doesn't execute a known war criminal in the middle of a war!?

 

There's no reason why Arcee should kept her alive other than making sure that Airachnid can become a undead Insecticon queen zombie later, and if anything Arcee should've just kill her already.

Airachnid is lucked out that she never get killed in her own show. If she did the same thing in any other continuities like Unicron Trilogy, G1, Bayverse...... it won't take like an entire season for anyone to kill her (But that's another topic for another day)

 

I'm shocked that @kaijuguy19 isn't in here defending her already...