PSA: Play nice and respect others opinion

Let’s face it: Transformers has one of the biggest cast ever and seems to grow bigger with every year and new entry. So it’s amazing back in the 80’s they were able to bring so many characters to life with every season plus the movie.

Which is I wonder if it’s possible to try something like that today? I mean we all have our favorite characters and I’m sure it frustrating when a new show comes on and the cast lists come out. You hoping your guy/ gal made it but when it doesn’t happen a part of you dies a bit in disappointment. And honestly you would feel that especially when they use and reuse the same characters over an over. Which is part of the reason is why I loved what Netflix WFC and Cyberverse did, yes the used the same tried an try characters but they also brought on new and old faces and even named dropped a few that have been way overdue for comeback to the small and digital screen.

Now I’m not saying bring everyone back, but it would be nice to see something like in the old G1 days where every character get to shine or what idw did in the first phase and give some characters mini arcs and spotlight episodes. Maybe spend some time exploring other protagonists and enemies like deathsarus or victory Leo or hell maybe try to create their own version of DCAU and do animated stories from popular arcs and series.

 

But in the G1 days everyone didn't get a chance to shine. There were plenty of extras and underdeveloped characters. For every Jazz or Rumble there's a Skids or the Reflector Trio.

Cyberverse is probably the closest any modern Transformers show has come to doing this since it's the first mainline show to break with having a "main" team so to speak. A large chunk of Season 3 is devoted to following side characters. There are spotlight episodes featuring new characters. I honestly prefer that to cast herds.

 

Valid point but that’s kinda what I meant, I mean look at the old justice league unlimited cartoon , legion of super heroes and Batman: brave and the bold cartoon. Those cartoons had their main characters but when they decided to shift focus on to other characters than the usual suspects, it made it a lot better. Because it offered us perspective, personality and great stories to watch. In the G1 show they had a lot guys standing in the background but at least they acknowledged their existence. Sometimes we got an origin story or a spotlight episode or even a great mini arc. I’m not saying we should have cast everyone in the franchise but it would be nice to have watch someone in the spotlight beside megatron, Optimus,starscream, bumblebee and wind blade or Arcee. How long should we wait to have springer or sunstreaker or the protector bots or anyone else show up again? I mean look how long it took to get the full dinobots team with speaking roles and their combiner form. Or even the quintessons, who were a huge adversary for both factions.

 

It's not a war or realistic if it is 5 vs. 5 the whole series.

 

I'd love to see something like Justice League Unlimited, yeah. To its credit, Cyberverse definitely did do this later in the show, but I wouldn't mind seeing that more.

 

I've mentioned this before but I actually prefer smaller casts. G1 really wasn't that amazing with it's huge cast most of the characters were barely on screen and were easily forgotten about.

Punch/Counterpunch conceptually is a great character but I think he was only in one episode and his scenes went by so quickly that it didn't even register who they were, and I say they because I innitially didn't even notice they were the same character. I had to go back and rewatch the episode to see what Counterpunch ment by "His Autobot counterpart" I thought it was one of the Stunticons saying that the first time.

The Clones are also conceptually really interesting to me. The idea of two robots who look identical but transform into very different alt modes is a fun unique concept but I don't even remember them appearing in the cartoon.

Blitzwing I never really thought of as a character until Animated. The G1 character had one episode I actually remember him for and it's not even a good episode. It sounds like a joke, he mistakes a football couch for a battle strategist.

I could go on, there are a lot of G1 characters who design wise I really like but as characters in the cartoon I barely remember even existed in the show. The amount of G1 characters I can actually remember in the cartoon is about the size as most of the smaller casts that would come later on.

The issue is that there's only so much time in a cartoon, they can't focus on every character, so the ones who don't get any focus end up being totally forgotten. What's the point of having more characters if they're ultimately just going to be background characters anyway?

Well every series has done that. They reuse some characters, introduce some new characters, it's never an exact repeat of the same cast. Animated and Prime felt the most similar on the Autobots side but that's only because 4 out of 5 Autobots are all the same characters and the 1 different character that got swapped out, Prowl for Arcee, ended up with the same vehicle mode, a motorcycle, so those two casts have felt the most similar if any series ever.

Now there are characters I would love to see again. Tracks was one of my favorite characters in G1 and I loved any episode that focused on him. I would love to see a modern Tracks update but sadly he's only appeared as a Cameo background character in Animated. He hasn't been a main character since G1. Something else I'd like to point out, Tracks centered episodes also usually included a different main human character who didn't seem to have any connection to the Witwickys. Raoul was also a far more interesting human character than Spike or Daniel.

With Hasbro having multiple TF shows running at the same time... I could see them doing spin off set in the same universe with multiple shows having different main casts with the possibility of crossovers. That's the only way I could see the larger cast working is if they split them into multiple different shows of their own allowing them to have more focus in their own show rather than just being background characters in a main series. Imagine if G1 had a spin off that was Raoul, Tracks, Blaster, and the other Autobots who usually got more focus in those specific episodes. It would allow them to get a lot more focus than they did and be far more memorable today if they had their own full length series rather than just the 2 or 3 episodes they had in the main series. I think Hoist and Perceptor may have also been in those episodes but the fact that I can't remember for sure who the other Autobots were just proves my point about how little focus they got.

Perceptor got more focus in the movie and season 3 but he was apparently introduced prior to the movie but damned if I remember what his actual introduction was.

 

If they built it up over time I could see it. I think of how Cybertron had a bunch of characters introduced during the visiting of different planets and could see that cast size working in a similar story where the battle and locales keep escalating.

 

Yeah, Justice League Unlimited is pretty much the perfect example of handling a large cast correctly.

 

Possible? Of course. Likely? Not at all.

 

Large casts have their drawbacks, as others have already said. For one, it becomes impossible to fully develop all the characters unless you drag the series on indefinitely. Hence why shows such as Beast Wars and Animated are so well-loved; the smaller cast allows for more time to be spent on getting to know the characters, which allows for the audience to form more meaningful attachments to them and become more invested in their struggles.

 

The biggest reason newer shows don't have large casts is the animation. Because most TF shows go with 3D animation, they can only make a certain number of models. I would love to see a new 2D animated series with a large cast.

 

Large cast Superior, Small cast Inferior.

 

Not necessarily. Armada and Animated had small casts, and both used traditional animation.

You wish!

 

Honestly one thing that would help cut costs would be instead of hiring one VA per character, actually letting them do multiples like VA's used to do. But even then, a small central cast and then an expanded cast handled in the style of JLU would be perfect.

 

Animated started from a small cast and expanded the story into a large big picture cast. They ended the series too soon when it had a large cast. I liked Animated. Fake news.

 

VAs get paid per character, so that wouldn't save then any money. It's why all the Starscream clones in Animated were still credited as Starscream, so they only had to pay the actor for one character.

 

Yes, but it will have to explain what all the characters are doing to make sense. For example, you can't just have somebody missing that would have been really useful in whatever story without an explanation. Sunbow did this often.

 

Not really. The show had heavy focus on a few main hero characters and a few main villains. The rest were guest stars.

 

Cyberverse built up to a pretty big cast by the end of it, while having a relatively small core cast throughout. It was pretty lean in the beginning though. So we can get fairly large casts, but the days of "10 main Autobots debuting in episode 1 all at once" are probably over.

I don't think we'd ever get a truly gigantic cast in a series unless they use 2D animation just because 3D requires a lot of effort to go into creating each model and rig it compared to a flat drawing. Although in the end, I think there's only so big you'd ever want to go before all you get for each character is a 2 minute toy ad with 3 lines and nothing else. I for one don't want everything to be as breakneck paced and overstuffed as The Rebirth. Gotta find a happy balance.

 

I think its possible. What they should do in that case though is have a core class of characters (ones that'd be repacked in following waves since all the kids would want and know them and let's face it cartoons are commercials for Hasbro) then assign the primary voice actors of the core characters and rotate them Episode by Episode to allow development and screen time. That would also keep the show in budget since you wouldn't need to higher too many additional voice actors/actresses

Hell Frank Welker could do 80-100% of your show