So recently I started watching Beast Wars with a bunch of friends who know basically nothing about transformers, the friends are as follow

M: My best friend I've known since 4th grade, she knows a bit about Transformers from me, as well as the fact we frequently go on toy hunts together.
A: M's S/O, our dnd DM, knows jack shit about transformers
C: Another good friend of mine, only knows about Randy, and by extent the horrors of GPS

Episode 1: So basically everyone was taking the piss out of the animation of course, and A and C respectively quickly acquired a hatred towards Cheetor, which is fair, he's pretty annoying in early episodes. A quickly discovered that their favorite character is rattrap

Episode 2: We continue to take the piss out of the animation, and generally made fun of how shaky the opening fight between Primal and Dinobot was, and how Dinobot could've just thrown primal over the edge. Had to explain what Energon was to the group and why they had to take beast modes. C found out her favorite character was Dinobot.

Also, we got this beautiful freeze frame.

Episode 3: We pretty much spent this entire episode making fun of Cheetor, and the plethora of suggestive moments in this episode, it was actually a pretty fun watch.

Episode 4: Another episode where we made fun of Cheetor, like I said A and C find him annoying, we also tried to mimic Terrorsaur's speech pattern. A gained a liking towards Terrorsaur

Episode 5: C began to question why Rattrap was put in charge instead of Rhinox, because in her own words "He seems to be the only responsible one", and basically everyone questioned why Waspinator survived being loaded with bullets at the end of the episode. C basically said, "I hate that I'm actually getting invested in this" and for the record M's favorite character is Megatron.

 

While I've pretty much always maintained that Beast Wars is probably the best Transformers series. I've never been certain about it being the best way to introduce someone to the franchise. Of course the people who grew up with Beast Wars might very well say otherwise.

 

they're really enjoying it so far, which I'm happy about

 

Hearing people shit on the animation really hurts. I know it was a long time ago, but I remember how fucking cool it was at the time. I still think it's fucking cool. I like the metallic look on the bot modes and TMs.

 

for what it was at the time it's pretty good, and after a few episodes it becomes a lot less jarring, as the episodes went on I found they commented on it way less

 

Graphically, it never looked good, IMO. But it was technically impressive for a TV budget, and it was animated very well. We should draw a distinction between how the primitive rendering and texturing look versus how the characters move--i.e. are their movements natural, is the motion fluid, little touches like Megatron wiggling his dinosaur fingers, etc.

 

Beast Wars may not have aged well, but I consider it to be one of the most expressive CGI shows.

 

To be honest I could never get passed the cgi when it was originally on. I know that sounds kind of snobbish. I recently watched through it with my daughter. She absolutely loved it. I still think the writing was fantastic and love the characters. The cgi grew on me too.

 

Which piece of TF media would be better though? I'm doing a full rewatch of pretty much all TF media at the moment and I struggle to think of a more appropriate introduction than Beast Wars.

 

Well again, someone who grew up with Beast Wars would be able to answer this better than I am. But I've always wondered if Beast Wars is as enjoyable before having watched the original cartoon first.

 

Always good to see new people get into BW. It's such a wild ride given the pretty humble beginnings. The characters are so over-the-top at the start. Effective in establishing the characters, but blunt as a brick to the gearbox.

But that would be lacking in honour! D:

I feel around late season 1/season 2 the show became a lot more effective in working within its limits. There's a lot of stuff that just isn't there yet, like how freaking bad trees look early on compared to season 3, but they tend to choose their battles better as it goes on.Back then, especially the second and third seasons, the show did look good. While textures were basic the models were mostly incredibly smooth and sharp, and without HD a lot of the graphical limitations weren't so egregious.

Not only was it enjoyable without watching the original show, it made watching the original show after damn near painful for me. I never expected the original cartoon to be so low quality in terms of writing, animation, and story. Beast Wars set the bar too high.  

And 26 years later I'm still a massive fan and even completed the first stage of my BW collection today.   (all mass retail releases, then moving on to exclusives)

 

I will tell you from my personal experience. I grew up with the G1 cartoon in the 80 and early 90s. By the time Beast Wars came about on the air I was just finishing High School. I found the concept pretty ridiculous at the time, which was robots transforming into organic animals. However, I didn’t watch much of the show in the 90s. I did catch it’s successor show Beast Machines and I was blown away by how good it was.

Beast Machines convinced me to give its predecessor another look. I eventually watched all of Beast Wars and this was well past the Unicron Trilogy by the way. And while I never considered it to be better then Beast Machines, I found Beast Wars to be a well made series. The characters, writing, voice acting and the story is timeless.

 

Reminds me of zoomer-aged younger brother ragging on the graphics and scope of Ocarina of Time. I'm like...dude, it makes no sense to judge things outside of their place in history. That's like telling a 5 year old he's an idiot just because he's not as smart as his future adult self.

 

That's actually a great analogy which I'll probably now be using a lot in future, good on you my friend.

 

I never thought it looked good at the time. The character models were indeed great, if a bit uncanny in their faces. But the overall look of the show also includes the scenery and the special effects, which were mostly awful, especially in season 1. Even the show's color palette seems a bit weird and not very pretty.

It actually looks better to me now that I'm older and can be more objective, and consider the budget and time constraints Mainframe were working with, instead of just going "yuck"

 

Better than WFC even.

I'd say some awareness of Transformers would be beneficial, especially for certain plot points and later reveals. I'd nominate either Beast Wars or the 1986 movie as the best "gateway media".

 

For me one thing Beast Wars did well was having a smaller cast it really helped each character to stand out. Instead of shoving in a bunch of characters into one episode and giving them all one maybe two lines to establish their personality and that’s all you got from them. Characterization in Beast Wars had depth.

 

UPDATE

They hate blackarachnia's design

 

Hopefully they get past that and can enjoy how fun of a character she is.

 

This was definitely something I was struck by while starting to watch the show for the first time last year. There's definitely a lot of personality that comes through despite the aged technology

Though I suppose even though I somehow completely missed the show at the time it was airing, I am somewhat primed to get along with its animation as someone that was well into Reboot at the same time as a kid.

And fair enough, too. I think she's a good character, and her toys can be fun, but "the girl must be an hourglass titty spider" is naff as all get out