Animated's got many praises among the fan form being among if not THE most celebrated TF show of all time but were there things about it that you don't like about it at all?

 

I really didn’t like the human villains but after watching armada and seeing how bad that show is and its human characters were I began to appreciate animated’s human villains but I still don’t like professor princess or the headmaster, another thing I don’t like is how it never got a 4th season.

 

I don't like the whole "Autobots don't fly" thing that much.

 

I'm not a huge fan of the style, and Bumblebee got on my nerves.

 

I hated Blackarachnia and the Dinobots, and I really didn't care for the whole "Autobots don't fly" thing or the fact that the Autobots apparently fought a war without guns because only the Decepticons can have guns for some reason.

 

The whole thing with Dirt Boss was really kind of annoying (especially when it felt like he couldn't go five seconds without declaring his name constantly) and he didn't contribute much to the show except maybe getting himself and Mixmaster killed.

I also strongly dislike what the official plans for S4 would have been, with Megatron going crazy because of the Marauder triple changer upgrade (which itself I found rather uninspired compared to the excellence of the Super Megatron based look) and basically killing all the Decepticons himself by throwing them (Lugnut willingly jumping) into some reactor thing inside Trypticon prison to power it up, all for it just to crash into Dinobot Island.

That's some stupid shit I would expect Prime Megatron to do, but Animated Megatron was second only to Beast Wars Megatron in being an effective villain without having to be a mindless brute all the damn time. Plus, it would kill off all the other major Decepticons and screw that noise because Animated Decepticons are a freakin' hoot.

 

The way Bumblebee insincerely apologizes to Waspinator always felt really tone deaf to me. Bumblebee inadvertently ruined this guy’s life and right up until the end it’s like Bee is still trying to avoid any sort of responsibility. His apology is more of an excuse than anything.

I also didn’t like how poorly utilized the animation companies were. Nature Calls gets really high quality animation, but Megatron Rising Part 2 looks like garbage. I don’t know what determines which company gets which episode, but it sucked that some of the most pivotal episodes of the show had the weakest animation.

I also disliked how weak the Dinobots were. They were presented as these incredibly dangerous individuals but were easily beaten by pretty much anyone. They really needed one episode where they, I dunno, fought Blitzwing or something and won.

Other than that it’s hard for me to point at things I dislike about the show. Most everything served a purpose or felt right at home in the narrative. I liked how much down time and small scale conflicts the show had that made the setting feel more intimate and quaint, and thus made the genuinely world-ending events feel momentous.

Yeah, that doesn’t sound great, but I also hesitate to entertain that concept as anything more than brainstorming. What we were told of TFA S4 was all over the place, with a lot of episodes and plot points, and it was clear most of that would have needed to be scaled back if it ever made it to animation. Megatron going crazy and using all these Decepticons as raw material particularly sounds like something someone higher up would veto for the very reasons you give.

 

I felt that came off more as him attempting to play up the 'buddy buddy' angle in that they were both used by Shockwave as tools for preserving his cover as the spy - the wrong one, to be sure, but at the same time I don't think the show could have reasonably given that plot thread a truly satisfying conclusion in such a short amount of time. Predacons Rising really did feel more like them just trying to tie up loose ends in a hurry since that's the end of the Waspinator plot as well as the whole Elita-1 thing between Sentinel and Optimus.

Most of the budget for MR Pt. 2 absolutely went into perfecting Megatron's stock footage transformation.

Enh, I didn't mind it purely because it was just the Dinobots acting tough but in reality they weren't. After all, they were little more than refurbished animatronics from the beginning and if Soundwave himself was any indication, just because you were brought to sentience with the AllSpark, that doesn't mean you can actually take a punch. They were only dangerous in so far as being semi-feral fire breathing giants - once you got around that, they were not that bright and easily manipulated.

Yeah, plus it doesn't gel with the stuff from the Almanacs outside of the Marauder upgrade, so you're probably right in that it was an unrefined idea that wasn't developed further due to the show's cancelation and the third season cut in half.

 

Almost forgot: I didn't like Soundwave either.

 

I don´t know if my complaint makes much sense, considering Animated was quite comedy-oriented but I think Autobots felt sometimes too silly. Maybe its just me, though...

 

I honestly spent a solid 5 minutes or so trying to think of something I didn't like about this show besides it not getting the chance to finish naturally (which isn't really an issue with the show itself).

I still think Sari near the end was looking a bit too much like a fanfic author's first attempt at a super cool OC that totally isn't a self-insert... but I still very much liked her. Just because she reminded me of numerous original characters I've 'discovered' when reading fanfiction doesn't mean she's disqualified from being a good character.

 

I do wonder what the original plan for Sari was. She was clearly more than just another protoform. She looked different, appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and after being upgraded and essentially becoming a living version of the Allspark Key, she was shown with abilities that never got a proper explanation but were clearly hints towards something.

This is purely my fan-theory, but I always wondered if Sari was part of a new generation of protoforms meant to be more adaptable than standard Transformers. Possibly even replacements for the stolen protoforms Lockdown would eventually sell to Starscream. Essentially TFA's version of the great upgrade, where the Transformers race would shrink and adapt to a planet's life, organic or otherwise. Her abilities like the super learning seen in Decepticon Air could be part of this, allowing her generation to instantly adapt to any culture/civilization.

Unfortunately we'll probably never know, but it seems unlike the show we know for her origin and purpose to stop merely at being one of many generic, unremarkable protoforms like those that would be used for clones. It also doesn't explain why she had a Spark or how she got into Sumdac's lab.

 

Probably the most controversial one for me is going back through the rewatch thread I kind of find Animated Starscream to a bit of a letdown from what I remember. I think Kenny's a great modern Screamer voice but maybe it's kind of I've gained a new appreciation for Armada and Cybertron Starscream but I kind of find Animated Starscream to fall short a bit in comparison to the iterations that immediately preceded him.

Soundwave's on the lesser end of "modern Soundwave" reinventions. Don't care for the "machine revolution" thing and I really don't care for Soundwave with car alt-modes.

Reading what sounds like would have been the plans for season 4 kind of makes me happy it, mostly, wraps up nicely with season 3. I really didn't like how it sounds they would have taken Megatron.

Also yeah, Bumblebee kind of ruins a guy's life and never really seriously seems like he has to own up to it. That after the apology Waspinator goes full on "I will never forgive you! Mwuahhaha" seems like it was kind of letting Bee off the hook.

 

I wish Swoop and Snarl were actual characters instead of just making roars throughout the series.

 

What made me quit the show one season in.

 

No season 4.

 

The Wraith and any other human super heroes being cut, no exploration of the Autobots taking their " jobs"
The Dinobots being non entities and worse than the Sunbow Dinobots, Grimlock only got a couple good lines in the entire series, in Black Friday.
Too many Ninjas including arguably Lockdown's connection to Yoketron and Prowl.
Bulkhead was a Space Bridge expert with nobody on the Omega crew being aware.

 

I have felt like there was something wrong with me and the way I just didn't get into Animated like everyone else seemingly did in the fandom, but seeing this thread is starting to make me realize I was not alone in not really liking it. I just couldn't get into it and I feel like it was because I wasn't liking the "fun" elements because I got into Transformers via BM, but I see some people have some of the gripes I had with the show, especially if the one spoiler is right regarding BlackArachinia's whole endgame goal.

Animated was a series I wanted to get into, but just quit after a few episodes.

 

I've been watching animated lately and I do really like it however the misogyny is. astounding honestly. How you can have this much misogyny in a kids show about robots I don't know.
Black-Arachnia being a freak of nature and a seductress, Arcee losing her memory and basically being a prop, Slo-Mo losing her time piece immediately... and the only other girls in the show are two literal children

Also I feel hate how Prowl is the most ignored main character and how he's treated compared to Bumblebee and Bulkhead. Those two are allowed to screw up all they want but Prowl gets a few new upgrades and Ratchet and Optimus are on his tail immediately, before he really even gets too full of himself