What is your biggest problem which each series? G1: No legit ending Beast Wars: Season 3 should have been longer Beast Machines: Organic Cybertron RID: Kids saving the world and controlling Fortress Maximus Armada: Choppy animation Energon: Cliffjumper/Downshift Cybertron: Not enough cons TF1: none come to mind Animated: Professor princess TF2: Ratchet, Sideswipe, and Ironhide did not do enough Prime: Lack of Optimus Prime in season 1 and 3 DotM: No deluxe Dino/Mirage Rescue Bots: Could use more Optimus and Bumblebee
Well isn't this thread just cynical. G1: Season 3's less than stellar episodes. Headmasters: Daniel and Wheelie. Beast Wars: The deaths in season 1 that no one could remember. Beast Machines: The premise without an explanation. RID: Just some of the general stupidity. 'some' of it at least. Armada: Most of the dubbing and rushed jobs. Energon: Everything. Cybertron: The Velocitron arc. TF1: Lack of personality in the Decepticons. Animated: The overuse of the key in earlier episodes. TF2: The Hats. Prime: Boring Cast. DOTM: Not nearly enough robots. Rescue Bots: Nothing really, it just doesn't appeal to me.
G1: Being, well, an 80s cartoon BW: Handling of Tigatron and Airazor BM: Nightscream RID: Everyone being boring aside from Side-Burn and Sky-Byte Armada: Rushed dubbing and animation Energon: Everything Cybertron: Not enough focus on Sideways, Soundwave, and Planet X; only a handful of permanent Decepticons. Animated: Not having a fourth season Prime: Poor characters and status quo
G1: Megatron's bizarre plans, like a giant purple griffon. Though I guess I enjoy them in a campy sense. Beast Wars: I didn't like how most of the Predacons had the goal of overthrowing Megatron, it felt so often that I got tired of it. But I'd say this is forgivable. Beast Machines: The transmorphing, not transforming. RID: The Decepticons being a subsection of the Predacons. I would prefer the Decepticons to be their own thing. Armada: Gotta catch 'em all! Energon: The erasing of established character history. Cybertron: I agree with you Hotshotprime, not enough cons, they felt forgetable aside from Megatron and Screamer. TF1: Barely any Megatron screen time. Animated: While S3 had a great ending, seeing what cool stuff could have been in S4, I feel disappointed. TF2: The Fallen was a disappointing villain. Prime: Megatron's departure in the end and the reasoning behind it. DotM: Megatron had a really awesome alt-mode that was barely seen in the film.
My blanket answer to just about every TF series would be the humans. Most often the main human companion characters, but some of the secondary human characters are irritating too.
G1: Season 4, being an 80's cartoon. BW: Dated animation. BM: Ugly character models. RID: Haven't seen it. Armada: Dub issues, kids. Energon: Shitting all over the last half of Armada. Cybertron: Pacing issues. Animated: Didn't get a Season 4. Prime: Terrible lack of focus and direction, wasted potential. Rescue Bots: Haven't seen it. Movies: The Transformers are very rarely (if ever) treated as characters, just big set pieces that explode and punch each other.
G1: Daniel and Wheelie Headmasters: tie between Daniel and Wheelie & the departure of old characters so we could have more focus on the headmasters. Masterforce: saying that humans are superior to Transformers. Victory: uh.....can't think of anything. BW: uh....can't think of anything. BM: crappy designs (well, mostly). RID: good guy/bad guy ratio severely tipped in good guy's favor. Armada: uh.....can't think of anything. Energon: crappy CGI. Cybertron: not enough Soundwave. TF1: too much time on humans, not enough on Transformers. Animated: lame human villains. ROTF: Megatron answering to anyone. Prime: uh....can't think of anything. DOTM: dissapointing final fight between Prime and Megatron. Rescue Bots: no Decepticons.
I'll say a few things about the live-action film series. ROTF spent a lot of time on the college. A lot. ROTF overdosed on the humor. When watching a series with apparently "serious" implications, having a lot of jokes shouldn't come to mind immediately. Shockwave, Arcee and Skids were all wastes of a perfectly good character. The antagonists' plan, specifically Megatron's, seems awfully convoluted. From the first movie, I took away that Megatron came to Earth to find the Allspark by himself, so that he could secure victory over the Autobots. But in ROTF, he returned to the Nemesis on Saturn, which seemed to have crashed a long time ago; there, Megatron reported his failure to the Fallen, who wanted to Allspark, not for the alleged limitless energy within it, but for coordinates to find the Star Harvester so they can use it on the sun and get more energon. Then, in DOTM, Megatron said that Sentinel was to rendezvous with him on Earth. Wait, didn't you immediately crash and freeze in the Arctic? And wouldn't bringing Cybertron into Earth's orbit ravage both planets? Another writer could have taken all of this and tied it together in some way, converging objectives, but this is unforgivably sloppy. The human cast. So many potenial characters disappear by the next movie, it's hard for me to care about them. There's very few scenes between the Transformers themselves. Megatron's return to the Nemesis in ROTF, and Optimus and Sentinel's Talk in DOTM are some of my favorite in the series thanks to their solid Transformer-to-Transformer interaction.
G1: General lack of thought, quality or logic. BW: Simon Furman writing the last two episodes despite having no damn clue what Beast Wars was and totally fucking up the ending with absurd "Covenant of Primus" bullshit. BM: Nightscream. RID: It was an anime dub, and while their were plenty of strong vocal performances, it suffered from things anime dubs of that quality usually suffer from. Armada: The shear level of technical errors. Energon: The entire fucking thing. That show was a wreck in every single regard except maybe music. The animation was insultingly rudimentary, the writing was utter nonsensical dreck with large portions of episodes being just pure babbling, the direction was awful the pacing was awful. It was just painful. Even it's best episodes are hard to watch. Cybertron: The speed planet arc lasted longer than I think the universe itself maybe. TF1: As cool as they were, those giant Bumblebee and Frenzy puppets looked so damn fake. TFA: It never got a fourth season. (also I wish the actual animation was higher quality. The style is great and some episodes like Home is where the Spark is looked great, but there were eps like Megatron Rising Part 2 that... eh...) TF2: Everyone humps. Also, a lot of speedy rambling. TF Prime: The utter lack of anything unique or remarkable. The show's writing was painfully average, and it seriously went out of it's way to avoid doing truely interesting plotlines. Everytime it had a good idea it regressed it into pointlessness. Little in that show was unique to it, and what wa unique was so poorly handled I understand why it hardly had a fresh concept to be found. Even it's style is highly derivitive of the movies and Transformers Animated. (except without any of the unique features character were always given to be visually distinct in TFA, almost everyone had basically the same face in Prime) TF3: Sentinel just turned bad, the Autobots ahve lost one of their own, nest has been leveled, the world is on the brink of invasion, you know what we need right now? "GIRLS LIKE BIG DICKS, SAM." The Cybertron games: Like Prime, they're just generally unremarkable. Highly derivitive and simple, and they really don't look very good at all. Dreamwave comics: The art. IDW comics: AHM and Chaos.
G1- Perhaps more than any other TF series (perhaps), this one was dominated by the toys on the shelves. Characters would disappear into the background never to be seen again. The Dinobots, Ironhide, lots of really important guys just vanish during season 2, only to be killed during the movie. The toon slavishly obeyed what was on the shelves to the detriment of the characters. Headmasters- God awful boring and repetitive. Scramble City- Characters show up and fight. Rinse, repeat, and roll the credits. Vapid and soulless. I'd get more entertainment from watching a little kid smash 2 of his robot toys together for a half hour. Zone- See Scramble City. Just BARELY better. And that's not a compliment. It had the tiniest sliver of a story to it, but it was still a mindless pile of crap. BW- The way Tigatron, AirRazor, Terrorsaur and Scorponok were handled. I can't really picture the story working without the rest of the cast, but those 4 drew the short ends of the stick. It's like the writers didn't really know what to do with them. BM- Rhinox dies as a bad guy. Sure his old self was freed from the Tankorr personality after he was dead, but I would've preferred to have him rejoin the Maximals with his mind freed. Also, the technorganic element was limited to animals and plants. I would've liked to have seen some technorganic vehicles to show that the TFs can still be cool jets and whatever while still being technorganic on a molecular level. RID- A lot of the show felt like filler. Armada- The Mini-Cons are non-characters. The whole drive for the show centers around those little guys, and I couldn't care less about them. Energon- Everything Split Lip said. But specifically, the story was afraid of changing the status quo. Any time the bad guys were dealt a crippling defeat, they'd simply recover quickly and be back at full strength by the next ep. It was like watching a teeter totter. Both sides tipped the balance of power, but they never get any closer to defeating the other. Cybertron- I hated Megatron/Galvatron. He was one of those typical cliche' anime villains who couldn't be beaten by anyone but Optimus. Not even a gigantic, Primus-fueled Starscream could beat teeny tiny Galvatron. Fucking ridiculous and annoying. Thanks, anime cliche's! TFA- Nothing really coming to mind. TFP- Didn't like how they'd set up something grand only to back away from it at the last second. Take for instance, Optimus losing his memories and reverting to Orion Pax. Since Optimus didn't retain any of his experience during his time as a Decepticon, there's no chance for character growth there. Likewise, Megatron was unaffected by having his old friend back. No character development there. The only thing that came of that entire arc was the thrust for the relic hunts.
BW: Silverbolt is a secret asshole Movies: Needs more explosions Animated: Really weak first season Prime: Boring. So boring. It has its moments, but they're very short and few. I couldn't find anything to care about.
G1- No rhyme or reason, boring designs BW- waste of Tigatron and Airrazor BM- Very underrated Armada- The kids Energon- Absolutely fine! Nothing wrong AT ALL Cybertron- weird animation RID- Boring TFA- No fourth season TF1- Nothing, really. TF2- Too much human stuff, toilet humor Prime- Boring, repetitive, boring characters, no coherent plot, wasteful with characters that actually did stuff, status quo controls all, nothing had no consequence. TF3- Too much human stuff, not enough Shockwave. Rescue Bots- Nothing, really. Maybe not enough bad guys? WFC/FOC/RODS- Call of Duty with Transformers
G1 - People thinking this is the be all and end all Transformers. BW - Not getting Dark Glass made as an episode. BM - the way the returning cast was mostly handled. RID - Almost everything aside from Scourge and Sky-Byte. Saban's dubbing was really annoying, 4Kids would have done better IMO.....I'm serious. The voices would sound better at least. Armada - The Kids and the rushed dubbing and animation errors. Energon - Everything, whenever it had something going for them they squandered it but giving it a boring alternative. Cybertron - Velocitron's arc being longer than it needed to, the lack of development with Planet X and the way the first two episodes were made and dubbed. Animated - The human villains were tacky, the handling of Samurai Prowl, Ironhide and Hot Shot's hick voices, Sentinel being too much of a tool, the lack of a Season 4 and more figures in the toyline. Prime - The fact the fandom is truly divided over the show, Primes Don't Party, Mary-Sue Airachnid, Wrecker Wheeljack, The shortened 3rd season, Unicron being the Earth. Rescue Bots - The plots for most episodes feel like every other tv show, I'm not real a fan of the too simplistic artstyle. I feel like most of the voice actors I've always wanted to see in Transformers are wasted on voicing human character over Transformers.
G1: Caving into whiny kids and reviving Optimus, and then a horrible 3-part finale. BW: Other Victories needed to be a 2-parter (so as to properly conclude the Vok storyline and just overall have not as quick a pace). BM: The 'dark' tone (i.e. Primal being an eco-terrorist, overly preachy and long-winded message, Rhinox becoming a villain because of his ideals;which completely contradict his personality in BW) RID: Overly silly approach (but still a good, underrated series). Armada: Bad 'Gotta Catch 'em All' beginning Energon: Not continuing on the set-up of Optimus' redemption arc and just being a bad show with a bad plot and development in general. Cybertron: How rushed the 1st 2 episodes were. 1st Movie: Lack of screen time for certain bots and cons TFA: The various subplots left unresolved. TF 2: ROFT Poor execution of the plot at points, lack of screen time for The Fallen, very inappropriate ratio of time spent on 'Optimus Revival' battle:Final Battle TF 3: DOTM Lack of screen time for certain characters again. Prime: Wasted potential (poorly concluded arcs, setting up great but then unused plotlines, Smokescreen's incredible character development being swatted aside come the finale for Bumblebee, the rushed feeling of Predacons Rising in general)
G1 - Jazz kinda just left after the movie BW/BM - Day poor (by today's standards) cgi RID - It's perfect STFU Armada - Don't remember it too well to have many complaints Emerging - Can I complain about everything? Cybertron - Holy shit that race Trilogy 1 - Too little robots with character Animated - I felt like it only got good when Ultra Magnus and co. came in Prime - Spent too much time on the details of the robots and introduced too few characters
G1: Continuity errors, Rodimus Prime being a shitty leader, Galvatron going from being a badass in TFTM to an incompetent nutjob in Season 3, Carbombya BW: The way the deaths of Terrorsaur, Scorpinok, Tigatron and Airrazor were handled BM: The horrible character designs and character derailment RID: Awful storytelling Armada: The slipshod dub and animation, the whole "Gotta Catch Them All!" mentality the first third of the show had. Energon: Everything Cybertron: shoehorned into the UT-verse and has very little relevance to the previous two shows. Animated: no Season 4 TFP: OP is dull, Unicron is earth. Movieverse: Everything, especially the horrible character designs that make Injector, Nightscream, and The Beast look good in comparison. Also the blatant misogyny and racism.
G1: Didn't get a full 4th season, or at least let Rebirth be the 5-parter it should have been. Beast Wars: No complaints whatsoever except that the animation has not held up at all. Beast Machines: No complaints. RiD: Every single episode felt like a filler episode, even when it wasn't. Armada: The kids. Carlos' over-the-top offensive cartoon hispanic accent. Just the simple fact that there could be a kid named "Rad." Energon: I only saw Super Link, and I only watched the first half of the series to the point it was originally supposed to end, so I don't actually have any complaints. The Energon complaints either don't apply to the first half of Super Link, or I don't agree with them. Kicker and Roadbuster were great characters; the idea of reformatting characters was already well-established in the franchise for years. Cybertron: The shaded 3D robots look horrible next to 2D human characters and backgrounds. They either needed to stick with flat cel-shaded, or choose full CG or full 2D. A good show, but a visual mess. Animated: No complaints. The easy complaint to make would be that we didn't get a fourth season, but I kind of like ending things on a positive note and Ultra Magnus still hanging on to life. TFP: sigh... I guess my biggest complaint would be lack of living up to potential. Perfect example would be how season one seemed to get better and better as it went on, until we got the great finale and that amazing cliffhanger. But then they followed it up with the most underwhelming, disappointing, BORING season 2 opener possible. That show was an endless string of good set-ups and disappointing pay-offs for me.
