Looks like Call of the Primitives is going to take me a bit. There's a lot to talk about, and I tend to catch myself writing a ton of comments about the sexy, sexy animation. I'm less than 5 minutes into the episode and I've had my notepad file for thoughts open and worked on for almost 40 minutes.  

I'm hoping it'll be done tomorrow night, but even that might be a stretch.

 

I absolutely swear I'm getting Call of the Primitives up tomorrow morning/afternoon. The watch is done, the notes are made and the images I want to use are set, I just need to finish the review and check it over before I post it. But I had planned on getting to be by midnight and here we are at nearly 1am. Will also do my best to find some time to watch The Face of the Nijika tomorrow too.

 

CALL OF THE PRIMITIVES

THE SHORT VERSION
Gorgeously animated ode to a bunch of underappreciated characters? Or hilariously disappointing origin story that nobody asked for? You decide.

REVIEW
As the above comment suggests, this is an episode whose legacy depends largely on which aspect of it is more important to you.

If you're here for the story it's probably disappointing. The idea of roping all the "primitive" characters into the fray and focusing on the Dinobots, Predacons, Terrorcons, Sky-Lynx and a handful of others is cool in theory, but the unfortunate reality is that few of those characters (mostly the Dinobots and Sky-Lynx) are capable of carrying the episode for any lenght of time. And since many of them don't speak or can barely speak, we get a lot of extra characters just sort of standing around and doing nothing because they have no better way to contribute.

The fight at the start of the episode is fun, even if we really don't have any clue why the Autobots and Decepticons are fighting it out on the moon, it's visually interesting and has some decent banter to go along with it. But since it's just window dressing and a launching pad for the main story it doens't really get to go anywhere and peters out as soon as the signal to the Dinobots appears.

And then the big elephant in the room. Which is, ironically, the tiny little alien sitting in his control room: Primacron.

This is how the cartoon chose to explain the origins of the biggest, baddest, most dangerous enemy the Transformers ever faced. Unicron is reduced from being a mysterious threat that is basically a walking, talking force of nature to it being the plaything of a little ape man with a space helmet. I don't know if this is the worst possible origin for Unicron, but it seems like it's pretty high on the list. I would've preferred them just not revisiting the well. They could've chosen to not link Unicron to this at all and just had Tornadron be the creation of a random mad scientist. But instead this attempt at world building hurts the story. And what hurts it more is that the story itself is pretty thin once we get past the Primacron background. The Oracle is a cool effect and workable historical quirk, but it's not enough to save everything. So then mostly what we have left is Primacron's inability to control his creation and the various Primitives comedically not getting along and failing to stand up to Tornadron at all. It's almost telling that in the first 6-8 minutes of the episode I had far, far more thoughts and talking points than I did in the last 12 or so. Because once we get the infodump on Primacron's history, everything else flies by in rapid fashion. And that's a shame. Because if they had slowed things down and perhaps allowed for a few more interesting characters to be invovled, a big threat like this could've sustained a two-parter. but instead it's hollowed out so much that the remaining plot skeleton can barely support itself. On the plot side of things, the episode is a C at best, verging towards a C-

On the other hand, if you're here for the visuals, then prepare to be entertained. Not animated by AKOM or Toei, it carries a very 80s anime stylized design aesthetic. How stylized it is tends to waver, from looking like highly detailed but standardized G1 models and designs to being sleeker, smoother, longer, and generally more dynamic looking, full of little mechanical details and extra linework. While there are times where the exceptional detail works against shots where things are portrayed from a distance or on also-detailed backgrounds, those moments are few and are mostly drowned out by the way that everything else pops and sizzles. The laser and blast effects in particular are mostly very good and far more detailed and flashy than what we're used to from the series, especially over the last season. I'm a bit sad that there aren't a ton of big fights to really let this style sink its teeth into, as Tornadron lends itself to mostly standing near an opponent and them keeling over "dead", but what we get is really cool and is a nice way to help wind down the series towards its rapidly-approaching conclusion (though in retrospect it's also a bit of an unfortunate tease that we get this visually fantastic episode before ultimately closing out with the AKOM-made Rebirth trilogy). On the visual design side of things, this episode is a solid A.

So in the end, things balance out and get us a B+. I'm giving the plus because I hold a particular fondness for the visual style and relatively error-free animation (shame about the Windcharger cock-up) even if the story is weak. I don't think I could push it into A territory on those grounds alone, but this is a good result from an inconsistently made episode.


THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS

Spoiler

-For the final time, we get an episode written by Donald F. Glut. Fittingly he goes out as you'd expect: writing an episode that heavily features the Dinobots to pander to his enthusiasm for all things Dinosaur.

-The other big production aspect of this episode that I want to touch on before getting into making biting, unfunny remarks about the content is the animation. This is one of the episodes of the series that is almost certainly not the work of either Toei or AKOM, who were known to have only produced 42 of the 49 season 2 episodes and an unkown number of season 3 episodes (TFWiki suggests at least 3: this episode, Starscream's Ghost, and Only Human. The presence of that last one would go a long way to explaining what the deal was with the incredibly goofy prototype Arcee character model that got used).

This episode in particular is possibly the only one that gets singled out for being an unknown studio's work with the intent of that claim being a big positive. The animation is lush and detailed and the characters feature stylized designs and elaborate effects far above what even Toei did at their best. It really sort of gives the episode a late 80s/early 90s anime flair that you didn't often get. I'll talk more about specifics of the animation as I go through the episode. According to the wiki, while the exact studio has never been pinned down, research now seems to suggest that the strongest candidate is Japanese studio Ashi Productions, who produced a lot of magical girl and mecha series through the 80s and 90s including GoShogun, Dancouga, Macross 7, and a pair of much more relevant things to our tastes: Machine Robo, the toyline for which was harvested and rebranded for the west as GoBots and Rock Lords by Tonka (before they were bought out by Hasbro) and the two Beast Wars filler anime series (Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo) that aired in Japan beween seasons of the JP dub of Beast Wars proper. Will we ever get to watch these series? Who knows.

-The opening shot of the formation of Tornatron is actually kind of cool, starting with a single atom and expanding into chained molecules before becoming visible energy "fire"

-The unseen hands of Primacron (who we don't know the name of yet, but I refuse to dance around that for the next little bit until it's revealed properly within the episode) are pretty detailed (our first look at the design and animation quality of the episode), but almost seem like they should belong to some sort of animal barbarian being rather than a scientist.

-The cryptic references to Unicron (again, I'm not going to pretend like I'm watching this episode blind and act like I don't know that's what the reference is. I do take that approach sometimes, but mostly for comedic purposes) sound cool and poetic.

-Tornadron's first act, siphoning the energy off a comet and leaving it as a dead ball of ice floating in space looks awesome too. The hand-painted look of the comet body is quite nice, even if the film transfer to DVD shows quite a bit of scratches and wear.



-We switch to what looks like Earth and the moon (and to quote Spaceballs: "Nice dissolve..." Once again, there's some nice art here as the moon is particularly crater-y and well shaded instead of just being a blob of singular grey.

-The Sweeps heading to the moon identify as "Sweeps 6 and 7", which is not only indicative of the greatest potential number of Sweeps that we've ever seen (I'm trying to think, I believe the most ever assembled on screen in an episode is 4 or 5 plus presumably Scourge?) but the only time the Sweeps have ever been given any sort of unique individual designation.

-Rampage looks anime as hell. It's actually quite cool.



-The one downside to this extremely detailed battle is that from a distance it's hard to pick out who's present at the battle in the wide shots. As the camera pans across the Decepticon side after Springer's "picnic" line, I'm having difficulty IDing every bot aside from obvious ones like Soundwave and Galvatron.

-Even Rodimus looks super anime, with his more angular face (look at those cheekbones. You could cut diamonds on them) and a body preference for angled lines and V shapes instead of straight vertical lines. It makes him look taller and more distinctively regal and imporatant (And more importantly, markedly different from the detailed youthful Hot Rod model from The Movie). His head also seems to fit more snugly inside his "helmet" which makes it look larger and more like an actual helmet rather tahn part of his head structure itself.



-Ultra Magnus: now with super kung-fu action!

-Even Rodimus' transformation is upgraded and detailed, looking once again like a poper transformation rather than a blob of shifting color that becomes a vehicle mode.

-Windcharger?



Can't even blame this one on AKOM like Braun and Huffer-cosplaying-as-Gears in Carnage in C-Minor

-For all the great bits of animation I talk about, there's some rough stuff too. When Slingshot, Air Raid, and Wheelie first encounter Tornadron on Cybertron, the laster blasts and sound effects from them shooting at it clearly precede the animation of them raising their guns to shoot. Also Slingshot is drawn as noticeably taller than Air Raid even though they logically should be the same size given that they're both superion limb-bots and have been shown as identical in size before.

-My bad, the close up reveals that's not Air Raid. It's Blades. Who still should be the same size as Slingshot since he too is a Scramble City style combiner limb, but I'm going to be less pedantic about scale issues between members of different teams.

-Man, this episode is jam-packed with stuff to talk about. I've had enough material here to cover some of the slower episodes of the series, but I'm only 3 minutes into the runtime, which isn't even 3 minutes of story since it includes the title sequence time.

-Tornadron for some reason takes the form of a giant alien spider-sorta-thing (complete with angry eyes and a mouth full of teeth)

-When the Autobots have their energy siphoned off, they turn monochromatic and mostly white before collapsing. It's obvious when you think about it that they aren't dead since Optimus and Starscream turned charcoal black/grey when they died in the movie, but it turns out this is similar to how death is portrayed in the later Japanese series. It makes for an interesting consideration of whose decision the loss of color was and if it was recognized that it might appear like all the characters are just dropping dead.

-Ok. Cybertron itself does turn charcoal black when Tornadron siphons off its energy in one fell swoop. That definitely does make it look like the whole planet was just murdered.

-Ooof, that awkward gray Unicron head in the background as Tornadron leaves (and the nature of his connection to Unicron is revealed). It almost looks like a gag head, with no definied shape within its total mass and just a rather bland face with big round eyes (where Unicron had optics with glass-like pane exteriors) and a sort of mildly purturbed looking mouth expression.



It looks less like the remains of Transformer Satan and more like someone's stoner viking grandpa

-  the way Headstrong just sort of spasms on his back after being flipped over by a tail whip from Grimlock. It's comical, but somehow endearing. Like watching a turtle flipped over on its back.

-When summoned by the mysterious voice, the Dinobots are identified as Grimlock, Snarl, Sweep, Swoop, and Slag. Poor Sludge. But I'm just glad that for once it's another Dinobot that gets forgotten about instead of Snarl.

-What the hell is with Swoop's voice? It sounds almost like Sky-Lynx.

It's been a while since we've had a good combiner assembly sequence. Abominus looks pretty cool coming together, even if it's done exceedingly quickly.

-Galvatron has a pop-out radio mic in his shoulder, the first time

-Sky-Lynx certainly doesn't lack for bravado if he's willing to take on Trypticon.

-There, for but a brief moment, we're reminded that Slugfest and Overkill exist and that Soundwave never ever used them. That's too bad, because dinosaur cassetticons are an awesome idea. And I'm always up for more Stegosaurus content in my pop culture. It's also worse because that scene was all they're going to get. They never appear again in the rest of the episode or anywhere else for that matter aside from some very tame and mostly disconnected appearances in various comic series throughout the years.



-Funny that this episode debuts new cassettes for Soundwave, but nothing for Blaster. Though in retrospect, Blaster never had any other G1-released cassettes that had animal alt modes other than Steeljaw and Ramhorn. So I guess it's not so much 'funny' as it is just sorta intresting that soundwave got so many more casettes for himself than Blaster did.

-Also it's interesting that we see Ravage, Ratbat, Slugfest, and Overkill depart from Soundwave, but not Laserbeak or Buzzsaw.

-Galvatron seems to waffle back and forth betwen holding his arm cannon out with his hand turned sideways (so that it appears as if he's clutching at a handle under the gun barrel and even sometimes that he's pulling a trigger to fire) and in its more natural rested position (so that the cannon rides along the back of his hand.

-Wow...



If it's not clear what that shot is, it's the apparent dissolution of the Autobots on the moon (Rodimus, Magnus, Springer, and Blaster) after Tornadron hits. They'll be shown again briefly as inactive white, statue-like husks in just a moment, but until then it sure looks like they were simply vaporised. This episode almost looks like it could have been made as horrifying as the movie the way Transformer life just gets apparently snuffed out. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautifully rendered effect, but damn does it look bleak until they pull a "psych! They're just de-energized/drained/not-really-dead-for-serious!" 30 seconds later

-Oddly, the moon Autobots stay upright after being drained of their energy, even if the position they were standing in as they writhed in pain seems like it'd be totally unstable. When the ones on Cybertron were hit, they collapsed after being drained.

-Soundwave having a pained moan is creepy in its monotone sound.

-Tornadron clutches the earth and takes all of its energy too, rendering the planet in grayscale. I feel like asking the question of what would happen to biological life forms deprived of their life energy and how it would differ from technological ones like the Transformers is perhaps a bit beyond the scope of the show and should be beyond that of my review too. Also I'm still at less than the episode's halfway point and I've probably watched for almost 2 hours at this point, stopping to comment along the way. So I kind of want to keep things moving.

-Ok, after the break the Autobots on the moon have fallen over. I guess we just didn't get to see that.

-Snarl takes the lead in defending Grimlock. Yay, action for Snarl!

-The "primitives" have been locked in Trypticon's hold for like 10 minutes and are already all trying to kill each other. And this is the crack team that's going to save the universe?

-It's also somewhat concerning that the group is so heavily Decepticon-slanted. On the Autobot side we have the 5 Dinobots, Blaster's 2 cassetes, and Sky-Lynx for 8 total bots. on the Decepticon side are the 5 Terrorcones, 5 Predacons, presumably 4 of Soundwave's cassettes (if we still count Slugfest and Overkill evne though they are not seen again, and don't include Laserbeak and Buzzsaw) and Trypticon for a total of 15 bots. The Autobots are outnumbered 2-1 and the Decepticons would seem to have the clear and distinct size and force advantage.

-When Grimlock breathes fire on the Decepticons (actual fire, not a laser last like he often does), it sounds like the cons all cough at it. There are several things wrong with that reaction...  

-The ancient and sacred place the primitives are called to is a tiny, barren rock in the middle of a junkyard.

-The animation of Grimlock stepping on the cliff edge as it buckles and sends him tumbling down is really cool.

-On the other hand, Sky-Lynx and the other Dinobots literaly just popping up into frame from underneath is far less cool. It even comes with a comedic slide-whistle sound as they rise into place.

-As Grimlock tumbles over you can see small square details under the soles of his dino feet. This is actually well-done as they are representatives of where his robot mode fists store away when transformed

-The Oracle, aka Primacron's assistant is a really cool effect with the sort of running stained glass distortion overa field of colors. It's kind of evocative of the far more interesting way that energon was portrayed early in the series before it just became glowing pink/purple cubes, but is also totally unique.

-The shot of Unicron during the Oracle's story is not from the movie, but honestly it almost could've fooled me given its level of detail.



-Aside from Unicron's origins (which I'll have said enough about in the episode review once I write it. Because, peek behind the curtain, I do all these bullet form thoughts first and then write the review portion last before posting.), the most confusing thing about this episode is that the various bots assembled are called "primitives", but so are some of Primacron's creations. But we know damn well that at the very least the Autobots built the Dinobots themselves. And the presumption would be that if the other characters who appear weren't Quintesson constructions, then they should have come from the point where the Transformers were more or less self-sustainingly reproductive. The concept of the dumber, more animal-like Transformers being older and more "primitive" in the chronological sense seems to clash with the idea that the surviving bots from the time of the Quintessons, way back into the past are more modern and advanced characters like Blitzwing or Alpha Trion. I get what the story is trying to do by separating out the unique characters in the form of the animal-like bots, but it makes for some confusing history.

-The other confusing thing from the Oracle's story (I should stop for a sec and say that name comes from TFWiki via supplemental materials. It's never spoken in episode, where he's only referred to as Primacron's assistant) is that as he recounts his own death, the Matrix is shown emerging from his broken body immediately before Unicron is shown being destroyed (with new animation instead of re-using the footage from the movie). As far as I know, this was never meant to be an origin for the Matrix since the Oracle exists as the glowy energy wall in the cave where he's speaking from in this episode while the Matrix is safely in Rodimus' chest. Sems like an animator just got over-eager to pick out a cool design without being privy to its significance to the story.

-Tornadron drains a sun of its energy and leaves a giant ball of broken, dead rock roughly the size of the sun itself. Uhhh.... stars don't work that way.

-Ooh, the close up of the Oracle is even cooler than the earlier wide shots.

-So the Oracle's plan is that the primitives might be stupid enough to think of something to defeat an intelligent being like Primacron. That seems like a pretty ballsy thing to hinge a plan on when you could also be appealing to the fact that there are numerous genious strategists among the Transformers factions that might be able to pose as a match for Primacron. Why not give Lightspeed a crack at it? He did a good job last time out.

-Clearly all the primitives went to the Prometheus school of stupidly running away from something falling by running so that the falling object chases you instead of turning perpendicularly to escape. You know, like that kinda-awful Alien movie prequel? The school also needs a better name.

-Sky-Lynx's full wrath at the apparent death of Grimlock is a single small tail missle and a blast of fire from his mouth. That's kinda weak, Sky-Lynx.

-And now he's dead too.

-Slag steps up to lead the Dinobots in Grimlock's absence. That's a terrifying prospect.

-Though, when I think about it, who would be the suitable second in command for hte Dinobots? Sludge is dumb by even their standards, Swoop seems like he would get pushed around easily, and Snarl has very little in the way of G1 cartoon personality, but based on his toy bio he is too sullen and angry to lead effectively. So I guess by default the only one left is the axe-crazy, violent psychopath triceratops? Man, they're all doomed.

-Somewhere along the way, Frank Welker's Slag voice really changed. It sounds way different than it did back in season one.

-Whoa! What happened to Razorclaw? That's the most anime-esque design yet. And it's less cool than the previous ones.



-Predaking's definat stand would've been a lot cooler if it was actually a fight and not him just dropping dead because Tornadron was close to him.

-Snarl! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

-Tornadron reassembles and his pieces morph into some kind of molecule chain for no reason whatsoever. Cool, but why?

-Ok, seriously, since when does Grimlock have booster rockets in his feet?

-Tornadron speaks? And has a weird jaggy head thing inside its energy field? What the hell?

-And where did he suddenly get the intelligence for this?

-Primacron's design is awful. It serves its purpose for the comedy of the episode, but man is it disappointing.

-Grimlock pulled a Homer. Maybe he can get a plaque and a ham like Homer did in that Simpsons episode the reference comes from.  

-For all the flashy, cool animation, the seizure-like look of Grimlock laughing is pretty bad.

-And this is how the episode ends: not with a dramatic wrap-up or summary of what happened, but with Grimlock thrashing about comically in Primacron's lab like a goofball.

FAVORITE LINES
"Save your ammunition, Autobots. Superior forces are taking over!"
"Well, well. Commander Modesty is here."
-Sky-Lynx's arrival prompts some well-earned snark from Springer.

Final Grade: B+

 

good lord, that episode took foreeeeeeverrrrrrrr to get through. And not even in a bad way.

 

Excited to check it out tomorrow. Just gotta watch the episode first myself.

 

When watching the Call of the Primitives I think that if you took Unicron out of the story it would be a better episode. I guess many of us would like to know what the connection between Unicron and Cybertron, given that the Matrix could and did defeat Unicron. Here was a chance to give the viewers a good backstory on Unicron and Unicron's possible connection with the Quintessons, Vector Sigma, and Cybertron, but not to be.

Interesting with Soundwave's new cassettes and you can conclude that Buzzsaw and Laserbeak are no longer. My headcanon on the Decepticon cassettes is that at some point before the 1986 movie is that Buzzsaw was badly damaged in battle and rebuilt as Ratbat. Interesting that Laserbeak was seen in Webworld but maybe that was an animation error. With the 2 new Decepticon cassettes, I would say when the Constructicons built Trypticon, they were guided by the Quintessons and built these 2 new Decepticon cassettes.

On the Dinobots, I wish they were shown in their robot modes more often and only really transforming for battle. But that is not a big deal.

 

THE FACE OF THE NIJIKA

THE SHORT VERSION
For the first time ever: a Transformers review with Gilbert & Sullivan references! It's Perceptor in The Mikado(atron)

REVIEW
I went into this episode thinking I would end up probably giving it a C grade as a serviceable but forgettable piece of the late-series run, doomed to relative irrelevance on account of not being big, boisterous, flashy, or important to the franchise like most of the episodes around it.

But you know what? It's actually not bad in a somewhat simplistic sort of way.

The background of the plot is kinda threadbare. We get just enough explanation of the Zamojins and their plight to understand what's going on but never any deeper meditation on the nature of the Quintessons issues or how they managed to somehow lock away an entire planetary system behind a small disc, cutting it off from all the stars besides its own. The quick way the Zamojins seem to re-adapt to being freed of their prison in the end is also left without explanation, as is how Perceptor engineered the freedom in the first place. and perhaps most disappointingly, there was a chance for a bit of interplay between Perceptor-as-Nijika and the Zamojin people and especially Katsudon, but it was passed up in favor of devoting more time to the Zamojins finding various Transformers and shouting "Demon!" and "Devil spawn!" at them. It's too bad becuase this could've been an even better episode than it was if they had done that, perhaps doing away with some of the slower other aspects of the plot.

But that aside, it's still a fun ride. The cast is relatively small, but all get ther jobs done. Zamojin is interesting in a sort of bland "it's a broad-brush version of one culture or a group of cultures, but in space!" sort of way, and the sci-fi explanation of Perceptor and his universal emulator tech is a neat bit of world-building for the Transformers as a species that while it only plays out as important here (because, sadly, this is the end of the line for Perceptor's appearances in the series) it's nice to get a little touch like that before the character bows out.

If you're looking for a great, iconic episode of the series that is everything you expect Transformers to be, this probably isn't it. It's a little weird with its preoccupation with a feudal alien society and the limited Decpeticon involvement. But if you want something that can be entertaining and very Transformers, but in a different way, you could certainly do worse than this episode.

THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS

Spoiler

-Surprisingly this late in the game for the series, we get a debuting pair of writers in Mary Skrenes and Steve Skeates. For both of them this was their first and last crack at The Transformers. Skrenes had a 2 year run with Marvel-Sunbow doing a total of 9 scripts for this series, GI Joe, and Jem combined which encompassed her entire TV writing career. Skeates was a noted comic book writer of the era whose work included Plastic Man, Hawk & Dove, and Aquaman for DC and, surprisingly given the nature of this story, a bunch of comedy stuff for Marvel like Howard the Duck and Peter Porker: The Spectacular Spider-Ham. I can't find any link between the two of them outside of this script, which makes this one of the odder pairings of the series.

-This is also the last ride for Perceptor in the series (though realistically we're down to the last 7 episodes of the series if you include this one. So every episode is likely to be the last outing for somebody). I'll give him credit for being a character debuted in relatively early season 2 who managed to stick it out past the movie when most of the season 1 and 2 cast were being retired on account of no longer having toys on the shelf.

-Sky-Lynx has a viewscreen in his passenger cabin (and it's clearly a viewscreen and not a window based on how he pulls up a visual of outside on it with a techno-sounding noise and flash of light) that has a grid layered over top of it. Like burglar bars on a home window. That's strange.


-I enjoy the visual of Galvatron angrily punching the giant metal disk in space in an effor to get it to open for him.

-Almost as much as I enjoy the visual of Galvatron angrily punching Cyclonus.


-"don your rocket packs, gentlemen" As the Autobots clearly have no rocket packs when they fly through space.

-But that's bypassing the bigger issue here: everyone ejects from Sky-Lynx by flying out of his beast form's mouth



-Ahh, Crazy Galvatron is at maximum crazy in this episode.

-The Quints give the Transformers odds of about 1 in 82.5 million of surviving their trip through the warp gate. So of course they survive.

-Here is the first mention of Perceptor's Universal Emulator. Like the Matrix, it's one of those "what do you mean this thing wasn't here the whoel time? Of course it was" type things. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is always a shame when they have to pull this sort of fake retcon type idea out of nowhere when it's something that seems like it'd be important to know.

-Also it implies that Perceptor is one of the oldest Autobots if the Quintessons know enough about him to know him by name.

-Great, the Autobots are crashing into Space Mongolia. Or Space Feudal Japan

-Rodimus remarks that the trees feel like steel girders. But we've seen often enough that the Autobots seem to have little to no trouble bending or breaking steel structures.

-Ultra Magnus: secret scientist?

-Nice bedside manner, Rodimus. No wonder everyone is happy to get Optimus Prime back soon.

-It's supposed to be a horrible scene (and on the surface it is), but Perceptor's "my insignia! He's removing my insignia!" just sucks all the drama out of it and makes it seem silly.

-The Quintesson voices in this episode seem unusually high-pitched.

-There's some sort of design shenanigans going on as the blacksmith guy inserts Perceptor's universal emulator onto the head of Nijika. The emulator seems like it extends out the back of the insignia for several inches past the depth of Nijika's head. And more than that, the front-view on Nijika implies that the head is not entirely hollow. To put it bluntly, there doesn't seem to be enough empty space available inside the head of Nijika to accommodate the entirety of the Universal Emulator without it sticking out of the front of the head by a significant margin. I suppose you could chalk it up to some mass shifting and shape-changing quirks on the part of Perceptor's part, but there's also no sound to accompany that sort of concept.


-It's cool that they established the extreme density of the planet so that they can justify Katsudon's ability to use his sweet martial arts moves on the Sharkticons and actually cause damage (including a surprisingly visceral smoking hole in one's chest.

♫♪One little bot from space are we.
Pert as a school-girl well can be.
Filled to the brim with girlish glee!
One little bot from space!♪♫​

(for anyone who doesn't get it:

I'm not linking an original production because I figure people will probably be more familiar with the Simpsons reference  )

-Rewinding for a minute, fun fact: the blacksmith guy, Katsudon, takes his name from a Japanese dish comprised of a fried pork cutlet served over rice. A character with a food pun name? Have we stumbled into an Akira Toriyama work?

-We've gone from Blurr leaning on Rodimus's shoulder to Rodimus carrying Blurr out in front of him.

-And oh god, Blurr is speaking at normal pace! Clearly he's on his deathbed.

-Whoa, crazy. that one villager has sharp orc-like fangs in his mouth and terribly awkward looking eyes. Nobody else in the episode comes anywhere close to looking like that.

-During the flashback story that Katsudon is telling, the voice of the empress is Mona Marshall, familiar in this show as Jumal/Prince Hassan, the alien kid Aron, Luisa from Fire On the Mountain, and a couple of incidental kids. She's maybe more famous for playing Kyle's mom and various other female roles on South Park. She also plays the original voice of Nijika in this episode.

-Man, the Quintessons clearly kill a bunch of Zamojins in their attack. No sugar-coating this one.

-It's kind of fun to juxtapose the visuals of the actual story against the somewhat naive retelling being spoken by Katsudon.

-Perceptor's stern conclusions about the nature of Katsudon's story would be more dramatic if his voice wasn't coming out of a tiny little geisha robot.

♪♫Everything is a source of fun♪♫​

-The Quints drop a "what chance do we have?" when discussing the threat of the Zamojins. This was a good 2-3 years before Simon Furman would take over writing the Marvel US run of The Transformers and make that one of his favored stock phrases.

-Cyclonus being the only sane one here and making a deal with the Quintessons behind the back of Crazy Galvatron is always a treat.

-Speaking of Cyclonus, it seems apparent now that I'm listening for it that Roger Carmel's voice is weakening in the lead-up to his passing. It's really sad to hear now that I'm listening for it.

-The Zamojins all attack Ultra Magnus, but it's Rodimus that begins skidding down the cliff before one final hammer shot sends him toppling? Ok then...

-Rodimus seems extra flippant in this episode.

-It's kind of shocking that Perceptor would be built with a valuable part like a Universal Emulator and that it would coincide with where his personality component and brain are stored. That's just bad design.

-"Be silent! Don't call attention to us!" Yes. Because without Cyclonus shouting people will never notice the 15-foot tall purple robot and 5-faced "Demon" standing in the crowd of ordinary people. Oh, wait. They don't notice them even with the shouting. Carry on then.


-What's with the random Zamojins that have pointy teeth? It's not all of them or even most of them.

-Shout out to the one Zamojin who sounds suspiciously like Perceptor shouting to burn Blurr. Simple case of Wally Burr not considering that Paul Eiding has a limited vocal range? Or does Perceptor secretly hate Blurr and want to see him killed? You decide!

-As an interesting quirk, the modern Zamojin Empress is played by a different actress than the past one. Denise Mora appeared 4 previous times on the show doing assorted incidental voices with credits like "woman", "waitress", "reporter", and "TV daughter". These are her only acting credits aside from a b-movie called "Beasties" (which is unrelated to the fact that Transformers Beast Wars was aired in Canada under the name "Beasties" because Canadian TV guidelines prevented programming for kids from being using words like "war" in the title.) Oddly, IMDB credits Mora for voicing the original Nijika while TFWiki claims it was Mona Marshall. I'm inclined to believe the wiki over a less focused source like IMDB, but who can say for sure unless someone goes and asks Marshall and Mora if they remember providing Nijika's 1 line of dialogue.

♪♫Nobody's safe, for we care for none♪♫​

-Seriously, Cyclonus and the Quintesson have been in the crowd the whole time and nobody noticed them? I know that the Zamojins' intelligence is blunted thanks to Quintesson meddling, but that's really pushing it.

-Nice bit of staging to have the Quintesson ship fly by in the background while Rodimus and Ultra Magnus talk.

♫♪Life is a joke that has just begun♫♪​

-It's never established if the original Nijika was sentient or not, and clearly she would seem to be "dead" until Perceptor's emulator was plugged in, but it's still a bit morbid for the one Quintesson to just toss her body casually out of the ship's airlock, strike Blurr, and plummet into the lava.

-Blurr's... erm.... 'pleasurable' sounding moans as he is in the lava are kind of unsettling. I swore I'd never quote the Bayverse movies, especially their bad attempts at humor, but is he having his "happy time" down there? Is he gonna need a minute before he can rejoin the battle?

-Blurr also refers to "wheels in place" but.... he doesn't have wheels. He's a hover-car.

-Rodimus calls Blurr "speedball" for the first and only time. Stealth x-men reference? or stealth drug reference.

-It seems stupid of the Quintessons to just toss Perceptor's Universal Emulator aside. Feels like the kind of important tech they would want to keep around to do basically anything.

♫♪One little bot... from spaaaaaaace......♪♫​

-There's zero explanation of why the Quintesson escape turned off the quadrant lock. I guess we're to assume that Perceptor being plugged into the ship reprogrammed their escape becuase the emulator contains his personality component, but that's never even really hinted at that strongly and never actually paid off in the narrative. I don't expect everything spelled out for me like I'm a dope, but I do at least appreciate that the authors ensure that we're left with logical reasons for events to occur. More logical than "for some reason" (I'm going to use this as a call-forward for when we get to the Japanese G1 trilogy. I've reviewed a couple of episodes of each before and I did a lot of "for some reason" explanations of events. I might need to keep a counter for that one  )

-So Nijika didn't fall into the lava? And is somehow mostly undamaged aside from the missing face? Huh. I guess everything is extra durable on this planet.

-"You and Nijika will meet again. Out among the stars." Spoilers: they don't.

FAVORITE LINES
VENGEANCE NOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!!
-Cyclonus subtly manipulates the assmbled crowd.

Final Grade: B-

 

THE BURDEN HARDEST TO BEAR

THE SHORT VERSION
Rodimus finally learns the most important lesson of all, one which will define his tenure as Autobot leader... Right before he relinquishes his leadership and the show ends.

REVIEW
We're almost on the home stretch. The penultimate story of season 3 is this episode, which takes a mild break from high-stakes space wars to meditate on the burdens of leadership and the pressure of being thrust into a role you weren't prepared for and didn't ask for. It also does this by having a high-stakes space war.

I, along with a lot of people, generally like this episode a lot for dealing heavily with the nature of Rodimus Prime and his usual unease with having to be the Autobot leader who follows in the footsteps of Optimus Prime and be a prophisized chosen one. For doing that it's great. It uses some real world philosophy, albeit slightly incorrectly, and addresses the issue in a pretty respectful manner that pays off in the end with Rodimus finding some personal truths that help him accept what fate has in store for him. It's almost immediately undone by the following episode, but that can't really be held against this one.

Watching a little more critically though, there are some cracks and flaws that appear. The visuals are strongly designed and mostly nicely animated, but there are some moments of extreme corner-cutting along the way with shoddy work and low frames, or downright cheaty tricks to avoid confronting any truly difficult animating. The visuals also all seem a bit on the dark side and there's a distracting split/distortion line near the top of the frame that never goes away, though that could just be a bad transfer for the Shout Factory discs.

It would've also benefitted from spending more time on Hot Rod and maybe a bit more time working with the Decepticon sub-plot like Scourge's coup and the fight between the Autobots without Rodimus and the Decepticons led by Scourge. Like a lot of episodes this season, this was a plot begging to be a two-parter and suffers from not being able to pace it self properly. Still, in the end it's hard to discount just how interesting the concept is and that it probably gets handled as well as it could've bene hoped for given the restrictions placed on it. For that and for the fact that it's essential character development (immediately wiped out or not) it gets to enjoy a fairly high grade.

THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS

Spoiler

-Michael Charles Hill, the episode's writer, is a famliar name for us, having previously penned 4 episodes (2 on his own, 2 with Joey Kurihara Piedra) and who will go on to write the teleplay for The Return of Optimus Prime, Part 2 shortly after this episode. He was also a producer on the series.

All in all, his contributions to the series are mostly on the good side of the ledger, so should we expect teh same here? Let's find out!

-It's apparently dawn in Japan, which features some very retro looking design elements such as the small fishing boat and some of the buildings on the coastline. This was a Toei animation episode, so it seems like they would know better than most how to draw their own country, so I guess who am I to complain?

-Also the visuals of this episode seem oddly dark. Like the master brightness was turned down. I don't know if it's my print of the episode, my transfer off the DVD, or something inherent in the episode's original surviving master. But it's weird.

-Wow, it's surprisingly toy-accuarate Broadside!

-In spite of the darkness issues, the animation and design are nicely done.

-Hey, a Defensor sighting! and he even gets a solid fight.

-the visuals look good, but the combiners to tend to look a little bit defomred in their proportions.

-Rodimus is kind of a dick for how he handles the complaints from the Japanese government/businessmen, but he's also kinda right in that it's not his fault hte Decepticons attacked. Sure Bruticus was after Defensor, but Astrotrain was out wreaking havoc on his own.

-The writing is nice and a change from the usually fairly simple dialogue and subtext, but there's something odd about the recordings. They sound a little clipped, like it took a lot of takes to get the lines right and they had to kludge things together a little bit. It doesn't detract from the episode at all. It's just a bit "off" sounding.

-It's a nice bit of philosophy to use the Japanese concept of "giri" which is very much a real thing. But as TFWiki notes, it's not quite applicable to Rodimus' situation. Giri is more like "responsibility" or "duty" to others which is owed as a matter of respect and isn't usually treated so negatively as Kup explains it. But then again, this is being done through the lens of western writers and culture, for whom such a collectivist concept such as Giri might seem horribly oppressive or burdensome in a way that doesn't necessarily translate to and from its original intent.

-Oof, those awful walk cycles on Kup and Marissa.

-Speaking of, this is the last episode for Marissa. And the animators this time gave her a somewhat different looking model here, with a more angular face and larger nose.

-This was also the last episode for Broadside, AStrotrain, and a pair of bots who have yet to appear as of the point where I'm writing this: Springer and Devastator.

-It's always a shame the individual Stunticons didn't get used more, because their personalities were quite fun. Especially the contrast between the psycho Wildrider and the morose Dead-End.

-The Matrix just fell out of Rodimus' chest/hood when he crashed? And if that was the case, how did Rodimus still lay there in Rodimus Prime vehicle mode? Shouldn't he have been found in Hot Rod mode?

-Nice touch to make sure that Hot Rod is shown in his movie-accurate hot pink colors instead of Rodimus' usual maroon/dark red.

-Galvatron and the Decepticons now have a base on Cybertron? Since when?

And who the heck are those bots standing at the base of the screen, below Cyclonus and Scourge?


I guess they could be the Constructicons, but then they'd be very badly done Constructicons. Or are they supposed to be the Stunticons? I'm honestly at a loss. When I stare at them long enough, the remind me of the characters from that Simpsons gag, "The Mattel and Mars Bar Quick Energy Chocobot Hour!"

-Does Galvatron not remember that he had the Matrix before and couldn't figure out how to use it? Granted he didn't try sticking it in his cannon, but it's not like the fact that he fails to find any meaningful use for it is new territory for him.

-"You broke the Matrix, didn't you!!"   that's great.

-As is the fact that him using the Matrix as a cannon upgrade causes ghosts of dead Autobots to spawn and haunt Galvatron is complete nonsense, but fun too.

-"The Matrix is the key to the universe" Huh? How does that even follow? It was a symbol of Autobot leadership and yes it did destroy Unicron, but if it was some sort of superweapon, why hasn't it been more useful since then?

-Scourge being mutated by the Matrix is horrifying.

-The fact that he also appears to be crying as he's mutated only makes it creepier.

-Springer's character model looks a bit different in this episode. His shoulders especially.

-Man, Hot Rod is kind of a huge dick here. "Screw everyone else! I'm gonna go drag racing!"

-Crazy Galvatron vs jacked-up roid monster Scourge! It's the grudge match we never knew we wanted!

-  that super cheaty melting "transformation" for Scourge. That the sign that the animators didn't even want to begin pondering how to do his normal transformation when he looked like an ice cream bar left out in the sun.

-Poor Cyclonus. He stays loyal to Galvatron and gets crap from it for Scourge. Then he gets a backhand from Galvatron for his toubles.

-Hot Rod can't be reasoned with by his lifelong comrades, but one afternoon in a random kendo dojo in Japan gets through to him!

-Scourge's big explanation earlier about the Matrix was that it wasn't just a weapon or a power source. But everything he does seems to be to use the fact that the Matrix is plugged into him to power his onboard weaponry or even generate a unique energy field just to attack the Autobots (and other Decepticons). So... it realy was a weapon and power source?

-That old woman with the can sure can run once Scourge frightens her.

-Ozu's line of "let her alone!" sounds funny to me. Who actually talks like that?

-Why does his katana make a laser/lightsaber sound when it strikes Scourge's leg?

-Scourge, possessing of hte power to defeat Galvatron and all Autobots alike, gets sidetracked from his conquest so that he can chase down an insignificant swordsman and old lady just because the one mouthed off to him and the other fled. He's certainly got his priorities straight.

-Scourge and Hot Rod's fight is shockingly disappointing.

-and Scourge heals from his deformation rather quickly once the Matrix is out.

-Not to mention that Hot Rod powers back up to Rodimus in a way that dodges us having to see his colors change.

-This wraps the plot up rather quickly, leaving us with some extra time to pad out by having Galvatron take out his frustration on Scourge.

-Rodimus closes with a strong summation of his philosophical realization about how he has to shoulder the weight of leading the Autobots and carrying the Matrix. Too bad about what happens in the next episode.  

-pausing the episode during the credits to close out I noticed that Casey Kasem is still apparently credited for the series even though he had already long walked out by this point. Also he was credited as "Kasey Kasem". Of course, these credits are hardly current given that they also include Ted Schwartz whose involvment in the show ended after his one line as Tailgate and that all his Rodimus dialogue was recorded over when Dick Gauthier was cast in his place.

FAVORITE LINES
"Scourge: Take this and destroy it!"
"But mighty Galvatron, you promised to return it."
"I LIED!!!"
-Crazy or not, Galvatron is at least honest.

Final Grade: A-

 

phew, just in time.

I feel like maybe I short-changed The Burden Hardest to Bear by going through it so fast and without a lot of images and snark, but it was an episode that moved briskly and didn't have a lot of moments that I felt called out for screencapping and pithy remarks on my part. Maybe it's also because I basically did both episodes back to back and was kind of burning out by the end of the second one as well.

But with that we're just about to move onto the last week of the project, a 5-episode blowout finale covering the end of season 3 with The Return of Optimus Prime and the stand-alone trilogy of Season 4 episodes, The Rebirth. Chances are I'll post them as two reviews covering each story contained through all its component episodes. I'll try to have TROOP (heh, I never noticed the acronym before) by maybe Wednesday and Rebirth then done on Saturday or Sunday. And then I can share what my thoughts are for how we're going to wind down this leg of the project and move onto Headmasters.

 

Oh, how I hate the weekend. it's the busiest time of the week for me.

Why not both?

Yeah... as much as I dislike Unicron and the 1986 movie overall, this origin for him is just pretty damned stupid and underwhelming.

Agreed. They shouyldn't have brought Unicron into here.

Hah! Suck it, movie!  

oh, god. That's the first thing I thought of when I saw it, then I read what you wrote.  

Well, Sludge has the most boring robot design and personality overall. Grimlock is, well, Grimlock. Swoop is the nice one and has wings and pointy head. Slag is the angry one and has the horns and helmet-head. Snarl is the sullen one and has the tail-and-spike backpack. Sludge is the stupid one and has... not much of anything going design-wise.

A bit of a shame it wasn't an actual window. then the bars would make perfect sense.

I got nothing. I just... the eff?! Who thought that was in any way a good idea or something?

Better late than never?

Maybe Japan took one look at what New York was doing and went in the opposite direction?  

 

Just watched The Face of Nijika and I think it is alright but nothing special and to me, it seems a kind of a rehash of an early season 3 episode where you have a small cast and the Quintessons are in this episode. Given that season 4 is just around the corner, you think they could have used one of these episodes to introduce some more of the season 4 cast. I for one would have loved to see a story on Punch/CounterPunch and he seemingly lived for all these years as a double agent.

I am thinking in season 3 do the Decepticons really miss Starscream. The Decepticons seem to have very few good ideas of their own, I think in Season 1 and Season 2 Megatron had to work hard on tactics and strategy because in part he knew that Starscream would like to find fault with any plan before it got off the ground. But under Galvatron, there seems to be no real strategy for the Decepticons to retake Cybertron without the Quintessons.

Thinking on cultural issues raised in the show I find Sky Lynx interesting that he has a high-class English accent and is very full of himself, excuse my french, but I think quite a few English people would refer to SkyLynx, as a 'wanker or tosser', but at least he is effective. I would be interested to know if Sky Lynx was based on any particular real person or fictional person. Just being half English, the English almost pride themselves on being modest and Sky Lynx is anything but modest.

 

Forgot to do the last bit of admin for this leg of the project.


******FINAL WEEK OF G1******
1) The Return of Optimus Prime (Part 1)
2) The Return of Optimus Prime (Part 2)
3) The Rebirth (Part 1)
4) The Rebirth (Part 2)
5) The Rebirth (Part 3)


As always, the watch period for this set will be 7 days, lasting until 11:59:59pm PDT on Sunday, December 1

I'm still hoping that I'll have The Return of Optimus Prime totally watched and written up by Wednesday night and then that gives me 4 days to get through the 3 parts of The Rebirth

 

Burden Hardest to Bear. I've said this before, and I'll say it again, this is tied with Ghost in the Machine as my favorite episode of the original series. Ghost in the Machine had Starscream at his finest while Burden shows us the amount of stress and anger that Rodimus has to endure due to being forced into a position he is not comfortable with.

Another thing I noticed about both Ghost in the Machine and Burden is that they both feature Scourge heavily and there's a pair of characters that provide some really great comedy relief (in Ghost in the Machine, it was the Battlechargers; in here, it was the Stunticons).

And man, you're reaching the end of the show. I must admit, I kind of like Rebirth. It's actually my favorite of all the multi-part episodes. Sure, it would have benefited if it was a five-part story, but it still manages to work and gives us memorable (although sometimes brief) moments to shine for some of the new characters.

Return of Optimus Prime... I liked the idea of the Hate Plague, but the way it's handled (along with a lot of the plot in this two-parter) is incredibly clunky. I give it this, though, the music actually makes the two-parter at least more intense and enjoyable than it would have been and the voice actors really bring their A game as they always do, this time screaming and laughing like crazy due to the Hate Plague infecting the characters, so you get some really great acting here (especially Dick Gautier, who is pretty intense as the infected Rodimus).

 

Burden Hardest to Bear is one of my favorite episodes of the whole series. It is almost a shame that Optimus has to come back.

With Scourge and the Matrix. Going back to the creation of Scourge, I kind of think that Skywarp, Thundercracker and Insecticons (or clones) were alive when they encountered Unicron. However, in the process of reformatting them, Unicron killed their old selves before giving them new life, however, I do like to think that a remnant of Thundercracker's doubt about the Decepticon cause (from the toy bio) lived on in Scourge and this had something to do with Scourge being able to use the Matrix.

I do like the Stunticons involvement in this episode, I kind of wish that Blast Off was left on earth to fly them back to Chaar. I know there are warp gates but in this episode, Galvatron flies his ship to earth.

With Astrotrain, Springer and Broadside's (and soon to be others) last scene, I kind off wish there were scenes of them being shot down so you could assume they died (I just like closure).

The original Transformers cartoon is one of my favorite shows of all time, but a source of frustration in this series for me is that characters just appear with no good (except marketing) explanation and also just disappear with no explanation.

 

THE RETURN OF OPTIMUS PRIME (PART 1)

THE SHORT VERSION
You know all those stories that tell you raising the dead is a terrible idea? Clearly they've never met Optimus Prime.

REVIEW
The biggest thing that always sticks out for me about this episode is the memories I have of watching it as a kid.

The first one is that I always remember this being a lengthy story arc. Like 3-5 parts. so the realization that it was just a two-part episode ends up being somehow disappointing. That's not something new to this rewatch. It happened for the first time when I watched he episodes on DVD years ago when I bought the Rhino sets and saw most episodes for the first time since I was little. But I always have it in the back of my head that this should've been some big, epic, incredible event and instead it's just a relatively quick 2 parts.

The second is that this episode scared the absolute holy hell out of me when I was little. The whole concept of the hate plague (which little me only called "the red dust" because I couldn't think of a different name for it. Imagine my shock when it got called that in this episode, becuase I have no memory of picking that name up from the show iself when I was little) and the bots turning red and just attacking each other in a bloodthirsty rage while screaming at one another like madmen was terrifying. Almost as terrifying as the movie was with all the death. It's funny though that while I remember tearing up the first time I rewatched the movie since I was little, that didn't happen with this episode. I laughed at why I thought it was so horrific. Sure, it's a bit more intense, but ultimately it just doesn't have the same impact on grown up me as it does on little kid me.

But enough about my memories of this episode 30 years ago (oh man does that make me feel old).

As an episode itself, I think the concept is great. Humans who aren't necessarily card-carrying evil monsters themselves wanting revenge for the collateral damage caused by the Transformers' fighting is a heady and interesting concept that rarely ever gets explored that deeply in this sort of fiction (at least until something like Man Of Steel comes out and everyone whinges about the concept so much that it becomes a major part of the follow-up to that movie). The concept of the hate plague turning the Transformers against each other and into mindless fighters who risk tearing apart the world is cool. But there are a few little bits of the story that take away from it. The cartoonishly overblown way that Dr. Morgan and Gregory go about their eeeeevil plan is disappointing because it dehumanizes the idea that they might have a legitimate reason to be upset (even if it's misplaced). Everything also kind of unfolds quickly once the hate plague takes over. They could build a lot of suspense and dread by letting the threat of the plague-infected Autobots hang over the uninfected ones as they desperately try to figure out a way out of their scenario. But none of it ever breathes and instead it's mostly bang-bang-bang-bang-bang that each little new threat pops up and is either dealt with or run away from. Maybe the episode would've been better as a 3-parter or 4-parter.

The other big thing is the elephant in the title: the return of Optimus Prime. It was stated that his resurrection was in direct response to the audience complaints over Optimus dying in the movie. As bad as that was, I feel like bringing him back here is a poor decision on its own. They invested all this time in Rodimus, even in this very episode, building him up as an interesting new leader full of doubt to overcome and insecurities to address. And all of that is tossed aside to bring back Optimus to no fanfare. Everyone treats him like he's still the leader even when he's dead and that his only rightful place is back at the head of the Autobots. It's a disservice to Rodimus and all the time spent trying to make him an interesting character. And it's even worse when it goes nowhere else because the series was cancelled with only the Rebirth left to air. While I can certainly get bringing back a beloved character who nobody wanted to see die, the payoff doesn't feel nearly big or interesting enough to justify the storytelling expense necessary to get us here. But most of that will be resolved in the second part of the episode after this one ends on a cliffhanger, and I won't get into any of that now as it can wait for part 2 of my review (which will be of, fittingly enough, part 2)

For its faults the concept is interesting enough to keep me engaged. It just falls short of the expecations it set for itself (another entry in the "season that could've been better" ongoing refrain for season 3)

THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS

Spoiler

-It's writer trivia time! Probably for the last time for a while since The Rebirth was just series regular David Wise and the Japanese series may or may not have any interesting writer names. Our penultimate story of Generation 1 came from another oddball duo: Marv Wolfman and Cherie Wilkerson. The latter is mostly unremarkable, having had a career writing cartoons between 1984 and 1992. She worked on a variety of series for an episode or two each, including this one (IMDB says she also served as an executive scrip consultant for the series in addition to penning both parts of this story), My Litle Pony, Jem, Ducktales, a short-lived 1988 Superman series (not the one famously helmed by Bruce Timm for the WB), Batman The Animated Series (yes, this one is the famous one from the WB. She wrote an episode that basically stole from The Island of Dr. Moreau and turned Catwoman into a literal cat-woman) and one of the hilarious greats of forgotten 80s cartoons and the pre-Jurassic Park dinosaur boom: Dinosaucers.

But the far, far, far bigger deal is her writing partner here. Marv Wolfman is a super famous comic book author who put out some of the more notable stories of the 70s through 90s. He was the primary author on the original giant crossover epic: Crisis on Infinite Earths for DC, and was charged with collapsing like 60+ years of DC storylines and history into a smaller and more streamlined package designed to help attract new readers who were turned off by the company's sprawling headache of continuity (whether this was effective or not is beyond the scope of my talking about giant cartoon robots). He also had a hand in creating a ton of popular DC comics characters including many of the most popular characters from Teen Titans (Starfire, Cyborg, Raven, Deathstroke, and Brother Blood among them) during his time spent making that series popular and enjoyable, along with the Tim Drake incarnation of Robin and Crisis' big villain: the Anti-Monitor. He also worked over on the Marvel side of things and created recurring Spider-Man supporting player Black Cat, iconic Daredevil villain Bullseye, and Marvel's #1 vampire hunter: Blade.

On the Transformers side of things he would return to the Cybertronian fold twice in the 90s, co-writing "The Probe" from Beast Wars' first season and pitching the story outline for Beast Machines before it would be altered by series producer Bob Skir to add elements at Hasbro's request. TFWiki also indicates that he was a story editor for G1 for the later portion of season 3, but is unclear on exactly how much this encompasses.

It's absolutely amazing to look back to this series being written in the late 80s as a glorified commercial for toys and think that it attracted some heavy hitter names. Sure, Paul Dini wasn't "that guy who created the DCAU" yet, but Wolfman, Len Wein, and Gerry Conway (who I totally forgot to mention created The Punisher last time his name came up.) had a hand in some of the biggest watershed moments in marvel and DC history. I guess it mostly comes down to the fact that as big of a pop-cultural deal as superheroes are now, the comic book industry has never been a huge cultural cornerstone, so even the biggest names in the industry not named Stan Lee wouldn't have garnered much awe or reverence outside their own circles.

But enough about that, on with the actual show!

-We begin the episode as we do all great Transformers episodes: by focusing on some humans! The only one named is Gregory, who we can tell will probably be trouble on account of his giant scar. Becuase if I've learned anything from TV, it's that people with scars across their cheek like that are usually evil. The only scars that good people get are on their brows, maybe on chins or lips, or maybe over an eye if it's really bleak. But that cheek scar? 100% evil territory.

-I suppose there's no reason they couldn't have, but the way the group talks abou the alloy tests makes it sound like these are their first attempts to get close to the sun. Wouldn't that seem like the kind of thing you'd want to do unmanned test with first?

-As the ship heads towards the sun, they come across another ship hurtling towards and asteroid. On it, Jessica picks up the life sign of Optimus Prime, who we see on their viewscreen. Now there are 3 things wrong with this:

1) Optimus was last seen in Dark Awakening ramming his ship into the Quintesson trap to set it off in a massive explosion. Suddenly all of that is nowhere to be found and his ship is just merrily careening through space on its own? Because it can't be that the humans just happened upon the actual events of Dark Awakening becuase a) that was ages ago and b) if they did, why would they no have also noticed the scores of other Transformers present, not to mention the Quintessons?

2) Optimus was very much dead the last time we saw him, slapdashidly brought to sorta-life by the Quintessons. The way he reacted to the Matrix seemed like it implied there was something "wrong" with him then, so to have him giving off life signs seems odd.

3) At the end of Dark Awakeing he was severely damaged, missing an arm, half his face, and sporting deterioration from that episode along with the remaining wounds he suffered in The Movie. He was basically falling apart in front of out eyes. But here he's pristine and complete looking for no adequately explained reason.

-Gregory has a flashback upon seeing Optimus. As he ominously strokes his scar, he remembers Optimus and Megatron battling in a science lab somewhere, their battle causing a huge explosion as he ran into the room, leaving him with the scar he has now. It would've been too much work and might've invited issues with royalties, but it would've been cool if they had specified that the fight was actually specifically part of a classic episode so that we could look back and say "hey, that nameless guy in the lab coat was actually this character we're now getting to know!"

-Gregory makes the logical conclusion: his injuries are all Optimus' fault even though the flashback clearly shows the explosion was caused by Megatron hurling a (transformer-sized) flask of mystery liquid at some other materials. Jessica calls him on this and heads off save Optimus. Just before the scene transition we see him run to Jessica and the space-suits without ever hearing any sort of response to her accusation that he might be a little bit bitter and uninformed. Clearly this is going to go well.

-Small trivia side note: our not-insane scientist, Jessica Morgan, is named after writer Marv Wolfman's daughter.

-Jessica brings the most logical tool to help retrieve Optimus' body: several feet of normal-looking brown rope!

-Gregory also shows off his sanity by noting that they only have 5 minutes to get back to their ship and then "Kaboom!". This sanity is further solidified by the fact that not 10 seconds later his watch (which he is wearing over his spacesuit informs him that they have 4 minutes remaining.

-After somehow managing to make Optimus' arm move and break a control stick on the ship's panel, Gregory in an act of utter sanity, starts punching Optimus' wrist. Because nothing says "I'm a rational and well put-together person" like breaking your fragile little hand bones on several thousand pounds of alien metal alloys.

-More countdown clock shenanigans: using my episode time-codes (Which includes the time spent on the title sequence) Gregory's 5-minute warning occurs at 2:04. The 4-minute warning comes at 2:09. His watch then gives another warning for 3 minutes at 2:20 and the 2-minute warning at 2:27. The 1-minute warning is voiced but not seen at 2:33. The important thing here is that while there are cuts for the 5-through-3 minute warnings to look at Gregory's watch, none of the action of the scene seems to skip ahead, implying that for that 2 minute span we are seeing everything in real time. Over the course of less than 20 seconds. There is ac ut before the 2 minute warning where things could be sped along, and then subsequent cuts afterwards, but for those initial lengths of time there is nothing to indicate how we saw 2+ minutes pass in just 15 seconds. This is always the problem with writers trying to do timed countdowns or controlled passage of time in storytelling. Just as Fry found out in that one episode of Futurama, just because it takes 30 minutes to write something doesn't mean it takes 30 minutes to read. So just because the script wrote out this scene for a 2 minute uninterrupted span doesn't mean that the animators are going to bother filling 2 minutes with them struggling to rope and move Optimus' offline corpse just so that the clock lines up.

-And just as one final "screw you" to the countdown clock, there's an audible warning for 10 seconds which then begins counting down. Problem is it only gets as far as 8 before Optimus' ship collides with the asteroid and, to quote Gregory, "kaboom!". This is a state of the art scientific prototype vessel they're on, but it apparently couldn't be outfitted with clocks and computers that can provide accurate extrapolations and countdowns. Awesome.

-When the ship explodes at 8 on the countdown, the scene shifts to a very obviously inferior looking bit of animation. I don't still have Dark Awakening on my computer to look back, but the scene looks so AKOM-y that I'm betting they just went back and cribbed the explosion from the end of that episode.

https://morbotron.com/video/S02E16/bVAfoKQeWIosrNYthF2LoCxZtyE=.gif

-Optimus' ship slams into the asteroid and at exactly the same time the sun they're near goes nova? Is there supposed to be some sort of causal relationship here (which seems extremely dubious), or is this some kind of hilarious coincidence? If they were aware that the star would go nova ahead of time, they aren't letting on.

-It's Jessica's turn to show her rational nature as she gives not the slighest bit of care to the mysterious spores that coat the ship as a result of the explosion... somehow.

-Seriously, for as respected as Marv Wolfman is as a comics writer, he seems to have overseen part of a story that has no qualms about just pulling things out of its own ass to move the plot along.

-Of interest on TF Wiki is that Jessica is not given a credited english Voice actor. Behind the Voice Actors' database lists her character as attributed to Joy Grdnic, who also voiced Nimue for A Decepticon Raider... (I'm not writing out the full title. No, not even now that doing so would've been shorter than writing this note. I stand by my convictions) and Nancy, the lady Junkion from The Big Broadcast of 2006.

-More dubious science! the spores are apparently "definitely" alive for some reason, even though nothing ever suggests such a fact again after this. Why even make such a statement when it never pays off in the slightest in terms of the story?

-We see the spores infect one of the lab mice in the test chamber. It then pounces on the other mouse and infects it and the two of them continue fighting. Gregory, rational scientist that he is, immediately concludes that the obviously "manifest hatred". Because hatred is the only reason that animals ever attack each other. Not insanity/brain damage, or severe hunger, or other types of stimulus. Nope, just hatred. Whatever the antelopes did to piss off African lions, I sure hope it was worth it.

-Great. Jessica's father is an idiot too. When she rightfully points out the severe danger of the spores given how quickly they infect and the instantaneous aggressive reaction they cause, he brushes it off with a rather patronizing hand on her shoulder. Because sure, let's let this trio of apparent metallurgists or engineers or whatever they would be to be responsible for designing a metal coating to protect against solar radiation make important research decisions about a chemical/biological agent or disease. Next up: we let a theoretical astrophysicist review building blueprints to see if they are structurally sound!

-And right on cue, the lab is attacked to prove Jessica right.

-But to hell with that, it's attacked by the terrorcons, in robot mode! This is one of the very few times they actually get to do something in robot mode and not as Abominus! Look at Sinnertwin in all his yellow-and-teal glory!

-While it's also the result of the teams being the newest toys to sell, it's nice to see that the Technobots show up and that they have a particular rivalry with the Terrorcons.

-The lab caving in during the fight and injuring Jessica is an interesting thing to see. Obviously it happens becuase of plot relevance, it was always somewhat rare to see the results of the collateral damage wrought by the Transformers' fighting one another.

-Yep, Jessica's father is sane. look at how quickly he breaks down into a rambling maniac. And this is a man trusted to do imporant science things that have an impact on other peoples' lives.

-They hate the Transformers because their war of hatred and destruction has caused human casualties like Jessica. Their solution: Make them hate and destroy each other! That's certainly my first choice to stop the senseless damage and injury that giant robots fighting causes to surrounding humans! Genius!

-No, Gregory. You don't have their leader. Rodimus Prime isn't there. You have the corpse of their former leader. It's not quite the same thing. but then again you're not exactly right in the head enough to make that distinction.

-For all the craziness, it's actually some fun staging to play off the doctors trying to heal Jessica with Dr. Morgan and Gregory working on Optimus.

-  The team guarding Jessica's hospital room are Hot Spot, Blades, and... Swindle? And this isn't a coloring error I don't think. It looks like Swindle's model too. So... did he sell them the parts for Jessica's prosthesis? Or does he just like hanging out with the Autobots sometimes?  

-Setting aside Dr. Morgan's angry speciesist/racist/technoist/something-ist rant about Jessica becoming a robot becuase she has a prosthetic exosuit, he also just immediately takes her out of the hospital. Where the heck was her doctor to OK this?

-So these two dopey scientists and their plan to seek revenge on the Transformers hits a snag and Gregory's immediate plan is to just melt Optimus down for metal to make more of their special alloy. Call me crazy, but a giant, millions-of-years-old sentient robot being is kind of a huge technological achievement and would probably be worth studying for parts and tech alone. At the very least it seems to be the thing that happens in any other TF series where a human stumbles across a deactivated Transformer and can take advantage of the situation. But nope, let's just say "slag it" and melt him down for rebar!

-A bit of a weird pre-commercial cut here as there's no fade out. It just shows Optimus inching towards the smelter and then cuts to the bumper.

-Everyone keeps calling Optimus Prime the Autobots' leader. It's kinda like saying that Abraham Lincoln is the president of the united states. Tenses matter, people.

-Jessica objects on a moral level to Dr. Morgan's plan for entirely sensible reasons. His convincing response? To rant like a crazy person and conclude with "Do what I say because I'm your father." Just to make things clear, Jessica appears to have to be no younger than in her 20s. She's a little old for the authoritarian act to work on her. Never mind the fact that his excessively aggressive reasoning certainly makes him sound like he's not in his right mind.

-Strong visual of Gregory walking over and putting his hand on Dr. Morgan's shoulder to reassure him that manipulating his daughter into inciting a viral outbreak that could cause the downfall of countless civilizations is the right move.

Look at that smarmy bastard. Look at him.  

-On the one hand, I like that Rodimus still has self doubt about his leadership capability even after The Burden Hardest to Bear simply because accepting that he has to be leader is not the same thing as believing himself to be good at it. On the other hand, it once again feels like a bit of negative continuity lesson-repeating where every time he kind of embraces his duty and destiny as leader he ends up right back to where he was, feeling like he shouldn't be it. It's also especially unfortunate because it's in an episode/story where he's going to give up that job. Now, if he had expressed these doubts and Optimus decided when he returned that he would leave Rodimus in command and perhaps either operate as an independent force or as an adviser, great. But doing htis speech now and then taking the Matrix away from him later just serves to make it look like he was right to question his fitness all along.

-Rodimus also ruminates in front of what appears to be an Optimus Prime memorial statue. Presumably constructed after he died and not to be confused with the Optimus Prime Memorial Statue that some humans morbidly decided to put up years ahead of the respected bot's death.

-Ultra Magnus is tasked with putting together an assault force. His choice to take on the task of retrieving Optimus' body from the lab of a pair of humans: 2 combiner sets, the Throttlebots, and a 4-bot unit of Blurr, Bumblebee (so far, so good), Steeljaw (but not blaster? I guess that's alright...) and Wheelie (uuuugh.). This isn't a mission to defeat the Decepticons. It's a pair of humans with a trap to spring. That necessitates a 19-Autobot strike force (if we count Rodimus and Magnus)? Hell, especially if it's a trap why would you take so many Autobots to get caught in it?

-And for that matter, why are the Protectobots and Aerialbots being told to transform to their gestalt modes while sitll at base? Are they supposed to run all the way to the destination as their combine form?

-But hey, if there's a silver lining here, it's that Ultra Magnus' calling out of the Protectobots is the first time they actually get introduced as a unit with a full role call and a transformation into Defensor. So yay for me I guess?

-Ratbat is the one to spy on the Autobots instead of Laserbeak. Selling the new toy makes sense, but damn Laserbeak has been replaced easily.

-Soundwave's voice is missing some of its processing. It's not full-on Dr. Claw voice that can be heard, but it's a lot more audible under the reverb and tuning.

-Also as Soundwave looks down from the sky to play back Ratbat's report, a cel of his mouthplate stays in place and obscures the rest of his face. That's an AKOM level error. Maybe Toei decided "Screw it" because they were done with the series after this story anyways  

-For all his self-pity and doubt about being a leader, Rodimus actually lays out a good plan for the Autobots to follow. Most of the time when Optimus was in charge he would just have the team kick down the front door and roll in firing.

-But never mind that for a minute: Superion disassembles and the Aerialbots follow Ultra Magnus around the back of the building. So why did they travel as Superion in the first place?

-I never noticed before that Rodimus actually refers to the spores as "red dust". First off, this ties back to my review in that I didn't know the episode canonically used that term. I thought I just made it up as a little kid because I couldn't remember a better explanation (or understand the concept of "spores"). Secondly, if this demonstrates that they have a full understanding of the spores and their potential, then the fact that they get caught and infected makes them look mighty stupid.

-How and when the hell did they get Optimus' body off the conveyor/stretcher/gurney he was on and just prop him up against the wall like that? and why even bother?

-As I said in the review, this scene of infection and them fighting each other scared the hell out of me as a little kid.

-It's also a little odd that with the rats we saw that the spore-infected beings just fought each other mindlessly. But here after an initial bit of scrapping, all the infected Autobots seem to join forces specifically to target the uninfected ones. And are capable of working together well enough to do things like form their combiner modes. I get the need for them to be a coordinated enemy, but it would've been interesting if the hate plauge made them mistrustful and hateful enough of each other to not be able to combine and work together fully.

-Why does the loading area of this high-tech 2006 lab have what looks like big wooden accordion doors? Did they repurpose this place from being a saloon or something?

- , not sure what the best part of this scene is:

The fact that Bruticus is the same size as the Stunticons (or it's just the worst perspective work ever) or that all the Stunticons have terrible detail work including no faces.

-"They've all gone mad. This is no place for me!" You keep telling yourself that, Galvatron.

-laser pistols or not, the image of the cops shooting at Superion makes me laugh. Like every time the military opens up on Godzilla, or some crook shooting at Superman. It's like "really, what do you think you're going to accomplish?"

-The more Defensor appears, the more he sounds like Sparkplug.

-Ok, so Superion infects Defensor, who immediately splits apart and the Protectobots start attacking one another. Which means that the aggression is overriding and everyone just fights whoever.

-Wreck-Gar's spate of Star Trek references might be his best collection of lines in the series. Particularly "I'm a doctor, not a forklift."

-Uhh, no Rodimus. The Quintessons may have built Orion Pax. We can't be sure about that one. But it was Alpha Trion who built Optimus Prime. Too bad he's dead now.

-Sky-Lynx's model looks exceptionally turkey-ish this time out.


-And for a leader who has so much self-doubt, Rodimus does a good job of motivating Sky-Lynx with reverse psychology.

-What is with that weird "vwweeeeeee" sound effect this episode is using every time a laser blast strikes something?

-Nice framing on the pre-break cliffhanger of having Magnus sneak up behind Rodimus and have his reflection show in the deactivated viewscreen.

-There's a lot of brick walls around Metroplex. Seems like those would crumble whenever he had to transform.

-Crazy Ultra Magnus is kind of fun. I'd love to have seen him get in a good scrap with Crazy Galvatron.

-Rodimus is clearly solid red before Wreck-Gar touches him.

-Love the apocalyptic news broadcast that ends with "will any of us be alive to see the end?" line. If only there was some reaction from Dr. Morgan and Gregory to realize how badly they screwed up.

-"This is not going to be easy." a couple of cuts later, everything is fine.

-The different Quintesson heads aren't speaking with unique voices this time around.

-"It's true. Our leader is back." Ouch. Take that Rodimus. That's also a hell of a way to end part 1.

FAVORITE LINES
"Why do I keep seeing you in my dreams, Optimus? Are you trying to tell me I'm not the leader you were? I already know that, Optimus. I always have.
-Rodimus demonstrates that he's coping well with the events of the previous episode.

Final Grade: B

 

I wanted to get this up rather than wait and do both parts together because I'm not quite finished Part 2. Maybe I'll have it up tonight, maybe it'll be up tomorrow. We'll see.

 

I intend to watch this two-parter of the coming days. I kind of feel that Transformers lost its soul with all the new toys back in the 80s. As such, I wish that not only could they have brought Optimus back but some of the Autobots who were absent in Season 3 (without being clearly killed in the movie, the likes of Sunstreaker, Hound, Tracks) with a succinct backstory about why they were not seen in the last 30 episodes or so.

Bit of personal frustration, but I was a bit of a latecomer to the show in the mid-1980s and by the time I was mentally invested in the show they had taken the season 1 and 2 characters of the shelves. What is worse season 3 did not come on for another 2 or 3 years in Australia.

 

Season three in a nutshell, basically.

I always did wonder and laugh at just how bad this is, continuity-wise. It's a straight-up retcon, no need to beat around the bush or try and justify it.

I'll give Star Trek: TNG and My Little Pony: FIm credit. In both series, they managed to avoid the magic countdown, and when they said a set amount of time, that was it.

I do like little bits of continuity, there. Every little bit helps.  

"Okay, guys. I know what it seems like, but trust me. I've got Galvatron's command codes, and all it'll cost is ten energon cubes!"

You know, as much grief as I give Rodimus, I do feel sorry that he's been screwd over pretty much all season. Between the negative continuity, crap like Fight Or Flee... feels like he was set up to fail, almost.

Well, Superion can fly, at least.

 

THE RETURN OF OPTIMUS PRIME (PART 2)

THE SHORT VERSION
The only thing that can defeat a hate plague is the power of Stan Bush.

REVIEW
It's the dramatic conclusion to the dramatic return of Optimus Prime, and in fittingly dramatic fashion, a lot of things happen on the way to Optimus being Optimus and wrapping things up.

This is a better episode than the previous part, which I suppose shouldn't be surprising given that setup episodes are rarely as entertaining as their conclusions. We get a bunch of Optimus in action, which is a refreshing thing to see, and the fun of him interacting with Galvatron for the first time ever. I also really liked amped up hate plague Rodimus and have a soft spot for the introduction to Goldbug. Plus it's hard to hate any episode that makes the first and only post-movie use of The Touch. It also gets high marks for being a very visually impressive episode, showcasing the best aspects of Toei's animation and design work including lots of shading and high-detailed blasts and explosions, and for managing to do the very difficult job of making so many monocolored characers look good and not become a muddy, indistinct mess.

Still, it suffers from the same flaws that part 1 had. Everything feels quite rushed and like it should've had an extra part to let things play out longer. The actual implications of the hate plague remain a little unclear (random crazy hatred vs focused "evil"), and as much as I like Optimus I feel like they absolutely kneecapped everything great they had been trying to accomplish with Rodimus Prime by bringing Optimus back and essentially pretending that none of that ever happened.

This is a hugely iconic episode for the events that give it the title, and it's still a very very enjoyable one. It just comes up a litle bit short of what I imagine was the lofty goal when it was pitched and handed to a big name writer like Marv Wolfman.



THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS

Spoiler

-Optimus' line to start this episode isn't the same as the one that ended the last episode. Was it really that hard not to just use the same recording? This time he refrs to Sky-Lynx by name and says no force in the universe "will" stop him, whereas last time he said no force "can" stop him.

-Holy balls, Sky Lynx's lion mode component thing talks! that's freaky. We've never seen anything but the bird mode talk before. It raises some questions about the nature of his mind/personality and the two pieces. Does he only operate in one segment at a time? Is it his choice? Are they distinct in any way? Are they tethered together and he could speak and act through either segment at any given time? Why are we just learning this now in the 4th-to-last episode?

-The animation in this episode looks markedly better than part 1. It's noticeable in the flashback where the part 1 footage is being reused and where new material is being drawn for part 2 with improved shading and detail.

-The flashback to Optimus' rescue keeps on confusing the visual of an asteroid exploding with the spoken story of a star going nova.

-I'll credit the beginning of this episode for choosing to infodump the "last time on The Transformers" recap in-story via Sky-Lynx explaining the situation to Optimus rather than just a standard Vic Caroli narrated recitation. It's a clever way to get around what's happening.

-Part 1 never answered an important question: How did the plague spread to the Sharkticons off-world so quickly? We see the beginnings of the outbreak on Earth and then all of a sudden Sky-Lynx is able to find a Quintesson hiding "on the edges of the galaxy" being chased by infected Sharkticons.

-Oh great, the part of Rodimus' assault squad that wasn't combiners is all that's left of the Autobots. And Blaster for some reason. So that means that Wheelie is 1/6th of the Autobots' last hope.

-The animation is really fantastic.

-Admission: I always kinda liked Goldbug as the evolution of Bumblebee. Probably because I had Godlbug and a pair of other Throttlebots as a kid (Rollbar and Wideload). Becuase of that toy and the knowledge that Goldbug was a rebuild Bumblebee (somehow, given that as a 3-5 year old I didn't have the strongest grasp of the overall story of the franchise) I tended to always look at Goldbug as sort of being "my" Bumblebee.

-Vaunted leader Optimus Prime: "I have no plan."

-That sentence is meant to convey that without the Matrix Optimus lacks the knowledge and experience of leaders past to help him make the best decision possible. But what it really does is makes it look like it's not Optimus that was the great leader, but the Matrix itself. This in turn also makes Rodimus' self-doubt and shirking of his responsibilities look even worse becuase it implies that what would make him a successful leader is already there and wouldn't even require him to do anything special, but he's sabotaging his potential all on his own.

-Jessica was standing there the whole time with the other Autobots and nobody even said a word to or about her. Instead we go though an entire convesation before she buts in and only then does Optimus address her, introduce himself, and thank her for saving him. Way to be kind of a jerk, Optimus.

-Kup calling Jessica "sister" is either a) terribly out of character for an old curmudgeon like Kup or b) a painful attempt at an out-of-touch geezer like Kup to sound hip and "with it." Like watching your grandfather listen to rap music and insist that things are "off the chain" without a hint of irony.

-I like that even 20 years after it first happened with Spike, Optimus is still weak to the "oh, come on....." school of arguing about putting one's life in danger. He ends up flip-flopping harder on Jessica's desire to tag along than... Huh. I just can't seem to think of a good Transformers-y flip-flopping joke analogy. I must be losing my touch. Good thing the series is almost over and I can recharge before Headmasters.

-I'm almost willing to forgive some of the disappointment of Optimus replacing Rodimus just for the fact that it's been a whole season since we've heard Peter Cullen declare "Autobots, transform and roll out!". It's the equivalent of being OK with 90% of the Bumblebee movie, but instantly kicking it up a letter grade because we get "Ravage, eject!" from a properly vocoded Soundwave voice during one of the Cybertron sequences.

-Even as Goldbug the animators can't seem to properly scale the tires on a VW Beetle. It's a standard sized car, not a monster truck.

-Kup totally transforms and drives off backwards as everyone rolls out. Are they sure they want him to be on this mission? Becuase now it's looking like that "sister" comment was less trying to sound "with it" and more like robo-senility.


It's hard to tell on a static image, but everyone is exiting screen left, including Kup.

-Man, I missed those purple glowy explosions. They bring back the look from the Movie and I feel like they only show up when Toei brings their A-game (which they probably are becuase this is the last original G1 episode they would animate)


-This is the first appearance of Jack Angel filling in for the departed Roger Carmel as Cyclonus. If you listen closely it does certainly sound like his Ultra Magnus voice, but it's also a decent impression of a voice that seems like it would be difficult to replicate accurately.

-While I like the detail and shading on the infected bots and the fact that thir glowy totally red bodies are a dramatic-looking and interesting way to tell who has the plague, man is it hard to figure out who is who in a crowded scene without some color cues (or even significant shading differences to highlight body shape). But on the up side, could you imagine what a mess it would be if it was being animated by AKOM?

-The battle between the infected 'cons and Galvatron and the Autobots on Chaar is somewhat unique with all the cover present and the hiding behind it that is done. It's a lot different than most of the time where everyone just stands in the open or maybe behind a small ridge and fires endlessly without covering themselves.

-That said, Galvatron's exaggerated recoil effect on his arm cannon is distracting.

-That moment where Optimus catches the running Galvatron feels like the prompt to launch a thousand unsettling slash fics.

-I take back what I said earlier about Jack Angel's Cyclonus voice. His commanding of "Decepticons retreat!" basically does sound like slightly gruffer Ultra Magnus.

-Optimus is awfully trusting of Galvatron to reveal the deatils of their plan now when it would provide Galvatron an opportunity to double-cross them.

-Jessica's gasping "a spider!" line is delivered with her suddenly no longer wearing her exo-suit.

-Even rebuilt into a new body, Bumblebee is stuck acting like one of the most ineffectual Autobots.

-Maybe I just haven't been paying close attention, but has Blaster even spoken at all in this episode? What a weird choice to include him in the party for apparently no necessary story reasons and also not have him talk.

-Optimus' "I know you too well, Galvatron" throws all sorts of monkey wrenches into the issue of how separate the beings/personalities of Megatron and Galvatron are. The show hasn't shied away from refering to the fact that Galvatron is just a rebuilt Megatron, but at times it seems to imply that he's his own bot, separate and distinct from what he was as Galvatron, and not just because of the crazy.

-So Blaster and Goldbug get infected. Since I doubt he'll speak much now that he's crazed, I feel like it's safe to say that he had zero lines in this two-parter.

-Jessica, you idiot!

-Here we get a clear view of the sometimes-used model of Galvatron having a literal trigger to pull on his arm cannon. It's a weird detail that doesn't make a ton of sense, but it's still sort of fun that Toei takes the time to include it sometimes.


-Two strange things occur after Galvatron is infected and the rapidly dwindling uninefected forces flee. First, Optimus is colored as if he's already coated in the resisant metal. Second, Jessica clearly appears to grab Sky-Lynx by the tail, but he isn't instantly infected like basically everyone else has been.

-They seriously can't seem to keep the coloring or shape of the metal straight. Sometimes it's silver, sometimes it's gold. As it's being fed into the coating machine it appears to be almost lemon yellow and suddenly in cubes instead of long bars. And yet in spite of that color, it coats everyone by making them silver/grey.

-Why the heck is Sky-Lynx not shown as coated in the metal after the scene transition? They never implied that they had a limited supply that would only be enough for one bot.

-Psycho Rodimus is actually kind of fun.

-And if not for the fact that this whole sequence basically ends up being kind of a "screw you" to Rodimus, it's actually fun having a Prime vs Prime fight.

-Rodimus infects Sky-Lynx and proves that he wasn't shielded. So what the heck was the Quintesson doing? Did they really only have enough metal for just Optimus?

-Rodimus looks like a dope if he can't figure out that the very Optimus-like truck-and-trailer on the conveyor belt of this car factory is actually Optimus. I'm sensing a running pattern of "Rodimus looks like a dope" elements to this episode.

-The big dramatic act break is a mostly-restrained Rodimus threatening Optimus with a welding gun? That doesn't seem like it should be too perilous given that Optimus appeared to have the advantage in their fight. Especially since Optimus notes that his coating protects him from heat (which likely includes the heat of the welder)

-Rodimus' matrix chamber opens up way differently than we've seen in the past (last time the panel was the shape of the yellow flame detailing on his chest/car hood)

-Optimus appears to have lost something in being resurrected. How else can you explain him holding the Matrix the way he is? You'd think he would treat the most sacred artifact of his people with a bit more respect.


-And then he just shoves it sideways into his chest instead of setting it in hte correct way.

-Ahh, journies into hte Matrix. The time for a crazy, trippy acid sequence.

-Alpha Trion appears and after his initial lines, the camera cuts and he is suddenly colored gold on his head and body, making him look disturbingly like the guy from the Gorton's Fishsticks box. I was going to say the Highliner Fishsticks box, but then I remembered that the Highliner guy wears a blue jacket and sailor's cap.


-None of the bots that appear after Alpha Trion in the Matrix appear to look anything like the apparent Matrix-bearers from Rodimus' acid trip in Five Faces of Darkness.

-I wonder how much it cost them to license The Touch again for this episode. It's an unusual and fun thing to include in the series proper.

-How in the hell did Jessica get off Chaar and to... Russia it looks like?

-Galvatron respects anyone?

-Remember when Hot Rod was the chosen one? Now he's just another face in the crowd.

-The way things end it's almost like they intended this to be a finale. It actually would've made for a good series finale without The Rebirth.

FAVORITE LINES
"Fools! I am your leader!" *explosions* "It's no use! You're all crazed!"
-Galvatron reaches peak irony (legitimate irony, I think. I can no longer tell for sure. Damn you Alanis Morrisette!)

Final Grade: B+

 

I do, too. Seeing Bumblebee evolving like this is pretty cool, and it's nice to see a season one-two character still appearing.

At this point let's just say Beorht did it and be done with it!

This is one of the reasons I don't like the Matrix. Before, it wasn't this shiny bauble that signified Optimus being worthy of being Autobot Commander. He just was that good.