Imo Prime is quite overrated, but the movie Predacons Rising was pretty good. First season was bland imo, but the later seasons except for Season 2 slowly started getting more fun to watch and interesting. I don't hate TFP, still love the designs and am looking forward to seeing more G1-ised updates like Skyquake and Bulkhead.

I agree!
The big boy robot show that came around the same time as TFP was Gundam Unicorn (a mini-series) in 2010. Arguably Gundam Unicorn handled the "big boy show with robots, for slightly older audiences" thing better than TFP.

 

I love it for the deeper relationship between Prime and Megatron before the war. It gives a lot more emotional whipalsh to their war and how it started. Like before that the idea of Megatron and Optimus working together was some AU throwaway panel from a comic or fanfic only. Now, it's become a pretty mainstream idea. Optimus and Megatron, what could have been if their beginnings were not so different, or they learned to compromise. TFP had decepticons you can sympathize with, before TFP, I really couldn't ever see decepticons as anything other than aggressive or crazy. The plot of TFP had some flaws, and for the past decade I've been writing fic to fix it. I think it's a really interesting show, I love how aligned gave us a lot more lore of the original 13 primes, their weapons, and personalities, etc. TFP had some really cool shit.

 

I don't think I've watched a full episode of prime since they originally aired. I watch clips, sure, but I have never felt the need to sit down and watch an episode, let alone the entire series. I guess it comes from a sense that any sort of plot thread, leads back to the status quo, so you can't even get the enjoyment of a character arc. It's funny that the only character who actually goes through a character arc, that leaves them in a different place was Miko and most prime fans tend to loathe her.

 

I really enjoyed the show back when it first aired. Haven’t gone back to rewatch it since then, but not because I hate it or anything. Just found other new things to watch too.

 

I haven’t rewatched it since it ended. As the series went on I found myself not enjoying it due to meaningless plots, reversal of any potential character growth, and character interactions that went nowhere.

If I’m going to rewatch anything, it’s stuff that clicked with me. Shows like Beast Wars, Beast Machines, RID, and Animated.

 

Other than wasting a lot of characters, the only thing that I particularly loathe about Prime is that they tried giving Optimus divinity.

That's not what Optimus Prime is supposed to be. He's too down to Earth to be some reincarnated god.

 

There are lots of major issues TFP has, but this is not one of them. Let's be fair, it was never mentioned or even implied in the actual show. That's on the Covenant of Primus book.

 

Regardless, This is the show established that Prime can't have a personality other than """stoic""".

Wasn't a fan of Cyberverse, but it was at least a step in the right direction.

I must say, I'm rather digging Tudyk's performance as Truck-Dad.

 

Prime I just find frustrating on rewatch for its wasted potentional, and as others said, it tries very hard to be "the big boy show", when in all honesty I think Animated and Beast Wars have handled way darker, more mature concepts. After Cliffjumper's death, it just felt like no one was ever in danger. Raph gets shot by Megatron's fusion cannon? He's fine. Bulkhead nearly dies and gets close to a montage episode? He walks it off.

Killing off Breakdown and Dreadwing just felt more like a waste, especially when they were two characterscwho appeared like they were about to go through character arcs where they sympathized with the autobots, only to be killed to keep things seemingly clean.

And worst of all, I always hated the vehicon fights. With Animated, all it ever took was one or two Decepticons to put up a challenge. Yet in Prime, vehicons and insecticons get shot done like flies, and there's an endless amount of them. It never felt like there was a reason to fear for autobot safety.

 

Car Robots is better.

 

Not that I don't personally dislike Prime, but I do feel this is a bit of an unfair comparison. Gundam has always dealt with mature themes and subject matter from its creation, being a direct allegory for real war and targeted at older audiences despite the broad appeal of the model kits. Transformers has never been a series, until more recently (and unsuccessfully) to deal with the same tones and subjects of Gundam, and I don't think TFP would ever have been allowed that level of maturity.

Not that it didn't try to be more mature, with varying levels of results. One could argue it tried punching far above its weight class and that was the issue, but no way Hasbro was going to allow the level of death and heavy themes Gundam handles with regularity. 00 features child soldiers in a war in the Middle East, Unicorn features social-political turmoil and absurd civilian casualties. (the Shamblo alone killed dozens of visible bystanders in its rampage) TFP was never going to go that heavy, if only because the robotic nature of its main characters and the simplistic dynamic of their war precluded things like that.

So yeah, I get where you're coming from in that I consider the "big boy robot shows" thing more an issue with the fans who try to elevate Prime beyond its existing tone, rather than an overt flaw in the show itself. It wanted to be dark, but not that dark.

 

And yet the funny thing is Animated tackled the more mature themes no problem. Omega Supreme asking Ratchet what the point of all the fighting is, and Ratchet not being able to answer, single handedly is more mature than any single scene in Prime because of the ramifications and moral dilemma that is trying to explain to Omega "you were literally built for the sole purpose of killing people for somebody else's war."

 

A problem with Prime's writing was redundancy of characters.
Breakdown Dreadwing, and Predaking could have easily been a series wide arc for Breakdown if it wasn't for Hasbro pulling the same antics they did in 1986 with Shockwave, Blitzwing and Octane.
The desire to include newer toys split up the narative progression amongst the three characters.
The redundancy issue also manifests in Arcee having two dead partners, and vendettas against Airachnid and Starscream
It would have been more competent to merge the arcs together, and give Arcee a pursuit of Starscream lasting till the end of the series.
The initial promise for the series was that it wouldn't be primarily a toy commercial, which is presumably where much of the resentment and disappointment comes from, the recognition of "being had".

 

I've rewatched Prime and the only things I don't like are Raf, Miko and Bulkhead but I do think it's a good series.

I tried rewarding Animated recently and stopped on episode 4 with Angry Archer. I've never understood how fans venerate the show with the terrible human villains especially Professor Princess.

Similarly I can't rewatch G1 because of silliness like Kremzeek, Primacron and Lord Chumley. Plus I despise Alpha Trion and Orion Pax.

 

I just did a rewatch since I am recovering from surgery and I still enjoyed it. I slightly like animated more due to nostalgia and I agree animated felt more diverse with its story structure.

The positives about Prime I like the humor, characters are fun I even like Mako, the action is pretty good I also like how it pays homage to the movies might be the closest thing to a live action show. While I like earthspark I will be honest after AOE and the Bee movie this was pretty much one of the last forms of Transformer media I actually liked. Didn’t care for the sequel show, TLK, cyberverse, or those Netflix shows.

Now the negatives bots have plot armor cons, don’t too many hunting episodes hunting bones and relics, mute Bumblebee, along with slow motion fight scenes I never liked slow motion. Also the world does feel pretty lifeless. I know earthspark is just getting started but I already like how alive it’s universe feels. Not really a con but I wish we met shockwave sooner

 

I think that’s a bit of an unfair analysis of the situation. Didn’t the Japanese series make some changes to Prime with new segments, more humor, and altered characterizations to appeal to a different type of younger audience? I think to claim the series as people on this forum probably know it is responsible for that is kinda disingenuous.

 

For me? Ehhh yeah kinda?

I mean Prime’s biggest retraction for me is how dull it can be. So aside from one rewatch I did years ago I’ve never felt compelled to revisit the series. I got what I wanted from it and I sorta still have it, I guess you could say. Though honestly I think if I revisited it today, knowing all the flaws of the show, I’m sure I’d still enjoy it.

 

Transformers in Japan has always catered to a younger audience with a greater emphasis on humor and silliness, especially when it came to them importing the Hasbro series and dubbing them. The only real exception was G1 which was apparently a pretty straight, no frills translation of the western version. But after that? all bets were off. They didn't do anything to Prime that they hadn't done to almost any of the other series that they'd imported before that point It just so happened that this time it flopped huge. The only time anything close to this happened before was when they chose to basically bail on Beast Machines due to the declining interest in the Beast era of shows, bleeding it off on a satellite channel nobody watched several years after the fact and only putting it on more standard TV even later still.

 

Professor Princess is an extremely minor character who only shows up like literally one more time in season 3.

That and in the comics she threatened Starscream while he pointed a null laser at her head and got away with it.


And amusingly, I would actually say the point where Animated really kicks in is Episode 5; Thrill of the Hunt. That episode more than any other is where the groundwork for the plot starts to reveal itself, since Lockdown is the single most important character in the entire show given the sheer ramifications of his actions at any given point. He's not responsible for everything but he comes pretty damn close all things considered. It also establishes that this is Ratchet's story, because the flashbacks in this episode are directly what leads to the payoff at the end of S2 where it's revealed the Ark is in fact Omega Supreme and Ratchet was keeping a silent vigil over his comatose form all these years.

Plus, the human villains are only around as a baseline for countering the problem of power creep. Guys like Angry Archer and Prof. Princess aren't truly serious threats, with the later human villains straight up needing Cybertronian derived powers to be real threats like Meltdown (BB's coolant fluid got on him or something), Nanosec (the only threat he posed was carrying around effectively a powerful bomb which was all at Megatron's behest anyway...though how he stopped being old as hell at the end of the episode is unexplained in his return), and both Master Disaster and Slo-Mo are only threats thanks to having AllSpark Shards.

Also, Angry Archer is a meta in-joke reference to Aaron Archer, then-lead guy in charge of Transformers.

The only thing I really recall about the Japanese version of Prime, besides them trying to get into the model kit building angle with the Arms Microns weapons (which Hasbro later tried with RID), is that they changed Airachnid into some kind of high pitched schoolgirl like character who wanted to add Jack to her HAREM OF MEN. I will never not find that hysterical.

 

I just don't like those villains. They feel like something from 60s Batman and they just ruin the show for me.

I'm not a fan of Lockdown either.