The new design for Bumblebee actually looks good for once. Finally a designer that knows how to update characters while still keeping some recognizable traits from the original. Kinda reminds me of IDW especially considering it looks like the shoulders share that front of the car becomes shoulder pads design. But this is the first time since G1 that we've gotten a Bumblebee in a cartoon who actually looks like Bumblebee. Though we did have Sparkplug in Armada who looks like Bumblebee but didn't get the name.

I'm going to have to find a different way to display my Bumblebee collection if they make a Deluxe of this. Maybe I'll take the Classics one down. It was basically just a stand in for G1 but now I got MP Bee up there and don't really need classics anymore.

 

The picture for Cyberverse Chapter 1 is G1 Bumblebee, right? Maybe Cyberverse Chapter 2 will have more of a team basis and bring in Ironhide, Ratchet, and Optimus Prime as the main focus.

 

Why do fans over 10 get horrible 5 minute long crap CGI shows with awful stories, whilst little kids who don't care what they watch get fully funded feature length shows with better animation and talent?

 

...I cared what I watched when I was ages 6-10. I wanted nothing to do with stuff like Alvin and the Chipmunks or Foofur. I wanted robots and army guys shooting at each other with color coded lasers for my convenience. This is probably why that, as a grown ass person over the age of 35, I buy plastic toy robots and army men instead of Alvin or Foofur toys.

The question isn't why the kids get the "meatier" show, it's why they bothered with the Machinima in the first place. My guess? Just to gauge if anyone actually gives a crap. They probably have some kind of threshold numbers they need to meet or exceed to see if they even proceed forward with anything. My guess is that they tossed D-List money at the thing to just test the waters. It's a little counter-intuitive to expect a big turnout when your show is... well, it's bad objectively speaking, but consider:

While I love TFs, I also watch other things. Anything they bother making is going to compete with any other thing I feel like watching. To a marketing and budgeting exec, it's probably a hard ask for money for top shelf talent and animation on a show that someone may not even watch because they're busy watching Season 9 of Supernatural.

That being said, fans are an integral part of Transformers since the early 90's. Even if we're not the demographic, we help sustain the brand as we grow old, have kids, buy our kids TFs, spend money on masterpiece stuff, etc. But what do you do when you want to see if there's fan interest, but don't really have the budget dollars to go whole hog on something without running the risk of straight up wasting dollars?

You make a shitty show on a shoestring.

If fans magically like it, you are a marketing genius. You spent little dollars, but got a lot of people watching.
If fans hate it, well, you didn't spend much. You also have all the fans in an uproar, complaining about how awful it is. You then get to gauge reaction - how many people actually watched it? What did they not like? What's the threshold for them to watch it (i.e. what minimum improvements are necessary to get 100 more people to watch? 500? 1000?)
If nobody watched it, again, you spent little money and you can just sweep the damn thing under the rug and wait 2-5 years before trying again.

It's that second factor that may be the reason that this latest installment of The Awful Windblade Show has bigger budget for talent (adding Cullen, Nelson, Wheaton) and/or why they're trying to capture youtube audiences by adding popular youtubers to the cast. They're trying to get a big return without spending all of the big dollars because sometimes it works (looking at you, Blair Witch Project).

Just discussion - I could be utterly wrong.

 

ProtectronPrime pretty much covered in in detail, but I'll add that typically adults don't care about new media. They're adult collectors, emphisis on collectors. They're more into the product than new media, because it feeds into their love of the old cartoons. It's all about the nostalgia.

Also, who says kids don't care about the quality of a show? Did you not care as a kid? Because I, and many others, did. I loved BW as a kid, and I knew what made it good and what other forgotten 90's shows did wrong. It made me a fan to begin with. But personally speaking as a fan now, while it would be nice to have a new cartoon geared towards me, I don't need one. I'd rather have a cartoon geared towards kids that can also appeal to me ala TFA.

 

That's the thing all they need to do is make shows in TFAs tone and everyone is happy, there was no need to go lower than that.

 

Has the tone changed? It seems like the quality of writing's gone down, more than anything else.

 

The late 2000's were a glorious period of Transformers, with great writing (ROTF excluded) and fantastic toy engineering that really pushed the envelope of what could be acomplished.

It seems like the line has been in decline ever since 2009/2010, though, since while we did get the excellent HFTD/Yellow Box stuff and Generations has been keeping a relatively high level of engineering (granted they are more or less articulated G1 designs nowadays), the actual media lines in both cartoon and toyline have been degrading somewhat. The Rik Alverez panel certainly indicated that everything was chaos behind the scenes with Prime and the movies...well, the Transformers are more of a joke than ever. The next one only has Bumblebee and three others in it!

The exception is Rescue Bots which was pretty damn good for being something only needing to appeal to three year olds. Time traveling, psychological traumas, even a Hitchcock reference, it's all so insane but it works because they're having fun with it.

 

I feel like RiD theoretically was supposed to bridge that gap thematically between Prime and Rescue Bots but really fell flat because of that. Rescue Bots has a lot of creative freedom because it's for little kids. It's supposed to be bright and goofy, and as a result there's a lot of freedom to do whatever you like because there's no reason to be serious. On the flipside, Prime was geared towards older kids/fans, and regardless of whether the storytelling was solid, it did provide dramatic tension and mood and provided one of the more complex interpretations on Starscream that I've seen.

RiD on the other hand didn't seem to know what it wanted to be. On one hand, you had Grimlock and Fixit making pratfalls left right and center, and on the other hand you have Strongarm having self esteem issues and Optimus Prime attempting to prove himself to undead gods floating in the microverse. It's not that it can't be done (see Beast Wars for straddling humor and drama), it's just that it's not easy to do. I feel like RiD got handed a raw deal in that regards insofar as the power rangers-esque "monster of the week" format coupled with the fact that it's very much a bridge series makes character development really hard.

As a result, I dunno about noticing "degeneration" so much as "stagnation".

It's pretty clear at this point that Beast Wars/TF:A's format of having a small group of marooned/cloistered characters to focus on is the fallback position for Transformers these days. It's my hope that Cyberverse breaks that mold at least a little bit. There's a lot of story potential in the TF Universe as a whole, and the "motley crew" angle is played out for me a bit, specially since every series that's used it has had the group generally stuck on one planet (Earth).

As for the Bumblebee movie, I can only hope that focusing on a smaller cast might help somehow. The Bayverse DID improve at least slightly by giving us a repeat cast through Age of Extinction and Last Knight, insofar as at least Crosshairs, Drift and Hound have recognizable personalities now. Maybe the shift to a smaller group will allow the writers to explore that a little more.

Hopeful/wishful thinking I'm sure.

 

That's some good analysis, ProtectronPrime.

One of the things that I'm hoping for with the next series is that the "I have amnesia, whoa now I'm remembering something from my past " format will allow for the introduction / exploration of an expanded cast, without the awkward "Hey guys, I'm the new team member because NEW TOYS" kind of thing.

Kind of like Highlander or Forever Knight, if anyone remembers those shows.

Also, I hope we get to see some pre-war Cybertron and Cybertronian culture. Bumblebee's memories seem like the perfect way to get a glimpse at life before the war.

I am trying not to get too hyped because who knows, maybe this show will suck. But I am optimistic and I certainly want to like it.

 

This is 100% what's gonna happen.
Good posts guys.

The US needs to take a leaf from Japan and the UT trilogy and extended G1. Something that actually feels like a war with multiple characters and stakes where you actually feel Optimus and Megatron are leaders of an entire planet. You don't get that in smalll groups. If you'd take the core concept of Galaxy force but remove the cyber key gimmick, horrid animation and just overall do it better, it'd be the best TF show ever easily.

 

Eh. I don't necessarily agree with that.

You can get grand scale in small groups. It just depends on the framing device. A lot of the Gundam Universal Century spin off series focus on small groups with the backdrop of interstellar war, as well as Armored Trooper Votoms or even Exo Squad. It's harder to do that, however, without treading a line that not everyone wants to cross and treat the Transformers like "living" aliens instead of ridiculous caricatures.

Honestly, the shows and media that have been the most successful at telling stories have abandoned the pretenses of being related to Japan altogether: Beast Wars, Transformers Animated, and (arguably) the Aligned set of games/shows at least attempted deep background and storytelling. If anything, I think Transformers needs to walk away from Japan and anime altogether. That being said, if you want Galaxy Force without all the Galaxy Force, you can watch TF: Victory and be done with it.  

 

I wouldn't put a lot of stock in those pictures actually representing much. Remember they had a mock up picture for an RID2015: Combiner Force Bruticus that never went anywhere. It might represent a tentative cast, but it could just as easily be a placeholder image showing that the narrative expands beyond Bee after 2018's year of the Bumblebee.

 

The anime style has many more unique possibilities, we just need good Transformers anime aimed at teenagers.

 

Anime, even good anime, always seems really predictable and trope-y to me. Maybe it's just because it's easier to notice (or be annoyed by) the tropes of a culture that isn't my own, I don't know. Whatever the case, I don't think "Transformers as an anime" is a particularly great idea.

Now if the people who did Avatar: The Last Airbender wanted to take a whack at the TF mythos, then I'd be thrilled.

 

That might be true. I really haven't watched anime for a while, only catching a few things here and there since the early 2000's. I would one day love to see a Transformers show in the same vein as Macross or Legends of Galactic Heroes, or even Gundam's Universal Century continuity. I won't hold my breath, though.  

 

I think a lot of the same people are working on Voltron right now? And that's been really good!

 

Truth be told even if they were to do that it still won't make everyone happy cause here's the thing we need to remember. Not everyone is such a huge fan of Animated if at all and as much as I enjoyed Animated for what it brought I wouldn't want every show to be like that because then you'd get rid of any chance of thinking outside the box and trying something different to make a future TF show unique and cool in its own right like how I don't wish for every TF media to be like G1 or like Beast Wars even.

I mean we have people who wish to see another TF series that has a darker tone like Prime did and IDW has,people who wish to see Transformers tackle something that hasn't been tackled much if ever and we also have people who just want to see something entirely different. The point I'm making it's that while I get the need for a TF series that exceeds people's expectations I don't want to have it come at the expense of just sticking to one thing only and running with it to the point of being stale.