Agreed. Look, I harped on BM as much as anyone 8 years ago. But a couple years ago I gave the DVD set a try and I have to say it was an excellent sci-fi series. Was it a good Transformers series? I still don't think so. But I can't trash it the way I used to just because of that.

 

Maybe not Energon, but Superlink.

 

Yes.
There, i've said it.
Everyone can hate me if they want.

It wasn't the best series, and yes, there were alot of mistakes. Plus Ironhide was very annoying.
But I still like the series, and I think it's worth watching.

 

Uh... no. Barely made it the first time...

 

Energon's okay. On a whole, it's lackluster. But some arcs are pretty cool. The first several eps up until Megatron's rebirth. The Inferno arc. The combiners as guardians of Primus. Some other ideas are kinda neat too. But on a whole, it's meh.

You're better served watching Super Link. It's fansubbed. It's the Japanese version. Much more coherent, much better story. Also, you can probably skip Cybertron if you go for Galaxy Force instead. Again, tis a better series than what we got in the USA. Even if it's not perfect, they're at least better. Somewhat. And more consistent.

 

I like the show

 

I never watched armada or energon when it was on regular tv and I only caught cybertron near the end of the syndication M-F 630am airings. I liked armada overall and loved cybertron, however energon is about 20 episodes of my life that I will never get back. I slept through half of them (great nap fodder) and enjoyed the other half.

The completionist in me had to watch the whole trilogy and energon was definitely the lowest cartoon series on the list, ever.

 

I watched the whole series. For me the most enjoyable part of Energon was Shockblast and his younger brother Sixshot. They helped ease the disgust I had watching Energon Starscream, who was the worst version of the character ever. Rodimus wasn't too bad either.

 

The first fight between Megatron and Scorponok was 

 

TF Energon was certainly boring in A LOT OF PARTS. Too much dialogue and the stupid voice of Ironhide was extremely annoying. NOT A SERIES to have a gf(now fiance) watch and not make fun.

It did have some saving graces though. Megatron's ressurrection and battle with Scorponok was awesome as was his line "Prove your loyalty...be my SHEILD!" Rodimus started off cool with him fighting Optimus to make his point was good. The battle of Omega Optimus Prime vs Unicron was cool and the final battles of Optimus vs Galvatron were well worth watching as much of it was actually anime instead of CGI. Also that video game special was basically the whole series summed up into a whole and was better then the episodes it came in between of.

But these fine moments were sandwiched in between TERRIBLE dialogue and moments where the characters stood there for a couple episodes wondering what to do next. Ironhide's voice became the center of why the show was so bad. Plus all the G1 cameos from Armada became generic no name bots for background Autobots and Decepticons. The last 10 episodes felt like Energon was being STRETCHED to fill out 52 episodes when clearly it could have ended in 3 or 4. Kicker, while being a USEFUL human ally, SCREAMED all the time and it became a nuisance. THis was a series that I actually CHEERED for the Decepticons because their character development was the only good part, and Rodimus of course.

 

I watched all of Energon over the last month of December and disliked the majority of it. Some things were okay, such as Megatron. I thought it was a pretty brutal interpretation of Megs. However, most things were terrible. Heck, it has the only version of Optimus Prime I disliked. I actually liked Armada quite a bit, but Energon just isn't that good. Heck, I think its the reason I've only made it through 10 episodes of Cybertron in 3 months, I'm afraid I'll end up wasting my time again.

 

Cybertron was such an improvement over Energon that I became hooked. I was dissapointed that it was missing Rodimus though.

 

You know what I forgot about? The cars driving through space.

 

I love this. The complaints people are making about Energon are nearly identical to my problems with Animated.

 

I have been watching Transformers Energon on DVD and I have two episodes to go on it and I found nothing wrong with it as soon as I have watched the last two episodes I going to watch Cybertron to complete the Unicron Trilogy 

 

To be honest my biggest turn-off with Energon and Cybertron was the CGI animation. This is not to say it was bad, I didn't really watch a whole lot of either so I can't really comment. It was the style that bothered me. The Transformers became too robotic and lost a lot of their anthropomorphism. I frequently at first was confused over who was who, and couldn't really relate to them at all (the lack-lustre voice-acting didn't help; but then again few Anime dubs have top notch voice acting). Admittedly these are also problems I have with the live action movies in general.

For me overall the Unicron trilogy was very...Shonen-Anime-ish. Plots were frequently encapsulated into a single episode and there was sometimes even a distinct monster/villain of the week feel. There were very few if any planned out and developed story-arcs over the span of any of the three series.

Was it bad? No, not really. Sure it has some humorous errors in the dub which could, and should have easily been corrected. But the show on its own was not that bad in the end. In the end it's definitely formulaic Japanese cartoons and frankly it shows.

 

The real problem Energon suffered from was much the same as Armada, it was just too long. The animation budget was stretched thin, and there's a large amount of filler between a few very cool moments. It starts off strong, but as it progresses, you see some very obvious efforts to do nothing but fill time.

In retrospect Beast Wars was probably so awesome because it had only 13 episodes per season (26 in Season 1) with no guarantee of renewal each year, they just HAD to cram in awesome in every fleeting second they had.

 

[Looks at the big Shounen anime: Dragon Ball, One-Piece, Fullmetal Alchemist, Naruto, Bleach, etc.]
Plots encapsulated in single episodes: rarely, mostly for filler.
Planned and developed story arcs: common.
Monster/villain of the week: Not really. Bi/tri-weekly henchman of the villain of the current planned-out story arc, sure.

[looks at "typical" American action cartoons for boys: Ben 10, Transformers: Animated, various Batman cartoons, etc.]
Plots encapsulated in single episodes: Almost always
Planned and developed story arcs: Occasional.
Monster/villain of the week: Oh heavens yes.

[looks at above post]
I get what you're saying, I think, and I partially agree with the problems... but shounen anime? Really?  

Maybe like, in the 1970s. I mean, technically it qualifies as a shounen anime, but you've done a fantastic job of describing our shows instead. Moreso if you look at the stuff we had in the '80s.

 

But see, i have no idea what HiKaizer is going on about, because THAT is what Energon was like. Giant, sprawling go-nowhere story arcs that were strung out over unbearably long periods of time, with stories that were VERY rarely finished in one episode (once you got past the first ten or so episodes, which was the GOOD part of the show), unless they were filler, leaving the whole thing feeling more like a sixteen-hour movie that was religiously chopped up into 25-minute chunks regardless of whether where it stopped and started made a good cliffhanger or opening. In later stages, there is no attempt made by the show to make each episode accessible, refusing to show establishing shots of locations or tell us what the heck is going on, because it all blurs into one hideous whole.