I’ve watched five of the six episodes, and there are good parts and bad parts to the show for sure.
- Not happy about how they handled Ultra Magnus, but that’s more out of bias.
- The Alpha Trion Protocols is a terrible concept that tries to serve as the explanation as to why Bumblebee stops being an edgy character for the series, but it comes across at an attempt at something original, when it’s really just a Matrix-with-a-different-name.
- The English dub is pretty bad. Wheeljack’s voice actor does a great job, but the Japanese dub is hands down a lot easier to digest, with the exception of Megatron.
- No such thing as music in this series. The lack of any energetic or well-arranged music really dampens my attention to the show.
- This series just lacks a spark and a central focus. It’s so busy world-building and providing backstory-after-backstory, but it’s insistence on addressing the past really affects the show as a whole. It feels like the show wants to have Bumblebee as the star, but it drops that after the first episode to serve as The Optimus Prime & Elita-One Soap Opera Hour. Then, Bumblebee just happens to abruptly appear after three episodes or so.
- There is no way whoever wrote the dialogue to this series graduated with an English undergrad degree. “You asked me to find you some Energon, so I found you some Energon.” What kind of grammar is that?
- F.J. Desantis just comes off as pretentious. I still can’t get over their cringeworthy ToyFair presentation. Somebody at Hasbro needs to wish that man the best and say goodbye.
- The models move very strangely, especially Optimus Prime’s abdomen in the first episode or so.
- Ratchet is well executed, nice to see a reference-in-spirit to their Animated counterpart.
- Impactor and Jetfire’s side-switching feels like it lacks any impact because they happen so close to each other, and with how the dialogue is written, it’s like they’re giving the same reasons as to their choices. Impactor also came off as way too passive in the series.
- Prowl appears out of nowhere, as does Ironhide. This would’ve really helped to expand the group meetings in the first three episodes, which felt rather small to begin with.
- Soundblaster was handled really well, including the voice. Loved the decision to change them to a Mercenary. Wish they had explained the Mercenary faction in that scene for viewers unfamiliar with the toy line.
“Everyone who dies stays dead.” Yeah, tell that to Skywarp. It looked like they died sixteen times.
- Cybertronians performing theatrical productions? Perhaps in the days after the stories of “the old religions” occurred, but you’d think Cybertronian art would have evolved by The Great War. The set design was really well designed, though.
- Where are the MicroMasters? This is going to make the Modulators’ jobs in ER pretty difficult, unless the animators just make them huge.

 

 
I didn't mind the horde of generic seekers, but they did make it hard to tell if named seekers died. Like, is Thundercracker dead? I'm honestly not sure.

 

I recall maybe seeing Thundercracker in the show once. It was hard to really connect with any of the characters, other than Wheeljack, especially when the Seekers were just the Siege equivalent to Vehicons.  

 

I think I saw Acid Storm once, green is easier to spot in the greyness of Cybertron.

 

Jetfire was reluctant to execute them in the first scene, it's just subtle. First he slices Starscreams arm off preventing him from doing it. Then if you watch his response to Megatron's order to execute them he looks conflicted. Later on he looks disgusted/disappointed at Megatron's response to Magnus not shooting him in the back.

 

That came across more as he was punishing Starscream for stepping out of line and generally being Starscream. He didn't seem to care about the Autobots at all. I didn't see any hesitation what so ever unlike when Megatron hesitated to forcibly reformat all the Autobots into Decepticons. He clearly didn't even want to do it when Shockwave first made the suggestion.

 

So my thoughts are perfectly summarised by Thew and Jobby's reviews, ultimately I thought it was just fine. I'll still be checking out Earthrise.

Something I was thinking about the other day was the character choices, and how existing models were utilised as rank fillers.
Now obviously there's more involved in translating the toy CAD files into animated form than basically using them like a marionette with no changes, they need actual hands, faces that can emote and speak, gaps and ports filled etc. but I think they missed a trick by not utilising a particular toy to fill the Decepticon ranks in the same way Cog did for the Autobots; Brunt. Surely he would've required much less effort to turn into an animated model what with the no-face and claws?
Actually same with Crosshairs. The Ironhide model was already there and he, like Brunt, doesn't have a mouth to animate, even if they didn't use him as an actual character he could've been a rank filler like all the recoloured Prowlstreakscreens, Hounds and Cogs everywhere.

 

HA! Those giant forearm gaps on Megatron tell a different tale!

Yes, I'm still salty about that, why do you ask?

 

Okay, so I'm usually a pretty cynical guy when it comes to modern day Transformers media. I fully respect everyones opinions on this show, be they love or loathe. That being said...

I thought this show was frickin fantastic, and deserves more positivity from the fans than its getting. I dont and never have equated 'GrimDark' with 'mature and grown up' - this show is legitimately sophisticated in its character writing and nuanced portrayl of a war between two factions. This is by far my favourite ever on-screen Megatron and one of my favourite Primes. I loved the slower pace and the fact it trusted its audience not to need constant action and humor to stay engaged. FJ DeSanto has my support for any future TF content (and thats saying something after the Prime Wars travesty!)
The only issues I could really find were the sometimes iffy voices and lack of any stand out fight scenes. The voices were hardly bad - some are downright fantastic - but many are generic and the odd one is outright wrong (Hound/Ironhide anyone?!). Also, the whole Trion Protocals thing was needless and pretty lazy. Maybe it will play a part in future series, but I'm gonna assume it was just a pointless and quick way to get the Allspark and get Bee to do a U turn.
Again, I totally respect anyones opinion, but personally....I feel like some of the fandom just are not willing to see that due to it not meeting their personal tastes (a lighter, more original show). We have plenty of series in that style and a properly grown up G1 reboot is something myself and many fans have been waiting for.
For Earthrise, I'd love to see some more attention paid to the voice direction and some more inventive action scenes, but overall Siege was an excellent show and a fantastic addition to TF Canon.

 

Huh, wait, this is the same VA who does Prime there? He sounds totally different here. I guess some director told him "be more like Cullen Prime"...

5 times???
Man you have way too much free time to waste. Care to sell me some of it?  

I am surprised about posts like yours. Unless you just registered here and did not follow Transformers toy releases for years, you WOULD know these are bit by bit the ACTUAL TOY DESIGNS. So don't credit Rooster Teeth with the designs. They used the CAD files Hasbro sent them of the Siege toyline. And they animated them somewhat adequately. Not a big deal.

 

I finally put aside some time to go through it. I had spectacularly low expectations coming off of the Prime Wars trilogy (I still haven't gotten around to sitting through Power of the Primes, but if it is anything like its prequels, it will be more like suffering through it). Unlike those, I didn't feel like my time was wasted here.

This was actually worthwhile. Though there have been better versions of this story in the past. But since my favorite version, Fall of Cybertron barely exists anymore for newcomers without jumping through some serious hoops, this is easy enough to recommend.

 

It was decent, better than I expected.
Great voice acting in general, good dialogue in the first part of the series, the animation (except for the fights) was nice, the models were pretty awesome (and I don't even own a Siege toy)...

But the plot points were pretty fucking stupid, most of it was concepts already done before to death and in general, I think we should ask more for a Netflix show based on one of the biggest toy franchises that exist.

Transformers can be more than what it is Siege, that's what IDW has showed me.

 

Given that the gesture comes from the latin "recipe ferrum" from ancient Rome, a country that will not exist for quite a few million years yet to come, and of which cybertronian robots could have not known about, that was quite a bit of anachronism.  

Are you for reals???? Cartoon Network??? The studio that KILLED Transformers Animated, and then did the same to RID, pushing it to terrible slots to get it cancelled?
Yeah I hope CN will never ever produce TF cartoons. They kill every show that isn't their own homebrew crap like Teen Titans Go or Thundercats Roar or the new terribly dumb Ben 10.

Netflix had nothing to do with it, they just aired it. Rooster Teeth is the studio you wanna check out. They produced this. And given that all they ever did are terrible western anime-ripoffs that sound like bad Sailor Moon and Gundam fanfics (I tried to give both their shows a watch, just horrible), I dunno why anyone was expecting quality stuff.

Marvel UK Magnus once went on basically an assassination mission with Optimus to kill Megatron, so... likely yes.

Good points there Steeljaw.
Other Optimuses, like G1 or Animated, were remembered as heroes who took Megatron and the Con leadership with them to the grave (or so they thought at the time). This Optimus will be remembered as the one who did a suicidal mission costing many lives to destroy the artifact that gave life to Cybertron, perishing with the one last starship of the Autobots. I would not be surprised if Elita afterwards would pretend never having dated him.   It's not good writing when your hero of the show comes off as a stubborn idiot who doomed everyone. It's like I am having flashbacks to Star Trek Voyager, where the writers intended Janeway to be a motherly but stern figure, and yet she came off as a merciless dictator whose whims (and whether she felt like Prime Directives applied or not) changed every episode...
Agreed on the weird mixups. Why Hound's powers were given to Mirage? Because the writer forgot to read the giant section of the wiki where Mirage only has invisibility powers and ONLY checked his G1 Tech spec- the ONLY place where he has hologram powers? Just... baffling.
Also, why even include guys like Flywheels and Spinister if they don't give them any personalities? It would have taken a few lines only. Also they could have made them transform, neither looks very earth-vehicle-like, and this way maybe the Con air force would not have been just 100 seekers.

I suppose could work like Dark of the Moon Megatron's cloak, but even so, I can imagine aggravating moments for him when the cloak gets caught between transforming parts and gets stuck.  

No, it became pointless because Megatron authorizes the plan... Then they do NOTHING for it.
The rest of the season is spent with the Decepticons looking for the Autobot base/Ark. They never, ever go out to get the Allspark... despite Jetfire telling us that the seekers mapped the Rust Sea (so they should have really found this strange energy signature, but whatever).
At the end, Megatron shows up to kill Prime, he never even knew Prime had the Allspark until he saw it in his hands. The whole Allspark-reprogramming plot was completely forgotten and pointless. Just like the whole... Vector Sigma? Underbase? Alpha Trion protocols? whatever they were called. Bee has them for a while, it leads them to a place, then the virus deleted it and BAM that subplot about Bee's chosen status? Gone.

Hasbro has nothing to do with that... they gave the CAD files for the toys to Rooster Teeth. They cannot give them human animation models, since there are no human toys in the toyline...   At best they could give them GI Joe models, and then the humans in the show would look like toys with joints...  
To be fair, I too hope we don't get humans in the show. Have you seen the human models on RWBY or their other show? They are terrible faux-anime models.

Well unfortunately they had the two characters who had non-toy CAD based models (Elita and Bee) go to that meeting, and I guess the writers forgot Cog can not just turn into weapons but two vehicles too.

That's not really a spoiler, dude.   Also, no, he is just a random repaint, like so many other repaints on this show. Curious why they did not use the extra heads Hasbro probably gave them- they could have made that guy Aragon (the red Powerdasher), but nope.

 

Also, how the hell are you gonna make something thats only 18 episodes long "the definitive take" on the franchise.

To be fair, their show Camp Camp is pretty good.

Or maybe we have, you know, standards.
This show is dry, thinly written, poorly acted, and mediocre at best in the animation department.
And the fact that the creators are making it out to be the pinnacle of Transformers shows takes off more points.
DeSanto also just feels like the next Lorenzo Di Bonaventura except he belives his own crap.

 

You now what's the worst thing about this show, looking back? Yeah they had a very limited cast. No human models. Know what other show had that and made do with its horribly limited animation and characters? Beast Wars. In this day and age and this franchise (Transformers) in particular there is no excuse for this show to be utterly terrible and bland beyond incompetence, lazyness and bad writing. Yeah I know, BW isn't perfect but that show was even more shoestring in its own way as back then CGI technology was massively costly and limited. That said, it was a show which had good writers who seemingly had a genuine desire to make a good show despite not a single one of them remotely knowing Transformers or wtf they were doing.

 

Honestly I'm tired of these computer generated Transformers shows. Transformers, more then another other cartoon, has been CGI'd and it's worse for it IMO.

 

Classic animation is functionally dead and increasingly a 'lost art'.

 

I can't see CGI being the problem for Transformers as it's really Hasbro's fault for not giving enough budget to the showrunners to make the presentation good enough. Hasbro's really going on the cheap side when it comes to media presentation that had this series been 2D animated instead we still would've seen faulty animation here.

 

Its a Rooster Teeth and Netflix show: most people working for these are hacks more interested in their twitter feed than competent writing at the best of times.