Up until the moment he has to yell or emote in any way lmao

 

I'm 39, grew up with the original Transformers, and I never would have thought that Cyberverse would be the best overall show in my opinion. If anyone's getting Netflix just to see Transformers save your money. Go watch the new Star Wars Trilogy for better writing and "care" for beloved characters.

 

"wE aRe nOt tHe dEcEpTiCoNs!"
"tElL mE yOu fOrGiVe Me!!!"

"Perfect" - some Hasbro exec, probably.

 

Its voice direction or just not doing enough takes.

Because this same guy does a better job in the beginning of Cyberverse that by the most recent season has developed to a great one that just completely overshadows this series.

 

"Whatever, we can pay him less than we pay for Cullen"

 

The thing that kills me the most about this series... plot wise and concept wise, it's pretty good. It's just executed horribly.

I'd have loved a chance to edit each of these scripts. Just hand me one per week. I'd add more levity (because the show needs bright spots and less grim dark, even if just in some of the dialogue), make sure each character has their own unique voice, etc.

And I'm not mad at the voice actors, but the voice director needs to be replaced.

 

Even Netflix's anime English dub VAs are more recognizable. A lot of the names they use I've seen in various video games I've played and plenty are top calibre. I look at the VA credits of WFC (or even shows like Cyberverse and RB Academy) and I have no idea who they are. They're not terrible but not great either. And like the rest, Optimus Prime's VA is just a weak impression and his voice totally changes if Prime needs to emote.

 

So I just watched Earthrise yesterday and I have some notes...

I'm just going to start off by saying I didn't enjoy it as much as Siege. I didn't hate it but Earthrise was kind of a disappointing follow up to Siege and just kind of feels like filler to get to Kingdom.

Things I liked...

Megatron, just like in Siege, he has moments where he seems like more of a sympathetic villain and in both seasons he's been one of the best things about this series. This time it was more than just a moment of hesitation.

Spoiler

He straight up tells Shockwave that he hasn't made a decision on sector 12 and not to shut them down until he does. Then he makes an unplanned visit to Sector 12 to see for himself what's going on there. You can see and feel the conflict going on in his own decision. It actually feels like something he really doesn't want to do but feels like he's been left with no other choice. He's not doing what he's doing because it's evil and he's a Saturday morning cartoon villain, no, he's doing it to deal with the fallout from Optimus Prime.

Speaking of which... I think they actually did Optimus better this season as well. In the first season it's really not clear how he's the good guy and Megatron is the villain in all of this but I think Earthrise did something with these two characters that makes that difference a little more clear. Optimus threw the AllSpark through a space Bridge to get it off Cybertron so Megatron couldn't use it as a weapon. Both characters have made decisions that are the result of things the other one did or were planning on doing... However Optimus doesn't blame Megatron for his decision, he blames himself. On the other side of the coin Megatron deflects all of his choices claiming Optimus made them. Optimus may have put him in a bad situation where he had to make a tough decision but at the end of the day it's still Megatron's decision.

Spoiler

There's also a scene with the two of them fighting where Optimus asks Megatron for forgiveness for what he was about to do, which was to kill Megatron. He fails to actually do this because he hesitated and moments later Megatron points out his mistake saying he doesn't care if Optimus forgives him.

I don't think either character is really fully good or fully evil in this series, they're both in kind of a morally grey zone but if anything I think these moments showing how they handle similar situations differently shows that Optimus may not exactly be a white knight but he's kind of a light grey, and Megatron isn't a black shadow lurking in the dark but he is more of a dark grey.

Spoiler

The Galvatron part was really good but short lived. I thought he was going to be more of a primary antagonist this season but he's barely in it. The time he is there is well done but I still kind of feel like we could of gotten more from him. He never out right says that he's a future version of Megatron but it is heavily implied that this is a future version of Megatron who's traveled back in time in order to change his own future. And he also gives Megatron the Golden Disk kind of making it so in this universe at least, the Beast Wars only happened because Galvatron time traveled.

There's also a quick Dinobot cameo at the end of the season... It's not clear that it is Dinobot at first, could of been a normal raptor... except then his eye blinks and changes from an organic eye to a robotic eye so it's pretty clear that was intended to be Dinobot. I knew Kingdom was going to be next but I wasn't expecting to see two Beast Wars references in Earthrise before we actually got to Kingdom.

Oddly, considering this show is a glorified toy commercial there aren't a lot of actual Earthrise toy designs that show up in this season. Most of them are from Siege still. We do get the Quintesson, Sky-Lynx, Galvatron, Scorponok, Unicron, and Double Dealer... also...

Spoiler

it's called EARTHrise and they never once mention Earth the entire show, and it's only on screen for the last few seconds setting up Kingdom.

Essentially there's no Earthrise in Earthrise. I'm not really sure if this is actually good or bad, it depends on how you look at it so I'm just bringing it up here.

Now let's talk about the bad...

Jetfire keeps going on and on this entire season about how the Decepticons aren't to be trusted and can't be redeemed which comes off completely hypocritical from a character who is himself a former Decepticon. He basically spent the entire season trying to convince Elita-One not to trust him and not one person ever thought to point this out to him? I mean this was handled so much better on Rescue Bots Academy than this show.

There seem to be some literal HOLES in the plot where they go from A to C and I'm wandering what the hell happen to B...

Spoiler

like the first time we see the Ark it's already been taken over by Double Dealer and I'm wandering... HOW? It seems like there's an action scene that they skipped over right here. And Double Dealer has a much smaller crew than the crew of the Ark so how the hell did he manage to over power them and take over their ship?

The Quintesson seemed really kind of pointless. I mean they introduce these five faces and then quickly remove 4 of the faces. And then they quickly escape the Quitesson. And then the Quintesson is puppeting Double Dealer... again... how the F did that even happen? Then she's quickly defeated again. What was even the point of that character? She/They don't do anything, the character's motivations and actions don't make any sense, why even have them there at all? You could take out all the Quintesson stuff and it wouldn't change a damn thing.

How exactly does Megatron find the Ark so quickly? I mean I know they said Soundwave had received a transmission from the Ark but who sent it? It's kind of implied that Double Dealer sent their location but he wasn't on the Ark at the time so WTF?

Unicron is only on screen for a few seconds, says one line, and is only in planet mode...

so don't get too excited to see him.

Has the voice acting some how gotten WORSE since last season? When Elita-One and Chromia are having a conversation it sounds like ONE PERSON is talking.

Spoiler

The Quintesson, none of the voices feel like they match the face that's speaking.

When a Japanese movie poorly dubbed into English sounds better than this there's some kind of problem here. In the first season I only thought Shockwave sounded miscast and Soundwave was difficult to understand but this season I can't even tell who's talking half the time. At least poor dubs have an excuse of trying to match English to people speaking an entirely different language, what the hell was going on this show? It's a cartoon, made in English originally... there's no reason the dialog shouldn't match the character who's actually speaking.

So anyway... while there are aspects of it I enjoyed I can't really recommend it cause it feels like this show is just filler. Nothing much really happens to advance the story in any significant way. If you already didn't like Siege you're really not going to like this. I do look forward to Kingdom though.

 

wonder if there are any plans for whats next after Kingdom. Or will it be another 2 year or more wait ? sort of sucks only 6 eps a year kind of thing ( average )

 

They'll just replay the old G1 cartoon (and the movie) with added CGI special effects. It's called Transformers: Generation 3.

 

Also Jake Foushee will be dubbed over all of Peter Cullen's dialogue

 

You just described what Generation 2 already was though...

Oh... I forgot to mention in my last post... as there's likely to be a lot of comparisons between this and the Prime Wars Trilogy... Earthrise was a hell of a lot better than Titans Returns.

Siege was also better than Combiner Wars...

Oddly Season 2 of War for Cybertron Trilogy is kind of on par with season 1 of Prime Wars Trilogy. But as long as they don't screw up Kingdom I think season 2 will be the worst of both.

Right now I'm ranking them like this. (From worst to best)

Titans Returns

Combiner Wars/Earthrise

Siege

Power of the Prime

Kingdom (Hopefully)

 

From today's Hasbro's Investor's Event, War for Cybertron: Kingdom will be coming in July:

Netflix War for Cybertron Trilogy Kingdom Release Date Confirmed for July 2021 | The Allspark

(11) Transformers War For Cybertron Netflix Season 3 Kingdom Release Date OFFFICIALLY REVEALED by Hasbro! - YouTube

 

There’s no way it happens, as there’s no toy release planned in kingdom or earthrise sets... But I think it would have been cool if Bumblebee became Goldbug at some point during the third part.

 

so excited for kingdom but, I think earthrise could've been done better still I'm excited to see Cheetor after so many years since bw and bm aired on tv, although, I'm also happy to see Optimus Primal again

 

There's basically zero chance Chalk, Kaye or any other BW cast members are involved with the Kingdom show, right?

 

Right. Hasbro/RT refuse to hire union actors, and they’re all unionized.

 

Damn. I just caught up on the last couple of pages' discussions on voice actors too.

It's a shame, because Cullen and Welker and the like are still working and active, but ultimately there's a finite amount of time left that they're going to be able to voice these characters. Use them!

 

Hey all, long time lurker first time poster. Myself and my good friend Virtual Dave have embarked on a podcast adventure together and our first episode(s) are on the War For Cybertron Netflix series. It's up on all good podcast apps and called AARGH! MY OPTICS! We'd really love you to check it out! Plus we are Brits so you can have a good old chuckle at our accents and peculiar turns of phrase!

Shamless plug I know but how else does one get the word out?