I loved prime the only issue I had was the lack of new characters Ironhide and Jazz.

 

I neither love nor hate Prime. It was a decent show and I enjoyed watching it as it aired. But it hasn’t really left a lasting impression on me and I feel no overwhelming desire to go back and revisit it.

 

While I am often critical of Prime, I don't hate it. It is in fact a good show, and probably better than most Transformers shows out there. My problem is that it always felt like a show that's embarrassed to be a part the Transformers franchise. The show always played fast and loose with established continuity, and fundamentally altered some characters for the worst in my opinion. For example, they took Optimus Prime, a character Known for his kindness, compassion, wisdom, and humanity, into a boring, cold, emotionless, and distant character who constantly spouts empty platitudes. While I do somewhat enjoy Prime as a show, it never felt like the show's creators wanted the show to appeal to transformers fans.

 

Answering your second question first, people largely enjoy Prime because it had a few very memorable characters and characterizations - namely Knockout, Soundwave, Agent Fowler, and Ratchet - and it was visually very well-done, with impactful fight scenes and impressive CGI.

As for why people hate it, it largely boils down to poor characterization for everyone else, and lack of a decent story. Besides the few I mentioned, most of the characters in Prime are either bland and generic, or just outright bad characters.

Arcee is super edgy and represents everything wrong with how you cope with loss; her entire backstory and character is dependent on her chronic poor luck when it comes to her partners not dying. Starscream is a simpering coward who had his entire character arc completely undone for no reason. Megatron is just straight up an idiot. But most egregiously, Optimus Prime's entire character is "stoic leader." He does nothing else; he shows absolutely zero emotion and is constantly doling out "words of wisdom," which is a very, very far-cry from the much more expressive and fatherly Optimus Primes that we've gotten in the past.

As for story, well, basically the plot is a never-ending fetch quest. The first arc revolving around Dark Energon was okay, but after that the show basically devolved into a scavenger hunt for "Iacon Relics" or whatever else was the theme of the season that basically just sit around collecting dust for the rest of the show; they appear for one episode, maybe two, and then are never seen nor heard from again. Several episodes also had their impetus be one of the human characters, Miko, running after the Autobots to try and watch the action only to get into some kind of trouble as a result of her recklessness stupidity, which she never outgrew over the series.

 

*Cracks Knuckles*

"Oh Prime, such great music we could have made..."

I grew up with Animated and Prime, When I was growing up, I loved both of the shows equally at the time. Though, as I grew older and my tastes began to evolve, I found that when I was reevaluating EVERY aspect of the two shows, Animated would rise head and shoulders above the rest while Prime's glaring issues became much more apparent. To me, the true and core issues are:

Characters:
80% of the characters could be described in one word:

• Prime - Inspiring
• Megatron - Brutish
• Soundwave - Mysterious

When it is at it's worst is when multiple characters SHARE their defining word:

• Breakdown, Bulkhead, and Miko - Destructive
• Arcee and Wheeljack - Loners
• Bee and Smokescreen - Childish

It's funny, all of the "fan favorite" characters, are the only ones who are memorable like Ratchet, Fowler, and gorgeous.

Story-wise, it's meh. Season one is honestly pretty above average, probably on par with G1 S3 and Animated S2, but then there was a steep decline after that. After the Orion Pax arc, it seemed like the only thing the writers knew what to do was fetch quests as that is just what the show devolved into. Fetch quest after fetch quest, each less interesting than the last. Don't even get me started on Predicon's Rising.

Despite this and my many other grievances, I still like Prime. I like it better than BM, all of UT, RID15, and the headmasters. But nowhere near BW, Animated, Victory, or even G1.

 

I would have gone with "Prime - Cardboard" and "Arcee - MUH PAAAARRRRTTTNNNEERRRRZZZZZZZ" myself.

Oh, and Armada was overall far better than Prime. Sure, the whole show or at least the first half amounted to going around fighting over mini-cons...because that was literally the whole point of their existence. They were created by Unicron specifically to trigger the war in the first place and the show covers that conflict extending to Earth. Not random bullshit that just happened to be lying around for the dumbest of reasons (why in hell would Alpha Trion, one of the people who put Unicron into Earth in the first place, think it was a good idea to send all this powerful shit to Unicron's prison?) after being stolen out of Decepticon R&D or were 'ancient artifact' deus ex machinas like the stupid hammer was.

And then the last confrontation between Optimus and Megatron in Armada is sublime. Optmus tosses off the role of Prime, literally chucking the Matrix away, so he can fight Megatron on his own terms, Megatron's absolutely delighted over this, and this single mano-a-mano fight is enough to re-energize Unicron such that Megatron actually gives Prime final victory so he in turn can sacrifice himself to defeat Unicron - after which Prime goes into Exile and does not consider himself worthy of reclaiming the Matrix because of what happened.

Prime Optimus basically pulls some bullshit out of nowhere to defeat Unicron and then simply flies into the core of the planet or whatever because REASONS.

But I think the ultimate thing that needs to be understood about Prime and why it's regarded so poorly by many is that on its own mertis, it's a perfectly serviceable show in the sense of 'it's painfully average'. This show had serious potential and was hyped as such, going so far as to include saying 'it would explore what it meant to be a Prime' in the pre-release material.

It was one decent first season followed by fucking two seasons of fetch quests for ultimately minor powerups and fossils where nobody got any real development.

 

Yeah, I view them as about equal with Armada being a bit better. Yeah, that last episode and fight tops anything Prim ever did.

I've actually been looking around online and asking people about Transformers Prime and why they think it is the pinnacle of transformers. There are two factors that are almost universally common.

1. They Haven't watched Animated.
2. They never made it past season one.

 

The final fight in Armada is still to this day my favourite Optimus and Megatron battles, even if there have been better animated fights since then.

And yeah I'd say I do enjoy Armada more than Prime. I've been rewatching it recently and while it isn't a perfect show, with animation and dubbing errors for example, the first 2 seasons (episodes 1-26) are still enjoyable with the build up to Unicron and the morality of if you should fight an enemy (minicons) who are forced to fight. Then the latter half of Armada has stuff in it I wish Prime could have done.

 

Point of order: The Thirteen did not "put Unicron into Earth", they just lost track of his inert body which then drifted through space accumulating enough space dust to have a planet form around him. The fact that Alpha Trion was sending artifacts to Earth was entirely incidental.

 

Put simple in my opinion:
Prime is good, but not as good as Animated, G1, or BW.

I find it more enjoyable than most other Transformers series, but it still has the minor problems I had with BW, G1 (okay, maybe major for G1), and Animated. It also has more problems, like limited character development and poorly fleshed out villains.

 

Wow. Just when I thought it couldn't get any stupider.

Lost track of Unicron, a literal entity of chaos...and in order for the plot to work all the shit had to end up on that same planet.

Man, I miss the days when they could actually come up with Transformer stories that didn't involve entire catalogues of alien crap all just so happening to end up on Earth in order to come up with a plot involving warring space robots.

 

And then there was the Predacon clones that Megatron had apparently commissioned and sent all of them to Earth, only for them to die out while waiting.

One thing that I always didn't really like about Prime, even when it first came out, was how everything important was on Earth, even though they explained that there were battles on other planets. Guess Unicron just pulls everything towards him

 

If they could just go back to having the Decepticons trying to loot the planet for resources and the Autobots stopping them, that'd be great. No more McGuffins!

And don't forget that huge battle that left plenty of corpses for Megs to zombify.

 

What's funny is that that's how it started. Even with the inclusion of Unicron at the end of the first season I would be fine with it cause Unicron as Earth hadn't been done before. But presumably because of the price and that they did Unicron at the end of the first season, it then became searching for the entirety of the Iacon database that was all on Earth (including Smokescreen eventually) because the Primes were all powerful or something.

 

And then he does the same shit with Skyquake. I mean, the dude was ordered to kill Prime...but he's also been in a pod on Earth for god knows how long and Megatron never needed this guy who he thought could kill Optimus Prime during a war?

Don't forget the other crashed Decepticon ship Starscream hides in for a little bit.

I mean, if you think about it, this all would have been far more interesting if it had happened on Cybertron. Earth's sole purpose of being Earth in the context of the show is just to have humans on it, because everything else is just crap from Cybertron that somehow nobody's fucking noticed lying around on the surface of the goddamn planet.

At least if it was all on Cybertron, then that shit would have an excuse being lying around because in the middle of a war, nobody's going to really be trying to tidy up the blown up cities and whatnot.

Indeed, they just keep needing these 'grand' reasons for why the war ends up on Earth. When in reality, it only works when the war accidently gets stuck on the planet. Like in Armada, Earth itself is only relevant because the Mini-con ship crashed into the moon and sent all the hibernation plates or whatever smashing into the planet. Or in Animated, where Earth has jack shit to do with anything and just happens to be a planet the Autobots/Megatron end up warping to (And then in the interim Starscream is an idiot and later crashes the Nemesis into the moon while the Decepticons are looking for Megatron).

All those dead bodies lying around...makes you wonder what the fuck MECH was even doing all this time since they were all about grabbing up dead robot bodies and you had a giant goddamn crater full of 'em that could probably have been seen from fucking space.

 

That raises the question of what exactly killed the Earthbound Predacons. It took a cataclysm to wipe out the original Cybertronian population, so it couldn’t have been easy to kill off those on our planet. And if memory serves, the Predacons existed contemporaneously with ancient human civilizations, so they couldn’t have been wiped out by a natural extinction event. Not to mention that there should have been plenty of Energon on the planet at the time, so the Preds likely wouldn’t have starved. So, who or what did them in?

 

This right here is why I hate Prime. There's a proud history to the name "PredAcon", but goddamn youngins keep misspelling it because Shockwave pronounced it a little weirdly (despite Shockwave's VA having been in Beast Wars, and now I'm wondering if Depth Charge ever actually said "Predacon").


Prime kinda feels like the Sequel Trilogy. Part 1 is actually pretty weak but holds a lot of promise, Part 2 just stomps all over everything, Part 3 random ass shit oh who cares anymore. And Starscream's totally the Jake Skywalker, making an inexplicable 180 character change. Like, Starscream starts the series out living the dream as de facto Decepticon Leader, but the Cons are all horrible assholes so he sets out on his own where it SEEMS like it'd end up with him learning to become an actual good leader and maybe start his own faction (with Airachnid being the Azula-esque foil to the Zuko redemption arc)..... but no, Starscream's destiny is to be completely, genuinely loyal to the abusive Megatron. Just... why?

 

The thing I love about Prime is that it encapsulates what I think of when I think of an interstellar war. The Autobots are desperate and the Decepticons seem to be hot on their trail. I think it's one of the most original takes on a Transformers show I've ever seen.

 

I never got the sense that they were desperate. They always had the upper hand despite the number of Vehicons the 'cons had (honestly, the Autobots easily massacrated the Vehicons every time).

Too much suspension of disbelief for my liking. Hell, Beast Machines does a hell of a better job than TFP in telling a dark story without being pretentious.

 

Yes. For all the problems I had with Beast Machines, it did a much better job of selling me the idea that the good guys were underdogs than Prime ever did. It's like the writers for Prime wanted it to be dark like Beast Machines, but were too scared to take any actual risks.