What did you LIKE about the cartoon?

DrSpengler · Post by **DrSpengler** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 6:52 pm

The majority of us can go on all day and night about everything bad about the cartoon (and many of us do) so here's a challenge:

What did you ENJOY about the cartoon?

Does that mean you liked the cartoon? No. I just want to know what aspect you thought was good about it, whether it be a particular episode, an animation sequence, or whatever. There's got to be SOMETHING to comic fans liked about the cartoon.

I thought that a number of the voice actors were excellent. All the Insecticons, Soundwave, Rumble and Frenzy, Shockwave, Starscream, Perceptor, Blur (to an extent), Astrotrain and others were fantastic. Not all the voice acting was good. There were too many generic voices (90% of the Autobots) or some so annoying they made me wish I had no eardrums (the season 2 minibots), but for everyone of those there was at least one very good one. The voice acting wasn't as good as in, say, Beast Wars (which was nearly perfect voice-acting) but definately memorable.

I can think of other things but I'd rather hear from the rest of you. Just try to avoid fanboyish responses like "It's nostalgic!".

Dead Man Wade · Post by **Dead Man Wade** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 6:58 pm

I'm going to have to agree on some of the voice acting.

Also, the animation in some (repeat: some) of the episodes was really good. Call of the Primitives especially (even though the storyline was crap).

Ultimate Weapon · Post by **Ultimate Weapon** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:01 pm

It's getting more and more difficult as I age to appreciate things from my childhood. Things like Transformers & Star Wars are starting to show there age and wearing thin in the nostalgia factor. I can only really appreciate what Hasbro is doing now and have done in the past to keep the series alive and running and staying fresh for old and new members alike.

The old cartoons are like watching an unfinished painting. Most of it is half ass and not really worth my time even though I collect the DVDs I hardly watch any of them. I guess one good thing about the cartoon is that you don't have to read the story in order to understand it versus the comic. I think Prime sacrificing himself in the movie was the only real time that a character stood out from his stereotype ever.

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:06 pm

Y'know that bit in Starscream's Brigade where Prime's reasoning with Megatron, and for once Megatron's listening, so Prime shoots him in the face? That bit.

Nah, I can actually watch a dozen or so of the episodes without screaming. Dark Awakening, Auto-Beserk and Fight or Flee are great to watch, and despite mass stupidity, Brigade/Bruticus and Ultimate Weapon chug along quite nicely.

I have to say some of the voice acting is great too, though it's nowhere near as uniformly excellent as some make out.

Civ · Post by **Civ** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:12 pm

From what I remember, I liked the following:

1) Optimus Prime. My all-time favorite Transformer. When I use to watch the G1 cartoon, I didn't care much for Seasons 3 and 4. I hated Rodimus Prime, I didn't care much for Ultra Magnus, Daniel was Daniel, Blurr was annoying, and Wheelie got tiresome after awhile. The only ones in Seasons 3 and 4 that I liked (or at least I remember liking) were Springer, Arcee, and Kup. I would mention Hot Rod, but he only appeared briefly. Once Optimus Prime came back, I was a happy camper again.

2) The voice acting. It just seemed to make the characters more alive since a lot of their voices were just so distinctive like Ironhide's, Wheeljack's, Bumblebee's, Huffer's, Starscream's, Megatron's, and most notably, Soundwave's.

3) I liked the combinations of Hound/Spike and Bumblebee/Spike.

I don't remember the plots, so I can't comment on them.

Dead Man Wade · Post by **Dead Man Wade** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:21 pm

Originally posted by Civ
1) Optimus Prime. My all-time favorite Transformer. When I use to watch the G1 cartoon, I didn't care much for Seasons 3 and 4. I hated Rodimus Prime, I didn't care much for Ultra Magnus, Daniel was Daniel, Blurr was annoying, and Wheelie got tiresome after awhile. The only ones in Seasons 3 and 4 that I liked (or at least I remember liking) were Springer, Arcee, and Kup. I would mention Hot Rod, but he only appeared briefly. Once Optimus Prime came back, I was a happy camper again.

Couple things:

1) It used to be, I hated Rodimus. But as I got back into G1, and started rewatching some of the episodes with him, I began to realize that Rodimus was not the problem. The major problem was with how he was handled. The people that wrote the majority of Season 3 (indeed, the entire series) did not allow any room for the character to grow.

2) Ultra Magnus was alright. See previous comments.

3) Wheelie got tiresome 'after a while'? I wanted to strangle the little bastard from the get-go.

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:26 pm

Wheelie's great in the hilarity known as the TF:TM comic. He just turns up in one frame and basically goes "I don't like it here. Thankfully, I have a ship. Let's go".

Why didn't Wheelie use the ship before?

Actually, Season 3 Magnus is one other thing about the cartoon I like.

To be honest, I'd rather watch the G1 cartoon than most other cartoons, as they don't interest me, Transformers interest me. The cartoon tends to get a lot of stick in this place because of the nature of a vocal minority of its' fans. Yeh, call comic fans preachy, but comic fans don't wail on BW/BM/RiD/Armada/Energon because it dares to be different than the original comic, do they?

Like I say, I realise that it's because there's a bunch of pillocks letting the side down and that sucks, but it's pretty much why the thing gets the piss ripped so much.

Post by **Hound** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:29 pm

The animation on the Transforming sequences in MTMTE, those were great.

Megatron and Optimus in the movie, that was one of the few times those two were really impressive in their roles.

"Traitor" is a good episode.

"Triple Takeover", Blitzwing cracks me up, and Starscream is a complete idiot in this episode...

The Insecticons are almost always cool

"Ghost in the Machine" and "Webworld", Galvatron at his best.

Edit: Warpath, a little red tank on crack, it doesn't get much better...

Ultimate Weapon · Post by **Ultimate Weapon** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:30 pm

Originally posted by Cliffjumper
Why didn't Wheelie use the ship before?

I'm guessing that from the movie once the Quints were on the run from the Sharkticons that the ship was no longer guarded by their control.

Silly Cow · Post by **Silly Cow** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 8:29 pm

Nowadays, aside from the obvious choices (Webworld, Dark Awakening etc.) I mostly enjoy the fun episodes. You know, the ones you can clearly see even the writers had fun doing.

Triple Takeover - Full of great oneliners. Sure, Astrotrain's and Blitzwing's charactes were way off but it was fun to watch.

Prime Target - Ditto. Originally when I didn't remember much about the episode I thought the plotline sounded stupid. It still is, but that doesn't matter when the episode itself was funny. This still cracks me up:

"If that's the best thing you've got, you're in big trouble!"
"Aargh, that was the best thing I got!"

Or something like that.

Fight or Flee - Again, a cornucopia of oneliners.
"Everybody has to be somewhere"

"This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Now, give me the bomb."

Stupid plots and thin characters tend to irratate when you're older. Good comedy never gets old.

DrSpengler · Post by **DrSpengler** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 8:41 pm

I'll agree with you there. The episodes where they tried to be "serious" were often some of the worst since it's hard for anyone to take fighting robots from another planet in a cartoon with 30 animation errors per episode seriously. That's not to say all the serious episodes were crap (Dark Awakening was awesome as was 5 Faces of Darkness and many of the Japanese episodes).

But like you said, "Great comedy never gets old", and the episodes where the writers were intentionally being silly and just having fun are always the best to rewatch.

Webworld, Kremzeek, Triple Takeover are all some of my favorites for the simple reason that they're there to poke fun at themselves and just be funny.

Ozz · Post by **Ozz** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 9:23 pm

I got to know Transformers via Marvel comic. Cartoon was like: 'Robots I like, but now they're walking and talking. Cool!' After seeing it, I was very disappointed. But the things that I liked:

Episodes like Five Faces Of Darkness, Dark Awakening, majority of Season 1 were quite good.

TF:TM and Season 3, because I got to like new characters introduced in TF:TM. Season 3 is my favourite one.

And those fun episodes like those mentioned above (besides Kremzeek, didn't like that) and maybe few others unmentioned (first six or seven minutes of Carnage is hilarious).

Overall, there is about 30 eps I liked when I saw the entire series and I'd like to see them again sometimes. If I could get a DVD set with only those I choose, I'd get them.

Nevermore · Post by **Nevermore** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:26 pm

Originally posted by Silly Cow
You know, the ones you can clearly see even the writers had fun doing. [...] Prime Target - Ditto. Originally when I didn't remember much about the episode I thought the plotline sounded stupid. It still is, but that doesn't matter when the episode itself was funny. This still cracks me up:

"If that's the best thing you've got, you're in big trouble!"
"Aargh, that was the best thing I got!"

"Fascinating. A booby trap that actually captures boobies." One of my favorite episodes. Prime is characterized as an actual soldier here, instead of the larger-than-life hero he's portrayed as in most of the other episodes.

Aside from that, I also like "The Master Builders". The Constructicons get some cool characterization here - I really believe they were serious with their original offer to Grapple and Hoist before Megatron got himself involved. Kind of makes you believe the "Robo-Smasher" didn't work quite as well as Megs thought.

DrSpengler · Post by **DrSpengler** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:32 pm

I wonder how the Constructicons felt about being bitched around by Megatron. They did build him, after all...

Sixswitch · Post by **Sixswitch** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 11:07 pm

No they didn't. He built them in those caverns in Heavy Metal War.

That's the first explanation we saw, and that ep's my favorite, so I'm sticking with it.

As to the question, I liked lots about the cartoon. More or less everything, in fact. I liked all of the Transformers voice acting, bar the female Autobots and Unicron in Grimlock's New Brain. I liked the animation - nice and simple. Sure, the errors were annoying, but I can deal with that. The plots were often lacking, but then, I'm not looking for depth in a cartoon.

As an aside, I think the kids comics had an advantage in the plots area for two main reasons.

1. They were aimed at older kids, who were probably able to grasp a plot better.

2. They were in hard copy format - the cartoon was almost certainly designed to be watched, then quickly forgotten about. Certainly the episodes were never intended to be watched back to back, and certainly they didn't expect the kids to be talking about them 20 years later.

Anyway, back to the topic.

Series 1 was by far my favorite. It had the best ideas, and laid the groundwork very well. Season 2 was more hit and miss, with some good and some bad episodes.

Season 3 was again very hit and miss. Incidentally, I think the worst thing they did was bring in aliens. In Starscream's Ghost for instance, that little assassin guy was just rediculous - same for the Atlanteans in Atlantis Arise.

-Ss

DrSpengler · Post by **DrSpengler** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 4:17 am

Originally posted by Sixswitch
No they didn't. He built them in those caverns in Heavy Metal War.

That's the first explanation we saw, and that ep's my favorite, so I'm sticking with it.

Completely ignoring the fact that they starred in The Secret of Omega Supreme that had a story which took place well before 1984 and when Megatron supposedly "built" them in the caverns?

I didn't know you were the kind of guy to just ignore facts simply because you don't feel like changing your mind about something...

DrSpengler · Post by **DrSpengler** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 4:26 am

Originally posted by DrSpengler
Completely ignoring the fact that they starred in The Secret of Omega Supreme featuring a story which took place millions of years before 1984, when Megatron supposedly "built" them in the caverns?

I didn't know you were the kind of guy to just ignore facts simply because you don't feel like changing your mind about something.

Whether or not the writers meant for Heavy Metal War to be the origin of the Constructicons is irrelevant. They were given a new, and much deeper origin than just "I built them in my spare time" later on. That's part of their history, that's part of the series. Sorry, but it happened. Ignore it if you want, but that won't change anything.

Sixswitch · Post by **Sixswitch** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 8:35 am

Originally posted by DrSpengler
Completely ignoring the fact that they starred in The Secret of Omega Supreme that had a story which took place well before 1984 and when Megatron supposedly "built" them in the caverns?

I didn't know you were the kind of guy to just ignore facts simply because you don't feel like changing your mind about something...

What about the fact that Megatron stated in Heavy Metal War that they were built in the caverns? Seems like you're ignoring a few facts yourself, as were the writers of that episode.

-Ss

Sir Auros · Post by **Sir Auros** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 8:49 am

The cartoon's fun to just sit around and watch when you're eating or have nothing better to do. It's mindless, nostalgic entertainment and I see it for that. I don't build it up as the pinnacle of Transformers like some, but it's worthwhile to me.

Astrotrain255 · Post by **Astrotrain255** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 8:51 am

Originally posted by Sixswitch

Series 1 was by far my favorite. It had the best ideas, and laid the groundwork very well. Season 2 was more hit and miss, with some good and some bad episodes.

Season 3 was again very hit and miss. Incidentally, I think the worst thing they did was bring in aliens. In Starscream's Ghost for instance, that little assassin guy was just rediculous - same for the Atlanteans in Atlantis Arise.

Agreed.Fortunately I'm not alone about the Aliens...must agree about the voice acting,tough i've only heard the original voices very lately(about the time I joined here)...all that despite mass stupidity as Cliffy said before...and things like Sideswipe standing next to Megatron inside the Cons' base...

Heh nice to see the ages old dispute around the Constructicons...