Joe Besser-esque whiny voice: "But I want Ooooptimuuuuus to be the special Chooooosen Ooooone! He deserrrrrrves iiiiiiiiiiit! More that Rodimuuuuuus! Rodimus suuuuuucks! He's a puuuuuuunk! He doesn't deseeeerrrve to be the Chosen Ooooone! He killed Optimuuuuuus! Optimus is beeeeeeeetteeeeeeeeeeer!!! He should be the Chosen Ooooooone!!! And he's more maaaarketablllllllllllllle!"
The sad thing is, Rodimus himself (Well, his Cybertronic Spree version) leaned into this. I had the opportunity to speak with him after a concert, and revealed that I had kicked off the band's TFWiki page, but was uncertain of how to credit him (He's usually billed or addressed as Hot Rod, but events similar to TF:TAM are also referenced has having happened? I ended up listing him as "Rodimus" without the Prime, partially because I didn't want to get into the vagaries of whatever post-Great-War-politics is informing the backstory of this cross-factional band, and partially because both Lost Light and Last Bot Standing used it to show a more mature but not faction-leader character).Joe Besser-esque whiny voice: "But I want Ooooptimuuuuus to be the special Chooooosen Ooooone! He deserrrrrrves iiiiiiiiiiit! More that Rodimuuuuuus! Rodimus suuuuuucks! He's a puuuuuuunk! He doesn't deseeeerrrve to be the Chosen Ooooone! He killed Optimuuuuuus! Optimus is beeeeeeeetteeeeeeeeeeer!!! He should be the Chosen Ooooooone!!! And he's more maaaarketablllllllllllllle!"
Prime anyway."
That's a perfectly fine starting point for Rodimus, but the key is he has to overcome it and grow, and he never really did.
I can see that, yeah. Optimus coming back kind of shifts all the focus.
And then he immediately got all emo about that right after, yelling at his fellow Autobots and practically calling himself a failure:
But then, the first time we see him in "The Return of Optimus Prime, Part 1", before he hears anything about Optimus's body having been recovered, he's seen standing next to a statue of Optimus, looking up at it, and moping about how Optimus still haunts him and that he'll never as good a leader as Optimus was. Then, when he does hear about Optimus's body having been found, he refuses to heed Jessica Morgan's warnings about it being a trap and rashly rushes to rescue the body, recklessly getting his team infected by the Hate Plague in the process. Even though the episode was about Optimus returning and needed a big crisis to give Optimus a big hero moment to save everyone, they didn't have to also make Rodimus both a Debbie Downer and a Leroy Jenkins in this episode, which undid the, as you mentioned, growth he underwent "The Burden Hardest to Bear".
Optimus had a better PR team. Rodimus had Wheelie.
Counterargument: Rodimus also had Sky Lynx.
Yeah but Sky Lynx isn't giving anyone not him a glow up.
And then he immediately got all emo about that right after, yelling at his fellow Autobots and practically calling himself a failure:
But then, the first time we see him in "The Return of Optimus Prime, Part 1", before he hears anything about Optimus's body having been recovered, he's seen standing next to a statue of Optimus, looking up at it, and moping about how Optimus still haunts him and that he'll never as good a leader as Optimus was. Then, when he does hear about Optimus's body having been found, he refuses to heed Jessica Morgan's warnings about it being a trap and rashly rushes to rescue the body, recklessly getting his team infected by the Hate Plague in the process. Even though the episode was about Optimus returning and needed a big crisis to give Optimus a big hero moment to save everyone, they didn't have to also make Rodimus both a Debbie Downer and a Leroy Jenkins in this episode, which undid the, as you mentioned, growth he underwent "The Burden Hardest to Bear".
But speaking of that episode, "The Burden Hardest to Bear" was even unkind to Rodimus in comparison to Optimus, since after 65 episodes of Optimus leading the Autobots into battle with the Decepticons, we never saw Optimus having to face the consequences of the damage caused by the battles his Autobots had fought against the Decepticons. Yet, in this episode, we see Rodimus getting yelled at by the Japanese Prime Minister and blamed for all the destruction caused by the Decepticons. How come Optimus never got chewed out by the U.S. President or any other world leaders for all the damage caused by the Decepticons during his tenure? It's not fair that they made a story where Rodimus gets blamed for Decepticon destruction and while the same was never done for Optimus. Sure, Optimus didn't have to go through the same growth arc that Rodimus did, but Optimus was just as "guilty" of "letting" the Decepticons cause collateral damage as Rodimus was, yet never got unfairly called out on it like Rodimus was in this episode.
It's not just that, but his defeatist attitude about how weak he and his team are and how inevitable it is that Shockwave and the Decepticons are gonna beat them in the long run, requiring Kup to perk him up with a pep talk that still doesn't seem to cure Rodimus's doubts.
