I'd add Bumblebeep and Soundwave to the list of exceptions, personally. Though Prime does give me some of my favorite Decepticons; Knockout, Breakdown, Dreadwing, Airachnid (Hasbro, give us a Legacy leader class Airachnid, you cowards).
I will grant you that Bumblebee is a bit annoying through the series, but it all pays off when he finally speaks. One of the most Epic moments in all TF fiction.
Soundwave I will argue that. That is one stone-cold badass loyal Decepticon. Starscream and Airachnid found out the hard way not to mess with him.
One thing I've noticed on my latest attempt to watch through Armada (watched 2 more last night. Still not at the 1/2 way point) is that the kids are kinda awful.
And listen i generally like kid sidekicks just fine. Every other TF show I can think I'm either fine with or actively like the humans fine. The Armada kids though are all just a hair too much of their 1 personality trait.
Carlos is very dumb
Rad is very enthusiastic (and dumb)
Alexa is always over serious "mom" of the group
Fred is fat and whiny
Billy is a jerk
Almost all the kids dialogue seems to be flat boring, plot exposition, or stupidity. They say the way to write good kids/teens is the same as how to write for them, to not "write down" to their age and it feels like Armada is writing down about 8 years younger than these kids.
Heck, Billy and Fred starting as bullies and becoming part of the team should be the kind of plot that absolutely wins me over in a cartoon but it's nothing here.
-ZacWilliam, I think you could make a good fun show with these characters but these writers and this voice director did not do it.
And listen i generally like kid sidekicks just fine. Every other TF show I can think I'm either fine with or actively like the humans fine. The Armada kids though are all just a hair too much of their 1 personality trait.
Carlos is very dumb
Rad is very enthusiastic (and dumb)
Alexa is always over serious "mom" of the group
Fred is fat and whiny
Billy is a jerk
Almost all the kids dialogue seems to be flat boring, plot exposition, or stupidity. They say the way to write good kids/teens is the same as how to write for them, to not "write down" to their age and it feels like Armada is writing down about 8 years younger than these kids.
Heck, Billy and Fred starting as bullies and becoming part of the team should be the kind of plot that absolutely wins me over in a cartoon but it's nothing here.
-ZacWilliam, I think you could make a good fun show with these characters but these writers and this voice director did not do it.
In a similar sense the Prime toys capture my imagination way more than the show (I am oddly more fond of RID2015 in terms of shows, go figure).
The show hit a rut fairly early on and kept finding new ruts despite the occasional interesting ideas. In the end, the voice acting -- always happy to hear Gina Torres, this was the most interesting Steve Blum had been in a while, holy damn Tony Todd, and Combs is Cranky Ratchet forever -- stands out in my memory far more than the narrative bits.
But the toys were great. Loved the engineering and designs (although there were some growing pains as they sorted out what they could do with shrinking budgets, and just plain weird choices like straight upsized Legion class figures), especially with the inventiveness and design fun of Beast Hunters and RID2015, and wanted more.
The show hit a rut fairly early on and kept finding new ruts despite the occasional interesting ideas. In the end, the voice acting -- always happy to hear Gina Torres, this was the most interesting Steve Blum had been in a while, holy damn Tony Todd, and Combs is Cranky Ratchet forever -- stands out in my memory far more than the narrative bits.
But the toys were great. Loved the engineering and designs (although there were some growing pains as they sorted out what they could do with shrinking budgets, and just plain weird choices like straight upsized Legion class figures), especially with the inventiveness and design fun of Beast Hunters and RID2015, and wanted more.
The treads on mine, sadly, have deteriorated pretty badly. One's even broken in half - I've had to patch it up with duct tape. His Energon repaint has fared just as well.
With Prime, I kind of noped out during the first season as the ep after Megatron's return, was pretty boring, thou seeing the ep titles for the finally of the first season, peeked my interst, by that point, I would say the writers had found their mojo, for the most part by then, Prime season 1 was not great, the humans didn't endeer themselves to me that much and I was left with a bunch of questions that never really got answered in the show, we know how Acree and Cliffjumper got to Earth, but what about the rest of the Autobots, how did they get to Earth and make contact with the miltray, of course, a question I did kind of wonder, exactly why the human kids were given free reign of the Autobot base, let alone bought there! In terms of toys, Prime was the one that really could be considered the ones that set the stage for Studio Series and the WFC/LEGACY in terms of appearance and scale, the first edition OP is still a awesome figure!!
Prime is probably my third favorite show (Behind Animated and Beast Wars) though Earthspark is already a firery contender, but I'll have to wait until it's done before ranking it.
It was just a really solid show with great characters and an actually took the "robots in disguise" idea seriously, which is a rarity in the toons.
It was just a really solid show with great characters and an actually took the "robots in disguise" idea seriously, which is a rarity in the toons.
One of my biggest issue with Prime's characters, is the Autobots as a whole. They work too well together. Yes, you get occasional outbursts from Doc Grumpy, or occasional PTSD from Arcee; but largely they're just the getalong gang; there's no real inner conflict with the team, like you see in BW or Animated. You don't get much personalities conflicts that drive any interesting smaller plots, becuase that's just not epic.
Though another issue I have with the series is the bag of lies we were handed pre-series. Stuff like things having consquinces, or how they're killing a main character off to prove no one is ever safe in this series. The series never really follows through on any of it. They kill Cliffjumper, but can you really call him a main character? He's just a hyped up red shirt. No one else on the main cast ever dies or even really gets threatened; but Starscream will certainly never let you forget that one time he actually killed an Autobot. For a series hyped up to be all edgy and epic, it certainly was boring, safe, and sterlized.
Though another issue I have with the series is the bag of lies we were handed pre-series. Stuff like things having consquinces, or how they're killing a main character off to prove no one is ever safe in this series. The series never really follows through on any of it. They kill Cliffjumper, but can you really call him a main character? He's just a hyped up red shirt. No one else on the main cast ever dies or even really gets threatened; but Starscream will certainly never let you forget that one time he actually killed an Autobot. For a series hyped up to be all edgy and epic, it certainly was boring, safe, and sterlized.
I came to Prime later, so I guess I just judged it on it's own merits instead of whatever pre-release hype was around it.
I was still annoyed they canceled Animated.
I was still annoyed they canceled Animated.
RID01 is still my fav series to date. Cybertron, Prime, Animated and Cyberverse fill out my top 5, (that aren't G1 continuity) great stand out characters and plot ideas. Would love to see Scattershot, Landmine, Wing Saber, Thunderblast, Crumplezone w/ Ransack, Airachnid, Lugnut, Clobber and Slipstream in Legacy.
G1 and BW will always be number 1 for me.
G1 and BW will always be number 1 for me.
I mean you're telling me stuff I already know. I watched both shows when they were airing
To me Animated just didn't jive for me. I can appreciate its quality, just wasn't for me though.
And Prime? I wanted to like Prime but they tried. So. Damn. Hard. To make everything epic that it becomes exhausting to watch.
And I mean I could list the genuinely good things about Armada I like but I'm sure you're well aware of them and nothing I say will change any minds. So it's probably best to agree to disagree on that.
Animated, hit its stride around the third season if you ask me, thou I not gone back and watched it same with Prime, thou honestly, my all time favourte series has to be RID2001, AKA Car Robots, it was self contained, not to serious, but had a lot of stand out characters, such as Hot Shot, his obession with Red Sports cars, Prowl being the no nonsance police officer, Cowboy X-Brawn, of course, the colourful cast helped the show to shine in my eyes, thou the ep I think was about the most humilating defeat for the Predacons was when they were beaten by a Steam train that wasn't even a Transformer!
You're doing yourself a disservice.
Ok. Teacher hat time.
Armada's not an expertly written show but as someone who teaches kids around the age of the Armada crew... they got a lot right?
Like often TF human kid sidekicks are Epic Protagonists of Destiny or super smart geniuses (Prime had both) but Armada's kids felt like... kids.
Also don't bodyshame.
Cyberverse suffers from being an 11 minute show, so while the plots are cool, there's basically little to no time for character development for 98% of the cast. It's a great ride, though.
Who was an "epic protagonist of destiny?" That doesn't really sound like any TF kid except maybe Sari and she was too grounded and goofy for that.
They just felt like badly written, unnecessarily annoying kids to me.
Also I was a fat kid and am a chubby adult (with Diabetes like Fred), I wasn't talking bad about Fred at all, the shows writers however absolutely treat "Fat" as one of his character traits and not particularly nicely. He's almost always talking about being hungry, and or whining about food and snacks and it's treated as something to laugh at. That's not very cool yeah, but that's on the show.
I don't hate the Armada kids, but I think the bad writing makes them come off as slow and obnoxious more frequently than it needs to, in a way that makes them less likeable to me than any other TF kid sidekicks I can think of. Less than nuanced voice acting/directing is probably part of that too.
-ZacWilliam, Maybe they get better though? I still havn't made it halfway through.
Watch all the way through. It's slow but rewarding.
And I will continually advocate that it's a better fight because it happens in episode 52, not episode 26. We aren't just told how grand and old their rivalry is. It takes long enough to watch the whole show to feel some history when they have their final fight.
And I will continually advocate that it's a better fight because it happens in episode 52, not episode 26. We aren't just told how grand and old their rivalry is. It takes long enough to watch the whole show to feel some history when they have their final fight.
Kicker had a fairly standard anime "angsty teen discovers great destiny" arc. Jack Darby from Prime had the "unassuming normal teenager finds out he's special" arc, right down to him being compared with Optimus Prime personally. Raf meanwhile was a hyper-intelligent genius.
Sari was literally an alien wunderkind, fulfilling both roles.
None of this means all of these characters, or any if you like them all, were bad. But they're all very... unique by virtue of the archetypes and tropes they fall into.
But the Armada kids just felt like... kids of that age who stumbled into some Transformers.
I say this with nothing but appreciation for my students in my heart- kids of that age are annoying. Even the "mature" ones
It's part of being that age. I was annoying at that age, so were you, so was everyone.
Again, they feel "real" to me in ways most other kid protagonists in TFers don't.
I get that, I do. I donno. Maybe it's the MMPR fan in me but I just sort of slotted Billy and Fred into that "Bulk and Skull" archetype. Made me like both of them more.
But if the fat stuff bothered you that's valid. No defence of that.
Agreed. I'd double down too. Armada's Prime/Megs showdown is the best the franchise has done.
None of the live action films really lived up to what could have been and none of the fights between them in the animated shows since has lived up to it.