I was always against breaking stuff like IDW off from G1 because you look at it and it's clearly G1-inspired and rooted. Had Skybound started its G1 continuity by having the 'bots and 'cons get here in the present I'd never think twice about it.It seems like, with regards to G1 at least, there needs to be that "crashed on earth and lay dormant for millennia" that Beast Wars can neatly slot into to truly be a G1 continuity, as all the different variations are still basically telling the same story with Beast Wars/Beast Machines as an endpoint.
Versions like IDW seem like they should be splintered off as separate continuity families, as they are using the same characters but telling very different stories (with very different endpoints when they get to them).
Skybound stuck very faithfully to the classic G1 origins though, and it got me thinking about Devil's Due, Dreamwave, and IDW... and yeah. IDW, of the major G1 comic continuities, is the only one to disregard the "stasis on the crashed Ark until reawakened" backstory.
So... maybe it is its own thing. What makes IDW "more" G1 than Cyberverse for example? Or EarthSpark? If it just comes down to connivence for the Wiki... that's all well and good but I think that needs to acknowledged. Splitting IDW1 off as its own continuity would be a headache for Wiki regulars and I'm by no means suggesting they have to do it.
But if it's "fan convenience" then... it's fan convenience.
I think that in that case it just comes down to the narrative. Energon is very clearly a sequel to Armada. And even characters like Demolisher, Cyclonus, and Tidal Wave start Energon in new deco'd versions of their Armada bodies (available at your local retailer!). Megs too, if we count the petrified outline of his Armada body before his rebirth.Though, would you say the same about the Unicron Trilogy's three disparate designs for its characters? The
I've always argued that Cybertron as a show makes more sense and is all around more enjoyable if you treat it like its own thing and don't worry about connecting it to Armada and Energon, but Hasbro insists it's a sequel so... yeah it makes sense to treat it as part of the same continuity. Even if the show actively fights you on it
My personal take is if that Shockwave can be a loyal Megatron loyalist in one version of G1 and a cold, logical tactician who overthrows Megatron because logic demands it in another version of G1 then Frenzy being female in one version of G1 when the character is usually depicted as male isn't that wild an idea.notable things about each of them that make them stand out from all the other Skywarps, Swoops, Cosmoses, Ravages, and Frenzys in the brand's many continuities, merging them all with their G1 male namesakes would likely make them all stand out less as their own unique character versions unto themselves.
At the same time if enough people feel differently then... eh it's not a hill I'm willing to die on.
Full disclosure, I think Rik Alvarez is sort of a tool so who cares what he wants?In fairness, Rescue Bots wasn't supposed to be part of Aligned. It was the people who made the show that decided to make it part of the same continuity as Prime, due to both shows being made by most of the same crew and airing alongside each other on the same channel. Rik Alvarez was pretty miffed about Rescue Bots being added in at the time (but boohoo on him because Rescue Bots is the best part of Aligned!).
You're right, Rescue Bots wasn't intended to be part of it but it still ended up being part of it. And it added a third widely different art style to Aligned. This time making it so that characters looked different in contemporarily existing stories depending on what show they were in. And Aligned would ding art style #4 before the end with RiD '15.
I'd argue that while there are stylistic changes between A/E/C they are all consistently "G1 through a 2000s anime filter." Aligned meanwhile goes from detailed and gritty G1 inspired (High Moon) to stylized and sleek movie inspired (Prime) to Duplo-esque kid friendly (RB) to this sort of stylized cartoony style (RiD '15).
The Highmoon guys talk at length about how G1 was their starting point after all. But Hasbro just chucked the games into Aligned continuity for reasons.
I suppose my hottest take here is that I'm not a huge fan of Archer myself and prefer the directions taken since his departure. He's not like Rik Alvarez where I go "oh hey that guy's kinda a tool." By all accounts Archer seems like a nice guy and he did great things with the brand. Armada remains one of my favourite "eras" of Transformers.In other words, the inmates have taken over the asylum. With practically everything we get nowadays feeling closer to G1 than all the things that deliberately tried to distance and disassociate themselves from G1 during Archer's tenure, the once reliable system of continuity families isn't as clean as it used to be.
But... I gotta be honest. There are so many cool things we've gotten that I as a fan love since he's left that I gotta admit... I'm happy it all happened as it did.
So if getting figures I've always wanted is the price for this confusion then I'm down with it I guess
Generally speaking I can get behind this approach.I think we still need the term or something like it, for all the reasons it made sense in the first place. I'd keep the trend of treating new kid lines as new continuity families until convincingly shown otherwise. Cyberverse is one. Earthspark is one.
But yeah. When I started my first post here I wanted to talk about how Aligned fudged so much trying to make disparate outings feel connected but I ended up talking myself into "IDW should probably be its own thing"