blackwasp wrote:I’m concerned because I heard Transformers Animated ended abruptly and we did not get the ending we should have gotten. Does that mean it fell flat?
On the contrary. Plans for a fourth season were made, but the show was not renewed for a fourth season for a number of internal reasons.
First, the show was airing on Cartoon Network, who had had a history of being unkind to the Transformers cartoons that aired on that channel. However, as Animated was actually co-produced by Cartoon Network this time, it fared a bit better on the channel than its predecessors, but the fact that it was a co-production with Cartoon Network also played into the next reason it was canceled.
That next reason being, at the time, Hasbro was about to partner up with Discovery to create their own cable channel, the Hub (later renamed Hub Network). Since Cartoon Network would be a competitor to the Hub, Hasbro wanted all their shows to be made in-house by their own new TV company Hasbro Studios, so Animated had to be put to a halt since it was being made by a competitor company. Why didn't Hasbro Studios just pick up the show and continue it without CN? Well, therein lies the third reason.
That reason being, at the time, Hasbro was looking to reinvent the brand one more time and create an all new, singular, unified continuity that all forms of media would draw from and tie-in together with each other, and which was meant to be the very final mainstream continuity of all Transformers fiction. That new continuity being what has come to be known as the "Aligned Continuity", whose backbone was as big production bible called the "Binder of Revelation" (and obvious nod to the Book of Revelation being the final book of the Holy Bible). Animated's continuation would have interfered with that goal, since it A) wasn't part of this new continuity, B) predated its conception, and C) was the product of other parties not involved in heading the Aligned Continuity.
Hasbro really wanted to push the Aligned Continuity with all new fiction based directly on its lore. The video game Transformers: War for Cybertron and the novel Transformers: Exodus were the first pieces of Aligned media to be released, but the main focus was to be a new cartoon series, the one called Transformers: Prime. Since Animated was already so popular, its continuation would have undoubtedly competed with the Prime cartoon, and so rather than Hasbro have its audience split between the older beloved cartoon and the newer cartoon that they really wanted people to like more, they had Animated killed so Prime could live and thrive.
Naturally, the fandom was very divided on all of this at the time.
blackwasp wrote:How about Energon? Can I look forward to an epic ending? Does the show end on a strong note?
Energon... is one of the biggest disappointments in the entire history of the brand. Not because of how it ended, but because of how it was executed overall from start to finish. Energon does its best to
pretend like it's telling a story, but in actuality, it is nothing more than 52 episodes of mindless nonsense. Nothing of real value really happens over the course of its run. Things happen, sure, but the majority of all that happens just makes one ask "What was the point of any of that?"
Character traits that are established early on are eventually forgotten and ignored. Characters get killed off and resurrected for no real good reason. Those that get resurrected tend to either come back brainwashed (thereby having had any and all of what little character development they had had before they died get completely erased and undone) or they come back only to play no role of importance for the rest of the series. And the combiner characters near the end are likewise dead weight, being there just to shoot more guns at each other, rather than being there to be interesting or cool.
While the hand-drawn animation of the humans and backgrounds looks good, the cel-shaded CGI animation is horrendously dated even by the standards of the year that it aired in, 2004. Facial expressions are virtually nonexistent, limited to a single blank "Uhh" expression used for every emotion. The simple act of
walking is often rendered in such a clunky manner that many bots often look as though they aren't even moving forward, but are instead just sliding across the environments as their legs move back and forth without believably touching the ground.
The acting ranges from passable at best to ungodly mediocre at worst, even from the likes of veteran Transformers voice actors Garry Chalk, David Kaye, and Scott McNeil (the latter of which probably did the best job of the three), with Ironhide's voice actor Matt Hill being the standout worst of the bunch. And the dialogue scripts were so poorly and painfully adapted from the Japanese scripts that the majority of all the lines are rendered as utter nonsense that reeks of the translation having been a rush job. Entire conversations make no sense to baffling degrees and are littered with contradictions and bewilderments across episode after episode.
And then there is Kicker. Argubly one of the most hated human characters in all Transformers fiction. Though he showed potential of being interesting at first, and proved himself capable on the battlefield, his personality was regarded by many to be immensely annoying and irritating, to the point of being insufferable and loathesome. His father, Dr. Jones, is also considered one of the worst father characters ever, being so absent-minded that he can't understand why his son despises him so much (he willfully put Kicker in life-threatening situations as a child all in the name of science and research) and blindly writes off his son's irateness as just being typical teenage angst, completely missing the point that he
made his son hate him.
But don't worry. This little spat between father and son is
also soon forgotten by the show, along with all the other interesting story bits, like I said before.
Long story short, Energon wasted so much of its potential...
Energon SUUUUUUUCKS!!!blackwasp wrote:I just feel these shows are more mature and G1-esque
Energon is only "G1-esque" in that it had a lot of visual designs based on those of G1 (because it was the 20th Anniversary series), and that its story did nothing important for so long. There's nothing "mature" about it.
Animated, however, was like a well-made love letter to not just G1 but to all of Transformers in general, as it was the 25th Anniversary series. It was good, competent, well acted, well written, solidly crafted, and yes, even a bit mature at times, but never shied away from just having a good fun time with lot of laughs.
blackwasp wrote:than mini-cons which seem like something created to appeal to little kids,
Mini-Cons came about at a time when Pokemon was at the height of its popularity, and Transformers needed some new angle to compete with that. Transformers: Armada was a powerhouse franchise and a smashing success with children. Though its cartoon started off pretty BAD, it eventually grew into a much better series around its halfway point, and culminated in a critically-acclaimed final story arc called "The Unicron Battles", in which the Autobot, Decepticon, and Mini-Con armies were all forced to unite against the new threat of Unicron coming to destroy them all. By that point, the Armada cartoon had become dark, epic, and an all-out space war spanning several episodes.
blackwasp wrote:same with Beast Wars since kids like fuzzy animals.
They sure weren't fuzzy in the Beast Wars cartoon, since fur couldn't be animated in CGI properly until Pixar did it in Monsters, Inc.
Also, they later got upgraded into metal animals and then mutant animals.
blackwasp wrote:The G1 Dinobots, Predacons/Predaking, Terrorcons/Abominus, Skylynx, and all the robot beasts in the G1 episode “Call of the Primitives” are way more cooler.
Opinion, not fact.
There is a bit of a difference. 
