ctrlFrequency wrote:Funniest thing someone commented on the MLP Facebook page about this... "The fact that the plot of MLP is miles deeper than any Transformers narrative is hilarious."
Eh? Have they actually watched TF? (G1 doesn't count, it had 80's depth, which is to say none. Yes, I grew up in the 80's)
I agree with that sentiment. Not the one defending Transformers cartoons, the one against Transformers cartoons. Aside from Prime, Beast Wars, Animated (in its third season), and Beast Machines (as a separate entity from Beast Wars), Transformers cartoons pretty much suck. And though Prime and Beast Wars are the best
Transformers cartoons of all time (despite in-thread disagreement), they're not even the best
TV shows of all time.
The reason? A lot of Transformers shows tend to be gimmicky. They tend to focus too much on a single element than the story because Hasbro's trying to market the franchise to little boys. Granted, this is something Prime and Beast Wars did not do (so much), and that's because the writers had respect for the material they were working on as a story rather than another Transformers cartoon. I hear writers and directors of a lot of modern Transformers works (yes, even the films) babbling on about "what makes Transformers
Transformers," and cramming all of these so-called "elements" in to try to make it feel like "Transformers," whatever the **** any of that even
means. I don't watch Transformers to watch robots beat the **** out of each other
anymore. I watch Transformers for the same reason I watch any show, to get enjoyment and find interest in the story and characters at hand.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has this element. I admit that now, in the fifth season, they're really trying to cram friendship as some kind of goddamn religion with all of its forced-as-hell melodrama (see "Amending Fences" as an amazing example), but for the first four seasons, the spirit of simply telling a great story marketed to
everyone was there. The writers, and especially the creator Lauren Faust, weren't trying to tie to any kind of "what makes Ponies
Ponies" bull. They just wanted to write a story and MLP seemed like a good outlet to base the world off of. MLP: FiM could survive as a great show without being associated with the franchise behind it. Transformers shows couldn't, because it heavily revolves around the "robots fight robots and turn into stuff" aspect of it. Take that away and all you have are a bunch of cardboard nobodies that fight each other over something because it's, like,
the thing to have or whatever.
However, with all of the writing problems that follow Transformers shows in comparison the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I believe that the author of that comment was suggesting that Transformers shows as a whole don't really have an overarching theme or moral that all ties it together in the end. It tells its story about fighting robot people and that's it. Beast Machines was the
closest we've ever gotten to that concept. It's a good thing to have that because you don't have to just pick through episodes to find a moral that suits you. You can fall back on the series as a whole as enforcement of one big concept and
then pick through the episodes to find even
more gems. Although, as a counterpoint, there's nothing wrong with shows that just tell their story to tell a story. Avatar: The Last Airbender and Teen Titans are great examples of doing just that and still being fantastic shows. Also, overarching themes can get tiresome and worn out after a show's stuck around too long. MLP is
also a great example of
that, considering the whole concept has turned to mush this past year. Even with all of that "deeper plot" stuff aside, I
do think that MLP FiM is a better series on its own than any Transformers cartoon put together for the superior writing techniques, characters, and world building alone. Yes, even Prime.
