by cybercat » Thu Oct 23, 2014 4:30 pm
In my experience (and ftr I'm an original Geewunner, saw G1 first run as a wee little one), most of the G1 stuff...to really get it you kind of had to grow up with it, and in the milieu of other cartoons of the time. Cartoons today are so much more sophisticated, even in terms of plot and worldbuilding, while G1 was basically, well, I mean, take Sixshot for example: he appears for just long enough to show all six modes--aka LOOK KIDS A NEW TOY YOU WANT. It was all about shilling toys.
Bayverse, well, my problems are with Bay, I'll be honest. I know you've probably heard the blah blah sexism blah blah racism blah blah stop the forward momentum of a movie to have a talk about statutory rape, but what I mean is, well, in the first Bay movie, the Decepticons were scary! They were mysterious, alien, and a real threat. And by the third one, Megatron's become a lice-ridden hobo, and Optimus Prime becomes the guy who kills the guy who offers peace. I'm all for moral complexity, yeah, but I do like my Optimus to....try to be a good guy?
Prime, well, we're adults now, so we have different standards than the cartoons we grew up with. And Prime was kind of....I'm going to go with 'uneven'. As a friend of mine once commented: it came up with great characters and neat ideas, but stuffed them in the lamest and most cliched situations that really didn't have any character development. It was a kiddy cartoon pretending that it wasn't, and it would have worked if it wasn't so Oh Em Gee Grimdark.
IDW...has been uneven since it began. No one is as bad as the Costaclasm (defenders of Mike Costa's era should go read that exit interview he gave about how arrogant TF fans are and how robots can't have feelings and the whole idea of robots having friends is stupid and then get back to me). There have been some great bright spots (the Chaos Theory arc, etc) but also some missteps that stand out in higher contrast like deeper valleys from the peaks (such as the disappointing Windblade series).
Me, I like them all, for different things. It's like a continuity for all moods and seasons!
CC....and then there's Kiss Players.