Seibertron.com Energon Pub Forums

[Evil Eye]

beat me to it there Sabrblade. one thing I've got to wonder about this series... its bad. really bad. so why in the holy hand grenades of Antioch to I keep watching it? machinima or masochisinima.

Well, how else are you going to know exactly what to criticize about it in order to give a proper, educated critique?

On the other hand, does it really deserve a proper educated critique? Do I need to chug a jar of urine and write a long, drawn out review of the unpleasant ammonia tang before I can tell people that drinking pee is a bad idea when basic instinct is enough? Do I need to try tap dancing in a minefield before I can say safely that stepping on explosives sucks when they're expressly designed to blow up people that step on them? Do I need to play Depression Quest myself to come to the conclusion that, yes, it was an indeed depressing quest (and a scam to boot) when the stink that was kicked up by people who shilled for the game in spite of its apparent awfulness is still haunting the internet to this day? Not everything needs or deserves a "proper critique".

So in answer to your question, Immortal Starscream, you might have developed bile fascination.

I will say, from what little I've seen of it, it's not nearly as bad as some have claimed. Not good either, but not the cartoon Khmer Rouge people say it is. The animation ain't great but it's still better than Energon by a country mile. The writing is bad but that's par for the course with Transformers- good TF fiction is the exception rather than the rule. The voice acting ranges from decent to deplorable but again, see the vast majority of TF cartoons.

[Sabrblade]

beat me to it there Sabrblade. one thing I've got to wonder about this series... its bad. really bad. so why in the holy hand grenades of Antioch to I keep watching it? machinima or masochisinima.

Well, how else are you going to know exactly what to criticize about it in order to give a proper, educated critique?

On the other hand, does it really deserve a proper educated critique?

I'd say just about anything does, since blind hatred just comes off as annoying trolling.

Besides, if people hadn't watched these, no one would know how good of a diamond in the rough Jason Marnocha's Megatron is, which fully deserves all the praises given.

[Evil Eye]

Blind hatred is annoying for sure. Educated guesswork/"I can tell this is gonna suck, I think I'll exercise good judgement" is not the same as blind hate/trolling. In fact, it seems as of late that showing restraint and not going to see something you know you'll hate is a prime target for actual trolls. See poor old James Rolfe and the torrent of abuse he got after saying "This new Ghostbusters movie looks a bit crap, so instead of paying money to see it and getting angry I'm just not going to watch it and preserve my cash and temper".

Of course when it's free to watch it's a bit of a different story, but even so, no point watching something you know is gonna be trash.

[Bronzewolf]

Thanks for sharing, Sabr! I'll get that posted shortly.

[Sabrblade]

Blind hatred is annoying for sure. Educated guesswork/"I can tell this is gonna suck, I think I'll exercise good judgement" is not the same as blind hate/trolling. In fact, it seems as of late that showing restraint and not going to see something you know you'll hate is a prime target for actual trolls. See poor old James Rolfe and the torrent of abuse he got after saying "This new Ghostbusters movie looks a bit crap, so instead of paying money to see it and getting angry I'm just not going to watch it and preserve my cash and temper".

Of course when it's free to watch it's a bit of a different story, but even so, no point watching something you know is gonna be trash.

Sometimes it takes a fair watching to see if something really is good or bad.

Like, Animated looked absolutely terrible in its earliest advertisements, but watching the show revealed it to be really good.

And with Combiner Wars, it took people watching it to see just how bad it was since it was hyped up so much as being really good by its creators and a lot of people were really excited by all of its first looks. But then when Megatron came along, people got hopeful again since he was really good. People kept coming back for him to see if either he could redeem the series by himself or if there would be more good things like him to help make the show better.

In cases like that, it took watching the shows so that we could make our educated guesses for later stuff.

[Bronzewolf]

A trailer for the upcoming Machinima Transformers apower of the Primes cartoon has appeared online, specifically from the Machinima YouTube channel. The trailer is pretty brief, but establishes the cast, where we left off in the last show, and some new shots of new characters. It give us our first look at the Dinobots in action, Volcanicus, Predaking, and Optimus Primal, as well as our returning characters Megatron, Overlord, Windblade, Megatronus, and Victorion. You can find the new trailer mirrored below!


The past two installments of the series have gotten heavily mixed reviews from fans, and the short break in between Titans Return and Power of the Primes (just a matter of months), makes some concerned that they didn't have enough time to listen to critique and improve the show more. Though, it does fix one criticism that fans had: it is premiering while the coinciding toy line is still on shelves, something the previous two shows hadn't been able to match.
Power of the Primes premieres May 1st, on Go90 and the Transformers Tumblr page. Make sure to catch the official Seibertron review of the show shortly after each episode airs.

[Sunstar]

I am jazzed by what looks like cybertronian plant life.... that works out well, I have visualised stuff like that in my fics. .I am eager to see this epsiode.

[shocksound96]

I still wished Star Saber had won the Power of the primes poll #NotmyPrime

[Randomhero]

I still wished Star Saber had won the Power of the primes poll #NotmyPrime

Yeah except it was fixed. These things always have been. I mean come on. Look at the gimmick for the leader class. That might have worked for Star Saber by how would it have would have having a smaller bot turn into a bigger one have worked for Hound, Megatron, Deathsaurus, shockwave and Arcee. Like I said a couple of the others sure but it was always gonna be primal due to the gimmick.

[Skritz]

I still wished Star Saber had won the Power of the primes poll #NotmyPrime

Optimus Primal will Make Cybertron Techno-Organic Again!

Well, at any rate, the show will most definitely be garbage like the other two yet I'm still curious to see what happens, namely because this is the return of Optimus Primal to an animated serie for the first time since the end of Beast Machine in 2000, a whopping EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO! Now obviously this is not the same Primal, different continuity and all, but he's still a character which had not been seen in any incarnation outside of mobile games, tie-in comics, manga or the Beast Wars Uprising stories. Beast Wars haters will forever scorn him but let's not forget that before we got all these new continuities (RiD 2001, Unicron Trilogy, Movies, Aligned, Animated...) he was THE other 'Optimus' of the franchise. Love him or hate him but big bot was the original heir to the namesake of Optimus before the big old truck guy got rebooted.

Even if, admittedly, Star Saber would have been nice too...

Obviously I'm all too aware that Chalk could most likely not return due to the whole Canadian actor stuff which is admittedly a shame but expected. Oh well, this stuff happens. Given they depicted the base form Primal with fur I'm hoping he's shown turning into a gorilla and not the 'space log' at least initially.

That said I'm not sure if I like Hellboy Ron Pearlman in the role based on this clip alone but it could just be from how rushed and low quality if the PotP Cartoon but Perlman's line came off as all off and stilted and if his whole performance is like that it will lack everything which make Primal...well, who he is.

[Skritz]

I still wished Star Saber had won the Power of the primes poll #NotmyPrime

Yeah except it was fixed. These things always have been. I mean come on. Look at the gimmick for the leader class. That might have worked for Star Saber by how would it have would have having a smaller bot turn into a bigger one have worked for Hound, Megatron, Deathsaurus, shockwave and Arcee. Like I said a couple of the others sure but it was always gonna be primal due to the gimmick.

I doubt it was rigged solely because Warden hate Beast Wars and the gimmick may have been chosen later in development. The gimmick scream Star Saber and clearly he was the guy Hasbro thought would win. It make no sense to rig the poll for Primal.

[Sabrblade]

I still wished Star Saber had won the Power of the primes poll #NotmyPrime

Yeah except it was fixed. These things always have been. I mean come on. Look at the gimmick for the leader class. That might have worked for Star Saber by how would it have would have having a smaller bot turn into a bigger one have worked for Hound, Megatron, Deathsaurus, shockwave and Arcee. Like I said a couple of the others sure but it was always gonna be primal due to the gimmick.

While the gimmick may have been set in stone, I doubt Hasbro were expecting Primal to win since it is known that Warden and his team don't think that highly of Beast Wars. If anything, they were probably anticipating Star Saber or Deathsaurus to win, the latter due to how they seemed to force "Unknown Evil" into the final round as a wildcard.

[Randomhero]

Oh come on. I dont mean to sound like a conspiracy person but the fan votes have never been real. Windblade was chosen way before hand because they wanted to push female transformers in the media and it was never gonna be a male decepticon or decepticon for that matter because they wouldn’t have been able to promote a decepticon like Windblade. Same with Victorion.

[Skritz]

Oh come on. I dont mean to sound like a conspiracy person but the fan votes have never been real. Windblade was chosen way before hand because they wanted to push female transformers in the media and it was never gonna be a male decepticon or decepticon for that matter because they wouldn’t have been able to promote a decepticon like Windblade. Same with Victorion.

Which is why Primal winning is so goddamn weird because the current Hasbro team don't really like Beast Wars that much.

[Randomhero]

Oh come on. I dont mean to sound like a conspiracy person but the fan votes have never been real. Windblade was chosen way before hand because they wanted to push female transformers in the media and it was never gonna be a male decepticon or decepticon for that matter because they wouldn’t have been able to promote a decepticon like Windblade. Same with Victorion.

Which is why Primal winning is so goddamn weird because the current Hasbro team don't really like Beast Wars that much.

Because his name is Optimus. I would wager that had something to do with it.

[Skritz]

I'm not so sure, man, simply because with Hasbro constantly moving toward a 'unified brand' that it would seem weird to keep around a guy like Primal around. They'd go "but the kiddies would be confused by two Optimus". Corporate suits think everyone is a moron.

UNLESS! And hear me on this: unless this Optimus Primal is, somehow, a reborn/reincarnated Optimus Prime in a callback to the original Beast Wars story. You see, before the show existed, the early BW material had made it a direct sequel to Generation 1 and Primal was just a renamed Optimus Prime.

[ZeroWolf]

Actually I can see people voting that way, I would have, having more female bots would be more interesting besides designs will have been done to some degree as we know the full life cycle of a figure is two years so the ones that didn't win will have been put away for a rainy day still one thing that bugs me about fan polling is why we have to jump to conclusions and say votes are rigged? So what that we got some more girls? So what that primal won? End of the day we got more TFs that people can buy if they like them.

[Rodimus Knight]

Actually I can see people voting that way, I would have, having more female bots would be more interesting besides designs will have been done to some degree as we know the full life cycle of a figure is two years so the ones that didn't win will have been put away for a rainy day still one thing that bugs me about fan polling is why we have to jump to conclusions and say votes are rigged? So what that we got some more girls? So what that primal won? End of the day we got more TFs that people can buy if they like them.

TBH, for all the fan polling they've done, I've always picked the female bots pretty much because I thought they would be more interesting. I also Voted originally for Arcee to be the new prime.

But I can see with the choices given at the beginning of the fan polls, why people would think it was supposed to be rigged.

Look at back in the day when Matty Collector did their fan poll. We know that one was rigged because Toy Guru closed to poll a couple days early, because the character he didn't want was close to winning over the character he did want. At least the Hasbro team didn't try that.

I would say, the gimmick does seem perfect for Star Sabre, and I'm surprised they didn't make him for this run for that reason, unless they really were pushing for him and decided not to make him out of Spite for the fans.

[Randomhero]

Actually I can see people voting that way, I would have, having more female bots would be more interesting besides designs will have been done to some degree as we know the full life cycle of a figure is two years so the ones that didn't win will have been put away for a rainy day still one thing that bugs me about fan polling is why we have to jump to conclusions and say votes are rigged? So what that we got some more girls? So what that primal won? End of the day we got more TFs that people can buy if they like them.

Well it’s not even jumping to conclusion. Just look at the time frame of the voting. Windblade was done and 4 months later she’s in the comics. Dark Cybertron was produced during the voting process. They said that Dark a Cybertron even was produced almost a year before it was released. That’s why it has different artists than the regular ones. They were working on the current issues.

Same with Victorion. That voting happened in the spring and once she was announced a couple weeks later a preview for the Combinder Hunters came out. That’s pretty convienient timing considering the amount of time it takes for comics to be produced. Usually it’s 2-3 months before release.

Look how important how both those characters have been integrated in the comics and RID with windblade. They were never gonna have a decepticon in that role and in IDW. There was never gonna be a decepticon who could have filled the role she has in the comics. 3 comics with her name and centered around her and becoming leader of Cybertron.

Like I said I don’t like sound skeptic and such it man I don’t believe the fan contests are anything to boost fan morale

[Autobot N]

Like I said I don’t like sound skeptic and such it man I don’t believe the fan contests are anything to boost fan morale

I'm not going to try to argue that the 2013 and 2015 polls weren't rigged, but I find it very hard to believe that Hasbro rigged the vote in favor of Primal, considering Warden's hatred of BW and Hasbro's obvious pushing of Deathsaurus.

[o.supreme]

I think pretty much every fan poll was rigged except for the Titan one in 2016 (for 2017's Titan) there were only 3 choices, and the votes were overwhelmingly for Trypticon (Rightfully so, and this coming from someone who's favorite character is Omega Supreme)...Unlike the results of that poll, have the results (meaning the percentages), been revealed for all the others been made public? If not that would be a good indication.

But as for this series, in my random comments on the previous page, I was not pleased with the random forrest on Cybertron, but someone pointed out on another forum, that those scenes may take place on Eukaris (considering Dinobots, Predacons etc...), which would make sense. I hope this is so. Also would make sense, they are looking for *Primal* on Eukaris.

[D-Maximal_Primal]

For as bad as the prior 2 have been, I really enjoyed that trailer, especially Overlord and the combining Dinobots

[Bronzewolf]

It all looks promising, but man, the way Primal talks just reminds me of all the bad things these shows offered. Just so blocky. Open-shut-open-shut-open-shut. Hardly any shape to it at all. Looks like a dubbed anime.

[Skritz]

It all looks promising, but man, the way Primal talks just reminds me of all the bad things these shows offered. Just so blocky. Open-shut-open-shut-open-shut. Hardly any shape to it at all. Looks like a dubbed anime.

It took me a while but I know why this single sentence of Perlman as Primal had bugged me. It's not so much the different voice as the way the whole thing is said: so blocky, choppy and simplistic in tone. Lifeless. Now do keep in mind that I'm aware this is not the same Optimus Primal and that I'm all too aware that changing the voice for a character in this franchise is hardly new. However, it seems that upon a more serious analysis that if all the lines he say will be this stilted, the core of the character will be lost.

Primal, in general, a much more 'casual' leader than any incarnation of Optimus Prime short of the young and unproven Animated Optimus. His lines were generally full of intonation, emotion ranging from a general pleasantness (when in a good mood) to irritation and clearly holding back his pure annoyance (usually at Rattrap's whining). This choppy, stilted and pause-heavy and almost robotic sentence just doesn't sound Optimus Primal. It's not the voice which bug me, it's the way he intone his sentences.

In general, Perlman has a good range and he'd be very well suited to voice Optimus Primal but the impression I get out of this is that the voice actors weren't given any goddamn clue on how to properly voice the character and are just reading off the script with no context.

[Sabrblade]

It's like the voice director said "Okay, Mr. Perlman, I want you to say this line... as BORED as you can possibly sound! Great idea, right?"