The Energon Pub

Ranking the Sunbow cartoon first in anyone's top series always felt weird to me. On one hand, yeah I actually understand and agree that its very much the incarnation of the original series that has pretty much established all the conventions of the franchise, more so than even the comics. It carries a massive legacy that is impossible to ignore. However on a technical and storytelling level, its kind of utter crap. The animation is piss poor even for the time and so riddled with errors that every single episode on TFwiki has a bucket list of moments where the animation goes wrong. Even worse, the animation isn't just some minor issue like BW clipping or textures failing to load but often something which damage the flow of the story such as characters swapping lines or colors.

It seems people's mental image of what G1 was like is more in line with the much better animated and much cleaner motion picture. Mind you, in my case this is because I saw everyone's precious GEEWUN after the admittedly pretty 'meh to horrible' Unicron trilogy.

Honestly it seems like people like the ideas of G1 (at least in cartoon form) more than the characters and what little story arcs they might have had over such an episodic show. Maybe that's why my favorite season of it is maligned season 3. I actually like the stronger continuity with the Movie plot and onward, as well as Rodimus struggling with the leadership...even if the show eventually gives up and bring Optimus back.

Maybe its the Beast Wars fan in me who prefer a slightly stronger arc structure and the more central cast of Magnus, Springer, Arcee, Kup and the others. There's also the fact that for the most part, Transformers cartoon have stuck to a more stable recurring cast ever since season 3 and rarely, if ever, went back to G1 season 1 and 2 insanely huge rotating cast.

Skritz wrote:The animation is piss poor even for the time and so riddled with errors that every single episode on TFwiki has a bucket list of moments where the animation goes wrong.

To quote Unicron from TF:TM -"You Exaggerate", or perhaps your argument has been shaped by fans who did not live during that era and jump to these conclusions harshly. There are errors to be sure, but no more so than any other series of the time. It's not excusable mind you, but its just what occurred during that time. It's funny to think that Rhino tried to correct some of the mistakes, and add in sound effects not originally present, on its first DVD releases and was lambasted by the fans of the time because they wanted it preserved the way it was. It's actually high end when it comes to the 80's, not sub par. If you want that watch any Hanna Barbara show. Scooby-Doo is among some of the worst when it comes to technical errors, yet is still beloved to this day. Maybe it is because I've seen each episode dozens of times, but the mistakes to me do not deter from the story. Audio and animation mistakes like what occurred especially in Armada are far worse in impeding storytelling IMHO. There are plenty of examples of beautifully animated scenes in the original series btw.

If you'll notice from a technical perspective I ranked BW higher than the original, THAT is how much I like and respect that series. Kind of like how Star Trek TNG is technically superior in every way from OST, - the original series still has it's core fan base who love that series more than any other iteration, and rightfully so.

All good points, but as we move further away, the comparisons become more evident. Original Transformers is to OST what BW is to TNG. (Both having solid fan bases, and both TNG and BW were great for their time, are still great to an extent, but yes obviously aging ever so slowly) Unicron Trilogy is kind of like Voyager (not that popular), although then the comparisons become problematic. Although both Trek fans and TF fans are split in a similar way as to whether new media is "good" or not, I cant compare Prime or Cyberverse for instance to anything currently Trek related. New Trek Looks great (from what little I've seen), but older fans are critical of its story. I only saw the first episode of Picard, and liked what I saw, but heard it had problems as the season went on...

I think another reason why people adore the G1 Cartoon besides being the first thing around is that the show had a lot of "life" and/or "energy" for lack of better words, it was a pretty optimistic show with fun characters even if most were not deep or had character development.

The G1 cartoon isn't my fave overall but it has some of my fave versions of characters just due to how likable they could be, the top of which is Optimus Prime, I'm usually just "sure he exists" with most versions of Optimus and don't tend to be favorites but there is something so wholesome about G1 Prime.

(I consider Animated and to an extent UT Optimus to come close, Optimus Primal doesn't count for me but he's also up there.)

So overall I think the most important part of making a Transformers show work is the characters, like who cares if the show is "dark" or something if you don't find any entertainment in the characters or care about them right?

So I hope the netflix show can deliver on that to some extent even if the trailer isn't super exciting.

I'm happy it's arriving fairly on time, but I still hope it doesn't have the same sorts of issues that Prime Wars had. Of course, casual nerd sites will love it because it's "G1 but dark and mature", but I'm sure more experienced fans may have more varied opinions. We'll see how it goes, because I'm on the fence so far.

Ooouuuu, speaking of best series eh? You know lists are my thing. Wondering if people would lose their minds if number 1 in a top 5 would be beast wars.

let's see, for english language releases...

5. Animated
4. Cyberverse
3. Prime
2. Sunbow
1. Beast Wars



what do y'all think?

My five favorite TF shows go like this:

1. Beast Wars
2. TFP
3. Animated
4. Cyberverse
5. Cybertron

william-james88 wrote:what do y'all think?

Think it's off-topic.

So is the show cast going to be strictly SIEGE or do you think we will see some non-toy outliers?

Well there's characters in there that haven't recieved toys yet (and they're not in their previous toys forms) like Elita 1 and Bumblebee. I expect to see 'repaint' characters a plenty to save on creating new character models

As much as they don't have WFC figures yet. Given who they are, I wouldn't call BB or even Elita-1 these days, outliers. I'm thinking more will we see something/one new? The next Rattrap or Bulkhead maybe?

ZeroWolf wrote:I expect to see 'repaint' characters a plenty to save on creating new character models

Right. As it is a CG show, I'm expecting the BW effect with the size of the roster. Depending on how in parallel they were made, I would assume Reflector, Barricade and the Eight Tetrajets are part of this line for that very purpose.

I would be so impressed if they put effort into making Cog, Brunt etc into new and memorable characters. Maybe someone might even do something anything with Full Tilt.

To quote Unicron from TF:TM -"You Exaggerate", or perhaps your argument has been shaped by fans who did not live during that era and jump to these conclusions harshly. There are errors to be sure, but no more so than any other series of the time.

I'd disagree with that. I've been watching Gobots recently and it is startling just how consistently animated and error-free the series is by comparison with Transformers. It's not the only show from that era that does well by comparison either. And I DID live through the original Transformers series when it aired.

I also echo OP's comments - I think it's a poor choice for top series because it's all over the place in terms of quality and can be genuinely hard to watch. People just put it on a pedestal because of its legacy.

Getting back to the main topic I'm looking forward to the series but to be honest I don't expect much beyond the Prime Trilogy. Smoother animation, okay great, but the script and voice-acting seem really wooden, really over-doing the grim-dark SERIOUS DRAMA. Remember when in the original series Bots could stop megatron returning to Cybertron and stand around chuckling at a few jokes afterwards? God, I miss that sense of easy camaraderie.

Hopefully I'm wrong and the series will be amazing. Fingers crossed.

Sabrblade wrote:And there was Full-Tilt's poignant role in the BWU story "Intersectionality"

I mean direct representation via a show or something official [and canon] from Hasbro/Takara. Considering Full Tilt is pretty much the only Decepticon non-Earth based car (also not part of a combiner team) and his design being quite distinct, he has been little more than Trypticon's wacky chest plate within continuity.

Note: Much in the same way some people are dismissive of 3P figures, for me that bugbear is Convention/Collectors Club merch.

o.supreme wrote:

Skritz wrote:The animation is piss poor even for the time and so riddled with errors that every single episode on TFwiki has a bucket list of moments where the animation goes wrong.

To quote Unicron from TF:TM -"You Exaggerate", or perhaps your argument has been shaped by fans who did not live during that era and jump to these conclusions harshly. There are errors to be sure, but no more so than any other series of the time. It's not excusable mind you, but its just what occurred during that time. It's funny to think that Rhino tried to correct some of the mistakes, and add in sound effects not originally present, on its first DVD releases and was lambasted by the fans of the time because they wanted it preserved the way it was. It's actually high end when it comes to the 80's, not sub par. If you want that watch any Hanna Barbara show. Scooby-Doo is among some of the worst when it comes to technical errors, yet is still beloved to this day. Maybe it is because I've seen each episode dozens of times, but the mistakes to me do not deter from the story. Audio and animation mistakes like what occurred especially in Armada are far worse in impeding storytelling IMHO. There are plenty of examples of beautifully animated scenes in the original series btw.

If you'll notice from a technical perspective I ranked BW higher than the original, THAT is how much I like and respect that series. Kind of like how Star Trek TNG is technically superior in every way from OST, - the original series still has it's core fan base who love that series more than any other iteration, and rightfully so.

I gotta go with this one too, the animation was standard to high end for the time of G1. It always kills me when I see someone talk about older cartoon animation or even older movie special effects being bad because it doesn't compare to modern day versions. It seems like people just can't appreciate what came before for the technological advancements they lead to.

Look at the series REBOOT (the original not the remake/continuation from Netflix)You could literally see the improvements in CQ animation as the seasons progressed, but I've heard people complain, "why didn't they use the good animation in the season 1?" And explaining that it didn't exist then just doesn't seem to get through to them for some reason. But I digress.

I fall under the category that Beast Wars did have the best storytelling out of all of the series so far. Animated's story telling was pretty good to, but I also needed to get past the animation. Prime would be a #2 for story telling, until the end of the third season, then IMHO, it tanked. The unicron trillogy I would go with being pretty much the worst in story, especially with every series have Megatron become Galvatron only to revert back for the next series. Everything else is pretty much in between, though I do like how they handled Hot Rod in Cyberverse even if my favorite episode was the Arcee/Grimlock buddy episode.

Rodimus Knight wrote:

o.supreme wrote:

Skritz wrote:The animation is piss poor even for the time and so riddled with errors that every single episode on TFwiki has a bucket list of moments where the animation goes wrong.

To quote Unicron from TF:TM -"You Exaggerate", or perhaps your argument has been shaped by fans who did not live during that era and jump to these conclusions harshly. There are errors to be sure, but no more so than any other series of the time. It's not excusable mind you, but its just what occurred during that time. It's funny to think that Rhino tried to correct some of the mistakes, and add in sound effects not originally present, on its first DVD releases and was lambasted by the fans of the time because they wanted it preserved the way it was. It's actually high end when it comes to the 80's, not sub par. If you want that watch any Hanna Barbara show. Scooby-Doo is among some of the worst when it comes to technical errors, yet is still beloved to this day. Maybe it is because I've seen each episode dozens of times, but the mistakes to me do not deter from the story. Audio and animation mistakes like what occurred especially in Armada are far worse in impeding storytelling IMHO. There are plenty of examples of beautifully animated scenes in the original series btw.

If you'll notice from a technical perspective I ranked BW higher than the original, THAT is how much I like and respect that series. Kind of like how Star Trek TNG is technically superior in every way from OST, - the original series still has it's core fan base who love that series more than any other iteration, and rightfully so.

I gotta go with this one too, the animation was standard to high end for the time of G1. It always kills me when I see someone talk about older cartoon animation or even older movie special effects being bad because it doesn't compare to modern day versions. It seems like people just can't appreciate what came before for the technological advancements they lead to.

Look at the series REBOOT (the original not the remake/continuation from Netflix)You could literally see the improvements in CQ animation as the seasons progressed, but I've heard people complain, "why didn't they use the good animation in the season 1?" And explaining that it didn't exist then just doesn't seem to get through to them for some reason. But I digress.

I fall under the category that Beast Wars did have the best storytelling out of all of the series so far. Animated's story telling was pretty good to, but I also needed to get past the animation. Prime would be a #2 for story telling, until the end of the third season, then IMHO, it tanked. The unicron trillogy I would go with being pretty much the worst in story, especially with every series have Megatron become Galvatron only to revert back for the next series. Everything else is pretty much in between, though I do like how they handled Hot Rod in Cyberverse even if my favorite episode was the Arcee/Grimlock buddy episode.

Given that most of the episodes in seasons 2 and 3 were being made at a break neck pace with some episodes being made in about 4 months from finished script to aired on TV it's actually kind of amazing how well some of those episodes hold up at all (and some that don't). I do think on a technical/artistic level shows like Prime, Animated, Cyberverse, and Robots in Disguise (both versions) are better LOOKING shows than the original, it still has it's charm.

G1's show can suck at times with its redundant characters, subgroups, and animation errors, but I think the animation was at least better than the Japanese spinoff content for how more expressive the character movement is and not having lip movement be simply a flapping mouth.

Quantum Surge wrote:G1's show can suck at times with its redundant characters, subgroups, and animation errors, but I think the animation was at least better than the Japanese spinoff content for how more expressive the character movement is and not having lip movement be simply a flapping mouth.

Which is quite funny as it was animated in that region anyway.

Greetings Seibertronians! Fellow Seibertron user, CyclonusG1, has informed us that over on the Transformers Official Instagram, they've released three new images to promote the Netflix exclusive Transformers Siege cartoon that premiers this month. The three images give us a good look at Ultra Magnus, Bumblebee and Elita-1. What's interesting in the case of the latter two, these could give us hints as to what their toy forms may look like. As so far, from all the promotional material, the models used stay very close to toy designs.







That's not all, over on the Transformers Official Facebook page, these same images are also turned into animated posters!

What do you think of these? Looking forward to this new cartoon? Let us know in the Energon Pub and stay tuned to Seibertron for all the latest news and reviews!

Nice. Bumblebee looks pretty much like he does on the Earthrise box art. Magnus is Magnus. Elita-1 we'll have to see.