by Nemesis Primal » Wed Dec 30, 2020 9:26 pm
- Motto: "Anything worth doing is worth suffering for."
- Weapon: Twin Swords
My thoughts having seen it (with no spoiler tags as requested):
PROS:
-The plot, while still not even close to the best we've ever gotten, felt much better this season when they actually did/were allowed to do unique stuff like the Mercs and space travel as opposed to "That one Cyberverse flashback but movie length"
-Space travel means more unique backdrops/scenery than just sparsely-populated Cybertronian wastes, and some of it is actually really cool/nice-looking (albeit still sparsely-populated)
-Scrapface finally has a reason to exist now! (Even though his plotline was kinda just Impactor but again)
-Shockwave's depiction was, in my opinion, possibly a highlight of the season, since they let him follow up on last season's sketchy "I have a virus" with full-on war crimes
-Megatron, while not as satisfying as Shockwave for me, does get actual development/depth as this goes on, there are visible elements of the fact that he is pushing his boundaries and morals in darker and darker directions, more so than last season (plus he gets to ACTUALLY DECEIVE others, a lot of TF media doesn't really show that despite the whole DECEPTICON name)
-The Mercs were entertaining/satisfying...mostly, and getting to see them do what they do and be snarky about it was fun
-Confirmation that the Fool's Fortune is in fact, the name of the Merc ship (but only if you're paying attention and knew that the name existed before hand)
-Wheeljack is still his great Wheeljack self
-I know some will disagree with this, but I actually approve of the usage of Scorponok as a large boss battle monster rather than a more involved cast member. It makes sense with his size and alt mode, and having him be ANOTHER evil deceptive power-hungry personality like G1 Scorpy usually is alongside Megatron, Starscream, Shockwave, the Quintesson, and Doubledealer (to a short extent) would have been a bit too busy (and I don't trust this show to handle that busyness in an effective way)
-Mirage's powers continue to be impressive in both scope and usage
-The Ark Autobots actually feel like a cohesive crew that actually listen to Optimus most of the time this season, as opposed to just being a bunch of people that happen to be there but don't believe in Optimus at all
-Soundwave does stuff this time!
-The last 2 episodes were the best episodes overall, especially in terms of visuals and references
-Oh hey Sky Lynx is in it AND manages to get character development kinda in the episode he gets, that's better than a large chunk of the cast
-Galvatron's entrance was awesome, speaking of those references
-Starscream gets to live up to his full Starscream-y potential, never gets old
-Cog
-Solid setup for the next part gets done
-I'm already really excited for Kingdom on the toyline front, as well as the fact that Hasbro is finally even doing a line like it again, so that last scene made me feel things (which was a first for this show other than feelings of befuddlement/annoyance/laughing at things that weren't supposed to be funny)
CONS:
-Majority of the problems from Siege aren't fixed: voice direction, Megatron's Overlord lips, etc.
-Whoever was concerned about if the show would represent the ER line well was pretty on-point in their concern: we got the Merc characters (2 of which were Selects, and 4 of which are inaccurate to their actual ER figures), Scorponok, Sky Lynx, a Quintesson, and that's it. Wheeljack and Arcee are only there because they were in Siege, and neither of them transform still (and Arcee isn't based off her ER figure still)
-With the exception of Shockwave, the stuff still on Cybertron were the lowlights for me, the fact that they were just more Siege but without most of the actually interesting characters was boring
-Oh hey look Steeljaw-oh, never mind
-The Quintesson stuff is...not good. The "consensus" scene was effectively shocking for less than a second, and then it was just annoying because it defeated part of the whole purpose of using Quintessons in the first place (especially since it took less than an episode for it to happen), they barely explained who/what Quints are to begin with, and then what they did in the last part not only didn't improve it at all, but also brought down the Mercs by removing all of what made them appealing
-Megatron's Lips 2: Doubledealer's face
-There's a whole line about the Quintesson "army"...but the ER Alicon isn't in the show at all, said army is just Ironhide recolors (which we'll probably get a figure of, but still)
-We get a whole bit about how Bee's officially an Autobot now...but Ratchet doesn't get the same courtesy, despite part of his whole thing in the first season was that he didn't actually want any part in the war
-The jump from "The Nemesis exists" to "oh look the Cons caught up to the Ark" felt WAY too quick
-Optimus doesn't even seem to think about Elita at all until Megatron mentions her
-...regardless of my previous Scorponok comment, if Scorponok was that willing to exposit his backstory/talk to them, why did it take an episode and a half to happen
-They never actually explained exactly WHAT about what happened caused them to end up in the Dead Universe, not even a nonsense psuedo-science answer
-If you didn't go into this knowing who Galvatron is already and don't have the subtitles on, you really have to infer his actual identity, he gets even less explanation than the Quint
-For a show promoting a toyline that DOESN'T have an Alpha Trion figure in it, I feel like they dedicate more time than they should to Alpha Trion flashbacks
-Nemesis-Prime-baiting
-Shockwave giving himself combat-based upgrades is a good concept, but they should have took that opportunity to incorporate his armor/drone that comes with his figure
-Why exactly did they need to have Chromia shoot Skytread Flywheels? It just made her seem kinda sociopathic
-Optimus gets dangerously close to Murder-Prime territory in the last episode, and his voice goes to Murder-Prime territory in most episodes
-The cliffhanger on Cybertron just means there's gonna keep being stuff with that crew in Kingdom too, huh....gross
-Once again, Astrotrain appears for one frame in the finale and does nothing (although he seemed to be better in scale this time)
Despite the length of that Con list though, I did enjoy this season significantly more than Siege, to the point I would actually say I enjoyed it as opposed to just "it was alright I guess", and am absolutely looking forward to Kingdom.