The Energon Pub

I'M STILL SHOCKED.

'Beast Machines' is simply a masterpiece. Best TV animation I've ever seen in my whole life. Great screenplays. Terrific character development. And there's much poetry too!
Actually, I've been left crying for the end of the series, because I just loved the characters... I felt them like my family.
The series gave an epic closure to the G1 main storyline, and it was a poetic one.

I've got some questions:

1- How did Optimus Primal make those "vines" grow from Megatron's throne, in order to make them grab Megatron's arms? It's just not clear.

2- I don't know if this is a major flub. At the very end, when Ratrap hugs Botanica, am I wrong or I saw Ratrap's head "disappearing" through Botanica's face? Hopefully it's not an error.

Cobaltwick wrote:I'M STILL SHOCKED.

'Beast Machines' is simply a masterpiece. Best TV animation I've ever seen in my whole life. Great screenplays. Terrific character development. And there's much poetry too!
Actually, I've been left crying for the end of the series, because I just loved the characters... I felt them like my family.
The series gave an epic closure to the G1 main storyline, and it was a poetic one.

I've got some questions:

1- How did Optimus Primal make those "vines" grow from Megatron's throne, in order to make them grab Megatron's arms? It's just not clear.

2- I don't know if this is a major flub. At the very end, when Ratrap hugs Botanica, am I wrong or I saw Ratrap's head "disappearing" through Botanica's face? Hopefully it's not an error.

I'd disagree with you on that one. I thought the ending was a little poor but that is just my opinion.

As for your questions, Megatron used Optimus to access the key to Vector Sigma thus leaving himself vunerable to be used to reformat. Optimus siezed this chance and reformatted the throne making it techno-organic which subsequently attacked Megatron. And the other question didn't seem to happen when I saw it.

This abomination of a series is the bane of the Transformers existence.

MYoung23 wrote:This abomination of a series is the bane of the Transformers existence.

I think that is a bit harsh.

Personally I think there are worst series. But my own personal opinion is that it is far from being the best.

Beast Machines an abomination?

Have you seen Armada, Energon, G1 season 2, and certain episodes of Animated, specifically the ones with the human villains, the rest was great?

In the ten years when I grew out of Transformers, I did watch a few Beast Wars and Machines episodes. I found Machines very well done on all fronts while BW was an acquired taste.

While I have come to see BW as the best TF animated series, I still think Machines was a great series. It just lacked the better characterisations of Beast Wars. I can understand the disdain among the fandom regarding the organic Cybertron, having had my own misgivings but it doesn't ruin it by any means. I quite enjoy the Universe comics that followed on from it.

Beast Machines isn't everyone's cup of tea but it's by no means a bad series.

While Beast Machine is my favourite TF Series of them all, I wouldnt exactly call it a masterpiece. I agree that the story telling, voice acting & script writing and character development were fantastic nontheless. I still cant forgive the series for what they did to Rhinox...thats all.

Honestly, I liked Beast Machines, right up to the end. I really enjoyed seeing a spiritual element to TransFormers lore, the animation was beautiful, not quite as well-written as Beast Wars, but not bad. I just felt a bit robbed at the end. Something about reformatting Cybertron into a techno-organic world just rubbed me the wrong way. Possibly because it signified an end. There was really no carrying on after Beast Machines.

it was ahead of its time.

shadowsfm wrote:it was ahead of its time.

This is the TRUTH.

Fact is, it mixed up spiritualism and typical TF sci-fi in such a witty and crafty way... it experimented with the TF world and actually succeeded. It almost paved the way for a new genre, it was terrific and outstanding.
The characters were DEEP, the screenplays pure stuff of genius, the animation totally out of this world and each episode was very very special and definitely "different".

This is TRANSFORMERS quality to the nth degree. It's not for everyone.

GENERATION ONE was pure fun and escapism, but this was 100% serious and mature. ARMADA and the 2000 series are popcorn stuff, enjoyable but not memorable.

I just must rediscover BEAST WARS now.

Cobaltwick wrote:
I just must rediscover BEAST WARS now.

I was the same way, Cobaltwick. When I got back into TFs last year, Beast Machines was the first cartoon I watched. I watched the entire series on Youtube, and I thought it was great! The animation was killer, the overlying storyline was WAY deeper than I expected, and BM Cheetor and "RID" Optimus Primal are two of my favorite Transformers (that I own, anyway).

YES, go back and watch Beast Wars! Beast Machines was really good, but Beast Wars is even better! I'm pretty sure you'll love it. You'll have to get used to the older CGI animation, but that won't take too long...

Cobaltwick wrote:

shadowsfm wrote:it was ahead of its time.

This is the TRUTH.

Fact is, it mixed up spiritualism and typical TF sci-fi in such a witty and crafty way... it experimented with the TF world and actually succeeded. It almost paved the way for a new genre, it was terrific and outstanding.
The characters were DEEP, the screenplays pure stuff of genius, the animation totally out of this world and each episode was very very special and definitely "different".

This is TRANSFORMERS quality to the nth degree. It's not for everyone.

GENERATION ONE was pure fun and escapism, but this was 100% serious and mature. ARMADA and the 2000 series are popcorn stuff, enjoyable but not memorable.

I just must rediscover BEAST WARS now.

Beast Machines is my favorite series, so yes, I'm biased, but it was ahead of its time and it was much much better than what we got with the AEC shows and the crap of animated being robots vs. stupid human 'super' 'villains'. Long live Beast Machines.

To me, THE BEAST ERA is the natural follow-up of GEN ONE. I don't buy the fact it's a different universe.

The UNICORN TRILOGY and R.I.D. were really fun, yes, but can't hold an handle. GEN ONE + BEAST ERA is the one and only "original" Transformers saga.

I must disgree with the title. Beast Machines was a definite letdown after Beast Wars. Horrible. Sat through it once, never again.

Cobaltwick wrote:This is the TRUTH.

Fact is, it mixed up spiritualism and typical TF sci-fi in such a witty and crafty way... it experimented with the TF world and actually succeeded. It almost paved the way for a new genre, it was terrific and outstanding.
The characters were DEEP, the screenplays pure stuff of genius, the animation totally out of this world and each episode was very very special and definitely "different".

This is TRANSFORMERS quality to the nth degree. It's not for everyone.

GENERATION ONE was pure fun and escapism, but this was 100% serious and mature. ARMADA and the 2000 series are popcorn stuff, enjoyable but not memorable.

I just must rediscover BEAST WARS now.

I must disagree! I actually found the plot to be rather childish. And I think the look of it reflected that. The look of Beast Machines is really not to my taste. It had much less character development than some of the other series and even had a "and they lived happily ever after" fairy tale ending. Beast Machines was certainly a step down from Beast Wars, and Armada will certainly be more memorable than Beast Machines to me.

I liked Beast Wars, but I think I only liked that because there was no other Transformers stuff available, either on TV or in the stores in NZL at the time, around 97, 98 we had BW on TV.

As for BM. For years I heard it was arse, finally I managed to get my hands on a DVD of the first few episodes. I think I was able to tolerate the first episode and a half before I called it quits at the absolute BS it was peddling.

I was actually left confused and wondering if I had missed a few episodes at the beginning or the end of BW, as I couldn't grasp where Rhinox had gone - apparently he turned into a "Decepticon", Black Archnia was a whiny femme, gone was her strength and character that made her so endearing in BW, I don't konw what happened to Silverbolt, though apparently a similar fate to Rhinnox befell him. I couldn't stand Prime's incessent doubt, it got a bit too much like a Spiderman cartoon. I did like Cheetor's new design, and I thought his change of character and maturity development happened too quickly. And what the deal was with Megatron? And this whole Cybertron was or is going to be organic? It was just strange. Oh, and then there was teh whole "woe is me, Rattrap" thing. It was like an emo's wetdream!

People are free to like it, people are free to call it a masterpiece. I, on the other hand, thought it was sh1t.

I believe the slogan is - TRUKK NOT MUNKY!

I consider Beast Machines to be a good, if not great, series. While it did have it's ups and downs, it may have not been perfect, but it was still very enjoyable.

It had probably the best CGI animation of any Transformers TV series (the live action movies don't count, as they were movies) and it is by far the darkest story of any TF TV series.

And now that I think about it, the recent James Cameron movie Avatar (which I do consider to be a masterpiece) reminds me a bit of Beast Machines. The Na'Vi fighting off the oppression of the human military is similar to the Maximals fighting off Megatron's extremist rule. Eywa is similar to the Oracle, and there's also the "peaceful balance vs. iron extremism" conflict in both stories.

I agree that Beast Machines (and the Beast era all together) is a masterpiece. Top notch all around. I'm a very open minded fan, so the liberties that were taken with the Transformers lore in that series were surprising, but not at all what I'd consider a deal breaker. It took risks, and came out a better series because of it, I think. IMO, Transformers Animated is the only thing that's come anywhere close to it's quality ever since.