The Energon Pub

Well, this is something every Transformers fan should be embarrassed to say, I haven’t watched the first thirteen episodes of G1 until now. Rather than be embarrassed, I’m tingling with happiness.

It was great. Now I know I’m going to get some of those, “why I LOVE me G1! What R U talking about???” replies, but my point, its so good its underrated for the few complaints it gets.

One thing I always see people complaining about is the animation. Well I’ll say the guy in the colors department was drunk when he was working on G1, but the Animation itself is actually quite fluent.
Now there are errors every now and then, but they aren’t as bad as people put them out to be. Back in G1, we didn’t have the shaky cam effect and the gliding that you see in Animated, in G1 the movements were there, they didn’t glide.

I also found this to be much more entertaining than what we’ve seen recently *cough* animated *cough, cough*. It was just a LOT more fun in general. Each episode did its job of entertaining me well, there were no super heroes and what not, it was Megatron, Optimus and the best Autobots and Decepticons fighting each other every episode.

The characters, these were characters I can FEEL. Not always very detailed, the very developed, but they were fun and interesting.

Eh, anyway, I could go on about this forever, but in other words; G1 rocks and no matter how much good is said, enough good can not be said.

See, EVERYTHING YOU JUST SAID!!!

If writen right we don't need human filler to prove that the bad robots are realy bad. We also don't need a whole series to sum up what they'd normaly handle in 1 episode, while still giving good character development.

As for the animation, yeah it has flaws, and yeah it's dated. But thats just a result from the time it was made.

To get alittle Beast Warsie on ya, like Die-Cast construction, fully hand draw animation, is a lost art.

Frig they even had to hand draw the computer stuff back then . I use to tell my students in my teaching days that DragonBall is a fun show, but it's pictures not animated. If they wanted to see a real cartoon, go watch some old Tom and Jerry, or Loony Toons. If you notice in those, well detailed backrounds, and the characters never stop moving fluidly for more than 2 seconds.

I personaly blame computers and Japan for the crap ass state of modern cartoons(mouth movements on a still shot for 10 seconds does not a cartoon make).

But that said, enjoy the roots, and thanks for apreciating the reason why so many of us old schoolers have a near fixed raised eyebrow at the crap they try and feed us today.

However, I do have to add I recently got the RID series, and for what it was, it was pretty good. AEC could have learned alot from that series.

Liege Evilmus wrote:If writen right we don't need human filler to prove that the bad robots are realy bad. We also don't need a whole series to sum up what they'd normaly handle in 1 episode, while still giving good character development.

I'd beg to differ with that. The G1 Decepticons were a lot of fun, but I never felt like I could take them seriously, with a very few exceptions. I generally watched them with a grin and popcorn in hand rather than feeling worried that the Autobots would ever lose.

I do agree that the character development was good, but the plots/writing were a bit thin for the most part until Season 3.

Still, I agree that it doesn't deserve as much flak as it sometimes gets... it was a fun series with enjoyable stories and interesting characters and managed to create an entire phenomenon that's lasted for two decades.

Liege Evilmus wrote:See, EVERYTHING YOU JUST SAID!!!

If writen right we don't need human filler to prove that the bad robots are realy bad. We also don't need a whole series to sum up what they'd normaly handle in 1 episode, while still giving good character development.

As for the animation, yeah it has flaws, and yeah it's dated. But thats just a result from the time it was made.

To get alittle Beast Warsie on ya, like Die-Cast construction, fully hand draw animation, is a lost art.

Frig they even had to hand draw the computer stuff back then . I use to tell my students in my teaching days that DragonBall is a fun show, but it's pictures not animated. If they wanted to see a real cartoon, go watch some old Tom and Jerry, or Loony Toons. If you notice in those, well detailed backrounds, and the characters never stop moving fluidly for more than 2 seconds.

I personaly blame computers and Japan for the crap ass state of modern cartoons(mouth movements on a still shot for 10 seconds does not a cartoon make).

But that said, enjoy the roots, and thanks for apreciating the reason why so many of us old schoolers have a near fixed raised eyebrow at the crap they try and feed us today.

However, I do have to add I recently got the RID series, and for what it was, it was pretty good. AEC could have learned alot from that series.

Amen to this.

And god bless that another person sees the greatness that G1 was. A series not afraid to show a robot using a gun to kill or attempt to kill another robot. It's nice to gain new G1 fans.

Amen to everything that has been said. When I was kid, I used to laugh at the episodes and I still do because they are funny at times.

Liege Evilmus wrote:I use to tell my students in my teaching days that DragonBall is a fun show, but it's pictures not animated.

It must have been a hell of a lot of pictures, then, especially considering how fast fights could get.

Shadowman wrote:

Liege Evilmus wrote:I use to tell my students in my teaching days that DragonBall is a fun show, but it's pictures not animated.

It must have been a hell of a lot of pictures, then, especially considering how fast fights could get.

If I remember Dragon Ball right(and particularly Z ) yeah, the animation in some parts is no doubt amazing. However, like Liege said, a good amount of time was spent with just one frame with a moving mouth or twitching eyebrow or repeated animation(in the show, the movies have a higher budget) to balance out these well animated segments and save money I'm sure.

Transformers Armada has no excuse though, cause I was watching a few episodes I found on an old tape a few weeks ago and I honestly did feel like I was watching a picture book in the middle of it!! It was either the episode of or the one right before Prime "died", and there were conversations between Prime/Jetfire and Starsceam/Thrust, and little to no animation whatsoever was put into those bits. They must have had a pretty small budget for that series, cause if the animation was better and the first half of the series a bit more faster paced(ugh, worst kids EVER) then the series would rank pretty high I think cause it did have some pretty cool moments.

It is a common thing in all anime and WAS done to accommodate small budgets, and over time has just become another part of the style.

The thing about G1 though, is that after the first three episodes you can cut out massive chunks of the following episodes that really aren't worth watching.

MTME, Ultimate Doom, Megatron's Master Plan and Desertion of the Dinobots are the best episodes by a long shot. Those episodes aside the Decepticons have never been a valid threat to the Autobots and certainly never as much as they were in MTMTE, where the Autobots pretty much lost to the Decepticons at every turn until right at the very end when Mirage saved their asses.

Even though so many of the other episodes have garbage animation and storytelling I continue to love them for some reason.

Duke of Luns wrote:

Shadowman wrote:

Liege Evilmus wrote:I use to tell my students in my teaching days that DragonBall is a fun show, but it's pictures not animated.

It must have been a hell of a lot of pictures, then, especially considering how fast fights could get.

If I remember Dragon Ball right(and particularly Z ) yeah, the animation in some parts is no doubt amazing. However, like Liege said, a good amount of time was spent with just one frame with a moving mouth or twitching eyebrow or repeated animation(in the show, the movies have a higher budget) to balance out these well animated segments and save money I'm sure.

That's true. It was the eighties, and animation wasn't at it's top back then. They've came a long way, though. (See, Gundam 00, Cowboy Bebop, Death Note)

Though a Japanese company did do the animation (I.e. taking still frames and making them move) for a lot of shows back then.

Duke of Luns wrote:Transformers Armada has no excuse though, cause I was watching a few episodes I found on an old tape a few weeks ago and I honestly did feel like I was watching a picture book in the middle of it!! It was either the episode of or the one right before Prime "died", and there were conversations between Prime/Jetfire and Starsceam/Thrust, and little to no animation whatsoever was put into those bits. They must have had a pretty small budget for that series, cause if the animation was better and the first half of the series a bit more faster paced(ugh, worst kids EVER) then the series would rank pretty high I think cause it did have some pretty cool moments.

No, Armada doesn't have an excuse. There are some scenes where you can't help but say "How did they let these mistakes get aired?!" There was an episode where the Autobots raided the Decepticon's moonbase, and freed a crapton of mini-cons. When it showed the Mini-cons running out of the base, there were, I think, only three different versions, cloned, I guess, into the thousands.

Then there was the writing, where they had a hard time deciding if they were going to use the English names or the Japanese names.

There was one scene from Armada where Jetfire was colour as Optimus.

There's no need to pick on Animated like that. Animated, in my opinion, is really good! The Decepticons have got to be the greatest villains from any modern series. They will still never beat the old G1 voices, though.
Now Cybertron deserves to be picked on. That series was the worst thing I have ever watched. There were four robots staring at Lori's chest fer god's sake. What's that gonna teach little kids?

G1 was the best series. Animated comes in just after Beast Wars. Screw you, Unicron Trilogy. Unicron the god of hate. Whatever.

Hell yea G1 was awesome, even the smallest fight was animated, like in MTMTE part 1(?) Were they fight on the oil rig, they show the fight from the sky and everybody moves, while in todays "quality" animation we get a still with fighting sounds, if we're lucky.

Also in Armada, we have this funny scene in which one of Primes legs suddenly grows to doubly of its size while the other shrinks!

I was watching the first episode of season two and the animation seemed much better than season one. I also noticed the colors were better.

BTW Anyone else think Hasbro should make a figure of Spike from this episode and find some way to make it transform? It’d be nice since he never got an toy that I know of.

Thyunda wrote:There was one scene from Armada where Jetfire was colour as Optimus.

There's no need to pick on Animated like that. Animated, in my opinion, is really good! The Decepticons have got to be the greatest villains from any modern series. They will still never beat the old G1 voices, though.
Now Cybertron deserves to be picked on. That series was the worst thing I have ever watched. There were four robots staring at Lori's chest fer god's sake. What's that gonna teach little kids?

G1 was the best series. Animated comes in just after Beast Wars. Screw you, Unicron Trilogy. Unicron the god of hate. Whatever.

Yes there is, animated NEEDS to be picked on!

Of course, this is only my opinion, but animated is so far the worst TF series I’ve ever seen. Its like their trying to replace the Decepticons with super villains!

And for a show called animated its easy to tell its not very well “animated”. BW neo, G1, Energon, Cybertron, even Armada with all of its errors is leaps and bounds better than animated.

And all of those series I named off didn’t seem to fart around as much as animated.

HoosierDaddy wrote:

Liege Evilmus wrote:See, EVERYTHING YOU JUST SAID!!!

If writen right we don't need human filler to prove that the bad robots are realy bad. We also don't need a whole series to sum up what they'd normaly handle in 1 episode, while still giving good character development.

As for the animation, yeah it has flaws, and yeah it's dated. But thats just a result from the time it was made.

To get alittle Beast Warsie on ya, like Die-Cast construction, fully hand draw animation, is a lost art.

Frig they even had to hand draw the computer stuff back then . I use to tell my students in my teaching days that DragonBall is a fun show, but it's pictures not animated. If they wanted to see a real cartoon, go watch some old Tom and Jerry, or Loony Toons. If you notice in those, well detailed backrounds, and the characters never stop moving fluidly for more than 2 seconds.

I personaly blame computers and Japan for the crap ass state of modern cartoons(mouth movements on a still shot for 10 seconds does not a cartoon make).

But that said, enjoy the roots, and thanks for apreciating the reason why so many of us old schoolers have a near fixed raised eyebrow at the crap they try and feed us today.

However, I do have to add I recently got the RID series, and for what it was, it was pretty good. AEC could have learned alot from that series.

Amen to this.

And god bless that another person sees the greatness that G1 was. A series not afraid to show a robot using a gun to kill or attempt to kill another robot. It's nice to gain new G1 fans.

Hey, thanks!

G1 really is a lot of fun to watch.

Nekoman wrote:And for a show called animated its easy to tell its not very well “animated”. BW neo, G1, Energon, Cybertron, even Armada with all of its errors is leaps and bounds better than animated.

Animated doesn't use stock footage each time someone transforms.

Shadowman wrote:

Nekoman wrote:And for a show called animated its easy to tell its not very well “animated”. BW neo, G1, Energon, Cybertron, even Armada with all of its errors is leaps and bounds better than animated.

Animated doesn't use stock footage each time someone transforms.

Nor did the series I believe you’re referring to. It did most of the time, but there was times it didn’t.

Nekoman wrote:

Shadowman wrote:

Nekoman wrote:And for a show called animated its easy to tell its not very well “animated”. BW neo, G1, Energon, Cybertron, even Armada with all of its errors is leaps and bounds better than animated.

Animated doesn't use stock footage each time someone transforms.

Nor did the series I believe you’re referring to. It did most of the time, but there was times it didn’t.

Most of the time is still too much.

Armada had frequent miscolorings, mistranslated names, inconsistent character design, a bad concept, bad characters, and was overall just poopy.

Animated doesn't suffer from this.

Considering how many fans on this board love G1, and what a smash hit it was twenty years ago, I'd hardly call it underrated. How about rightly treasured?

G1 had several good moments. It had terrific character design, a strong concept, and truly top-notch voice acting for the key characters. The writing frequently fell through, however. Frequently, it's impossible to take the Decepticons as a serious threat, the series is amazingly internally inconsistent, and most characters never even get as fleshed out as their bio descriptions. If you choose the better episodes and ignore the others, though, you have some very memorable stuff.

Animated does a remarkable job with its characters, and the animation, character design, and voice acting all maintain a high quality. No need to hate on one to praise the other.

I think G1 was much more sophisticated than TFA. Not just because I grew up with G1 but just looking at the series its self. Aside from the animation, the writing for G1 was much more serious, not always trying to make a pop culture joke references like TFA does(i.e. "My Bad") And when G1 did use a Pop culture reference joke they still acknowledged that they were joking even within that instance. Also a lot of the character lines and monologues in G1 were so much more poetically written and almost Shakespearean-like, especially Megatron's Vengeful Lines. TFA likes to use lots of Sitcom humor and kiddie jokes. Even watching G1 today, its writing is timeless and the Grammar is still relevant to today. Even the music in G1 was better. They used a real orchestra to score the series and a live orchestra is always much more compelling than todays use of electronic-urban sounds. All this leads me to another topic I wanna post soon about the difference between generations and cartoons but...... yeah, to agree with this original topic, I do think the judgemental views on the animation have overshadowed what a great series it is.

G1 had the greatest soundtrack of any cartoon. And some of the most powerful lines.

Well in my eyes, G1 is/was & always will be the best and only greatest TF show in history and of our childhoods.

So far the only thing thats made G1 so underrated at the moment is the new Animated show and Animated has kinda put shows like G1 & BW etc underneath the pile.

Besides theres so much great points of the G1 cartoon such as...The voices, character design, music. Nothing will ever change the fact that G1 is so much better than all the other TF shows.

Shadowman wrote:Most of the time is still too much.

But the animation itself was still better.

inconsistent character design

Same can be said for animated, if I recall in Total Meltdown there’s scenes where Bumblebee’s yellow and gray area of his face keep changing in size.

a bad concept

In my opinion it was a great concept.

bad characters

I found them to be more likeable than the cast of animated.

Animated doesn't suffer from this.

It does too.

Menbailee wrote:Considering how many fans on this board love G1, and what a smash hit it was twenty years ago, I'd hardly call it underrated. How about rightly treasured?

G1 had several good moments. It had terrific character design, a strong concept, and truly top-notch voice acting for the key characters. The writing frequently fell through, however. Frequently, it's impossible to take the Decepticons as a serious threat, the series is amazingly internally inconsistent, and most characters never even get as fleshed out as their bio descriptions. If you choose the better episodes and ignore the others, though, you have some very memorable stuff.

Animated does a remarkable job with its characters, and the animation, character design, and voice acting all maintain a high quality. No need to hate on one to praise the other.

I called it underrated as half a joke, meaning that its so good not enough praise could be said. I also called it underrated because it seems when anyone says anything bad about animated, you’ll get the usual “well G1 was no better” or something to that effect about how one series before it sucked so it somehow makes animated better.

In reality, no, G1 isn’t underrated, I just wanted to say it was.

Of course G1 is underrated! One YouTube comment I read said that G1 was the worst series ever purely because of the animation errors, and that if you like 'geewun', as they called it, then obviously you sit in your mother's basement and watch it all the time. Well, I'm sorry, but at least G1 had a story. The plot was two races of giant robot on a quest to find energy to restore their world and destroy the other race. Right. Loose scope, you can fit anything in here. Beast Wars- Two races of robot fighting. One must destroy the other. Simple. Beast Machines...let's not talk about that. Armada. Two races of giant robot hunt for little robots to get superpowered. The once-cool planet eater is suddenly transformed into the God of Hate. Energon. Two races of giant robot fight over not energy, energon, which in G1 was energy, and is now able to make you superpowered or something. Cybertron. When Unicron died, he made a black hole. Now the Autobots must run around like idiots to find stupid keys that can somehow make a black hole go away.

I'd rather not go on. My head may implode.

Thyunda wrote:Of course G1 is underrated! One YouTube comment I read said that G1 was the worst series ever purely because of the animation errors, and that if you like 'geewun', as they called it, then obviously you sit in your mother's basement and watch it all the time. Well, I'm sorry, but at least G1 had a story. The plot was two races of giant robot on a quest to find energy to restore their world and destroy the other race. Right. Loose scope, you can fit anything in here. Beast Wars- Two races of robot fighting. One must destroy the other. Simple. Beast Machines...let's not talk about that. Armada. Two races of giant robot hunt for little robots to get superpowered. The once-cool planet eater is suddenly transformed into the God of Hate. Energon. Two races of giant robot fight over not energy, energon, which in G1 was energy, and is now able to make you superpowered or something. Cybertron. When Unicron died, he made a black hole. Now the Autobots must run around like idiots to find stupid keys that can somehow make a black hole go away.

I'd rather not go on. My head may implode.

I believe the moral of the story is; the simpler the premise, the better it works.

Nekoman wrote:

Shadowman wrote:Most of the time is still too much.

But the animation itself was still better.

No...no it was not.

inconsistent character design

Same can be said for animated, if I recall in Total Meltdown there’s scenes where Bumblebee’s yellow and gray area of his face keep changing in size.[/quote]

Armada: All Transformers repeatedly change size, various shapes might change between shots, heel, Megatron was occasionally shown having an Autobot symbol where a Decepticon symbol was moments ago!

a bad concept

In my opinion it was a great concept.[/quote]

I liked it better when Pokemon did it.

bad characters

I found them to be more likeable than the cast of animated.[/quote]

Now that's just an outright lie.

Animated doesn't suffer from this.

It does too.[/quote]

No, it doesn't.

I think it's become almost fashionable to bash G1, which is a shame. As Nekoman has just found out, it was really rather good. Compare it to any other cartoon of the '80s. It's not a coincidence that Transformers sparked a franchise still going strong today, whereas shows like He-Man, GoBots, M.A.S.K. etc have faded away.

Admittedly, I've only seen one episode of Animated so far. From what I've seen, it's pretty good. Certainly a lot better than the Unicron Trilogy, and probably up their with RID. But I don't think anything will ever match G1 because that's MY Transformers.

Aside from the animation, the writing for G1 was much more serious, not always trying to make a pop culture joke references like TFA does(i.e. "My Bad")

There were no references to Herbie the Love Bug that I can recall.

Frequently, it's impossible to take the Decepticons as a serious threat, the series is amazingly internally inconsistent, and most characters never even get as fleshed out as their bio descriptions.

What were the internal inconsistencies?


Michael