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I was wondering what everyone's favorite shows were from the original G1 show to the japanese animes (Like Armada) to the more current shows like Prime and RID!

Personally it's a tie between Beast Wars and Prime, the animation (For the times they were made) was stunning for a TV show and the writing (IMO) was some of the best I've seen out of the TF shows. Plus the toys from those shows were some of my favorites.

If you also have a certain show/version that you hate with a passion you can mention those too, but I'm mostly hoping to talk about what we like here. ^^

Alright, so these are the series and how and somewhat why I feel about them the way I do.

Generation 1, season 1 and 2, the original movie, season 3, and Rebirth - Even though it is nothing but a soulless attempt to get you to buy toys the original series had a certain charm about it that you just can't beat. Even though I was an infant when it came out I did enjoy it, I had a definite reverence for it and appreciated it. So this is why it has such a high regard.

Beast Era (Beast Wars/Beast Machines) - Set in the G1 universe this was my actual true introduction to Transformers given I was about 11 or 12 when it started coming out. I loved Beast Wars because it was a decent cartoon and had a rather mature storyline, but also didn't take itself too seriously. When Beast Machines came out I struggled with the shift in tone, but it did eventually grow on me after a while.

RiD '01: Honestly it wasn't my favorite. I only caught a small helping of episodes. I'd love to try to watch it in entirety. Though it is streaming no where due to who's holding the rights for it. So it's kind of forgotten at this point. I didn't mind Sky-Bite though. I remember laughing at him a lot.

Unicron Trilogy: Only sampled a small helping of episodes. Wasn't too thrilled with it. I am intending to go back and watch it in entirety where it is streaming (TubiTV)

Bayformers - Even though just tied to movies this did revitalize my interest and got me more into being a fan again. They are also decent action flicks that I can watch and enjoy. Unfortunately they're pretty mindless mostly and that is the unfortunate part. Not very cerebral.

Animated: I went back, I watched it, and I discovered it is up there pretty highly on my list. I loved it. I got over my issues with it when I did.

Prime, Predacons Rising, and RID '15 - Honestly I feel between this, Animated, G1, and the Beast Era I've found my TF nirvana in a way that I enjoy. This stuff is cerebral enough for me and decently animated. Gave characterizations of my favorites I enjoyed too.

Tyrannacon wrote:Alright, so these are the series and how and somewhat why I feel about them the way I do.

Beast Era (Beast Wars/Beast Machines) - Set in the G1 universe this was my actual true introduction to Transformers given I was about 11 or 12 when it started coming out. I loved Beast Wars because it was a decent cartoon and had a rather mature storyline, but also didn't take itself too seriously. When Beast Machines came out I struggled with the shift in tone, but it did eventually grow on me after a while.


Animated: I went back, I watched it, and I discovered it is up there pretty highly on my list. I loved it. I got over my issues with it when I did.

Prime, Predacons Rising, and RID '15 - Honestly I feel between this, Animated, G1, and the Beast Era I've found my TF nirvana in a way that I enjoy. This stuff is cerebral enough for me and decently animated. Gave characterizations of my favorites I enjoyed too.

I basically feel the same about Beast Wars, Animated and Prime. I'm so spoiled due to these shows in fact that I'm unsure if I'll like many of the shows we'll be getting in the future. I'm not enjoying 2015RID very much for instance because it feels like a downgrade from Prime when considering it's supposed to be a follow up show, I don't hate it by any means though.

Personally when I look at RiD 2015 I try to look at as a less serious take on the events in TFPrime. It does kind of stink as a sequel, but that's looking at only the first season and if you take it too seriously. I feel it loses the charm and what the series is trying to do if you take it for more than you should. Others have sworn by Robot Heroes for example too.

Season 2 of RiD and the possible second half of 2 or first half of season 3 are seemingly better and makes more attempts to connect to the events of TFP. Portals for example features Soundwave and his fate in the Shadowzone for example.

Armada can be neatly divided into four anime-length seasons. The last two are probably my favorite Transformers TV work ever.

Cybertron is one of my favorite overall shows, if I skip a whole bunch of Speed Planet stuff. First half of that show has horrendous pacing issues, but the overall universe of it is something I find very engaging.

Also, I really like G1 season 1. The more limited cast really helped it. I don't dislike S2 and it does some phenomenal world-building, but there are certain characters that might as well be Hauler, again.

I am really enjoying RiD's momentum, and I'm glad the purposeful misinformation campaign about its cancellation failed. Hopefully this continues on the path it's started down with Season 2's events.

Ooooh boy, we talking lists now? Been holding back since I figured it might start arguments. But.

1. Beast Wars
2. Animated
3. Prime
4. RiD 2015
5. G1
6. Beast Machines
7. Cybertron
8. RiD 2001
9. Armada
10. Combiner Wars
11. Energon

Just out of the things I've seen, mind. Haven't seen the Japanese-exclusive G1 and Beast Wars anime; I'd kinda like to one day, but I get the feeling I wouldn't like them that much. From the clips I've seen it's very general shonen stuff with a couple clever plot twists thrown in. Masterforce could be fun though.
Not really counting things like the Universe cartoon and Cyber Missions because, like... they weren't really series, were they? Just cute little advertisements dressed up a little. I mean they're still terrible, but they don't qualify.

Animated is not very far behind Beast Wars. If I give Beast Wars a 10 (which I'm not), Animated is a 9.9. Both are incredible in their own way... though oddly are very similar. A 5-bot team - including a somewhat experienced but still growing Optimus, a yellow rookie kid-appeal character, and an antisocial doesn't-play-well-with-the-team character who is arguably the most powerful on the team - end up crashlanding on Earth and have to deal with a far more powerful far more advanced 5-'con team most of which don't play well with each other, and follows a serious and mature storytelling format yet is still clearly a kids' cartoon with humour and good will at heart. Animated was basically Beast Wars X Teen Titans with heavy G1 references if you ask me, but since that's a friggin' awesome combination, I honestly can't say that's a mark against it.

Likewise... I don't know if I hate Energon more than I hate Combiner Wars and the latter stands a chance of being lower than the former. If it's a question of what was more of a pain, I suppose Combiner Wars hurt me more personally. I was actually watching it as it was being aired and it did some harm to some really good modern aspects of Transformers; touting itself as based on IDW and reducing the character of Windblade, whose two incarnations in IDW and RiD 2015 have both been very entertaining and interesting in their own way, to possibly the worst thing you can do with a character - blatantly overpowered, uninteresting, only interested in revenge, you can see exactly where their character arc is going with no twists or turns, and for some reason she's the goddamn focus. It hurts especially more when I consider this is a lot of peoples' first impressions of Windblade, which... is really annoying when I'd consider her IDW incarnation one of the best female Transformers characters we've ever gotten, and in this cartoon she's one of the most pathetic attempts at making a 'character' I've seen since the Unicron Trilogy. I know I made this into a rant about CW Windblade in particular rather than the show as a whole, but ugh.

Talking of the Unicron Trilogy. Armada was painful, Energon was even more painful, and Cybertron is slightly less painful than both objectively but it was the only one I watched as a kid so I let it off a bit more but looking back I realise it's pretty bad. I get a weird kick out of seeing the overpowered Galvatron beat the hell out of everyone though. I might have issues.

RiD 2001 I couldn't get past the Commando introduction episode so maybe I can't judge it fairly, but those episodes were just the biggest snorefest. It was so boring, so dull, it didn't help that Optimus Prime had the most unmotivated depressing voice acting I've ever heard... I just couldn't keep watching it.

G1 I like for what it is, but what it is isn't great. It's obviously just an excuse to sell toys in the 80s ("Sixshot! Show them what a one-robot army is!"), but for an excuse to sell toys in the 80s, it's cute and fun and I have to respect what it did for shaping some of the characters we know and love today. I still go back and watch a few episodes. It's just kinda nice; it's like stepping into a weird time portal of cheesiness and no worries and Optimus Prime being your leader who's your dad and your leader who's your friend. Can we get back that Optimus by the way? Like, I don't like sounding like a purist, but when watching the Aligned take on the character - or, god forbid, the Bayformers take on the character - it's really hard to not miss that friendly guy who'd save the day from Megatron then play basketball with you right after. I love him. He's so nice.

Beast Machines is... interesting. I don't really wanna go into it too much - and honestly I don't remember most of the thoughts I had on it at the moment. All-nighters are fun! - but the extreme shift in both tone and the 180 of characters' personalities make it a really bad sequel. As it's own thing? Ehhhh... I don't know how to feel about it, really. It was like a weird fever dream. What was going on with that show, man... hippie monkeys and plasma energy chambers and emo turkeys and wasps hitting on spiders because they got a new bike body and a show about robots having an environmental message... What a time to be alive.

I don't like calling the Aligned continuity Aligned because it's... not aligned. It's about as unaligned as you could possibly get. Energon connects better to Cybertron than any of Aligned's properties connect to each other. You need to stop, Hasbro. It didn't work. Just stop trying to pretend these things exist in the same universe and let them be their own thing and they can be better and you can still sell however many toys as you like. Just stop.
Anyway I like them both. Kinda. TFP went off the deep end at around the end of Season 2 and when it went back to To-Sell-Toys mentality it stopped being entertaining. I mean I know that's the whole point of Transformers shows, but it wasn't the point for this show until Season 3. They tried to make it work but it was so obvious Hasbro and... company-writing-prime were going for very different things. Season 3 finale is still badass as hell though, I go back and watch that every once in a while.
RiD 2015 is... cute. It still wants to sell toys but at least unlike Prime it wanted to sell toys the entire time, so it didn't suffer from having to suddenly switch to that. Though that recent Starscream thing was a bit terrible. You might as well just have had the mini-cons' motivations be "don't let me go back to Starscream! He doesn't want to sell us to the kids for the cheap cheap price of $3.99 available at your local Toys R Us!"
... but I digress. It's cute, I like it, it's nothing great but it's not bad either and while I do love new takes on characters, it's refreshing to see a show have mostly new characters again since... god, Cybertron was the last time we had mostly new characters, wasn't it? When was that, 10 years ago? I'm one of the youngest people on this forum and I'm starting to feel old.


Oh and if we wanna slot the other major fictions in there; I haven't read Marvel or Dreamwave yet (though what I've seen of Dreamwave certainly doesn't inspire me), but IDW no question goes so far on the top it breaks the ceiling and heads for Venus jesus christ it's so good and so beyond anything Transformers has ever put out
Oh and Bayformers can go somewhere below Armada. It's ****.

Sabrblade wrote:

Kurona wrote:Animated is not very far behind Beast Wars. If I give Beast Wars a 10 (which I'm not), Animated is a 9.9. Both are incredible in their own way... though oddly are very similar. A 5-bot team - including a somewhat experienced but still growing Optimus, a yellow rookie kid-appeal character, and an antisocial doesn't-play-well-with-the-team character who is arguably the most powerful on the team

Not to mention a big strong, mechanically-skilled green guy with a heart of gold, and a guy who likes to complain a lot about everything.

Rhinox, Bulkhead, Ratchet and Rattrap were always the ones I found hardest to draw direct parallels between (especially since the maximals had no direct medic). Thank you~

Sabrblade wrote:

Kurona wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Kurona wrote:Animated is not very far behind Beast Wars. If I give Beast Wars a 10 (which I'm not), Animated is a 9.9. Both are incredible in their own way... though oddly are very similar. A 5-bot team - including a somewhat experienced but still growing Optimus, a yellow rookie kid-appeal character, and an antisocial doesn't-play-well-with-the-team character who is arguably the most powerful on the team

Not to mention a big strong, mechanically-skilled green guy with a heart of gold, and a guy who likes to complain a lot about everything.

Rhinox, Bulkhead, Ratchet and Rattrap were always the ones I found hardest to draw direct parallels between (especially since the maximals had no direct medic). Thank you~

The R Chamber took care of the medical needs, which is something I wish later cartoon series would have made more use of. Rescue Bots had Blades use a stasis pod for a similar purpose once, but that's a different device.

You could kind of argue that something like a CR chamber could take away some tension and drama from a show. Like... when Bulkhead was severely injured in TFP? Wouldn't matter; just shove him in the CR chamber. He wouldn't be on the team for a few days maybe but at you wouldn't be fearing for his health. A bit similar to how Sari's Allspark Key was probably one of the bigger problems with Animated... just way too much of a convenience, safety net and fix-everything device.

For Beast Wars though, something like a CR Chamber worked and was kind of necessary just because of how slapstick and let's-break-Waspinator-again the humour was. You needed some kind of recovery to that constant exaggerated injury to make it work and still have a relatively serious show.

Prime, because that is the series that got me into transformers. Sure I say bayverse first but prime was what made me a fan. It has such great graphics, characters and sound. It really sucked me in and got me hooked.

G1, because I have fond memories of watching it with one of my close friends. I still have to finish it but I really enjoy it. It has some nonsensical episodes and has it's flaws but it has a really good feel to it. There is something about it that I just like.

Rescue bots. This one is my guilty pleasure. I like it because it's cute. It's the perfect thing to get my mind clear to sleep after a horror flick. That and the humor is top notch.

Egh, Transformers shows aren't that great, really.


Prime is probably the best one in the long-run. It had the most sensibility in approach as well as great characters, writing, and animation. However, even that fumbled its cards with throwing Breakdown out before his and Bulkhead's rivalry could be explored, and Airachnid's evaporation from the series (F**k "Crossfire" and "Armada"), among some other minuscule shortcomings thanks to executives sticking their dick in it. I still like it a lot, though. Starscream, Knock Out, Ratchet, Smokescreen, Wheeljack, and Dreadwing were fantastic characters, the humans were actually likable, and it forged probably the best Megatron and Soundwave in the franchise. GG.


Beast Wars is good. I think it's honestly overrated, though.

The animation only gets any good around season two, Blackarachnia/Silverbolt were the cringiest and most annoying characters I've ever had the displeasure of sitting through (f**k their arc together), the slapstick humor gets really tired really fast, which leads to a lot of inconsistency on how we're supposed to treat death in the show (Waspniator, Inferno, and Quickstrike blow to bits: They're okay! Tarantulas blows to bits: Whoa what dark and grusome deth best write evr), the Transmetal crap sincerely ruined Cheetor as a character and Primal in...the ability to be taken seriously, and finally the Vok arc felt so unresolved and unimportant I have to constantly wonder what the hell the point of that was in the first place. It does quite a bit right, in terms of character and story, particularly with Dinobot and its direction (something lacking in many TF shows), and I do think it's a decent enough series overall. However, I'd be lying if I hailed it as some glorious feat of storytelling. It isn't.


Robots in Disguise is decent. I've gotten to like the second season (including the six-part weaponizer commercial) for starting to take everything a bit more seriously than the first season did, which I thought was mediocre overall. I do like a lot of the characters, too, such as Strongarm and Sideswipe, as well as the best depiction of Bumblebee thus far. However, it does suffer from some episodes going nowhere and a clear generalization of which direction it wants to go, so there's that. I'll make a better assessment of the show once it's done with.


Rescue Bots is about as interesting as paste. Possibly one of the blandest cartoon ever put on air. I forced myself to make it through season one hoping I'd like it like everyone else, but that gave me cancer. It's so ungodly typical and sugar-coated it makes Full House look like a complex storytelling masterpiece. F**k Rescue Bots.


I haven't watched Animated in forever, so I don't remember too much about its storylines. I remember liking season three, but one and two were slow and crappy to my recollection. Bumblebee and Bulkhead were also very annoying characters, and given their solidification as series regulars, I doubt that would run in the series' favor if I ever decided to watch it again. I also remember disliking the choppiness of the animation.


Beast Machines was a pretentious load of pseudospiritualist agenda that screwed up a lot of what made Beast Wars good. I'm sure if it had its own characters and its own backstory it would've scored better, but being tied to Beast Wars was a bad idea. I'd preferred to see what Transtech would've entailed.


Robots in Disguise (2001)...............I watched the first episode and threw up.


Cybertron is a cringe-worthy load of fried horse manure, and I grew up with that show.


Armada would've been good if it wasn't dumbed down with crappy acting and dubbing.


Generation 1 is a god awful cartoon, just like most 80's Hasbro airplay. I genuinely hate that show. The whole first bunch of episodes were bland and downright ridiculous, until the 1985 toys showed up and started adding character development of some sort to the series (which is accomplished to varying degrees of success), the animation was HORRID as most visual bowel movements were in those days, this, that, and the other. There's a laundry list of problems that watching just ONE EPISODE would allow you to create ten fold. I don't buy into the whole "first for transformers" defense either. The toys are fantastic, but I judge each show on its merit, not its place in the universe or whatever people like to pull out of their ass to constitute the series as something decent. Screw that and all the rest of Hasbro's cartoons at the time.

...except for Jem, which was just barely better than the rest.


And, finally, Energon speaks for itself. I don't even need to explain myself here. There's entire sections on the Wiki dedicated to pointing out the cancer and AIDS the series creates. Need I go into detail?


So, what are my favorite Transformers shows in list form?

1. Prime
2. Beast Wars
3. RID 2015
4. Animated (I guess)
5. Rescue Bots
6. Beast Machines
7. RID 2001
8. Cybertron
9. Armada
10. G1
11. Energon



If I missed any......that's nice.

Screw Combiner Wars.

Transformers Armada is great.There are many good Transformers stories,but Armada got so many right.It has its own feel,while stll being a Transformers story at the core.