Review for Cyberverse Season 4 "The Immobilizers"
Good Family Fun
Good Family Fun
It was a total coincidence that I watched this special right after watching the classic G1 episode "Call of the Primitives" which is also Dinobot heavy. I was watching it since my 4 year old and I were playing with Combiner Wars toys and having the Dinobots face off against the Terrorcons and I wanted to show him an episode with both those groups. We had fun, as you'd imagine. Since I watched that episode on Youtube, I was recommended this special from Cyberverse that had just dropped and I called my 6 year old to join us in watching it.
Watching these back to back, I saw a nice throughline in Transformers media. This Cyberverse special (and the show in general) was targeting the exact same audience the G1 show did at the time while being a new interpretation of the same characters, further cementing my belief that Cyberverse is as close to a G1 reboot as one could imagine when considering every sense of the what that could entail. It's just fun.
My kids were never bored during these 44 minutes, neither was I, and the show made good use of this longer run time. One thing I really liked was seeing the dynamics of what it meant to be a combiner. While combiners have been a part of Transformers lore for a long time, I think this is our best depiction of that concept on TV (or film) so far in both the visuals and the writing. In terms of visuals, the Cyberverse design team has come up with their own Transformation scheme for Volcanicus, which differs from the original design. It mixes in transformation elements from Super Sentai (Power Rangers) and other combining robots, making this transformation scheme stand out within Transformers, and we see them go from combined to uncombined mode to achieve different tasks in a more fluid way than we ever have. There is a lot of time given to the team understanding what it is to be a combiner and how to work together. As I wrote, the longer running time is used very well here to see the process.
In terms of villains, any fan of deep cut characters will have a blast. Hasbro seems really keen on a third faction these days. We saw that in the Earthrise cartoon and a similar group is seen in this special. Plus, a similarly themed third faction will also be the main antagonists in the next live action film. And there is some character overlap between the depiction of this faction across those 3 different media interpretations. I won't say more, especially since these new characters all get a fun introduction and I wouldn't want to spoil it. I do love that with these villains come some major stakes, which is something the Cyberverse series has been known to do (like Shockwave attempting to eradicate all life on earth in the first season just to get rid of any possible nuisance).
Also, I do like the sense of continuity the Cyberverse show has had. The season 3 finale left us with a major character death and this episode shows what dynamics changed within the hierarchy. As a Transformers fan, this is what stood out to me most in this episode, even if that wasn't the focus.
Last thing before I go, if you are a fan of Soundwave, this is a must watch. I always loved the connection he had with his cassettes and this special conveys that to us in a way I had not seen aside form the comics.
