I finally found the episodes online to watch:
Episode 1, "Fractured" -
https://vk.com/video-56732771_456239800Episode 2, "Memory" -
https://vk.com/video-56732771_456239801Now that I've seen them... Not bad. I like that there appears to be a serialized ongoing narrative that carries over from episode to episode, as I was expecting this to be like most other 11-minute shows on Cartoon Network that usually tend to be done-in-one standalone stories, but this instead seems to have nixed that formula.
It does seem to draw heavy inspiration from the backstory of the Aligned media, as though it's drawing influence from the Binder of Revelation despite obviously not being an Aligned show. The AllSpark was launched into space a long time ago, Optimus Prime leads a team of Autobots aboard the Ark to go find it, some other Autobots stay behind to continue defending Cybertron from the Decepticons while the Ark crew is gone, there's a space bridge in orbit above Earth, and more. Plus Windblade's Cityspeaker ordeal from IDW.
The Decepticon voice acting is a bit awkward. It's gonna take some getting used to, but the more we get to hear from them, the more their acting may improve over time. Also, the female purple Seeker is named Nova Storm.
Of course, Bumblebee's radio speech is the elephant in the room, with his natural voice an indisputable breath if fresh air by comparison. However, I don't feel that his radio speech is as bad as it could have been. As it's all being done by one person, Jeremy Levy, I liken his performance to those of Robin Williams and Dan Castellaneta back when they each voiced the Genie from Aladdin, in that they each had to do a ton of vocal impressions and improv work to really sell their performances as the Genie. Jeremy Levy has to basically do the same for Bumblebee's radio speech. The big difference in this case is just that, simply put, Levy is not Williams or Castellaneta. He does not have either their magnetic charm or their star iconography. People would applaud at Williams and Castellaneta for how they each played the Genie even in moments where the Genie fell flat because people knew who Robin Williams and Dan Castellaneta were and already liked them as they were even before being cast into that role. Jeremy Levy, meanwhile, is a relatively new name to the acting world, so he's fighting an uphill battle from the get-go with having to do all of these impressions and make them not only work but also likable and entertaining. Unhelpful in this task is how radio-speech Bumblebee is already looked down upon by the fandom as a tired old gimmick that many have felt has overstayed its welcome, so it was a doomed position for Levy from the start as far as those critical of the radio-speech quirk in and of itself were concerned. Nevertheless, I feel that he served his role well enough to pull it off to the best of his abilities. It's clear that the gimmick is here to stay, but as Episode 2 has shown, it is not the sole form of communication that we will be receiving in this show. So those still groaning over it will at least have the normal talking parts of this show to look forward to.
With that said, for me, the worst this about this show has got to be the eyes, especially Windblade's. The eyes are just so big and yet so blankly devoid of any details that they just look so lifeless and inexpressive. If they didn't want to give anyone pupils and irises to give the eyes more expression like we've seen in so many other series, what they should have done was make the eyes much smaller like how those of the characters from the G1 cartoons, JBW cartoons, Car Robots, and the Unicron Trilogy cartoons were.
Overall, this was a decent first outing for the series. It's got me intrigued enough to see where it'll keep going and for how long.
