Amph The Transformers. More than meets the eye!

OK, now I'm mildly curious. Enough to maybe add that to Netflix.
What is the title of this new series?

There are so many crappy anime cartoons like Energon that I'd like to just skip to something good.

 

The series' full name is Transformers Prime I believe. It really is quite good, not quite as good as Beast Wars, but one of the better ones in years. Much better than just about any of the Japanese ones (different culture aside, they just dragged on, and the... inconsistent dubbing didn't help either, although most of the voice actors did try their best).

Not sure any DVDs are out yet though, maybe the initial mini-series, but not sure if anything else has been released yet (speaking of that, has Animated season 3 ever been released?). Although the first Prime episode does happen to be free on Itunes right now and the rest of the episodes are available there. The series is quite good, although I don't love every episode, but its still pretty good (having Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime does help a lot), although a lot of Transformers fiction these days are reusing iconic lines a bit too much ("One shall stand, one shall fall" is epic, but it loses impact when its used too much).

I do highly recommend War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron sure looks awesome already with Grimlock shown. War for Cybertron is not only a good Transformers game (a bit of a rarity unfortunately) it has a decent story and plenty of really cool designs and tons of references.

 

This show is way better than any of the Japanese translated shows but that doesn't really say much about it. I'd go as far as to say ever Transformers show or movie, including the Michael Bay films is better than them.

I think the show is one of the best one's in years. I'd rate it above Transformers Animated but below Beast Wars. i think the one thing that I loved the most about it was that it was willing to take itself to sufficiently serious levels to stand out.

Unfortunately one of the show's biggest flaws seems to feel more and more tiresome as the show goes on: The human characters. They have too much screen-time by far. It seems more egregious when you realize this is time that could be better spent on the Decepticons or something. I think the problem with them is that there actually aren't enough. The show actually starts with Starscream being pretty much the only one. Megatron shows up at the end of the first episode and while they've since added 3 more to their ranks they really took their time getting here. For the longest time it was just Megatron, Starscream and an army of generic drones. According to wikipedia they are named "Vehicons" after the sparkless drones from Beast Machines, but they are not named such in the show itself and they appear to actually be sapient and have the vaguest hints of personalities, but we never see it.

The humans themselves are sort of a mixed bag. If it was just Jack and Raphael, they might almost be tolerable, even if they'd still be a drag. But Miko unfortunately is the most annoying character in the show by a wide margin, in my opinion. In fact I think she may well be up there with the most annoying Transformers characters of all time, which is a list which I've come to realize has become tragically long over the years. What's weird about Miko is that she's becoming more and more of a liability. She constantly defies the Autobots and puts herself and others in danger over and over and never learns her lesson. This isn't even one of those things where the young kid defies orders and causes problems but somehow saves the day with their actions.

That and her endless lame jokes and inability to be act at all serious in almost every situation grate on my nerves the more the season drags on. Her threat to Megatron just made me role my eyes in One Shall Rise Part 2.

Speaking of the second part of the Finale. It was still very interesting. The alliance with Megatron was actually rather good work from him because after the last episode, his audience with Unicron somehow managed to render him completely irrelevant in the span of one scene. It was interesting seeing him take the fight to Unicron, at one point smashing one of his giant avatars into pieces face first. It does strike me as a little odd that they would bother having Megatron grovel before Unicron when they were only going to have to fight against him anyway. It's funny actually because this is essentially the exact reverse dynamic between Megatron and Unicron from G-1. I wonder if they were going for an intentional irony there.

Oh and as far as War for Cybertron goes. It's a fun game for what it is (the plot isn't exactly massively complicated though), but from a practical sense it isn't really all that similar to Transformers Prime. The main thing that stands out to me is that they both have Dark Energon, and it has different origin in o the game and the show. I think the show actually defines and utilizes the concetp a little better. Honestly, Prime reminds more of what Michael Bay's movies might have been in they had bothered to make good.

 

I think the Third Season of Beast Wars was actually pretty weak compared to Season Two. Several of the characters were simplified or marginalized and some of their longstanding arcs ended up having a botched ending. And Season 1 wasn't too bad either overall. Frankly I think the characters (mostly) stand out much more than in Prime.

As far as Miko goes, there's being fearless and then there's being insane. At one point Miko appeared completely unconcerned about her immanent death. In another she was directly responsible for Bulkhead ending up comatose because she stupidly took him outside while Optimus was negotiating with Megatron for a way to save him. This not only resulted in them both being ambushed by Decepticons but tipped the Autobots hands, resulting in Megatron abandoning the negotiation and Prime losing what he needed.

 

I think I just like Beast Wars more as it had a better set-up. Like here we have Optimus Prime and only a few soldiers with him, yet the Decepticons have a basically endless army of Vehicons, yet we know there are other Autobots out there... who can just come visit and leave as they please. Sure, Vehicons go down fast, but it just seems unbalanced. At least in Beast Machines they were said to be just drones, so endless army of them makes sense, but I know there were a few instances of them speaking up in Prime, or at least being addressed as troops, like when Starscream declared himself the Emperor of Destruction and the Vehicons weren't convinced.

And yeah, I hate Miko. She's probably one of my least favorite human characters in the franchise. Her personality and craziness is bad enough, what's worse is that she always gets away with anything. Almost every single time, she might get scolded, yet next episode she runs off through the ground bridge to imminent danger, distracting Bulkhead. And nothing bad ever happens to her. There are a few close calls, but compare that to Raf and Jack, she always gets off easy. Its not quite as bad as the live action movies, but the writers clearly favor her since she always gets off, whereas Raf and Jack sometimes feel guilty. Like that mine episode, she just goes running off and they let her, yet of course its Jack who runs into Megatron twice instead of her. Her obnoxious attitude certainly doesn't help either. Of course, letting that many young human kids hang around the base forever is already stretching incredulity. Although aside from Raf's age, he seems too smart too sometimes.

For me Beast Wars just had an excellent cast of characters and in this series, I just get tired of how the bad guys always just get to run off. It was bad in Beast Wars, like how in some episodes all the Predacons were knocked out and apparently the Maximals don't bother to lock up their stasis-locked pieces, but here the Decepticons have a giant warship while the Autobots have... an old army base. Or its partially just personal preference as I liked the Beast Wars cast of characters a lot. Although I agree season 3 was a bit weaker (being somewhat short didn't help either).

At least Sari had a grand destiny involved and she did screw up and suffer a decent amount too, especially after she upgraded herself. Or at least Optimus scolded Sari too. Here, even after Miko pulls some crazy stunt, by the end of the episode everyone just goes "aw, she's safe". Bulkhead especially, but everyone else to some extent too.

Of course Beast Wars also set up a lot of the current lore (Sparks for instance), but Prime is drawing on a lot of stuff established after Beast Wars. I haven't seen the season finale yet, but from what I've read the backstory between Optimus Prime and Megatron somewhat lines up with say the first half of the Exodus novel, although the novel, game and cartoon storylines, despite sharing some elements almost definitely do not exist in the same continuity, despite of their big talk of one big "Aligned" continuity.

Dark energon is always evil, although I think exodus might be the most detailed, but it probably plays the biggest role here, but WfC, being a visual video game, just looks epic. Speaking of video games, the first magazine preview of Fall of Cyberton is out and there are plenty of aweosme reveals in it. Like playable Grimlock and Bruticus I believe, and Metroplex will appear. Now if only they can have a Trypticon and Metroplex fight, sadly we never got to see Trypticon and Omega Supreme clash in-game, not counting the credits and the fact that Omega Supreme isn't quite in the same league as Trypticon, which is why Metroplex is more appropriate.

 

Bruticus? You mean the combiner all the Combaticons form? THAT WOULD BE AWESOME. We've never gotten to control a combiner before.

 

Yeah I thought that was a pretty good finale. Interesting twist at the end. I don't think that specific idea has been explored before. Though I have to find it a little hilarious that Orion Pax has the exact same voice as Optimus Prime, even when he was just clerk. I guess Orion went around his everyday life sounding like he had epic tasks to accomplish.

I also liked the Megatron/Optimus team up and Megatron's line about being commanded by no-one. Although I honestly was kind of hoping they'd be busting out the old "I belong to NOBODY" one. I also have to question why they went with Megatron grovelling before Unicron at first. It still kind of undermines his rebellion when it comes across like being commanded by nobody was still his second choice to being Unicron's herald. I'm still not sure what the implication was there. Was his alliance with the Autobots because Unicron rebuffed him or was his kneeling before Unicron because of the Dark Energon he infused himself with? If so that seems odd because since Unicron didn't want his servitude, it sort of strange to think that Megatron would want it if he was hearing his thoughts.

Anyway, as far as Cybertron's back-story goes I get the feeling much of this show's one is closest to Hasbro's "official" take on the subject. It's changed a lot over the years. The nature of a "Prime" for example seems to change from show to show. I remember the notion of the 13 original transformers, but how long have they been considered the 13 original Primes? Optimus is referring to as the Last of the Primes but didn't the idea used to be that there was always only one Prime at a time?

 

IDW's continuity added Nominus Prime recently. He was a bit of a jerk though, his apartheid policy is what led to Megatron becoming Megatron. IDW's continuity seems to only have Optimus be the only decent Prime of the lot. And from what I've heard their going to kill him off, surprise surprise, at the conclusion of their big story arc this year. Guess Rodimus will finally get to be a Prime again. At least for a year, until the bring Optimus back. And a year is still generous.

 

Yeah you are correct. Megatron started out as a political activist against the apartheid policies of Nominus Prime, and he wrote a manifesto about peaceful protests and what not. Nominus had Megatron arrested and an Autobot Guard beat the crap out of him and told him that he had power to do whatever he wanted to him and that incident showed Megatron that the only way things would ever change would be with force. Megatron was then exiled to a mining station where Megatron Origins happened.

 

You know, I'm not specifically against adding a little moral ambiguity to the history of Cybertron, but that actually almost sounds like it's a bit excessive. That kind of sounds like the Autobots are the the straight up bad guys at first.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I kinda miss the older concepts for the origin of Megatron, Prime and the Great War from the original cartoon. It may have been a much simpler than most of the more recent incarnations but I thought story in War Dawn was one of the show's best episodes. In fact I think whenever the show touched on the history of Cybertron, they tended to do a good job because they seemed to treat that part of their mythology with a great deal of seriousness.

I guess it may depend on the type of character one think of Megatron as being, but I thought added something to his malevolence that he was the one who ended Cybertron's peaceful Golden Age because of his hunger for power and hatred of the Autobots.

 

Glancing at TFWiki, there's a quote from Vector Prime that all of the original 13 were Primes... but at least two (going by the recent Exiles book) aren't "something Prime", although there's Prima but as the leader he's special. But it depends on Hasbro's mood any particular year, and maybe Alpha Trion will have an actual "Prime" name revealed someday. Even the Fallen has a Prime name, now revealed/retconned to be the origin of Megatron's name in some continuities (like the Exodus book).

In most continuities Prime just means leader of the Autobots. In some of the bigger ones, Prime also means almost holy leader, descendant of the original Primes, etc. Heck, even in the original G1 cartoon there's a certain lineage of Primes eventually, at least based on who carried the Matrix of Leadership, with the Matrix being .

And I think it was Sentinel Prime in the Megatron backstory, not Nominus. Although IDW was also building up a corrupt Cybertronian society, and back during the -tion mini-series era, the Autobots weren't all that great. Still better than the Decepticons, but lots of shades of grey sometimes. Didn't particularly care for it, but at least it sorta had a conclusion (better than the unfinished Dreamwave series).

I prefer Megatron as just a villain, but there's a certain tragedy to the histories where Megatron starts out with good intentions but ends up becoming far worse than the previous government. Not sure I ever got around to watching War Dawn, all well, I'll watch it someday, although I know what happened to it. Although my favorite history episode was probably the Omega Supreme one. Not because of its history (which was somewhat screwy), but seeing Omega Supreme send the Constructicons running for their lives.

Optimus Primes are usually pretty good, there have been the occasional Rodimus Prime, Sentinel Primes are usually jerks, as seen most recently in the last live action movie (either that or they failed to stop Megatron), and a couple of other Primes usually precede Optimus in some continuities (Sentinel Prime directly in some continuities). And of course in IDW they had Nova Prime, and Nemesis Prime is used occasionally for an evil Prime. Although Optimus is of course the most common one, although his pre-Prime name differs.

 

No you all are right. Megatron under Nominus Prime was imprisoned and then sent off to a mining facility. Sentinel Prime then took over and Megatron Origins happened. Sorry if I caused any confusion. Under Nominus Megatron realized that only force and violence will change Cybertronian society, under Sentinel he put that philosophy into practice.

I believe the IDW Prime line goes something like this: Nova Prime - Nominus Prime - Sentinel Prime - Zeta Prime - Optimus Prime - Rodimus Prime. Though Rodimus is a Prime alongside Optimus so there are 2 now.

 

Heh, yeah ironically Rodimus and Optimus are fighting Galvatron and his army right now in the current storyline, Megatron even surrendered so they can deal with Galvatron. And Optimus is supposed to sacrifice himself and die at the end of it so Rodimus will be sole leader.

 

well, of course. Can't have a franchise without Prime killing himself!

Also, few things kill Prime for me-human interaction and Miko.

Miko... I HATE her. She is everything wrong with human characters.

Also, gimme the EDC over NEST or whatever they've got in Prime-which is nothing! Seriously, when G1 does the best human/Autobot relations in the franchise, that says something. What, not sure, but something!

 

Wow, actually being able to see the robots...
That alone makes that trailing about a billion times better than the Bay crap.

Can we hire that studio to make the next movies?

 

Exactly. Far superior to Bay crap.