So I saw Transformers: The Movie and thought it was the coolest

Watch all of season 3 (the post-movie one) and point and laugh at all the QUALITY, starting with cabbage Cybertron in the very first episode.

I just bought and watched it yesterday
YOU GOT THE TOUCH
YOU GOT THE POWWWWUUHH
>you were born too late to be an 80s kid
Pretty hilarious that the main writer still has no remorse about Optimus to this day

>>15094212

season 3 is the worst though.

>>15094227

Why would he regret writing one of the defining and most memorable and beloved moments of a franchise, and maybe even a generation? It's not exactly something held against him.

Not really, they didn't age well. Maybe the Japanese-only ones (headmasters/masterforce/victory) are slightly better because they have story arcs.

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>>15094048
try masterforce and victory

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I wish Ultra Magnus replaced prime, hot rod is too annoying for me.

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>>15094048
>I know it's known for having goofy 80's SatMorn style nonsense and bad animation.
It's pretty much all worth watching if you enjoy this kind of thing, including the Japanese series.

>>15095564

I was thinking the EXACT same thing. Ultra Magnus has the name, voice, and design to be a good Autobot leader.

Hotrod can work much better as the younger protagonist type character. But not the leader. His interactions with Kup were great.

Some of the standalone episodes are pretty "fun" but the original series as a whole hasn't aged well. I do think everyone owes it to themselves to at least see the original Pilot and maybe some of the standalones. I'm pretty fond of the episode where they go to Camelot myself.

>>15095564
I like Ultra Magnus in the post-G1 stuff, especially RiD 2001. He was the biggest dick and I loved it. Not sure if he's equally as a dick in Car Robots as that's still in my backlog.

Didn't feel like he had much character in the original movie, and I really didn't watch anything post the movie so it could just be a writing thing. Did have the toy which I just imagined was just Optimus because I was lacking the trailer so he was mostly just an Optimus repaint.

>>15095862
Always liked Hot Rod more than Rodimus, to be honest.
Might be why I'm actually considering going to see the new movie in the theater when it comes out.

>>15095862
>>15095896
G1 Magnus's character is that he's a trained by-the-book soldier. He works best when he knows what the SoP is or he has it delegated to him. He lacks flexibility, which is why he can't lead. He's like the Autobot version of Shockwave, basically.

But yeah, with his design being literally Optimus Prime in super armor, they kinda missed the mark given what they did with it.

>>15094048
The Return of Optimus Prime would boggle your mind. He just died in the movie!!!

>>15094842
>It's not exactly something held against him.
Parents at the time begged to differ

>>15096007
>>15095862
>>15095564
Fuck you guys, replacing Optimus with an "improved" Optimus would be Great Mazinger tier. Nobody wants that. Fuck Tetsuya. Sure Hotrods original design is bland shite compared to literally every redesign hes had, and he did get Optimus shot, but hes still better than UltraBoring Magnus

>>15096007
This, really. It's why I really like the Cyclonus-Ultra Magnus rivalry in Season 3, they both play similar roles in their respective armies; the level headed second in commands that do the day to day running of their armies and keep their leaders (or try to, in Cyclonus') case, focused on being proper leaders.

>>15094831
I think Season 3 gets a bad rap. Yeah, there are some really badly animated episodes (thank you AKOM!) but I did like how they tried to shake up the formula (with Rodimus and Galvatron) and went for more sci-fi plots rather than the Evil Decepticon plot of the week.

>>15096921

You'll find few of them with the last 2 decades.

>>15097034
Few parents?

>>15097034
Even today main characters dont die in western action cartoons aimed at the 5-12 demographic
Your predisposition towards Japanese cartoons has clouded your thinking

>>15094842
Optimus was a surrogate father to a lot of '80's kids.

>>15098851
>Having degenerate boomer parents who neglect you for their drugs so your only parental figure is a TV giant robot
I pity the Gen X people, I really do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLBkvp2yFsg

>>15098886
It's cool. Now we have robots and drugs. Best of both worlds.

>>15098886
I love my dad but even he would concede that being a giant robot would only make him better.

I recently got hooked on Transformers: Prime.

It's not a perfect show - I felt like Unicron was used poorly, but it was a fun ride.

>>15097038

Few parents complaining about Optimus dying.

>>15097060

I wasn't actually commenting on the general trend, only the specific instance and how people who viewed have felt for the last 20 odd years.

What's the best Transformers anime? I mean post G1, when they did their own shit in Japan.

>>15094048
Here's a collection of some of my favorites...

==Season 1==
-More than Meets the Eye 1/2/3.
-Divide and Conquer, where they visit Cybertron.
-S.O.S. Dinobots, where the Dinobots show up!
-Ultimate Doom 1/2/3
-Heavy Metal War

==Season 2==
-Autobot Spike, where Frankenstein happens.
-Traitor, where Cliffjumper is awesome.
-A Prime Problem
-Megatron's Master Plan 1/2
-The God Gambit
-Child's Play, where the transformers are an alien child's plaything.
-The Secret of Omega Supreme
-Prime Target, where The Deadliest Game happens with Optimus. And he says "Boobies."
-The Girl Who Loved Powerglide, my hands-down favorite episode, unironically. It's so stupid it becomes fun.
-The Key to Vector Sigma 1/2
-War Dawn, where we see Optimus before he was Optimus.
-Starscream's Brigade
-B.O.T., the worst episode ever.

==Season 3==
-The Five Faces of Darkness 1/2/3/4/5
-Dark Awakening, where Prime comes back as a fucking Zombie.
-Starscream's Ghost
-Carnage in C-Minor
-Only Human, where 4 Transformers are turned human by an elderly Cobra Commander.
-Grimlock's New Brain
-The Burden Hardest to Bear
-The Return of Optimus Prime 1/2, where he comes back.

>>15099243
The Brave series

>>15099351
For some mostly spoiler-free summaries of the episodes, check out the wiki:
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/List_of_The_Transformers_episodes
It's also filled with snark and loving "what the fuck was this" retrospective.

Meanwhile, I'd also recommend checking out...
Transformers Masterforce, where Japan decided to have humans become Transformers. Optimus Prime's new body becomes the property of a Japanese trucker named Ginrai. Who is an Americanophile, and about as awesome as that sounds.
Masterforce is technically in a different continuity from the US G1, but it's also so disconnected from what came before that it doesn't matter much.

Beast Wars, if you don't mind hilarious 1990s high-budget CGI. The show begins rough, but has some great character development with a smaller cast, a fantastic cast of characters, a great Megatron... and Seasons 2 and 3 are filled with G1 references.
You can ignore Beast Machines if you want, though.

Robots in Disguise isn't bad, but is a Saban-dubbed Transformers anime from 2000. Take it or leave it, the show isn't utterly horrible. It's also got a ton of G1 references, but a lot of the characters are literally ripped from G1 toys.

Armada is of mixed quality, but is still decent. Mini-cons are the collectible of the show, and Starscream is a stand-out good character. Optimus and Megatron return from Beast Wars (in voice alone), and the show has a solid ending.
Feel free to ignore the horror of Energon and the meh of Cybertron.

Animated is utterly awesome, although the animation style takes some getting used to. Optimus Prime is a newbie, as are the other Autobots, and it takes time to make good Human characters and make things unique. Also, Optimus is voice by Beast Wars' Megatron for extra hilarity.

Prime is pure awesome. It features the return of the classic Prime and Megatron voices, and the cast of voices and characters are great.
The current sequel, Robots in Disguise, is a less-serious sequel that's still fun.

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>>15094048
on the comics side of things I'd recommend the relatively recent Transformers VS GI Joe series that IDW put out

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>>15099370
If you don't mind reading, there's also...

Transformers: Shattered Glass
tl;dr: Cliffjumper falls into a bizarro universe where the Deceopticons are lead by the honorable and heroic Megatron against the marauding forces of the despotic and insane Optimus Prime's Autobots. It comes in the flavor of convention-exclusive comics, which play the mirror universe angle straight, and prose stories that poke fun at the entire franchise. It features things like Soundwave being a righteous surfer dude, who is knighted by The Queen, Starscream being honest and loyal, Hot Rod being a Goodfellas knockoff, Grimlock being intelligent, and Cliffjumper being confused as fuck.

IDW's Transformers books are great... if you don't mind reading over a decade's worth of stories to get the whole stories. Or just pick through the good stuff, like More than Meets the Eye.

Any iteration of GI Joe vs Transformers tends to be great as well, or at least overly amusing.

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>>15099397
Oh, also forgot to mention... Japanese G1 is fucked up in a lot of ways.

Just ignore the fact that Wheeljack is somehow alive again, despite the fact that he died in the movie. Yes, the movie is canon in Japan's G1. They eventually came up with a massive hand-wave involving dimensional travel, the also-not-dead Prowl, and a random Matchbox-car-scale Transformer from 2001 named "Prowl II."
It makes no sense, and stems from the fact that Japan didn't get the movie for 4 years, and made Season 3 all about the mystery of "what happened to Optimus Prime."

Spoiler alert for Japanese G1: He died.

Then again, Japanese G1 also features Kiss Players, the most "goddamnit Japan" thing ever. This image is the most worksafe thing I could find in a few minutes.
Goddamnit Japan.

>>15096921
Not to mention for a lot of kids that watched it, it was a watershed moment where they realised even if you were a good guy, you could still die

Add to that some kids had never had to, as yet; consider topics like mortality and the fact for some kids Optimus was a hero they aspired to be..

..Parents had a fair few reasons to complain - especially as unless they read a spoilered review, chances were when it came to the cinema/vhs, they had no clue of the content

>>15099485
>Just ignore the fact that Wheeljack is somehow alive again, despite the fact that he died in the movie
I'm cool with this, Wheeljack was fun.

>>15099243
Transformers anime is basically all shit, the nips can't into it because they only like piloted bots.

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>>15100902

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>>15100902
>>the nips can't into it because they only like piloted bots.

...while this feels like bait (after all, the American shows have been successful too), I have to admit there's a bit of a point here.

I can't help but notice that most of the Japanese-only Transformers stuff is either directed towards a younger audience, or alters the old Transformers formula towards more humans (or smaller robots working with bigger bodies)... or it really is directed towards the older fanbase with bizarre results.
Budget allocation is also definitely different, angled more towards good-looking stock footage more than creative transformations.

Headmasters and Victory skew towards the "smaller robots that interact with humans" example, while Masterforce decided to just make Humans into Transformers. The Unicron Trilogy and Car Robots/Robots in Disguise just has more humans involved, though, with the latter requiring faith from humans for the Autobots to be effective.

Meanwhile, the entirety of Beast Wars and the Japanese-only spinoffs literally skew to younger audiences and absurd humor.

It's not all bad, though. Masterforce was pretty awesome. And hey, at least none of the Japan-created TF shows have been genuinely that horrible outside of the Unicron Trilogy.

Really, the worse of Japanese Transformers is the prose stuff, Kiss Players, and the sheer mind-boggling timeline that is Japanese G1.
The image to the left is from 2007, and it's gotten worse since then.

>>15101012
The only one of the Unicron Trilogy that I'd call genuinely bad is Energon/Superlink. It had issues all over, ranging from plotting to issues with animation.

Both Armada/Micron Legend and Cybertron/Galaxy Force I feel like are decent enough shows, with issues. All three shows had issues with the English script but I feel Armada got the brunt of it. The show itself? It's okay once it gets past the Minicon collectathon arcs.

Cybetron/Galaxy Force though? Once you get past the intro arcs where literally nothing happens and its basically character introductions, I found it to be really damn good if you treat it entirely disconnected from the other shows, aside from the usage of Unicron. At the very least, it was fun.

It didn't make combining lame like Energon/Superlink did, at the very least.

>>15101038
It helps that Cybertron/GF has one of the best Starscreams.

>>15094831
Not really