![]() Author has written 9 stories for Maximum Ride, Transformers/Beast Wars, Teen Titans, Harry Potter, Danny Phantom, Star Vs. The Forces of Evil, Starship Troopers, Black★Rock Shooter, Card Captor Sakura, RWBY, and Familiar of Zero. Been around for a few years, love anime and manga. List of toons that should be brought back (may add more later): 1. Transformers Animated 2. My Life as a Teenage Robot 3. The Life and Times of Juniper Lee Favorite book of all time: Fledgling: a Novel Favorite Anime of all time: Cardcaptor Sakura Currently working on: Rewrite of Family (I totally OCC'd Max)*Cancelled* Transformers Animated Season Four (I refuse to accept that it ends in a parade!!! Besides, Sari is an amazing character that was absolutely wasted!) Junipper Lee (Cartoon Network NEEDS a refresher course on how to end a series. Does June ever get to leave Orchid Bay or is she trapped there until she grows old and gray? WE DON'T KNOW!!!) Otherself (Black Rock Shooter and Teen Titans Crossover) Sins of The Father (Cardcaptor Sakura and Harry Potter crossover) A Question of Ethics (scientist!Sari tries to build more of her race, gets sent to Remnant instead.) TF Animated was leaps and bounds over TF Prime. For starters, TFP gets dark way too quickly. It was like the last Harry Potter movie, all action, all sorrow, no build up. TFA starts colorful and cheerful long before Ratchet starts dismantling Lockdown. It’s difficult to make a fair assessment because of how different they are, but even with the “Grey Autobots” that TFP became so famous for, they’re still pretty darn whitewashed simply because of one fact. The Autobots in TFA are NOT the good guys. I’m not talking about Team Optimus, whose members are mostly young and fairly naive, I mean Autobots in general. The first clue is the way they treat their civilians. In TFP, hell in every other TF timeline, the soldiers of a dying race brand themselves to show off their faction. What possible purpose could they have to brand their civilians in peacetime? Another point is that they obviously have no issues experimenting on protoforms. It could be argued that protoforms aren’t actually alive, but even embryo experimentation is controversial among us, and that’s with laws preventing scientists from letting them carry to term. The Autobots in TFA have no issues with creating Omega Supreme (who was essentially a newborn) and throw him head-first into war, a move that disgusted Ratchet. Later, they experimented not on protoforms but actual children to create Jetfire and Jetstorm. The Decepticon Registration Act is also suspect, mainly because of what we already know how that can go, but it could be argued that they’re simply keeping an eye on potentially problematic individuals. Ultra Magnus and the Autobot Council also have no issues with lying to their citizens to avoid issues, although it could be argued that mass panic would’ve caused more damage. All in all, the Autobot Commonwealth is highly opaque and of questionable morality. Now let’s move on to the characters. I’m not a fan of most Optimus Primes. People often see some form of great leader trying to resurrect his dead home, while forgetting that Cybertron’s death is partially his fault. In TFP he’s too idealistic, unwilling to yield to Megatron in order to maintain a moral high ground. The result? Cybertron is dead. TFA Optimus at least had the excuse that he was fairly young. It was also a lot more interesting to watch him grow into a leader, rather than the unquestionable demigod reincarnation that was his TFP counterpart. Megatron should also be called into question. TFA Megatron is essentially TFP Optimus Prime with a superiority complex. He’s a great fighter and a better speaker. For all his flaws, most of his men appear to be genuinely loyal to him instead of simply being ruled through fear like his TFP counterpart. I won’t delve too much into that particular subject since TFP Megatron might’ve been different before the war, but he simply seems to be too hot-headed for anyone to follow him otherwise. The other Autobots are also a lot more interesting. TFA Bulkhead was essentially DaVinci with a wrecking ball whereas TFP Bulkhead was nothing more than a block-headed soldier, albeit a caring one. TFA Bumblebee was in many ways inferior to his battle-hardened TFP counterpart, but it shows that he’s still somewhat naive in the way he views the world, making it difficult to make a proper comparison. We didn’t see enough of TFA Arcee to compare her to TFP Arcee, but it was interesting to get a few hints of what TFA Arcee was before the war, whereas we only saw post-war TFP Arcee. Prowl was fairly similar to TFP Arcee, but a proper TFP and TFA Ratchet are strikingly similar to each other due to their similar backgrounds, the key difference being that TFA Ratchet is recovering from the War whereas TFP Ratchet is still in the thick of it. Both are extremely interesting characters, with TFP Ratchet being a caring and self-sacrificing medic and TFA Ratchet being the wise grandfather of the group. Finally we have deal-breaker of any Transformers series, the human sidekicks. It’s somewhat difficult to compare them for many reasons. For starters Jack, Raf, and Miko seem to be segmented versions of Sari 2.0. Jack got her drive and height, Miko got her personality, and Raf got her talent with machinery (and unsolved backstory, WHY does he understand Bumblebee!?). Even though she was a bit of a brat in the beginning, people often forget that she was the eight-year-old daughter of one of the world’s most powerful, wealthy, and influential people. A few years ago she’d have been the classic queen-bitch character from that Lindsey Lohan movie (Bad Girls, I think). After upgrading, she matured a fair bit and admittedly became a bit of a McGuffin (not a Mary Sue, there’s a difference). Sari ultimately seems to have a hard time getting human society and appears to be awkward with people that aren’t made of metal. That isn’t to say that Jack, Raf, and Miko aren’t interesting by their own right. Raf was more of a Gary Stu than Sari (12yo kid that can outhack Soundwave? Really?) but was still an innocent view to the war, a true friend that Bumblebee desperately needed. Miko was an sheltered and insecure girl that did her best to hide it by being as loud as humanly possible, only showing her true self to her closest friends. Jack was a responsible young man that stumbled into a mess way bigger than himself, yet pulled through every challenge presented (it was a bit much to compare him to Optimus though). Moving on to the adults, both Fowler and Fanzone showed some serious gut (literally and figuratively) in their respective series. Fowler stood through torture that few would’ve survived through and Fanzone managed to down foes that the Autobots couldn’t. June and Isaac are only comparable to each other in that they’re both parents. June is fairly protective of her son and a smidge overbearing at times, yet she shows multiple times that even Decepticons aren’t much of a match. Isaac is caring yet absent minded, occasionally neglectful, and a bit of a workaholic. He’s also a bit too trusting, making me wonder how he got as far as he did with Sumdac Systems. The human villains are somewhat cheap in both series, but MECH (what does that even stand for?) has the disadvantage of being made up of soldiers instead of people. The one character that we see as a person immediately betrayed his men to join a group that wanted him dead. SUV showed that they could at least be friendly with each other. In both cases, they showed that humans could be threats to the giant alien robots. However, where MECH had to attack in groups and struggle, Professor Princess alone could take them on, Nanosec and Angry Archer kept them on their toes, SloMo paralyzed the whole team in a single shot, and Meltdown could torture Dinobots into submission. I’m not sure the TFP team could take them on, though I don’t think TFA would fare that well against MECH either. |