Transformers: War for Cybertron

Recently I've been rewatching the G1 Transformers cartoons with my kids and while it didn't age quite as well as I imagined, it's still fun to watch, and my kids love it. Jump to 2020/2021 in cartoon land, or "animated series" and we have to make do with seasons consisting of 6 episodes each. Let's be honest here, these are basically expended commercials for the (admittedly wonderful) new WFC toy line. Going into Siege I was expected there would be a lot of action and story packed into the episodes, considering 6x24 minutes isn't a lot to work with time-wise. I was wrong. Characters seem half asleep, nothing much happens, even when Siege transitions into Earthrise. During both current seasons my kids asked me when the Transformers would stop talking (slooooooowly, so full of pretentious "meaning") and would actually transform. But no, the al forms are almost never seen, they're just robots, talking, depressingly talking, and running. It struck me that Bumblebee thinks it's a better idea to run away from a big threat in Earthrise rather than transform into a car and drive like hell. Then we see Sky Lynx and its alt form is never even shown. To make matters worse is that the voice acting seems to be done by actual robots; there's no emotion or any life in any of the dialogue. It's tiresome and weak. Even the blast effects during fighting are a miss; "plip plip" sounds without any oomph. It's just a boring show for adults that has no real feeling of stakes, doesn't reward investment, and offers no hook beyond seeing the original transformers combined in a few bare bones episodes, but they're not in disguise, and we hardly see them in action.

Transformers Siege is the first chapter in the War For Cybertron Trilogy. I have to start off and say that I was really hyped for this show. It's the first time we're getting a more mature tone with the franchise since TF Prime. I'm sad to say, that I was left underwhelmed.

Let's start with the positives. The animation is incredible. It's very nice to look at and Rooster Teeth did an incredible job.

The plot is very good, all be it, it's nothing new and we've seen it before. They made some minor tweaks to the story to make it more interesting and I think they did a good job. It keeps you going cause you're wondering what other things they ch she's to spice up the sorry, even though the ending is VERY predictable due to us already knowing about the other 2 chapters.

Megatron's voice actor by far is the best one in the show. They got same man who did Megatron in the Prime Wars Trilogy and again did a great job.

Unfortunately, for me, that's where the positives end.

The voice acting for me was not great. Optimus Prime just didn't work with me at all. I didn't feel like this was Optimus Prime. The voice actor just tried way too hard to be Peter Cullen and there were some scenes where his delivery was just poor. They should've gone with The Epic Voice Guy for Prime. I think he does a much better Prime. Shockwave's voice was bad. Simple as that. He's supposed to be this cold calculating monotone Decepticon, but he came off as a subpar version of Starscream. Soubdwave's voice wasn't good either. The effect of his iconic voice sounded so bad. Even TFP's Soundwave( that only spoke 4 words) had a MUCH better effect on his voice. But the guy doing the voice wasn't bad. Ironhide was not good either. Way too high pitch for an Autobot that's supposed to be old and gruntled.

Some character choices in this show weren't good either. I admire some of the risks they took, and some of them worked, but others I thought fell flat on their faces. Ratchet for me was the worst risk. In almost every incarnation( including the movies) Ratchet has always been one of Optimus Primes's closest friends/ally's. In this show, he almost hates him and what the Autobot cause represents. Bumblebee I thought was a good risk. At first, I hated him and thought he was arrogant and annoying, but he grew on me as the chapter progressed.

Overall, I was disappointed. This show SO FAR, is not better then TFP or Beast Wars. Both shows after their first season cliffhangers, I was pumped to watch what happens next. With this show, I don't have that feeling, and I'm sad about it. While the show has great animation and very good plot, I can't get behind some of the bad voice acting and certain character personalities they decided to go with. Hopefully, the next 2 chapters will prove me wrong and they'll come back swinging full force. But for now, as I stated multiple times, I'm disappointed.

6/10

Optimus is so weak compared to the movies and old series and not the same without Cullen doing the voice am disappointed

I loved this! Lots of the great characters from the original, minus the annoying and cheesy human characters. I loved the darker tone!

It would have been nice to see a bit more transforming, but at the same time, they're on their own planet so they wouldn't have as much of a need to be in disguise.

A lot of reviews have lamented the voice acting, I felt it was decent. It was great that Starscream sounded the same, but unfortunately, many didn't sound quite the same. I must admit, at the start I did think that Optimus sounded like Peter Cullen but as it progressed, not so much.

I've not seen any of the series after G1, so can't comment on them, but I feel this does the franchise justice.

I have watched every single transformer part even animated series but we never watched what happend on cybertron so this show is amazing the graphics and pixel are amazing to watch so its amazing