Three things redeem Cybertron somewhat, the character of Megatron, the use of the Transformers, robots in disguise line in the theme song and the dynamic voice acting of Garry Chalk and David Kaye. Apart from them, the voice work is a mix of over-compensating, uninterested under-playing and inexplicably weird accents, sad seeing as from their other work there are some talented voice actors here. The characters are not very interesting, in fact the human characters are very annoying(not exactly old news though, they were in Armada- this show is marginally better than that, Armada was a mess- and Energon). Starscream has always been an interesting character but he's bland here, and the writers clearly had no idea what to do with Scourge(shame he had potential) he is not that fearsome and the constant changing of sides got confusing and you are like make up your mind already. The animation is very little improvement either, the traditional cell animation is rather flat and sloppy and the CGI is over-saturated. Not only that, the mouth movements of the characters are far too Nutcracker-like which was very distracting, and the Transformation sequences are all flash and no subtlety. The theme song has one good line which is gone to waste by a generic hip-hop-styled tune with inane lyrics that gives the music a dated feel. The rest of the music is dull and forgettable, lacking expression or atmosphere. The dialogue is the very meaning of clunky, the light-hearted moments veer on awkwardly goofy and the more intense moments almost too grim and over-serious. It also seemed really stilted. The basic story is a good idea that is sadly also too thin structurally and too padded. The story lines just don't engage for that reason, as well as the uncompelling dialogue and characters and lack of tension and excitement in the action sequences. To conclude, Cybertron is the best of the Transformers franchise's Unicron Trilogy but that doesn't say much, it really did disappoint hugely and really not one of the franchise's finest hours. 4/10 Bethany Cox
