Aside from all the promising Transformers news surfacing from the recent Botcon 2009 event in Pasadena, it was sad to learn proper confirmation that Transformers: Animated won’t be continuing. As much as I liked the Season 3 finale, I was left unsatisfied with an improper sense of disclosure. Surely a true finale episode should have been longer to have made room for the things to tie up in the show. The Dinobots, Constructicons and Wreck Gar are still roaming the Earth (where Prowl should have been buried) as well as a few other things still unresolved. For me it was like a very bad goodbye and a rushed ending for endings sake. Perhaps I am wrong and that the episode was indeed made longer, but cut for airtime reasons. The episode certainly did feel like it was cut. Time will tell come the DVD release.
I liked Animated a lot! It looked different to everything else and was a breath of fresh air after 3-4 years of badly translated japanimation in the forms of Armada, Energon and Cybertron. The best thing of all was that it was a Transformers text that both old and young fans could engage with. For the young fan it had the cartoony designs, whacky approach and colour; whilst the older audience could mark out at the several nods to past transformers incarnations and 80’s voice actors taking part (Judd Neilson, Weird Al Yankovic, Susan Blu etc). Beyond looking at the surface of the image, Transformers: Animated was uber-fan-friendly!
During its tenure I couldn’t help but feel in just under a year Animated was rushed. Season 1 and 2 being aired back to back probably wasn’t a smart move on Cartoon Network’s part. I think maybe things should have been spread out more.
Ideally Animated could have carried on for another year and another couple of seasons. So much potential was there via 25 years worth of source material to draw from. I’d have even welcomed the umpteenth return of Unicron, especially if the story was good. The remediated source material itself wasn’t just a drawing factor, but original characters like Bulkhead, Slipstream and Lugnut as well as a few likable support cast humans were all great too. On top of that, the interesting new origins for characters like Blackarachnia/Elita-1 and The Dinobots were brilliant! I could tell that some of the ideas must been influenced from Marty Isenberg’s involvement with the show, as he did similar things with the 2003 TMNT toon.
Transformers: Animated. It was fun whilst it lasted.
I hope the next Transformers show can be better; not just as a show, but also how the show is handled.
