Toon Zone Talkback - "Transformers Animated" Season One is "Teen Titans" for the Giant Robot Set

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...made even less significant by the fact that Season 2 has already aired.

I've read a number of reviews on TFA S1 because it's always interesting to me to see what the general media and non-TF fans have to say about Transformers-related product.

And the one thing I keep seeing repeatedly is the mention of this S2 "sneak peek", and I promise you that out of some nearly two dozen reviews I've read, not one reviewer even seems aware that Season 2 has already aired. That's why it sucks so bad that Hasbro didn't bother to put decent bonus content on this, but worse that what they DID put on it is something viewers have already seen.

Now, a Season THREE preview... that would have at least been *something*.

I don't subscribe to this expanded cable service, but I'm told that Cartoon Network HD actually airs TFA in widescreen. So I'm confused on what the show's original format actually is. Can anyone clarify this?
 
I do believe it's widescreen from what I hear. A lot of kids shows these days are done in widescreen, but get a full-screen release because I guess companies think kids won't like black bars or something
 
You probably missed it because all 26 episodes aired together, so it felt like one long season. The first battle with Megatron was the end of the first season.
 
Despite the lack of extras, I'm thinking of actually picking this up. After watching a few episodes on Cartoon Network, I really started enjoying this series. The photo gallary of Season Two is useless though. :sweat:
 
It did confirm that Elite Guard Bumblebee was supposed to appear in an early draft of season 2, so that's one thing it's good for.
 
Hasbro & CN dropped the ball on this one. Then again they dropped the ball on Animated in general. Releasing the toys when season 2 was almost over, airing the seasons back to back instead of taking a break, the quality issues on the toys. The DVD release is just another brick in a messed up wall. The set is clearly targeted at kids, but Hasbro knows there's a massive fanbase comprised of older fans that liked Animated as well. They should've made a set with loads of extras made with the older fans in mind.
 
Personally, I think the photo gallery would be much better if it actually showed some production/development art for the series. But that's just me.
 
Well, that just makes a lame "extra" lamer, but the fact remains that even if the season HADN'T aired, the feature is just a bunch of images without any kind of context or information, and a lot of them are for characters that we KNOW are going to come back ("Ooh, big surprise, there's Bumblebee..."). Not much of a sneak peek. There are a few minor surprises:

like Starscream, presumably meaning that he isn't as dead as he looked at the end of "Megatron Rising"

and some characters who you might be able to guess if you have any awareness of the TF universe. I'm guessing that the 'bot who looks like he has headphones on is Jazz, which you could guess if you had seen the live-action movie.



I was going by what the DVD packaging said. It's possible that Cartoon Network shows TFA in matted widescreen, where they animate full-screen with the knowledge that they're going to cut the top and bottom off when it's broadcast widescreen. Wouldn't be the first time they did this -- Justice League did the same thing for a while.



I think that they're aiming for a lower price point to get more sales. More people will buy a $20 2-disc set with no extras than will buy a $25-$30 set with tons of them. I also don't think that they really concerned about landing the older fans, since they know they have them no matter what they do. In general, I'm not as demanding that every DVD has to have a totally awesome set of extras. I'd rather they just spent the time and money presenting the content well, and I'm more upset by lame extras that waste my time than not having them in the first place. Then again, I may just be getting conditioned by watching anime releases, which are getting fewer and fewer extras as time goes on.

That being said, Paramount doesn't seem to put that much effort into any DVD extras for their animated releases, so perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that they didn't make much effort for this one.

-- Ed
 
I'm finally glad that season 1 of this great show is finally on DVD. I'll try to get a copy, at Wal-Mart, after my doctor's appointment, on Wednesday.

Now, let's hope that this DVD set sells well, so that we can see season 2, on DVD.

P.S.- The Dinobots are awesome, especially Grimlock! :anime:
 
Technically, there were 29 episodes including the movie premiere. The premiere movie was always intended to introduce the TV series and was produced concurrently with the rest of the first season, and all official sources even number the episodes according to the movie being split into three separate eps as the first three episodes of the series.

Which is yet another reason this release is full of fail: the movie premiere should've been included as part of Season 1. As a few other reviewers have pointed out, if you haven't seen the movie premiere, the "season 1" release thrusts you into the series already in progress with very little setup or backstory. There are too many questions: How did the Autobots and Decepticons get to Earth? Why is Sari all chummy with the Autobots, and how did she come to own some all-powerful key-thingy? How the @#$% did Sumdac wind up with Megatron's head in his lab?

But the redeeming quality of this release is that the show is fun to watch. I have my own gripes with the show, but it has a childlike quality about it that reminds me of when I watched Transformers on TV as a kid. And it's a quality production too, regardless of repeated complaints about the style and designs. It's nothing like the original G1 thirty-minute toy commercials.

And I would imagine, noting the predictable nature of studios and distributors, that we'll see a "Complete Season 1" with the movie included along with some meager extras to throw the fans a bone, timed to release either to promote TFA Season 3 or to tie-in with the release of TF2 in May/June 2009. And a Blu-Ray release seems likely too.

And just so you know, Ed, I wasn't criticizing your review. I actually enjoyed it and pretty much agree with you on your assessment of the series. But it has bothered me a little that repeated reviews keep calling the S2 "sneak peek" a "bonus" or a "special" feature when it's so useless and pointless.
 
Egad! Season 1 is out already? Looks like another trip to Best Buy is in order for me.


And I'll second everything in the review. Couldn't agree more.

Michael who? Shia who? :D
 
No worries -- I definitely didn't take it that way. If I had ever managed to remember to watch the show when it was broadcast, I'd have probably made more of a point that the "extra" really isn't, unless your only exposure to the series is via the DVDs.



They did release the premiere episodes as a separate DVD, which I've normally seen on shelves for $10-$12 (and which I reviewed earlier). I can actually see the logic behind releasing the series this way, since the first disc is cheap enough to be an impulse buy (especially if it's on sale), and will hopefully hook people for the following season set (which isn't impulse buy cheap, but pretty easy to justify if you liked the premiere). If I dislike this approach (vs. the Teen Titans DVDs, which dumped entire seasons on budget-priced DVD sets), it's only because of the extra storage space I need for two DVD cases. However, I definitely prefer it to forcing people to double-dip for the premiere.



I have to admit that I don't get those complaints about this series at all. Character design is an art in animation all by itself, and the designs of TFA are far better than any of the other TF series I've caught over the years (which, admittedly, are not many). It's really easy to tell who fills what role in the Five Man Band just by looking at the cast, which is pretty much the definition of good character design and also makes it easier to pick up the series in the middle (and, for what it's worth, this is another thing that Teen Titans did equally well). I definitely like 'em better than the designs from the live-action movie, where I could barely make out the robots' faces a lot of the time.

-- Ed
 
Missed seeing that review. And it's funny that fans still argue that "it's NOT 3 separate episodes". Entertainment Rights actually shops the show around as "26 x 22 minute [episodes] plus a 70 minute special episode" and both Hasbro and Cartoon Network number the premiere movie as episodes 1-3.

If I hadn't gotten that DVD for my birthday in July, I would've passed on it knowing how predictable studios/distributors are. I usually wait to get pre-owned anyway--I don't like paying retail for anything if I can help it. And I'm still confident that eventually we'll see a complete season 1 box set.

I understood that too, and I might not have minded so much either if the premiere movie had been included on the S1 release. Otherwise, it's an incomplete season set.

Same here. I didn't care much for the design at first, but the show's been so entertaining it grew on me.
and after I saw the toys--completely on-model and cartoon-accurate, it silenced my gripe about the design.

Also, it's the anime styling haters that are the loudest to complain. Thankfully, they're in the minority.

And TFA continues to win the diehard "geeoners" over. I tend to lean that way, but the animation critic in me keeps me balanced. And even objectively, TFA has much better writing, direction, animation, and entertainment value than the original series had. The Season 2 finale alone was better than even better than whole SEASONS of G1.
 
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