“Transformers” was one of the many 80s cartoons that I unfortunately was never exposed to during my childhood. Recently I did try watching some of those cartoons but got really bored of them very quickly and couldn’t go beyond a few episodes. I was expecting the same thing to happen with “Transformers” but was very happy to have been proven wrong! Here are my views:
Story:
Using an opening narration to sum up the history and core of the cartoon in a few seconds was a great idea. It helps to cut straight to the chase… literally! I also like how the two warring factions quickly end up on earth. This helps the viewers to focus more on the new characters since they are in familiar surroundings, rather than having to absorb an alien environment as well.
The pacing of the story is impressively fast for an 80s cartoon. Instead of dragging on and on, the story movies swiftly from one incident to the next.
There was plenty of “action” (I don’t want to use the word violence as it may be viewed in a negative light). Because the characters were inorganic machines, the filmmakers were able to sneak by the censors and put in a lot of injuries, gunshots and fights, something which would not have been possible with human characters.
The plot twist near the end, while not shocking, was novel enough to keep the proceedings interesting.
Voice acting:
The choice of voice actors was very apt. All the robots, despite some being voiced by the same actor, had easily distinguishable voices. The slight modification to some of the voices really gave the “mechanical” quality to them.
Characterization:
I enjoyed the fact that the villains are depicted (though not explicitly) as being slightly stronger/more powerful than the heroes. This keeps the battle between the two interesting. Otherwise it would end up being a one-sided fight.
The light-hearted, snappy and witty dialogue is a good way to lighten the overall tone of the show. I’m glad the makers didn’t go for the more common pretentious and grandiose dialogues like other cartoons of the era.
Tthe heroic characters were shown to have flaws (especially impetuousness) a couple of times. Even Prime let his anger get to him and did something rash. In all events, the outcome was usually bad, resulting in injury to the character himself or his friend. Such “lessons” were seamlessly integrated into the story and not made overly preachy, which was very refreshing to see.
The characters using their brains more than pure brute strength was also a good character development. Things were planned, thought out and then acted upon (unlike say ThunderCats who would just barge into Castle Plun-Darr or Mumm-Ra’s pyramid and hope that their goodness will ensure their victory).
I’d like to single out Starscream as a rather captivating character. He made his intentions of becoming the leader of the Decepticons quite clear to Megatron from the start, and he never passed up an opportunity to do just that.
Animation:
The animation was quite good, considering how difficult it must have been to draw these mechanical beings and their frequent transformations into vehicles. The Transformers’ alternate modes on Cybertron were shown to be alien space vehicles, and these were only changed to earth vehicles once they landed on the planet. This small attention to detail shows that the makers did really put a decent amount of thought into the story. It would have been odd seeing Bumblebee change into a VolksWagen Beetle on Cybertron!
Music:
The theme song, while not as impressive as say something like “Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors”, was catchy. But it was the background music/cues that I liked more.
The only minor thing that bugged me was Megatron and Soundwave transforming into objects much much smaller than their robot forms.
All in all, a great and riveting 3 part pilot that is sure to pique the interest of first time viewers to watch more episodes.
