DVD Review: Transformers Animated Season Two
Paramount Home Video, Cartoon Network,Hasbro More Than Meets the Eye
Jan 17, 2009
Transformers has a mixed history. The original cartoon (now called G1 by the fanboy elite) was little more than a half-hour advertisement for plastic toys that could be "transformed" into other plastic toys. The 1986 movie earned only $5.7 million in theatres, and hasn't aged well.
Fast forward 20 years, and the Hasbro toy line has returned to the public consciousness. The 2007 movie was successful enough to warrant a quickie sequel subtitled Revenge of the Fallen (due later this year), although the jury is still out over whether that was due to Michael Bay's "I need my earth-shattering kaboom" directorial style, those CGI machines, or the slightly more natural assets of Megan Fox.
Hasbro also tried to capitalize on the flick's success with more cartoons: Transformers: Cybertron was horrendously awful, which didn't impress non-fans of the original series.
But Transformers: Animated is a pleasant surprise: a G-rated cartoon that is genuinely entertaining.
Transformers Animated Mainly For Kids
Unlike the Michael Bay movie, Transformers Animated is pretty much for the kiddies. The show is at its best when it doesn't take itself too seriously: there are pratfalls aplenty among Autobots and Decepticons alike. A sequence where the hapless – but effectively immortal – Starscream attempts to assassinate arch-villain Megatron is a hoot.
There are also scofflaw humans to contend with, including a group of villains called the Society of Ultimate Villainy (S.U.V.) that includes the veddy British Angry Archer and the moll known as Slo-Mo.
Optimus Prime isn't quite the turgid, all-knowing leader of the Autobots as he was in G1: his voice (courtesy of David Kaye) is higher, he has moments of self-doubt and he gets into the occasional battle of wits with rival Autobot Sentinel Prime.
Visually and humour-wise, the series strongly resembles Teen Titans: supervising director Matt Youngberg and art director/lead character designer Derrick Wyatt used to work on that show. The robots are less blocky and demonstrate more personality than in the original series. The villains are much more effective than in G1, and the heroes less idiotic (gee, when will the Autobots finally cotton on to Lazerbeak?). That said, there are some dodo moments, especially when a pair of Decepticons successfully steal a transmitter off an Autobot ship.
Special Features
Listening to supervising director Matt Youngberg, Hasbro's lead product designer Eric Siebenaler, art director Derrick Wyatt and story editor/head writer Marty Isenberg discuss episodes 19 and 20 ("Mission Accomplished" and "Garbage In, Garbage Out" respectively) on the audio commentaries is like eavesdropping on several friends discussing their work. There are several in-jokes and they go off on several tangents, some of which they eventually explain to the audience. Needless to say, with all those guys pointing stuff out, there's not a lot of soundtrack space left.
The Episode #20 commentary is more entertaining, mainly because the gang discusses working with guest star 'Weird' Al Yankovic, who Youngberg calls "a living legend." Yankovic voiced Wreck-Gar, a bumbling robot created from a pile of junk, and Isenberg called it his attempt "to push the comedy as far as it could go."
The two animated shorts have some nice gags, while the photo gallery is about what you'd expect.
The Final Analysis
Transformers Animated was a pleasant surprise after some of the namesake dreck that preceded it. That said, it is very much a kiddie show, and should be viewed as such.
Yes, Transformers Animated is essentially a means for Hasbro to sell more toys, but – unlike other toy-tied-in animated DVDs – it's an entertaining show in its own right. For some fun interplay and solid action sequences, Transformers Animated gets a 6/10.
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