TF Prime episodes

[Gomess]

On reflection, the most awesome thing about the humans in Masterforce is the age range (counting the Pretenders as humans). That's something the American TFs have *never* really gotten the hang of. Daniel never had a cooler older friend like Shuta and Hawk. Heck, Daniel never had *friends*. At least Star Saber sent Jean to a mixed sex European boarding school run by nuns.

...

EDIT: Why does TF Wiki think Bullhorn is Mexican? Is there *any* evidence of that? I feel sorry for him. He's the only Destron Headmaster Jr. with no backstory. =[

[Sydew]

Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman should watch those series and take notes, it would do a world of good to TF prime.

Why does TF Wiki think Bullhorn is Mexican? Is there *any* evidence of that?.

I have no idea where they get that.

[Gomess]

...In fairness, on reflection he does share a lot of traits with other Central/South American anime characters. But I always just assumed he was white.

[Shockwave]

I thought Animated was really the only TF series that was able to pull off kids being around and even then she turned out to be an Autobot so I'm not sure that really counts.

[Onslaught Six]

The kids in the "Armada" comic were okay. And, the fact that Prime tried to keep them out of things made it even more tolerable. Contrast that with...uh, Koji. "C'mon kid. Leave your mother behind and join us for danger!"

To be fair, Koji's father had been kidnapped by the Decepticons.

[138 Scourge]

I never liked the idea of kids getting involved in TF, it always seemed unoriginal and irrelevant to any of the stories.

I liked the "Cybertron" kids all right, they at least were kind of useful. The one kid could fix Transformers...which makes about as much sense as Prime kid's super-hacking, but was less stupid. The little kid was...what, crazy good driver or something? I forget. And Lori could make Scourge, a giant dragon robot, back down like a little bitch and straight took out Thunderblast. That's kind of awesome.

Then again, by that point in the series, "Cybertron" was running on pure goofball charm, and really seemed to be having fun with the TF show formula, so I give it credit there.

Nothing in "Prime" so far's gotten offensive to me, really, it's just...deadly dull. I don't think I've made it through an episode without falling asleep. Of course, I don't think I've given more than the first three episodes a chance, either.

[Dominic]

Koji also had a mother. There was no reason to drag him along into the fight. (Bad Prime. Bad Neil Kaplan voiced Prime.)

Contrast this with "Armada", where Prime only let the kids and Minicons associated under great duress. (The Minicons made a point of demanding to be able to associate with the kids.)


Dom
-and Kicker was just abusing his station.

[BWprowl]

Dom
-and Kicker was just abusing his station.

Kicker didn't even want anything to do with the Autobots at first. I always saw it as, once Kicker got his suit he figured "Like hell I'm gonna let these big, scary robots defend MY planet for me! I gotta do it myself!", and so he did, and was a legitimately effective member of the Autobot force, and it was awesome.

In my mind, humans have always been necessary to TF stories for the simple purpose of scale. Without little squishies for them to stand around, Transformers cease to be "giant robots" and become simply "metallic aliens". The Giant Robots bit is a big part of the TF mythos for me. This is one thing the first live-action movie did well, in my opinion.

Also, this lets me bring up something I've been meaning to bring up for a while now, and that is Yahtzee's review of War for Cybertron. Now, ignore his trademark scathing critique for a moment and hone in on my point here: He actually pulls out the "Transformers aren't relatable because they're robots and not humans" shtick. This baffles the hell out of me because, as O6 said, Transformers have always basically been big metal people anyway. And judging from the opinions on human characters that everyone here (and on EVERY OTHER TF FORUM ON EARTH) has, we apparently don't feel that we need actual human characters in the stories in order to relate to them and be entertained. So my question, I guess, is: Is that only us, with every other person in the world needing a character to actually BE a human in order to relate to them? I always assumed "Kids need someone to relate to" was Hasbro's BS reason for sticking kids into every series simply because they wanted to, but after hearing a critic I somewhat respect and enjoy the opinions of mention it, now I'm not so sure.

[Onslaught Six]

I'm guessing Yahtzee has only seen, at best, the live action films (at least one of them) and maybe a few G1 episodes here and there.

I can *almost* sort of see where it's coming from--a lot of media will include a Newbie Character who we're supposed to identify with somewhat. Take Inception: At the beginning of the movie, all these characters already are established dream-sharing dudes and it's not exactly clear how they're all doing what they're doing. Then shows up the one girl, and then DiCaprio has to go around and show her how the dream-sharing stuff works and how to manipulate the dreams. It's an exposition bit cleverly hidden behind a character who isn't related to the main cast. Jurassic Park somewhat does this with its *entire* human cast (with the exception of Hammond and the bounty hunter guy) and it works very well.

I think...I think the reason we can work with non-human stories, though, is because we've already *seen* them interact with the humans. That, and we've seen TFs written with enough characterisation and personality that they can work as full-on characters, instead of Big Robots Who Smash Stuff, like the live action films treat them. (Actually, I recently watched Jurassic Park again and was surprised at how much the film is like the first TF movie. When I was a kid, the fact that it took forever for dinosaurs to show up made me angry--as an adult, I see that it's not even a movie about dinosaurs, but about people.) For example, take the Matrix Quest, one of Furman's best pieces of writing. (I'm not fond of what Furman's written in the past ~10 years, but his G1 run was really good.) We're able to relate to Nightbeat and Longtooth and everybody in those stories, because they're just plain good, fleshed-out characters. Hell, after seeing this, I *really* wanted a new Longtooth. Hell, I really wanted a new Doubleheader and Pincher, and they were bit characters in that story.

[Dominic]

Most people have a very egocentric view, and need the characters in a story to "relatable", either in terms of looking or thinking like them. Yes, it is childish. But, there is evidence for people thinking this way.

It even applies with human characters. Look at the "Spawn" movie.

In the original comics, Terry (the man who married Spawn's widow), was black. He also happened to be a responsible father and loving husband. Part of the whole tragedy of Spawn was that he came back from the dead to find his wife happily married to his best friend....who was in fact a better husband than he was. His race was never an issue in the comic. McFarlane just made him black because he figured audiences could handle it.

That all went out the window in 1997. In one of the most crass (and frankly racist) changes to a property that I can think of, they made Terry white because they were afraid that (white) audiences could not relate to a movie where none of the good guys were white. They were *assuming*, (one hopes incorrectly), that (white) audiences could not handle a movie where none of the good guys looked like them.


Of course, none of this makes audience identification characters "okay". If anything, it makes them more insufferable because they are there to give the most childish and immature in the audience something to identify with.


Dom
-loves "Last Stand of the Wreckers" because it killed those characters off.