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Understandably, you have to at least have watched another mecha\sci-fi series to cement an understanding on this.

I just watched Gundam Unicron episode 1. It's an OVA series for 6 episodes, episode 1 was JUST released. It's about an hour long. It features teenage angst [typical in gundam], space drama and space battles. It also featured the immortal line "It's a gundam!" moments before it ended. I swear, that line is just as spoken in-universe as "Transform and roll out".

Going through a list of other anime in my head, I was wondering how transformers measures up to their contemporaries. Also, how people who are also into other franchises, like Macross, Dougram, other super robot shows, Evangelion and so on stack Transformers in comparison. [Note: Knowing that Jetfire was a macross figure originally, and having watched Robotech with Rick Hunter DOES NOT MAKE YOU A MACROSS FAN]

I think that with few exceptions, transformers comes off as quite poor in comparison. There's about 10 transformers shows in total? More? I lost count. The only ones that were worthwhile in any sense of character development were Beast Wars [and that was until the end of season 2 at most], Beast Machines and Animated.

The characters in almost all other cartoons were 2-D at best, had zero development and even the cartoons were sub-par. I tried watching S1 of G1 and could not stomach even finishing episode 1. Transformers the movie [1986] is about the only quality animation and possibly character-oriented offering our franchise has gotten out in that decade.

I do realize it's all about selling toy robots to kids, and for that you don't need much more than a flashy animation of two or more robots clashing, but Gundam, Ideon, Macross and so on have done so [in the case of Gundam, much, much more succesfully when it comes to profit] without having to dumb down the fiction.

Thoughts? Ideas?

I think even aside from demographics, Gundam and Ideon are a bit of an unfair comparison - both shows sold toys (or tried to) in order to keep making episodes, merchandising deals raising sponsorship in order to fund the animation. Whereas Transformers and the ilk make episodes in order to sell toys. The Tomino shows are a result of him wanting to tell the story first and foremost, with merchandising being a way of funding (and getting a bit of cash for himself, no doubt), largely a side-effect. Whereas if Hasbro could sell the same amount of toys by producing a 25-minute film of the figures sitting there with Gary Chalk yelling "BUY ME!!!" over the top, they would.

The latter has arguably changed a little with the films, funnily enough, where the primary motivation is to create a film people will go and see on its' own merits, and hopefully pick up a few figures afterwards. For once, Hasbro need Paramount arguably more than Paramount need Hasbro; the relatively small cast turnover, especially of the Autobots, loses that toy commercial feel. Things like Bay (very sensibly) loving Ironhide to bits help as well. Apparently Animated did some of the same thing as well, but I've not watched beyond the first season, which was shite.

The G1 series actually stands up pretty well against most of its' US contemporaries, though that's more a bad thing about them than a good thing about Transformers. Only Voltron really managed to stack up much character development, and that was more because they couldn't cut it all out of the originals (though they had a pretty good crack at it).

Qualifiers aside, Gundam does blow Transformers out of the water - even the peak of Beast Wars is matched and bettered by the epic, auteuristic commercial suicide of Turn-A or the focused drive of 08th. Transformers series have grown up a little bit, but it's still not actually all that good and still has a long way to go.

Admittedly, I'm not as experienced with other franchises as other users of this site, but my brief encounters- a bit of Robotech, a couple of Gundam series- has led me to think that its quite an unfair comparison. Transformers, first and foremost, is a childish bit of fun. There's goodies, baddies, laughs and most importantly, a robot that can turn into a truck. A bit of character here, some plot if you're lucky, doesn't hurt but its not my main reason for watching. Many of the other shows you mention are not Saturday morning pap, or even more adult spin-offs of saturday morning pap designed to appeal to fans that never grew up. They are stories first, and I get a different enjoyment from them. Not better, not worse, but different.

Okay, maybe a little better.

First and foremost, TRANSFORMERS will ALWAYS be my favorite robot toyline. Although I admit I have not seen EVERYTHING about some of the other anime series that feature battling giant super robots (even though it's my favorite type of anime), I did enjoy ROBOTECH, GUNDAM, BLUE GENDER, MAZINGER Z, VOLTRON and the first generation of the MIGHTY MORPHIN' POWER RANGERS. Even though I know that it is not a whole lot of super/giant robot series, hey, I still had to start from somewhere. There is a more thorough list of robot anime on wikipedia ; check it out. By the way, has anyone here seen the original black-n-white American-released series known as GIGANTOR? I would like to see it myself. I am kind of trying to "take it back to the OLD old school", you know what I'm sayin'?

Mr_Hi_n_Mitey wrote:you know what I'm sayin'?

I'm not convinced you actually said anything, to be honest.

I've seen Tetsujin-28, which is Gigantor with more episodes and slightly less stupid character names, i.e. before Alan Ladd ****ed it up (though the thumping theme tune is pretty good). I know that sounds terribly otaku, but in that case it's true. It's a largely mediocre series; Palm's update is much better, rather charming and bittersweet, and it features THE INVINCIBLE KENJI MURASAME. And no-one called Dick Strong. And a better theme tune. First episode:

I'm glad to see the title of 'boy detective' get the awe and respect it deserves.

He's Japan's answer to Tintin; it's that sort of series. Though Tintin never really addressed the euthansia of animals kept in zoos during WW2. He did kill animals kept in Africa in the thirties, though, often in hilarious fashion (re-reading, "Tintin in the Congo" is possibly the funniest book ever written just on pure shock value).

Oh, I love the days of casual racism, sexism and slaughter of animals. Bond is a particular favourite, simply for some of the nonsense invented by Fleming.