Rewatched season 1 of the G1 cartoon

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Ryan F
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Post by Ryan F »

inflatable dalek wrote:To be fair, that's not as bad as Doctor Who treating Lady Liberty as if she were stone and therefor could be a weeping angel...
And amazingly, that's not even the worst logical flaw in that particular episode!
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Tetsuro
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Post by Tetsuro »

Ryan F wrote:I thought it was common knowledge that the Statue of Liberty is made of copper, and when copper rusts it turns green, hence why the Statue of Liberty is green.
Copper doesn't rust tho, the green colour is caused by patina which I understand is considered a good thing? It's supposed to protect the statues from the elements and that's why they're usually left green. Unlike rust which just eats through the metal alloy.

Which doesn't make your point any less valid though. Even then, Perceptor is still changing the appearance of a major landmark in a big way - except he isn't, because it's still green. It doesn't really make any sense if you think about it.
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Heinrad
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Post by Heinrad »

I've launched into my own rewatch of Headmasters, Masterforce, and what I'll be able to watch of Victory.

Unless I download Real Player. Can you still get Real Player?

And I go with the RTM dubs, because in all honesty, as bad as the dubs are, they kind of lessen the pain.

I wish I could find the dubs on DVD. My VCDs aren't aging very well......

And why were Cyclonus and Scourge piloting Trypticon like he's a Battlemech? And why didn't anybody secure him after they bailed out?

I enjoy these shows the same way I enjoy badly dubbed martial arts movies. And they make about as much sense.
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Tetsuro
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Post by Tetsuro »

Heinrad wrote:I wish I could find the dubs on DVD. My VCDs aren't aging very well......
Do people still sell those cheap Chinese bootlegs on ebay?
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Heinrad
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Post by Heinrad »

They used to. Now whenever I look, all I see is Shout Factory and Metrodome versions.

EDIT:

Ah-HA! Those wacky Malaysians. I can get a set. I just hope the image quality is good.
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Post by Tetsuro »

Unlikely, seeing the bootlegs usually just use single-layer DVDs and cram like nine episodes on each disc so they're probably compressed to all hell at the very least.
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Post by Heinrad »

I think Malaysia is where my set of Evangelion came from. The image quality is okay, not all that high-def. My only real complaint is that the audio winds up shifting about a tenth to a half second out of sync.

The really weird part is that the VCD set of Headmasters that I'm watching never worked. If fact, I think they were touted as DVDs when I got them, but other than a menu screen they never worked. My computer isn't enjoying them very much, but it enjoyed my normal set even less.
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Brendocon 2.0
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

It's really nice that Beast Wars holds up.

Okay the CGI is still primitive even for mid-90s standards, the dialogue try-hard cheesy in places and season 1 is padded out far too much... but all that was true whenever the last time I watched it was.

Only notable difference is that in terms of character and voice, Rattrap is basically Rocket from the GotG film. Can't shake that off.

Three eps into season 2 and can't shake the warm glow I'm getting from revisiting it. Top.
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Post by Skyquake87 »

I never used to like Rattrap, he's a whiny, back-talking pain in the ass. Over the years, the character's really grown on me. There's his whole espionage thing, which by his character and demeanour was something that was very much in his past, and you always got the impression with him there was a lot of deliberate prickliness about him. Like he's seen some sh*t and it was baaaad. Do love his scenes where he's constantly winding Dinobot up :)
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Shame about season 3 treading water really. The main plot's run its course and the attempts to do something interesting while waiting for the finale are overwhelmed by having to introduce new toys in a way the previous seasons managed to overcome.
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Skyquake87
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Post by Skyquake87 »

I think I give Season 3 far more leeway than I should. I was so happy when Universal put out the tapes so we could watch it in the UK, but with rewatches, yeah, its a bit of a choppy season and the finale feels a bit rushed.

I didn't see 'Optimal Situation' until some years later when I got a DVD player (thanks to the magic of weird UK releases on VHS and DVD), and that is probably the most disappointing episode of the season.
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Brendocon 2.0
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Skyquake87 wrote:I think I give Season 3 far more leeway than I should. I was so happy when Universal put out the tapes so we could watch it in the UK, but with rewatches, yeah, its a bit of a choppy season and the finale feels a bit rushed.
Yeah, it's not like it's actively bad or anything... it's just... eh.

Oh and yeah, huge shout-out to Universal for making both Aftermath and Optimal Situation toy-pack-in exclusives on VHS...
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Post by Warcry »

Season three really suffers due to the uncertainty surrounding the show's fate, I think. The writers didn't know whether there'd be a season three or not, so they burned through most of their plot hooks in the last half of season two and didn't really leave themselves much to build on. So it takes them an episode or two to establish a new status quo, then they spend a few more episodes introducing new characters and tech...and then there's only a handful of episodes left, they're cancelled for real this time and oh shit we need to wrap this up what do we do?

I still enjoyed it, but it certainly didn't have the same well-plotted depth to it that the second season did, or the same sense of adventure as the first.
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Yeah, part of what I love about season 2 is that it gradually leaves Megatron with absolutely no other option as all his pieces fall... but the byproduct is that it leaves him with absolutely no plan for season 3.

And given that "Megatron's a magnificent bastard with multiple plans and is 27 steps ahead of everyone" has been one of the driving forces of the series up until then...

"Shit, we killed most of the Predacons... it's plausible that Inferno survived that blast, right? We can just reintegrate Tarantulas if we don't draw attention to it, yeah? Er, here's an alien device that creates Transmetal 2s. No, don't ask where he got it from or when, just roll with it..."

Still pisses over 85% of the original G1 toon, mind.
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Warcry
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Post by Warcry »

There was on big plot left to resolve, but they only really touched on it for a single episode: the Vok. The natural plot for season three would have been something along the lines of "the aliens want to kill every Transformer everywhere and are corrupting us into Transmetal II slaves, and everyone needs to work together to stop them!!!!" But of course that's with the benefit of hindsight, knowing from the get-go that season three was really going to be the end and writing it that way from the first episode on.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Yeah, always found BW season 3 a bit of a slog outside of the finale for all the reasons mentioned. Plus it always felt like Megatron became infected by his predecessors spark and became a complete idiot (in the Agenda killing Optimus is a last desperate throw of the dice when he has nothing left to lose, in season 3 he keeps trying to destroy the whole Ark despite the uncertainty about what killing the Decepticons as well would do to his own history).
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Brendocon 2.0
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Still a big fan of the Nemesis two-parter. The big epic finale that the series deserved, full of ace stuff. Depth Charge and Rampage's final showdown, Waspinator's resignation, Rhinox saving the day... it's only the Dinobot stuff that doesn't quite land properly, due to the scrapped episode from earlier on.
inflatable dalek wrote:he keeps trying to destroy the whole Ark despite the uncertainty about what killing the Decepticons as well would do to his own history).
Eh, I'm cool with it. It's proper last-ditch desperation stuff. And he was carrying G1 Megatron's spark, so whatever happened that was guaranteed to survive at any rate.
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Post by Warcry »

inflatable dalek wrote:Yeah, always found BW season 3 a bit of a slog outside of the finale for all the reasons mentioned.
I don't think it counts as a slog, personally. It's got Depth Charge and his burning hatred for Rampage, Black Arachnia trying to be a good person, Dinobot II, Cheetor starting to grow up, Tigerhawk, Tarantulas getting eaten by the Vok...there's still a lot of good stuff there. The previous season set the bar so high that it feels like a big step down, but compared to basically any other TF series it's still pretty good. I'd still rather watch it than any similar-sized chunk of G1 or Unicron Trilogy episodes, for starters.
Brendocon 2.0 wrote:it's only the Dinobot stuff that doesn't quite land properly, due to the scrapped episode from earlier on.
The Dinobot stuff was obviously going to happen regardless, so even without Dark Glass to lend context I don't think it's entirely out of left field. They should have started hinting at it a few episodes sooner, sure, but did anyone not expect Dinobot to turn from the moment he was brought back?
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Impossible for me to comment, really. The state of the fandom and the availability of material at the beginning of the century meant I knew about it before I ever actually watched it.

And to be fair I didn't say it was out of left field, just that it doesn't quite land properly. It still works, just not as well as it would have done if the other stuff had been included.

I'm on episode 4 of Beast Machines right now. I'm going to wait until the end of season 1 before committing to any thoughts... but so far my recollection of the series isn't being challenged.
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Post by Skyquake87 »

I'm watching Beast Machines at the moment, just into ep 2 of Season 2. I have a lot of love for this series - again, largely just being able to watch it (and on Region 2 DVDs!In its entirety!) thanks to Universal having a bit of a quick cash-grab during the time of the first Bay film - but it is quite hard work.

It has quite a deep philosophical bent for a kids show, but that complexity is undone by a series of very repetitive episodes and some extremely flat characterisation throughout. Things start to turn around towards the end of the first season with all the Tankor stuff.

The thing that I felt could have done with some further expansion is Megatron's dislike of his beast form that's driven him to this idea of technological purity - there's a story there that's never touched on or expanded, so it feels very abrupt following on from Beast Wars (hand wavey 'he got to Cybertron before the Maximals aside').

The animation is stunning though, I love the design and shadows on Cybertron and the character models are all largely great (except for Optimus' beast mode, which must be the ugliest thing ever - what were they thinking with those massive hands and that weird elongated neck with a face dangling off the end?).
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