So, where was I in my last review? Ah yes, the childhood joy that is Transformers. When we last left our Autobot and Discepticon friends, Megatron and Optimus Prime had their legendary battle. One stood, and the other fell. Through marketing ploy, the new, and quick and brash Hotrod jumps into the frey, and turns the favor of the battle in Megatron’s favor. Megatron finishes off Optimus Prime (NOOOOO!) as he himself and his troops run off badly injured. The giant planet devouring Transformer - Unicron, happens across him - and the tools of mass marketing begin. Megatron is reformatted into Galvatron, and several of the Discepticons…
Hold up, shame on the author for not knowing the right way to spell it, Decepticons.
The rest of the Decepticons are reformatted into Cyclonis, Scourge, and the Sweeps. Several characters like Star Scream and Shockwave (my personal favorite, second only to Prime and Megatron) are killed off. What we have left is the Transformers trying to pull themselves back together, while dealing with Unicron whom attempts to destroy Cybertron. The Decepticons are no longer a bother as he does off with most of them. Thus ends the movie, in a weird half jumbled state. Brought into the series is the ‘Matrix of Leadership’. Key emphasis here, because it is HEAVILY emphasized in the third series.
In the third series, we start with the Autobots having won the Great War and… fast forward past the boring parts. We arrive at the planet of Char, with the Decepticons battling it out. The once glorious Decepticon Empire is ruined. Cyclonis, Scourge and the Sweeps arrive and determine themselves to pull the empire back together with the help of their leader, Galvatron. They find him, in a half molten pool of plasma. It has messed with his circuitry and he is no longer Galvatron, or the former Megatron, but some weird combination of his past memories and crazy.
Season three’s best focus is in the first five episodes. Galvatron brings the Decepticons back to power, the Autobots must resume their war, and they have a new opponents to face, the Quintessons, the former Unicron, Starscream’s ghost, and various space operaish style villians. The series moves heavily from the original setting. Most of the battles and plot take place in space opera fashion, sometimes visiting Earth, but mostly around Cybertron. Characters are introduced as a marketing ploy, but the producers did a good job in trying to flesh out and give everything a backstory. We learn why Cybertron was originally made, and why the Autobots and Decepticons are at war to begin with.
Season three remains subpar after the first five episodes. The first five have an awesome build up, boring and slow at first, but it gets better. Just as you think things couldn’t get better… they don’t. It gets boring. It has a mediocre ending, and the series remains a hit or a miss. A few of the Galvatron and personal character episodes (like Starscream’s ghost) stand out in my mind. But the best is the last two episodes in the series (which I won’t spoil). Okay I will.
They bring back Prime.
Galvatron is healed of his madness, and vows no war with the Decepticons and the Autobots, Prime has gained Galvatron’s respect. This is the last episode in the season.
There is a season four, which is just a four part series about the rebirth of Cybertron. The series faded into obscurity after the 1989 and 1990 season. Japan however, loved the series, and continued it with serveral more seasons. It slowly became about Galvatron (who had the only major character developement) and his minions, and slowly focused away from the Transformers, and focused on the humans and became another Giant Super Robot anime. Yes, later seasons are in anime form. Transformers becomes one of the few eighties/nineties animations to also sport an anime that continues the series (if not the only one).
Watch season three if you enjoyed the first three seasons of Transformers. Watch the rest if you are a diehard fan, otherwise skip later seasons.
Yozuki’s Drive - 6
