(no subject)
This weekend, herongale and I mainlined Transformers: Animated. Turns out it's not that long of a series.
The main thing that struck me, starting in the second season and continuing into the third, was what enormous assholes the Autobots are. I'm not even talking about Sentinel, who is supposed to be a prick. I'm talking about our main Autobots, like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. Supposedly the heroes, they are like recruitment posters ... FOR THE DECEPTICONS.
I mean, seriously, Wreck-Gar, the Constructicons, the Dinobots, and the Seeker clones might as well be newborns. And yet universally they are treated like trash by Our Heroes. If Starscream had fitted Ratchet with a time bomb, do you think the solution would have been "shoot Ratchet into the atmosphere so that he will explode where NOBODY IMPORTANT will be injured?" I weep for those sacrificed Seeker clones. I WEEP FOR THEM.
Is it any wonder that the Constructicons went over to Megatron? After how Prime's crew dissed them, multiple times?
I don't even want to imagine how a mech like Blitzwing would be treated by the Autobots. It's a good thing he's a Decepticon. Blackarachnia made a wise choice in switching sides. Autobots are like the Japanese in a way - they have a violent intolerance for anyone different. The Decepticons respect anyone who can hold their own, whether or not they are half-organic or totally insane.
And what was with that PARADE for Sentinel when he got back to Cybertron with his Decepticon prisoners? Was it really necessary to parade them around in front of everyone as war trophies? How Roman of them, and I don't mean that in a good way. You might say, "Well, Sentinel is a prick," but that doesn't let the rest of the Autobots off the hook, because they let him get away with this.
And Ultra Magnus! Dude is obviously supposed to come across as a wise leader, even a kind one considering that he pulled strings for Optimus after Optimus got booted out of the Academy. And yet he has SENTINEL as his protege and does nothing to rein him in, and in some places is pretty much a prick in his own right.
I'm not sure if the intention is for us to sympathize with the Decepticons or what. I'm frankly a bit uncomfortable doing this, because I like my Decepticons nice and evil, but they don't really come across as particularly evil in TFA. Maybe it's escaping me, but the Decepticons don't do anything particularly evil, except for Starscream. Starscream is a backstabbing traitor who likes to use his clones as suicide bombers, but what about the rest of them? They are accepting of people who are different, they are loyal and faithful, and they work hard at achieving their goals. And their goal? To go home. To return from exile. HOW DESPICABLE.
Maybe if it had been established what happened to start/during the Great War, or if the Decepticons were grinding up baby chicks in their spare time for shits and giggles, or if the Autobots weren't such assholes all the time, I would be back in my happy place accepting that the Decepticons are evil. But I can't go there with TFA. We are told flat-out during the OP that the Decepticons are "evil forces" but ARE THEY REALLY. Even Starscream is suspiciously reluctant to start killing human beings when he'd have every justification to do it (although I can chalk that up to this being a kid's show).
This is either bad storytelling, or some incredibly subversive storytelling. I suppose it's possible that the writers were unfolding this story on two levels - a superficial one for the target kid audience, in which we just accept that the Decepticons are evil and the Autobots are heroic, and a sub-surface level where, if you look at it with adult eyes, you see that things are not quite so black and white as all that. It's possible, and it would be nice if I could believe that.
I really can't, though, because the writers really took the easy way out with some of these threads. Take Wasp, for instance. Wasp was framed and sent to jail unjustly (and wtf, Autobot prisons must be hardcore for the dude to go insane - what were they doing to him in there?) but nobody really seems to feel any remorse over this. They are all concerned at the fact that the REAL spy is still on the loose, but very little concern is spared for Wasp and his damaged mental state.
And yet it's easy for a viewer not to care either, because Wasp was a jerk and a bully, so why do we give a rat's ass if he was raped and tortured in prison or something? It would have been more problematic if Wasp hadn't been a nasty guy before the frame-up, and making him a bully was an easy way out of anybody having to care about what was done to him.
So I don't know. I'd like to think that this is a masterful bit of subversiveness, in making the Autobots so rotten and the Decepticons so ambiguous. But I'm not sure I can.
Also: the animation is really nice in places. I mean, really high-quality. So why in the hell did they make so many of the character models so butt-ugly? :/ I realize that I'm not the first person with this complaint, but I have to make it anyway.
The voice acting is often so, so good, and the animation is often really stunning. So why does Prime look like he's wearing blue lipstick? WHY THE CHINS??? And why so lazy in the transformations? Honest to god, the majority of those robot models don't look like they can plausibly transform into vehicles, and apparently the animators agreed cos most of the time the transformation happened in a whirl of motion lines, and the rest of the time it happened in anime-space with so many extreme closeups that you couldn't tell what part was transforming into what.
You'll notice that I haven't even touched on the Sue Who Is Sari, and I don't really intend to go into that. Transformers always have a human companion, and I accept that, although herongale made a good point when we were talking about it ... it's curious that they had a little girl as the only human companion.
I'm glad I had herongale with me to watch this, cos I don't think I could have made it past all the cringe-worthy character designs otherwise, and I think the series has a lot to recommend it.
The main thing that struck me, starting in the second season and continuing into the third, was what enormous assholes the Autobots are. I'm not even talking about Sentinel, who is supposed to be a prick. I'm talking about our main Autobots, like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. Supposedly the heroes, they are like recruitment posters ... FOR THE DECEPTICONS.
I mean, seriously, Wreck-Gar, the Constructicons, the Dinobots, and the Seeker clones might as well be newborns. And yet universally they are treated like trash by Our Heroes. If Starscream had fitted Ratchet with a time bomb, do you think the solution would have been "shoot Ratchet into the atmosphere so that he will explode where NOBODY IMPORTANT will be injured?" I weep for those sacrificed Seeker clones. I WEEP FOR THEM.
Is it any wonder that the Constructicons went over to Megatron? After how Prime's crew dissed them, multiple times?
I don't even want to imagine how a mech like Blitzwing would be treated by the Autobots. It's a good thing he's a Decepticon. Blackarachnia made a wise choice in switching sides. Autobots are like the Japanese in a way - they have a violent intolerance for anyone different. The Decepticons respect anyone who can hold their own, whether or not they are half-organic or totally insane.
And what was with that PARADE for Sentinel when he got back to Cybertron with his Decepticon prisoners? Was it really necessary to parade them around in front of everyone as war trophies? How Roman of them, and I don't mean that in a good way. You might say, "Well, Sentinel is a prick," but that doesn't let the rest of the Autobots off the hook, because they let him get away with this.
And Ultra Magnus! Dude is obviously supposed to come across as a wise leader, even a kind one considering that he pulled strings for Optimus after Optimus got booted out of the Academy. And yet he has SENTINEL as his protege and does nothing to rein him in, and in some places is pretty much a prick in his own right.
I'm not sure if the intention is for us to sympathize with the Decepticons or what. I'm frankly a bit uncomfortable doing this, because I like my Decepticons nice and evil, but they don't really come across as particularly evil in TFA. Maybe it's escaping me, but the Decepticons don't do anything particularly evil, except for Starscream. Starscream is a backstabbing traitor who likes to use his clones as suicide bombers, but what about the rest of them? They are accepting of people who are different, they are loyal and faithful, and they work hard at achieving their goals. And their goal? To go home. To return from exile. HOW DESPICABLE.
Maybe if it had been established what happened to start/during the Great War, or if the Decepticons were grinding up baby chicks in their spare time for shits and giggles, or if the Autobots weren't such assholes all the time, I would be back in my happy place accepting that the Decepticons are evil. But I can't go there with TFA. We are told flat-out during the OP that the Decepticons are "evil forces" but ARE THEY REALLY. Even Starscream is suspiciously reluctant to start killing human beings when he'd have every justification to do it (although I can chalk that up to this being a kid's show).
This is either bad storytelling, or some incredibly subversive storytelling. I suppose it's possible that the writers were unfolding this story on two levels - a superficial one for the target kid audience, in which we just accept that the Decepticons are evil and the Autobots are heroic, and a sub-surface level where, if you look at it with adult eyes, you see that things are not quite so black and white as all that. It's possible, and it would be nice if I could believe that.
I really can't, though, because the writers really took the easy way out with some of these threads. Take Wasp, for instance. Wasp was framed and sent to jail unjustly (and wtf, Autobot prisons must be hardcore for the dude to go insane - what were they doing to him in there?) but nobody really seems to feel any remorse over this. They are all concerned at the fact that the REAL spy is still on the loose, but very little concern is spared for Wasp and his damaged mental state.
And yet it's easy for a viewer not to care either, because Wasp was a jerk and a bully, so why do we give a rat's ass if he was raped and tortured in prison or something? It would have been more problematic if Wasp hadn't been a nasty guy before the frame-up, and making him a bully was an easy way out of anybody having to care about what was done to him.
So I don't know. I'd like to think that this is a masterful bit of subversiveness, in making the Autobots so rotten and the Decepticons so ambiguous. But I'm not sure I can.
Also: the animation is really nice in places. I mean, really high-quality. So why in the hell did they make so many of the character models so butt-ugly? :/ I realize that I'm not the first person with this complaint, but I have to make it anyway.
The voice acting is often so, so good, and the animation is often really stunning. So why does Prime look like he's wearing blue lipstick? WHY THE CHINS??? And why so lazy in the transformations? Honest to god, the majority of those robot models don't look like they can plausibly transform into vehicles, and apparently the animators agreed cos most of the time the transformation happened in a whirl of motion lines, and the rest of the time it happened in anime-space with so many extreme closeups that you couldn't tell what part was transforming into what.
You'll notice that I haven't even touched on the Sue Who Is Sari, and I don't really intend to go into that. Transformers always have a human companion, and I accept that, although herongale made a good point when we were talking about it ... it's curious that they had a little girl as the only human companion.
I'm glad I had herongale with me to watch this, cos I don't think I could have made it past all the cringe-worthy character designs otherwise, and I think the series has a lot to recommend it.