From sstoneb@campbell.mps.ohio-state.edu Wed Jul 31 19:35:22 2002 Path: nntp.service.ohio-state.edu!not-for-mail From: Steve-o Stonebraker Newsgroups: alt.toys.transformers Subject: [ARMADA][SPOILERS] Episode One Review Date: 31 Jul 2002 06:20:05 GMT Organization: Ohio State University Lines: 218 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: campbell.mps.ohio-state.edu X-Trace: charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu 1028096405 27025 128.146.38.12 (31 Jul 2002 06:20:05 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@osu.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 31 Jul 2002 06:20:05 GMT User-Agent: slrn/0.9.7.3 (OSF1) Xref: nntp.service.ohio-state.edu alt.toys.transformers:579310 I was originally going to put this in my BotCon report, but it ended up being long enough that I thought it should get a separate post. I'll put up my convention report and Wreckers comic summary sometime wednesday evening. The convention report is meticulous and lacking in any social information, just as Zobovor likes them. I might write a full diary version if I get the time, but I'll probably just work on the FAQ instead. Obviously, this post contains spoilers for episode one of the Armada cartoon series. The title of the episode is unknown. My responses are moderately unorganized, but have mostly production related stuff at the top, with the story summary below. Also, they consist largely of disjointed sentences and factoids, because that's how I jotted them down in my notebook after the screening. S P O I L E R S ! ! The still-frame art was less detailed than that of RID (which is not inherently good or bad). The character designs of the humans were very similar to the humans in Medabots, but not as "sketchy". The shapes of their haircuts in particular was Medabots-ish, IMO. The Transformers looked very much like their Dreamwave deisgns, as per the Hasbro directive for consistancy. Animation was generally good or at least decent. It was more sophisticated than RID's animation most of the time, but not by a whole lot. (RID's animation was rather minimilistic, IMO, with the exception of the polished transformation sequences.) Although an anime asthetic is definitely there, no use was made of common visual devices from anime like sweatdrops or heads which become suddenly gigantic when yelling. There is one shot of Alexis sighing which really looked like it needed that little "mushroom" poof, but didn't have one. This episode didn't feature any switches to streaky mono-colored backgrounds that I can remember, but that doesn't mean they won't exist in the series. In fact, I'm pretty sure the clips on ASM that I haven't watched because my processor and net connection are slow feature polished transform sequences, which probobly all take place in that windy transformation dimension. Voice work was done -- seemingly -- entirely by members of Ocean Group (the Beast Wars/Machines, Reboot, Mega Man, etc., actors). Specifically, David Kaye and Garry Chalk are the voices of Megatron and Optimus Prime. There was not enough dialogue from either of them to get any feel for their mannerisms/portrayal other than the essence of the voice being the same as in BW/BM. Prime had only one line and Megatron primarily grunted (no instances of "yessss"). I hope that aside from the voice itself, they are treated as new characters. As much as I love their quirks from BW, I don't think they should be re-used on new characters, even though they share names. The dialogue was placed in using ADR/dubbing rather than having the dialogue recorded first. This is in keeping with the Japanese dialogue in the clips at ASM. Dialogue for the first episode was finished at the last minute before the convention -- at the 3H panel they said it was done on Thursday and then FedEx'd to the convention. It was clearly a rough cut in several respects. First of all, it still had a timecode running in the corner. Also, the commercial break wasn't edited out -- it was just blackness and silence. (During which time we asked Glen to "tell us a story", so he re-told the first half of the episode.) The dialogue/animation synch wasn't very good in many places. At the beginning and end of the commercial break, we saw the commercial bumper. The music was, uh, music to my ears. The tune was lifted directly from the G1 theme, with just the "Transformers, more than meets the eyes" phrase. A heavily vocoded voice said "Transformers" at the appropriate time, and the rest of the musical phrase was just the synth notes. It was at once incredibly cheesy and incredibly awesome and retro. It was... it was magna-spectacular. I get giddy and clap just thinking about it. Most of the first half of the episode focused entirely on the kids' lives and their interactions. Here's what we've learned about them: The "cool leader" kid is named Rad. His best buddy is the conspicuously Hispanic Carlos (I like seeing diversity, but his Hispanic-ness was a little too blatant for me, just shy of pandering and offensive). Then there's Alexis, who seems like she's supposed to be the friend-who-gets- frustrated-by-their-antics, but her portrayal in this ep made it a little unclear, as if they're not actually all friends yet. That's the core group. Then there's a pair of bullies with the tried-and-true duo formula: skinny dominant guy with a lot of ambition who is sort of mean, and the portly follower guy who is sort of dumb and whiney. One of them is named Billy -- the thin one, I think. The bullies seem to be mostly there for comic relief. Neither of them is very competent. Although the portly bully garnered a lot of sympathy (for being dragged along by the other guy, for being sensitive, etc.), I can see myself coming to really resent him if he keeps it up, especially since his whining was so over-acted. Specifically, I really didn't like the way they focused so much on him being fat. He's always hungry, he follows Billy around because Billy has his candy bar, he gets tired easily, he complains about his blood sugar level... If he was just fat I wouldn't care at all, but they made fun of it so much... Rad rides the bike, Carlos rides the skateboard, and Alexis rides the scooter. It's sort of sadly predictable, I think, that they'd place the girl on the scooter... I would have preferred she got a more "active" means of getting around. Granted, in the cartoon they all start out with regular vehicles (not mini-cons, natch), and her scooter is actually a razor scooter type thing, not a motor scooter like Sureshock, but still... I would have liked to avoid the girls-are- less-athletic stereotype. Considering the way they're treating Carlos and Bully#2, though, this is a small complaint. The episode opens with pictures of outer space, including a couple shots of flying through nebulae which are very reminiscent of the opening to TF:TM. A narrator (who sounded very familiar to me, but I couldn't place... now that we know it's Ocean Group, maybe somebody else can figure out who it was?) explains that early in the universe, life formed on many planets, and that life on Cybertron was among the earliest. After the Autobots and Decepticons fought over the Mini-Cons for a very long time, they agreed to a truce and exiled the Mini-Cons. All of this is done without showing any robots -- just spaceships shooting at each other, mostly. Also, it's stated that both sides of the war were exploiting the Mini-Cons, not just the Decepticons. The history the present reinforced, for me at least, the idea that this is a new continuity. Next comes a sequence showing the Mini-Con ship going through a warp portal of some sort and then crashing into the moon, with a large chunk of the ship continuining down to Earth. Both bodies are apparently strewn with Mini-Cons during the crash. Then we're introduced to Rad and Carlos, on their way to school (7th grade). One of the big features of the town is a radio astronomy observatory (there are many radio telescopes in the background paintings) and at least one of their parents is a scientist. Rad and Carlos are excited about a cave they found and plan to go explore after school. They say hello to Alexis and ask her to come along, but she responds in a confusing manner... at first, she acts like she doesn't like them and wishes they would stop talking to her, sort of condescending, but later acts like they are friends and she's just frustrated for some reason. The bullies overhear Rad and Carlos, and plan to follow along and cause trouble. While exploring the cave, R&C end up standing on a rock slab which sinks into the floor and then slides down a long shaft before they slide to a halt in a big cavern containing part of the Mini-Con ship. Excited, the start checking the ship out. A stairway (apparently external to the ship, oddly enough) is sized about right for human use. They see an object on the ground which is glowing green. [I lik jAam.] They wonder what it is, and one of them says "It looks radioactive", at which point they both rush to touch it. (Sigh.) When they do, lights on the ship start flashing, and an earthqueke begins. They rush out of the cave. Beams of light which seem to represent signals of some sort start shooting off into space. The bulk of the ship on the moon begins sending beams to all across the lunar surface (to the mini-cons there, maybe?). Another beam goes off through space to Cybertron, where several gratuitous cameos occur of characters from previous TF series. The only ones I was able to pick out were Powerglide, Hound, and Skyfire from G1. Other people said they saw some Technobots, Skids-Z, a member of Multiforce (Wingwaver?), and Bots watching something displayed on screens on a big Vector Sigma ball. Back on Earth, Alexis is worried about Rad and Carlos, after determining that the epicenter of the earthquake was the location of the cave they went to. She rushes out there on her scooter. Rad and Carlos emerge from the cave (with the bullies still lost inside) only to encounter Megatron, who is standing outside. He seems to want the glowy thing, which we can now see is a hand-sized panel of some sort with a Mini-Con insignia. Alexis arrives, and then, at some point, High Wire appears, but I don't remember how... I think he sort of "beams out" of the glowy thing, initially appearing to be a generic robot, and then he scans the surroundings and registers the bike, skateboard, and scooter. He seems to speak only in beeps (the Dreamwave staff indicated at their panel that this is normal for Mini-Cons in the cartoon, but that they will all speak in the comics). High Wire reforms himself into a bike, and then transforms back to robot mode and zips off with the kids holding on. During all this time, Megatron is sort of standing around grrr'ing and mumbling, and not moving much. He starts to follow the kids, and then picks up a stone and "shoots" it at them like a marble, stopping their escape. That's when Prime shows up out of nowhere with a rousing "Stand down, Megatron!". During Megatron's last sequence of mumbles before Prime appeared, people started whispering "that sounds like David Kaye" to each other excitedly, and then when Prime delivered his line and it was so clearly Chalk, the room roared with excitement. After Prime appears, the two of them sort of stand there struggling, motionless, and the episode ends. My overall impression is favorable. I don't doubt that I'll enjoy the series, just as I've enjoyed every other Transformers series I've ever encountered, from Beast Wars to Beast Machines to the Big Looker storybooks. I think it will be more "serious" than RID, but on the other hand I think the kids will remain main characters, unlike Koji who almost completely disappeared from RID for half of the episodes, if not more. I'm sure that will bug a lot of fans because it will make it more obvious that they're watching something meant for children, which seems to make them feel uncomfortable, or insulted, or something. Basically, though, this ep is far too little to make any sort of real judgement about the series. I think we'll have to wait at least until the full three-part premiere airs to get any sense of what the show will be like in general. --Steve-o -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Stonebraker | Transformers FAQ Keeper | Astrophysicist sstoneb@yahoo.com | www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~sstoneb | AOL IM: srstoneb