THE_LEGENDARY_HQB

Greetings to all in the name of our Aluminum Lord, the ALLMIGHTY TIN HEAD.

So, I was flipping through the stations yesterday afternoon, and I came to Cartoon Network. They announced Transformers Armada was coming up.
"Kewl" I thought. I used to love the original cartoon back in the mid 80's. I had seen bits and pieces of Armada before, and I wasn't impressed, but I figured, hey, why not give it a chance, and watch the whol thing?

Bad idea.

My HEAD, what a load of tripe! First of all, they turned the whole fuckin' thing into cutsie pie Japanime. You know, no discernible nose, slit for a mouth that only moves up and down, dinner plate sized eyes with that mysterious patch of white in the left hand corner, ridiculously exaggerated facial expressions, voice dub that just doesn't go with the animation, the whole enchilada.
Horrible.
Then, there's the "story line". In the original Transformers, you learned about the ancient battle betwwen good {Autobots}, and Evil {Decepticons}, fought from time immemorial, first on Cybertron
then on Earth. In this version, they're fighting for control of...Minicons. That's it. Tiny little robots buried throughout Earth that don't talk, but beep and click, and give whoever poseeses them earth shattering powers. Ooooogabooogabooooga! Noone bothers to explain what these things are, or why they're so powerful, or if they're so powerful, why they don't just free themselves and get the hell off of Earth.
Also left unanswered is the question of how a robot that is smaller than a human can combine with a 30 foot tall Autobot and make him something like 10 feet taller, and give him massive laser cannons.
Optimus Prime is a total wuss. Get's his ass kicked by Megatron every time, except when he uses his Minicon.
Ooooogaboooogabooogabooooga!
No Dinobots. No Grimlock. No Insecticons, no Bumblebee. StarScream is there, but he isn't the whiny little bitch we all loved to see get beat down by Megatron in the original.
The music is annoying, truly audial fecal matter. I mean, they tried to make it into a poppy, pseudo drum n'bass sound, and they completely eliminated the second part of the theme song. And, as the icing on the cake, {or nail in the coffin}, noone, Autobot or Decepticon, can transform without yelling out "Transform!" to the world.

Avoid this cartoon like the bubonic plague. It is the ultimate insult to the original Tranformers. If Grimlock were alive today, you know what he'd say?
"Me Grimlock HATE new Transformers! Me Grimlock smash animation studios that make new Transformers! Me Grimlock destroy animators and their families!"

Next week, my review of the new He-Man. Oh yeah, and don't forget to tune in tonight to 91.5, WMFO Medford, Mass. tonight 7-9pm. Listen online at www.wmfo.org.

Respect,
HQB

Grad Student Humanist

Yep, Armada is awful, totally unwatchable.

The new He-Man is good though.

VonEvilstein

Or, apparently, use their weapon without shouting its name and technical specifications at the world in general.