Transformers: Energon (cartoon)

Unicron Trilogy continuity family « Energon » Toyline Cartoon Commercials Comic Mini-comic Mini-comic 2

The Energon cartoon series, aired from 2003 to 2004, was a direct sequel to Armada and forms the second part of the "Unicron Trilogy".

The show takes place ten years after the finale of Armada, opening in an age of peace on Cybertron and Earth which is destined not to last long. Energon pits the Autobots against an array of villains: the reborn Megatron, the barely functional Unicron, and the mysterious Alpha-Q and his Terrorcon minions.

Energon, like Armada, was written and animated in Japan and dubbed for US consumption. The series employed the popular technique of combining cel-shaded computer animation with 2D cel-animation, creating a fusion between the CGI of Beast Wars/Machines and traditionally animated series such as Robots in Disguise.

Episodes

1. Cybertron City
2. Energon Stars
3. Scorpinok
4. Megatron's Sword
5. The New Cybertron City
6. Megatron Resurrected
7. Megatron Raid
8. Starscream the Mysterious Mercenary
9. Battle of the Asteroid Belt
10. Energon Tower
11. The Legend of Rodimus
12. Crisis in Jungle City
13. Kicker Beware
14. Energon Grid
15. Rodimus: Friend or Foe?
16. Go for Unicron!
17. The Return of Demolishor
18. A Tale of Two Heroes
19. Battle Stations
20. Alpha Q: Identity
21. Shockblast: Rampage
22. Survival Instincts
23. Each One Fights...
24. Unicron Unleashed
25. Open Fire!
26. Ripped Up Space
27. Team Optimus Prime
28. Protection
29. Improsoned Inferno
30. Jungle Planet
31. Bulkhead
32. Farewell Inferno
33. Scorponok's Scars
34. Crash Course
35. Omega Supreme
36. A Heroic Battle
37. The Power
38. Optimus Supreme
39. Unicron Perishes
40. Ambition
41. Wishes
42. Galvatron
43. Breakthrough!
44. Distribution
45. The Omega Train
46. Decepticon Army
47. Ironhide Team
48. Formidable
49. Galvatron Terror
50. Destructive Power
51. Spark
52. The Sun

Criticisms

Something cool finally happened!Alpha Q happily declares that the series is at an end.

The Unicron Trilogy was a franchise that got off to a poor start, fictionally speaking. Armada (the predecessor to Energon) suffered from a bad beginning that, in the eyes of many, condemned the entire show. Although it improved as it went along (with the "Unicron Battles" story arc regarded as fairly good in comparison), the sub-par start left it laboring under a bad reputation that it never escaped. Many fans had hopes that Energon would be a return to glory.

It was quite the proverbial brick to the testicles, then, that Energon turned out to be just the opposite — a series with a strong beginning, which slowly but surely degenerated into possibly the worst Transformers cartoon broadcast in the U.S. In retrospect, the fan's positive initial reaction may have been simply because it "wasn't Armada."

Conceptual and storytelling flaws

Plotting

The primary flaw of the Energon series is, simply, that it does not have enough plot to fill 52 episodes. The first half of the series moves at a respectable pace, and at the halfway point, the villains achieve their objective — the restoration of Unicron. However, because there are another 26 episodes to fill, an attack by the Autobots and their allies deactivates Unicron. The storyline is then repeated until Unicron is reactivated again and destroyed again, in episode 39. Even this end to the driving aspect of the plot could not finish the series, as there were a further 13 episodes to go. These were filled with a virtually pointless storyline full of repaints and combiners, which added nothing to what had already taken place.

Individual episodes are likewise padded out with time-killing scenes such as stock footage sequences, generally a minimum of three per episode. An incredible amount of time is consumed in communication and report scenes, in which the characters stand around in front of video screens and tell one another things that the viewers already know.

Character de-evolution

The series takes a very dismissive attitude towards characters and their development. With the exception of Ironhide (who survives the series and resolves his long-running feud with Scorponok), the writers seemed unable to carry personal sub-plots and conflicts through to any conclusion. Instead, they would either quietly drop these opportunities for character development, or (much more gallingly) the characters would die and/or get mindwiped, so the stories would not have to be resolved. Examples:

• Demolishor's uncertainty in the Decepticon cause? "Resolved" by having him sacrifice himself to save Megatron, then having Megatron resurrect him with no memories.
• Inferno's struggle against Megatron's Decepticon programming? Brought to an end by having him kill himself, then be resurrected, only to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the series.
• Kicker's hatred of Transformers? Vanishes with no explanation after roughly two episodes (though he did continue his constant abuse of Ironhide).
• Rodimus and Optimus Prime's ideological feud over whether Unicron should be destroyed? Rodimus puts himself under Optimus's command for the mission to defeat Galvatron, and the argument never comes up again.
• Wing Saber's dedication to capturing Shockblast? Well, he captures him . . . but when Shockblast escapes again, Wing Saber doesn't say a word.

Many similar examples exist.

Physics

Their wheels spin and everything.

In choosing to set most of its action in the void of space, Energon foolishly robbed the Transformers of any real reason to transform. They can all happily fly in robot mode (in space, on planets, anywhere), inviting the question of why transformation is necessary. But, because this show is about Transformers, they would routinely change to vehicle mode anyway . . . and fly through space anyway. Cue an innumerable number of scenes of cars, snowmobiles and dump trucks driving through space, controlling their movement with no problem, completely invalidating the need for any variety in alternate mode.

Whereas the English version of the series takes its name from the central plot element (the collection of Energon) the Japanese version, Super Link, takes its name from the main thematic concept/gimmick: Autobots powerlinxing. The Japanese version of the show contained a lot of waffling about the symbolic nature of this ("Even when one heart is weak, together, we are strong!"). Unfortunately, the fact remains that, almost without exception, these combinations are used in straight firefights, where combining two soldiers into one means fewer guns to fire at the enemy. Further, the resulting combined soldier rarely shows any sign of enhanced firepower.

Further failing to advertise the combining gimmick are the "Maximus" combiner teams. For about 99% of their screen time, the three giants are seen in only their combined super robot modes, virtually never splitting into individual vehicles, and never ever seen as individual robots. The show doesn't even acknowledge that the limbs could be individuals.

Production flaws

Art and animation

The above images feature: A horrified Ironhide witnessing Demolishor's death; a surprised Ironhide asking a question; a determined Ironhide charging into battle; and a fighting-mad Ironhide striking a decisive blow. Can you figure out which is which?

Energon introduced a new concept to Transformers cartoons: the blending of CGI with traditional cel animation. The animators rendered the Transformer characters in cel-shaded CGI, while animating humans and other aspects of the show through traditional means. On the plus side, this allowed for a consistently high level of cel animation quality (especially enjoyable after the often truly wretched artwork of Armada). On the other hand, the CGI animation was positively primitive. Characters possessed no sense of weight and could not move in any manner but the most basic. Even walking was a challenge for characters with bulky models, like Ironhide, who would often be reduced to swinging his arms and legs back and forth while sliding along a predetermined path. The black-line outlines of character models were often not rescaled for different shots, resulting in the characters sometimes appearing as indecipherable masses of heavy black lines.

Additionally, "emotion" was nonexistent; the blank-faced CGI models could not easily display any facial expressions beyond "mouth open" and "mouth closed." Some characters didn't even move their mouths at all to speak, most notably Alpha Q, who has no facial animation at all. In all but a handful of cases, when it was necessary for a character to emote visibly (Megatron's pronounced yawning, Inferno's tortured screaming), or to do something visually dynamic (acrobatic transformation), the CGI was replaced with cel animation.

The very notion that CGI was replaced with cel in order to look more impressive said volumes in itself. Further, the show's CGI compares very poorly with Beast Wars and Beast Machines, both of which came out years previously, both of which were fully CGI (without the crutch of cel animation to fall back on), and both of which had characters who boasted complex, nuanced facial expressions and fluid, constant body language — even the ones with utterly inhuman faces and bodies. The only way to spare the animators' reputation is to assume that Energon's budget was minuscule in comparison.

Scripting and dubbing

On the dubbing side, Energon seemed even more rushed than Armada, which was already known for being so hurried that dubbers were working with unfinished animation, got names wrong, and had moments of dialogue that didn't jibe with the action. Energon generally got completed animation (or at least, animation that was complete enough that it didn't look half-drawn), and usually got names right—though Misha gets three different names during the course of the show, and Downshift and Cliffjumper are constantly confused.

There was virtually no re-writing to adapt Japanese scripts for Western sensibilities, or much checking to see if they made logical sense. As a result, the script is stilted, perfunctory, and repetitive, constantly throwing in cliche, time-killing phrases like "We've gotta [repeat the plot which everyone already knows]", "Let's do it!", and "It's time to [perform some action that's already patently obvious]". There is arbitrary new dialogue (that seems to exist purely due to writers' carelessness) which does not match what is occurring onscreen. The final result is a show with some bizarre non-sequiturs and more than a few moments of genuine nonsense.

Outside of these accidents, there are also some strange deliberate changes, chief among them the tendency for Primus to be intermittently ignored. In one episode, Primus would be dubbed accurately, talking with other characters normally, while in the next, he would be deliberately edited out, with his lines erased or given to other characters, and references to him replaced with "the core". Other odd instances include Terrorcon drones having spoken lines randomly inserted in some scenes, never attributed to any one Terrorcon.

The quality of voice acting frequently suffers throughout the show, with the characters often sounding flat and uninspired. This can be a common result of the antiseptic ADR (automated dialog replacement) environment, where actors perform solo, with no one to play off of. But Energon is particularly bad in this regard. There are many times when all the actors clearly have no idea what their lines mean in the greater scheme of things, nor any idea of what they're really talking about. Proven talents such as Gary Chalk and David Kaye seem to struggle to make something of the material they were given.

There's also a pronounced amount of "filling dead air," with characters talking from offscreen simply to make noise where there was none originally. Take a drink every time someone goes "Uhh?" to break the silence, and you'll be hammered by the first commercial break.

Also? Kicker is incredibly annoying. This is not helped by the fact that his voice actor yells the vast majority of his lines.

Foonotes

From Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki, a Wikia wiki.