Transformers Animated: Return of the Headmaster

Ahh, another great episode of Transformers Animated. Today's episode was the Return of the Headmaster. As you can tell from the title, the criminal Headmaster returns, but now works for Sumdac Corporation. He's up to his old tricks of stealing Transformers bodies, but this time someone who deserves it. It works out, of course and helps Optimus Prime earn Sentinel Prime's respect. Good ending. I love this show. No Decepticons this time around though.

Transformers Animated: The Elite Guard

Today's episode, The Elite Guard, is very different and interesting. The Cybertron Elite Guard has come to Earth to take back the All Spark and deal with Optimus and his crew . It's very odd to watch Optimus get disrespect from his superiors, but again this series is showing us a version of what it would of been like if Prime was brand new. What was nice is that we got to finally see what Cybertron looks like real quick and it actually looks like the G1 version of the planet. The episode gets good as it goes. Our autobot friends get to prove themselves.

Excellent episode, and great for Optimus Prime fans.

Transformers Animated: Megatron Rising - Part 2

This is the best Transformers Animated episode ever so far, "Megatron Rising - Part 2". This is what everyone has been waiting for. A true legendary battle between the new autobots and decepticons. Megatron is simply awesome and all powerful. He has his arm cannon, but also has a sword to fight with. During this episode, Prime and Megatron finally got to fight off in a way reflective of their legendary battle in the movie along with their hand weapons. However, of course Prime didn't get serevely deathly damaged though. Megatron did beat his ass real good and they got to battle it out alone. We also get to see the autobot starship again in better detail and it is very similar to the Ark from G1.

As the episode goes on it only gets better as Optimus Prime and Megatron face off yet again, but this time with the All Spark reflective of the live action movie. Good thing it wasn't a human that put the final punch to Megatron. It's not over, of course, but now Megatron looks like his damaged self from the G1 movie. I don't think he's turning into Galvatron any time soon though. So, I must leave you with this. If you never watched Transformers Animated, this is the time. Megatron Rising Part 1 and 2 are legendary episodes to kick off a new generation of Great Wars to be remembered.

Transformers Animated: Megatron Rising - Part 1

The rise of the Decepticons is near as the episode "Megatron Rising - Part 1" begins. This is the first episode to seriously focus on the Decepticons and include all the characters we have met so far for their side. Finally seeing Starscream again since his first appearance, it's amazing how much he sounds like G1 Starscream. They did a great job at finding an actor who sounds like him. I also notice that his colors have been upgraded to red to match his G1 counterpart.

What's odd in this episode for the autobots is how Optimus Prime is trying to be really serious and hard on his troops with the upcoming threat. I guess the realization is that this generation of autobots are beginners at their claim to fame. I think this is a first to have an Optimus character that's only beginning to learn to be a leader and hero. Some people were against the idea that these autobots were not warriors, but held a maintenance job repairing space bridges. However, this is a way to show true character development of how characters with similar names to G1 began to become legendary. Afterall, G1 Optimus Prime didn't start off as a warrior either in his past. It was because of Megatron's attack that Orion Pax had to be upgraded into this leader warrior that we all know. Of course, the G1 series didn't focus on that, but wrote it as his backstory. Transformers Animated is the first to show how autobots go from average workers to legendary warriors.

Ah, the end of the episode was just getting good. All Hail Megatron.

Transformers Animated: Nature Calls

The series continues with "Nature Calls" which was a pretty good episode today. It was interesting that they nodded towards G1 again by having some construction vehicle robots that were similar in color and appearance to some of the constructicons. There was a supervisor guy that looked similar to Sparkplug and wore the same outfit. It's also cute that now the Transformers, well Bumblebee, plays video games and watch television. The main plot today focuses on space barnacles that are some dangerous alien life form from space that like to cling onto spaceships and machines. These barnacles made me thing of the Cosmic Dust organism from Geneation One but actually are completely unrelated. Cosmic Dust causes Transformers to rust away, while Barnacles engulf machines and take form into an alien zombie. Still, it's cool that they brought back the concept of alien viruses and organisms of deep space. The end was nice anyhow, heh heh. The next two episodes are going to be awesome.

Japanese TV: Bara no nai Hanaya

I started to watch a Japanese Drama called "Bara no nai Hanaya" which translates to "The Flower Shop Without Roses" or something similar. This drama starts off extremely sad as the viewer is given a summary of scenes that explains the main character's past that makes him who he is today. Shiomi Eiji suffers a terrible lost as his future wife dies while giving birth to their daughter, Shizuku. The summary of scenes continues to show a progression of his life with his daughter until she is aged to be in the second grade. Eiji is somewhat consumed by his girlfriend's love for flowers that he ends up opening a Flower Shop which he gets to meet a lovely woman who is blind. This is where the actual present story starts off along with his daughter and how she has began to hide her face since it reminds Eiji of his true love. What's somewhat odd is that there seems to be some form of man who is out to get our innocent main character. These cruel characters are only shown extremely briefly and mysteriously. This story is such a good hearted tale that it's going to hurt to watch cruel characters try to take advantage of Eiji. Overall, this show is a very human story and sad. It's just the first episode too. The preview shows that the plot is going to really start advancing with this devilish plot against our sad florist. Either way, I recommend people taking a look at it. The series is only in Japan, but has been fansubbed on the internet.

Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bara_no_nai_Hanaya
Official Web Site: http://wwwz.fujitv.co.jp/rose/index.html

Transformers Animated: Headmaster

Transformers Animated episode "Headmaster" is pretty interesting. What stands out at first is that it's an episode about Bulkhead and focuses on his character. The second thing is how they're trying to use the old Headmaster concept from the last season (season four) of Generation 1 by creating a head that a human can pilot. The difference is G1 headmasters merged human with Transformer life. I must say this episode has the most humor in it so far. It really cheers me up from how I been feeling lately. There's a lot of FPS talk in it though from this crazy human villian nerd. He keeps saying "noob," "ownage," and other internet terms. It wasn't a bad episode at all. Better than last week, but it still didn't have any decepticons.

Transformers Animated: Survival of the Fittest

This weeks of Transformers Animated wasn't as exciting. A human villain returns from the episode of "Total Meltdown" which many of us didn't see since it wasn't aired like it should have. Today's episode called "Survival of the Fittest" brings back the character who calls himself "Meltdown" and includes the Dinobots. This character has been transformed into some humanoid acidic form and wants to continue his experiments to create transforming humans. Meltdown has decided to kidnap Sari as he believes she'll be the best shape shifter since she's still growing up. The best part of the episode was to finally see the Dinobots transform into their robotic forms. Swoop's and Snarl's designs look pretty weird and strange in robot mode though. I guess I may have liked the episode more if I saw "Total Meltdown". I guess I was really expecting to see more of the Decepticon story. I understood the series started slow and focused more on the human city and characters, but now that the Decepticons are on Earth....it's about time we see more action with them.

I think some people seem to forget that the original Transformers Generation One had its own human villains. Typically these villains were taken advantaged of by Megatron, but not always. There's one guy who comes to mind that had nothing to do with the Decepticons at all. Lord Chumley, the big-game hunter. He collected the most exotic creatures that he could find. Of course, that means he wants the head of Optimus Prime. Anyone remember that episode? So, yeah, G1 was just as mixed up between the Decepticons, humans, and then aliens.

Transformers Animated: Lugnut & Blitzwing

Wow, another great episode of the Transformers. For all of you who haven't been watching, Transformers Animated is the first true American-based production for the Transformers since Beast Wars/Machines (even that was in Canada). This series truly honors the original G1 series and go far beyond that by finally offering a show that has high quality storytelling and animation. Some people may be shocked or freaked out by the animation style, but it will soon grow on you quickly. The series really has depth in character development, action, and plot. It's also a bit serialized which is great to anime fans alike. I want people to remember that I only seen the episodes once, and so I may not remember specific details clearly. I'm sure some hardcore fans will watch the episode twice, both on Saturday and Sunday. The show airs on Cartoon Network between 10:30 (saturday) and 11AM (sunday) EST. Watch the Transformers Animated Opening Intro!

So, now that I introduced Transformers Animated to my blog, I can express my impressions from this week's episode: Lost and Found. Actually, I'm going to speak about two characters that were formally introduced. I'm a big Decepticon fan and so that's likely what you'll hear about anyhow. I was very impressed by Lugnut and Blitzwing whom finally made their way to Earth to recover Lord Megatron. Blitzwing first appeared in the movie pilot, but really in the background. Anyhow, Lugnut reminds me a lot of Shockwave from Transformers Generation 1. He has one eye, he's bulky, and very loyal. Shockwave was similar. I think the major difference is that Shockwave was pretty intelligent compare to Lugnut's somewhat dull brain. Then there's Blitzwing, a name borrowed from Generation 1. They actually honored the name by making this guy another triple changer (he has three modes including his bot mode). Hmm, they actually kept both of his forms from G1, a tank and plane. I don't think Blitzwing got enough airtime in G1 and sometimes its hard to remember him compare to Astrotrain who got a lot more attention. Either way, this Transformers Animated (TA for now on) character has multiple personalities. I think he does remind me a bit of Blitzwing, but he's mostly a completely new character.

To end, I must say I'm very happy with these new Decepticons. I actually thought from their first impression from the TA pilot movie, that they actually may be very very stupid and worthless as the Decepticons suffered from the 3D CG Transformers shows from a few years ago like Armada and Energon. Instead, they are respectible and honorable Decepticons that will make any fan happy for some time to come. I was surprised to see both the Decepticon and Autobot spaceships in this episode as well. It was somewhat out of the blue since they were almost forgotten after the first episode. The end of the episode was a bit of a shock and a little weird too. It looks like our Decepticon buddies are where the Dinobots were put to rest except it's full of water now. Plus the bastard traitor has somehow survived and going to be trying to take power. Lugnut should prove very interesting in this new situation which will create a great plot of his attempts to follow Megatron while pretending to follow Starscream as he goes.