Within the first five minutes of Transformers: Prime, one of the Autobots is killed, seemingly setting the stage for a much darker Transformers cartoon. Unfortunately what follows is a fairly standard children’s cartoon, with silly humour and mild peril that will do little to satisfy older audiences. However, there are still darker moments and a quite interesting zombie-esque storyline but they are dragged down by the child friendly bits. The Dark Energon story is at least a change from the traditional “we need Energon!” plot that has been used in every Transformers cartoon ever. The biggest issue the series faces is that it isn’t really that interesting, in between the brief action scenes it’s a struggle to stay awake.
The human characters are the most annoying aspect of the show. The Japanese girl, Miko, is by far the worst and if you’re anything like me you’ll wish she’d be squished by a Decepticon. I actually think she’s the worst character in anything ever. Jack at least gets off as being OK but serves very little purpose. The youngest human, Raf, is a rather common archetype in Japanese cartoons; the child super genius. He is at least useful, unlike the other children. The robot characters are mostly well acted and portrayed; with the voice actors who have played Optimus Prime and Megatron for many years returning.
The animation is quite sub-par and a bit unusual. Backgrounds are quite well detailed, appearing almost hand drawn, whereas the characters look really cheap. It’s actually quite a jarring effect at times but you get used to it eventually. The action scenes can look quite good but mostly also look cheap, as well as moving too fast to possibly follow what’s going on. The sword fighting scenes are the best of the series, particularly as Optimus takes on an army of Zombies, as they are much easier to follow and actually look cool.
Overall Verdict: A not very well animated cartoon that will annoy any older audiences and will probably bore children.
Reviewer: Matt Mallinson