Now this is what the internet is for

Those of you who read this (there has to be one of you, somewhere... you at the back, no the toilets are to the left) and know me know that I'm a big fan of Transformers. I've written enough fanfiction about them at least.

Anyway a few years ago they announced a then new show. Transformers Animated. I saw the designs and along with a lot of people wondered what the hell had happened? These cubist nightmares were a hop skip and a jump from being the sort of thing you found scrawled on the back of a beer mat by an art student as a joke. Then I saw the toys (I would call them collectables, but they just weren't). While show accurate they were blocky, silly and so crammed with gimmicks it wasn't true.

Now in an earlier post I've praised the Animated legends figure of Bumblebee. He's fantastic and sits next to his G-1 counterpart blu-tacked to the top of my computer (the guitar I made it out of toothpicks is a bit bent but never mind). I love the little guy, I hope it shows. You see I looked deeper, beneath the gimmicks.

That is why I think Transformers Animated, as a show, is perhaps the best Transformers since Beast Wars. It knows exactly what it's doing and what other shows did wrong. First of all it has a set cast, the small team each have a chance to develop and a rich back story. It has far reaching implications, the actions of these few are pivotal  and seem to have effects all over the galaxy. There's humour, drama and real empathy with the characters, even the Decepticons and other bad guys out there.

This not only trumps the rampantly disappointing "Unicron Trilogy" but the breed of serious dramas like; The Wire, Heroes, the RDM Battlestar Galactica and Lost whose convoluted plots have gotten lost in a sea of undeveloped cameo roles and indecipherable arc plots.

This revelation forced me to look again at the animation. Now I've done my own bit of animation, not very good and I'll be posting some here as soon as I can. I know first hand the hardest thing is not what you would first think. The real difficulty is consistency. The animation has to be constant, in such you develop a style. A way of doing it that works for you. That style that becomes recognisable. While I don't think I'll ever be sold on the animated toys (outside of the legends line) I now think the unique design of Animated is one of it's best selling points. 

It's true beauty comes form the fact I can use like phrases like Cubist and Impressionist. I can analyse it as an art and design student and find something in it a lot deeper than the attempted realism of the 1980's cartoons like GI-Joe and it's stable mates. 

If you haven't seen any of Animated get out there and see it however you can. It is frankly stunning.