I was born in the 80’s and I remember Transformers being HUGE. I owned some of the toys and a few of the story tapes and books. I vaguely remember watching a few of the shows and enjoying them, but I never became one of the diehard fans. The Transformers never earned that place in my heart.
In 2007 I went to see Michael Bay’s live action Transformers movie and, I’ll be honest, I thought it was a good film. Some good CG and a pretty decent storyline made it a pretty enjoyable few hours. I remember the Transformers hardcore getting all pissed about the mecha designs and ranting that the Transformers didn’t get enough screen time. At the time I really didn’t get it, couldn’t they just accept that the franchise had been updated for the modern world?
Well a few months ago I was at the local supermarket, scanning the DVDs looking for a bargain. What should I find but the original first Transformers series in full. Five English pounds for 19 episodes of stupid one liners and horrendously bad one on one fight scenes? Yes please.
It was at this point I was suddenly made aware that in all my years of being a mecha anime fan, even though I own all the Gundam series and after sitting through episode after episode of Lynn Minmay singing that god awful song in Macross, I had never seen the original, generation 1, Transformers series.
I felt kinda bad. How could I call myself a mecha anime veteran if I hadn’t even seen Transformers? So after handing over my money I became the proud owner of Transformers G1.
Without comparing to the 2007 movie, here is what I think. For the 1980’s, the story was, and still is fantastic. A war between robots on a robotic planet that sees both good and bad robots travel to Earth, then after four thousand years get revived to carry on the fight whilst trying to find away to travel back to the homeland. It’s pretty good, and the fact that the series still comes across in 2009 as well as it did 1984 is quite a feat. I know that there have been re-incarnations of the Transformers in recent years, Armada and the quite terrifying looking Transformers Animated being two of them, but I honestly believe that the original series is far better, and it would be able to hold its own with the kids in this day and age.
Now I think I know what the hardcore fans meant. The live action movie was missing something, and that something was everything that the Transformers stood for. The series has action, comedy, suspense and an exceptionally good story. Michael Bay gave the Transformers a right royal anal raping. Seriously, everything that makes the Transformers what they are is forgotten and is instead replaced by some worthless collage humor, a terrible script and pretty bad acting.
Transformers has taken the path of Gundam. Amazing anime, horrendous live action film. Although I still think that Transformers live action is an enjoyable couple of hours, and way better than the disaster that was Mobile Suit: G-Savior, the original series completely rips it to shreds.
If you’ve never seen the original then I recommend you go and watch it. It’s old but god dam is it awesome.
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