The Media Man Reviews: Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2001)

Man am I going on a trip down memory lane today...

Transformers: Robots in Disguise isn't just a Transformers cartoon. For me, it was THE Transformers cartoon. Many fans can cite any number of TF shows as the one that started it all for them. Some got started via the original G1 cartoon. Some got started via the Beast Wars era. Some got into the franchise thanks to The Unicron Trilogy. And nowadays, there are fans who became fans thanks to the Aligned continuity. And of course, some got into the franchise (somehow) thanks to the Michael Bay films. But for me? Transformers: Robots in Disguise was my beginning. This was where I got started with Transformers. I owe my lifelong love of the franchise to THIS series.

And before you ask, no, I'm not talking about that mediocre sequel series to Transformers: Prime we got in 2015. I'm talking about the 2001 anime, originally titled Transformers: Car Robots in its original Japanese dub. Yeah, I bet so many TF fans are shaking their heads at this. THIS show was what got me into Transformers? This show that barely anyone remembers, barely anyone talks about (and if it ever IS talked about, it's only in regards to Sky-Byte and this show's interpretation of Scourge)? I got into the franchise thanks to this forgotten filler series that bridged the gap between the Beast Wars era and the Unicron Trilogy? Sounds crazy, but it's true! I was a 90's kid! I missed the entire G1 and G2 era and I was too young to be watching the Beast Wars era at the time (although I did get some of the toys amazingly enough). But I was the right age to start watching this show. I remember watching it with my older brother on Fox Kids back when that channel used to exist. I was hooked instantly and just had a blast watching this show and seeing all the cool transforming robots. It should also come as no surprise that my first TF toys I collected were from this era. I remember owning this show's version of Megatron, X-Brawn, Wedge, Heavy Load and miniature versions of Ultra Magnus and Scourge while my older brother got Optimus Prime, Side Burn, Prowl and Grimlock and my younger brother got Hightower. Sadly, I no longer have any of those toys, but I DID manage to find Megatron on eBay and bought it so it's back in my collection again.

In any case, I was feeling nostalgic the other month and decided "Why not rewatch it?" It was going to be interesting to look back and see where Transformers began for me. So did I pick a great place to start with this franchise? Or did I pick a bad first impression? Let's transform and roll out!

Section 1: The Story

It's a classic tale of good vs. evil as follow Optimus Prime and his fellow Autobots against the evil Megatron and his fellow Predacons with humanity caught up between the two warring factions. Yeah, it's as cookie cutter as it gets with a Transformers cartoon.

It's interesting talking about the story here, because this show really is the bridge between the Beast era and the Unicron Trilogy. What I mean is that at first, we have the Autobots fighting against the Predacons. The heroes are back to being Autobots instead of Maximals and they're back to turning into vehicles while the villains are the still Predacons and still have beast modes, but then later in the series at around Episode 14, we get the reintroduction of the Decepticons who also turn into vehicles. Out-of-universe, I assumed the plan was to slowly reintroduce the classic TF concept after the Beast era ended but in-universe, there's literally no explanation behind this. There's no reason why it's Autobots vs. Predacons at first, that's just how it is.

Anyhow, the story may be as basic as it gets, but is it any good? Eh...no. I'm sorry if I'm going to trample on people's childhoods here, but the writing of the show is absolutely not fit for purpose. And this is coming from someone who LOVED watching the show as a kid!

For starters, the writing is an absolute mess. The entire show feels like the writers were just making it up as they went along with no real thought put into it. Not only is the world-building incredibly weak with only a surface level explanation of who the Autobots and Predacons are and how humans just seem to be aware that the Transformers exist with little to no explanation behind it, but a lot of plot points and concepts that the show digs up feel half-explored and like they were just thought up with no real thought put into them. Case in point: the O-Part scavenger hunt. That plot point is very clumsily introduced into the show with little build up whatsoever and the characters just go along with it as if the O-Parts have always been a part of the story. Even the entire Fortress Maximus story feels half-baked and just thrown in there with very little build-up or explanation. And take into account how the show has interesting ideas but doesn't do anything with them. Scourge and the Decepticons are Autobot proto forms that were corrupted by Megatron's spark into becoming Decepticons. Imagine how interesting it would've been to see Optimus and his Autobots trying to break them free of Megatron's control and appeal to their Autobot nature. But no, they never try to break them free and restore them as Autobots. They just accept that they're evil now and just fight them because they're the enemy and that's it. It feels oddly cynical for a light hearted show like this...

But the worst example for me is the conflict between Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus. Magnus is jealous of Optimus for being gifted the Matrix while he wasn't and so Magnus keeps hunting him down and trying to take the Matrix from him. This plot is introduced in Episode 24 and lasts until Episode 28 in where Magnus leaves, saying he "has a lot to think about". Anytime he shows up after that, he's basically a deus ex machina to help save the day and any conflict between him and Optimus has more or less vanished. The two never reconcile and Magnus never makes another attempt to get the Matrix. He's just there to be a power up for Optimus more or less. What was even the point of having this storyline if it wasn't going to amount to anything?

And also, the pacing does this show no favours at all. Up until around Episode 14, we mostly just have missions of the week with very little plot progression being made and too many characters get introduced very early on with no time to flesh out the old ones before the cast begins to expand. For example, we're very quickly introduced to Optimus, the Autobot Brothers, Megatron and his Predacons in Episode 1. Then Episode 2 introduces Sky-Byte. Then Episode 3 introduces Team Bullet Train. And THEN Episode 4 introduces the Spychangers! Over the course of FOUR episodes, we introduce SEVENTEEN CHARACTERS at once, and that's if we don't include the human characters! I don't care if TF cartoons are meant to help sell the toys, there is such a thing as overdoing it! If Transformers: Prime can introduce its characters at a more leisurely pace and still promote the toys, then what's this show's excuse? It also isn't helped how the bad pacing means that in some episodes, we have characters instantly figuring out the problem or what's behind what's going on with very little work put into showing how they figure it out or come to these conclusions. This causes the writing to feel excessively childish to me. And then there's the fact we have THREE clip shows in this show. THREE CLIP SHOWS! In a series that's only 39 episodes long! What in the maw of Unicron is this?!

But the worst example of the bad pacing comes from the plot point of Koji's kidnapped father, Dr. Onishi. He's kidnapped at the very start of the show, which makes for an effective hook to keep us invested in what's going on. Do you want to know how long it takes for this plot point to be resolved? TWENTY-NINE EPISODES!!! No, I'm serious! It literally takes until Episode 30 for Koji's father to be rescued, AND THE AUTOBOTS WEREN'T EVEN THE ONES WHO DID IT! They were doing such a terrible job at trying to save Koji's dad that Sky-Byte had to do it for them, unintentionally might I add? It's frankly embarrassing writing. It'd be like if the Pokémon anime had a plot point where Giovanni kidnaps a powerful legendary Pokémon, Ash makes a vow to get it back and then makes NO effort to do so for twenty-nine episodes...and then the legendary Pokémon is saved because Jessie and James took it out on a mission with them or something and it's because of their idiotic decision to do so as to how Ash is able to rescue it. This plot point should've wrapped up a lot sooner and had way more effort put into it.

And that's not getting into the show's biggest Achilles Heel: the tone. The original Japanese version, Car Robots, was designed to be a more wacky series compared to what we got before in the G1 TF series and Beast Wars. While the English dub removes some of the wackiness, it doesn't change the fact that the show's tone does it no favours. It's a more comedic series of Transformers, and a bad one at that. The comedy is mostly not funny and sometimes out of place and it only holds the show back from its full potential. Because of this denser and wackier tone, we have a Transformers series that feels very weightless in terms of conflict. I already mentioned how Optimus and Ultra Magnus's conflict was quietly dropped and never touched on again, but the battles feel devoid of stakes since nobody can die or even get badly hurt in this show. The Autobots more or less win every battle and the Predacons and Decepticons are sent scurrying away in defeat. I'm just wondering how my childhood self was ever entertained by this thing. It says so much when even the 2015 RID show felt like it had higher stakes and better action scenes than this show.

So yeah, the show sounds like a trainwreck that's on par with the Netflix series and Transformers: Energon, right? Yeah, the writing doesn't hold up when viewed through a more mature perspective, that's for sure. But does it have anything good about it? Yes actually.

For starters, I love how surprisingly restrained they were with the human companions here. Koji isn't shoved into every episode and any time he does get involved, he is actually useful and when Dr. Onishi is rescued and more or less joins the team, he proves to be useful too. They're the few examples of human companions who don't feel like dead weights and the plot doesn't try too hard to make them seem important. I do feel that Fortress Maximus responding to humans was ridiculously contrived though, but still.

And as much as I was giving the story a hard time, I will admit that after the Decepticons are introduced, the show does pick up for they tone down the comedy, focus more on the action and the story becomes a little more serialized. It doesn't improve the story all that much, but it did make it more interesting to watch compared to before the Decepticons debuted. And I'll always appreciate this show for some of its cool concepts and character designs that have stuck with me years later. No joke, I'm probably the only TF fan on this planet actually hoping we get new toys of the Build Team because they've stuck with me so much. Give us new updated Build Team figures dammit! At least we got new toys of Scourge and Sky-Byte, which I was able to get. ;)

And while I said the comedic tone was the show's weak point, I will say the comedy isn't all bad. There are times the show can get funny, especially whenever Sky-Byte's making a fool of himself or some of the comedic quirks of the cast. And I guess some of the show's more insane parts are what make the show entertaining in a "turn off your brain and just enjoy the show" sort of way. There were scenes of the show I was even re-enacting years later into adulthood because I remembered how funny they were. This part especially always cracks me up:

"OH NO! The O-Parts got all jumbled up! And now I can't tell real from fake!"

"Sky-Byte!" (growls)

"Nothing...wrong sir!"

I dunno why, that bit just makes me laugh. XD

Still, with writing as amateurish as this and a story that feels like a first draft that never got properly refined, I almost feel embarrassed to admit this was the show that got me into Transformers. Talk about a bad first impression...

Section 2: The Characters

This show is a prime example of quantity over quality. There are so many characters in here, yet it feels like I won't be here long talking about them, because they barely have anything to talk about.

Koji Onishi (voiced by Jason Spisak) is the human companion. That is the beginning and end of my description of him because I literally have nothing else to say about him. He's just the human companion.

As for the Autobots, we have Optimus Prime (voiced by Neil Kaplan) and at least four groups of Autobots consisting of the three Autobot brothers Side Burn (voiced by Wally Wingert), X-Brawn (voiced by Bob Joles) and Prowl (voiced by Wayne C. Lewis), Team Bullet Train, the Spychangers and the Build Team. We also have Skid-Z and Tow Line, but they're guest characters rather than main ones, so they're not worth bringing up. All these guys barely qualify as characters because of how one-dimensional they are. They're more a collection of tropes than actual characters. Optimus is the wise and noble leader, Side Burn is the young hot head who chases red sports cars, X-Brawn is the tough guy, Prowl is a stickler for the rules, Wedge is the hot-headed leader of the Build Team and the rest have such little personality that I couldn't even describe what they are. I will at least give this show credit for giving us a very likeable depiction of Optimus Prime where he feels true to the character he's supposed to be. This Optimus really does feel like a kind individual who values life and will do anything to save his fellow Autobots and protect the human race. I also give this show credit for giving this Optimus more of a personality as some incarnations of Optimus make him a little too stoic or focus too much on the "Noble leader" side of him. In this show, Optimus is constantly smack-talking his enemies and making quips at their expense, and it's pretty funny honestly.

What's NOT funny is Side Burn's annoying running gag with chasing red sports cars. Not only does he come off as incredibly stupid for somehow not seeing these cars are CLEARLY NOT SENTIENT ROBOTS, THEY'RE JUST CARS, but his pursuit of them is just uncomfortable to watch. It's the equivalent of an obsessed stalker who can't take "no" for an answer and thinks they're "just playing hard to get". I swear if this really was a guy chasing after a woman, this would not have been played for laughs at all and Side Burn would be seen as a perverted creep for acting like this, yet somehow we're meant to find his antics because...he's chasing ordinary cars? I have no idea. Even as a kid, I never found Side Burn's antics funny and as an adult, I find them uncomfortable. If this guy ever shows up again in TF media, they better NOT re-adapt that stupid running gag of his...

And while we're still talking about Autobots, let's talk about Ultra Magnus (voiced by Kim Strauss). On paper, he sounds interesting as a bitter Autobot who's jealous of Optimus that he never got the Matrix and wants to take it for himself, but is ultimately an Autobot deep down as his beef with Optimus doesn't mean he'll take it to the point he'll join the Decepticons. I even found it pretty cool how in this continuity, Optimus and Magnus are legit brothers. That's such an interesting twist on their relationship together and unique for these versions of the two. But as mentioned in the story segment, Ultra Magnus is ultra wasted potential. His plot is quietly dropped and his character doesn't really develop, it more or less just flips on a dime and he's now just OK with showing up whenever the plot needs him to in order to help save the day. Such a waste...

The Autobots also have a holographic AI human codenamed T-AI (voiced by Sandy Fox). She's just there to help with mission protocol and that's it. I'm not even sure why she was created in the first place since he role could've been handled by just making Optimus's computer talk and nothing would change. And yet despite her pointless inclusion, I found myself oddly liking her and I have no idea why. It's not like she's an interesting or well-developed character or anything. It's weird, I know...

And then we have the villains of the show starting with Megatron (voiced by Daniel Riordan) and his Predacon quartet consisting of Sky-Byte (voiced by the late Peter Spellos), Slapper (voiced by Peter Lurie), Darkscream (voiced by Steve Blum) and Gas Skunk (voiced by Jerry DeCapua). These guys are as one-dimensional and undeveloped as the Autobots are. Megatron's the tyrannical leader who wants to conquer and the Predacons are just his bumbling minions who quickly lose relevance after the Decepticons are introduced. Sky-Byte on the other hand is more interesting to talk about. This guy is the most popular character introduced in this show and it's easy to see why. Not only does he provide the show's best comedic moments, but he's surprisingly capable when he wants to be, especially in the earlier episodes. No joke, he actually held his own in battle against Optimus himself a couple of times! He's also pretty endearing in later episodes as a buffoon who just wants to please Megatron and life keeps screwing him over at times. Oh and he loves to write haikus as well. Who knew Cybertronians would develop a love of poetry? Sky-Byte was a hoot and it's easy to see why he's a fan favourite.

Now onto Megatron's more competent minions, the Decepticons which consist of Scourge (voiced by Barry Stigler), Mega Octane (voiced by the late Bob Papenbrook), Movor (voiced by the late Robert Axelrod), Ro-Tor (also voiced by Neil Kaplan), Armorhide (voiced by Richard Epcar) and Rollbar (voiced by the late Michael Lindsay). While more competent and threatening than the Predacon squadron, the Decepticons are equally as one-dimensional and underdeveloped. Armorhide, Rollbar and Ro-Tor don't even have personalities while Mega Octane is more of less just the commander of the group. The only thing they have going for them is whenever they combine into Ruination (also voiced by Bob Papenbrook) and yet despite supposedly being a powerful combiner, he sometimes gets taken down very easily. Scourge had potential to be interesting as an evil counterpart to Optimus Prime who rivals Sky-Byte for Megatron's attention and is also pretty much the Starscream of this show, but very little is done with the concept. Scourge is mostly all talk and no show and the one time he does betray Megatron (who is Galvatron at the time), he's very swiftly punished for his subordinance and this plot point ends as quickly as it started. I can't even with the show I swear. Why does it have so many cool ideas for these characters and do nothing with them?

Oh and I'd me amiss if I didn't bring up Kelly (voiced by the late Philece Sampler). She exists just to be a dumb running gag about how she's often caught up in the antics of the cast and suffers misfortune. So essentially, she's this show's equivalent of Squidward and Meg Griffin where she exists just to suffer and we're supposed to find it funny for some reason. Maybe if Kelly was more obnoxious and unlikeable, I would've found it amusing but no, Kelly's just an innocent bystander who is the butt of a joke despite doing nothing to deserve it. I will grant only VERY occasionally does this running gag get amusing, but most of the time it just feels like forced humour and once again I'm asking "How is this meant to be funny?". All of her scenes should've been dropped entirely and this running gag should never have existed in the first place.

I don't think I've ever seen a Transformers cartoon with a cast of characters this bloated, this one-dimensional, this poorly-developed and this wasted. And this was my first impression of them all?

Section 3: The Animation

I really don't want to do this part, because I'm worried I'll sound like I'm being really harsh here. Now before I start, I want to make this clear: yes, I know, this is anime that was made back in the early 2000's, so of course the animation won't have held up very well. As is, I still have to judge it by the finished product and I'm sorry to say, but even for early anime this series looks SO average in terms of visuals.

I don't know if this show was a rush job or not, but I really didn't find myself being all that impressed with the animation upon a rewatch. Now yes, this is early anime and it might look a little primitive by today's standards, but I think even by the standards of anime at the time, this looks pretty amateurish when compared to shows airing around the same time like Pokémon, Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh!. There's all kinds of noticeable goofs and errors in the animation here from derpy eyes to characters frequently being off-model to bizarre poses and even characters being miscoloured in places. One of the biggest goofs I noticed was in one episode where the Decepticons combine to form Ruination and his limbs swap places. Sounds weird I know, but what I mean is that in the show, Ruination has two formations, flight and strength, depending on which Decepticons form the limbs. In one episode, we clearly see the Decepticons combine into Ruination's flight formation, which has Ro-Tor and Movor as the arms and Rollbar and Armorhide as the legs. But then later in the episode, we see him in strength formation when that's not the form of Ruination we got earlier. And then later in the episode he's back to being in flight formation. Like what the heck, how did they miss that? You'd think somebody would've noticed.

And that's not getting into the usual problems that you'll get in early anime where there's stock footage galore and they re-use the transformation sequences for no other reason than to pad out the episode. I'm so glad later TF cartoons stopped doing this and we don't get that much anymore. But the biggest victim of the show's animation for me are the action scenes. How I was ever entertained by this show, I'll never understand. The action scenes are so boring here! It's the same repetitive crap over and over again: the bots and cons just shoot at each other with very little actual physical fighting and the cons run away the moment they get overwhelmed. Rinse and repeat. It also doesn't help how some fight scenes have the characters just standing around gobbing at each other instead of fighting. It's so weird because this is ANIME we're talking about! Anime is the medium that gives us some of the most insane and intense action scenes ever depicted in the animation industry, so why are the action scenes so boring in this show? The only time the action scenes ever got exciting to me were any time a combiner came in to spice things up or if ever we got a fight scene that had more action than just shooting going on such as Ruination vs. Landfill in one episode.

However, the animation isn't all bad. I do enjoy some aspects of the visuals. First of all, I love the character designs. These were the first Transformers I ever saw and they're a great first example of them for me. Just about every design looks so cool here from Optimus Prime to Megatron to the Build Team to Scourge and the Decepticons and the Autobot brothers. While the designs are based on the toys, they're still great looking designs that give the Transformers characters a distinct, memorable and iconic appearance. Every Cybertronian depicted in this show is easy to identify and tell apart thanks to how well designed they are. The standouts to me include Optimus's powerful and robust physique and his powerful battle mode, Megatron's black and purple colour scheme and large wings, Sky-Byte's large four-pronged left hand, X-Bran's oversized left arm, Side-Burn's slick car mode, the Build Team's unique body shapes and tools and Ruination's golden helmet and chest plate. This is a show that absolutely knew how to make these characters look awesome and I'd love to see these characters get new toys so I can own them all over again. I know Scourge and Sky-Byte got new figures and I was quick to get them. Now if only we can get new toys of the Build Team, X-Brawn, Optimus and Megatron...

The character animation also has its perks here, especially during the more comical moments of the series. I feel this show animates slapstick comedy very well and nails it with very funny facial expressions. Sky-Byte, especially when he's in shark mode is the best example of this. Here are just some of his funniest facial expressions I've picked up:

Hilarious! Something tells me the animators just LOVED drawing Sky-Byte in his shark mode. They really gave him a lot of the funniest expressions in the show whenever he was in that form. XD

And while we're talking of character animation and awesome designs, this shot of Galvatron at the end of Episode 32 goes SO hard.

Beautiful, I love it! :D

But the absolute highlight of the animation for me was whenever Fortress Maximus was onscreen. The animators absolutely did a great job on capturing the sheer size and scale of the titanic machine. Anytime he was onscreen, he looked very intimidating with his towering size and how he was nearly always shot from a low angle so we'd be looking up at him, thus feeling the sheer scale of him like everyone else did. This was definitely a great way to depict a Titan-sized Cybertronian and I loved it.

I also felt that the CGI Space Bridge tunnels, while a little dated visually, looked pretty cool at times and the characters amazingly managed not to look out of place when they went through them. That was pretty impressive.

The animation isn't the best ever, but I don't think it's bad animation by any means. The action scenes may be dull and there's a lot of noticeable errors, but there's awesome character designs that give the Transformers a good look, some hilarious expressions from the more comedic moments of the show and some of the transformation sequences do look pretty cool at least. So yeah, I'd say the animation is decent enough to pass, but I have seen better.

Conclusion

This show is living proof that just because you grew up with it, doesn't mean it's great. Seriously, THIS was the show that got me into Transformers?

Transformers: Robots in Disguise is an absolute mess of a show with amateurish writing, a story that feels like it was being made up on the spot, a cast of characters with nothing below the surface to them, running gags that are more annoying than funny, poor action scenes and animation that is average at best. Talk about a bad first impression of the franchise for me. And yet despite my incredibly critical view of the show as an adult...I can't hate this series. There's nothing offensively bad about it (if we ignore Side Burn being a #MeToo incident waiting to happen), I at least enjoy it from a nostalgic standpoint and hey, it's the show that got me into Transformers. I can't hate it for that. Yes it was a bad first impression, but my young self clearly saw something in it my adult self cannot and if it made my childhood fun and enjoyable, then how can I possibly hate this show? The show may have aged poorly and doesn't hold up in this day and age, but I appreciate it for the impact it's had on my life. So all that's left to say is that this show definitely has its problems...but in the end, it's still a fun nostalgic memory for me. Thanks for the childhood memories RiD 2001, and thanks for making me a fan of this franchise. I'll forever be grateful for that...

And that's all I have for this review. I hope you enjoyed it and feel free to list your thoughts down below. Do you like Transformers: Robots in Disguise? Do you not like it? Do tell me.

Next week I'll be doing an essay to celebrate Pokémon's 30th Anniversary . See you then media fans!

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