Transformers: Armada
Director
Hidehito Ueda
Country of origin
Japan
Format
Series
Year
2002
Transformers: Armada
By Eric
23rd May 04  Back in the '80s there was this cool little thing called Transformers...where the cars and trucks turned into robots. They were in. Everyone had a transformer toy. You had one, your dad had one, your cat had one. They were a phenomenon...Now, there is a new incarnation of Transformers, and it is....average. What went wrong? Well, to it's credit, Transformers Armada did keep many of the things which made the old show such a hit. On the other hand, they also added a bunch of new things that are less than desirable. How do you tell if an anime is some cheap piece of crap made only to get your money? There's three indisputable signs. 1) The show is about collecting something...collecting cards, collecting monsters, and in Transformers Armada's case, collecting "mini-cons," which are kinda like upgrades to the robots. 2) The show has a supporting cast who do nothing but take up space. They're nerdy, whiny little tweens who never contribute anything to the Transformers, yet somehow they still get to hang out with them. They're like that fat neighbor who always watched your satellite TV and then didn't invite you to his Christmas party...bastard. 3) The show has some cheap, arbitrary moral in every episode. Now, I'm not saying that anime shouldn't have any lessons. I learned a lot of meaningful lessons by watching Cowboy Bebop and Generator Gawl. However, the lessons should have something to do one another...Learning about compromise in one episode and then skipping right to sharing or something like that is just dumb. Make it tie together so it doesn't seem like some kind of PBS after-school special! Transformers Armada does all three of these things...It still has all the battles and action you fondly remember, but it still manages to annoy the hell out of you. Diehard fans should enjoy it, but everyone else will be disappointed. 5/10
-- Eric 23rd May 04
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