#i tried not making it a rambling mess...or the hot rod fangirl hour

[just-absolutely-super]

So I finished watching Transformers Cyberverse

Okay so like...I don't know why people on twitter like to call this one of the worst cartoons, it's quite literally not that bad

Definitely not a perfect series by a long shot, but it's far from offensive and has some genuinely good things going for it

More detailed review under the cut, but the TLDR version is that this is one of those shows that gets better the more you watch it, and even if there are still some problems I feel the good outweighs the bad

Cyberverse spoilers below btw

Let's get some general stuff out of the way before I go into each individual season. First with some praise:

This show is very charming to me, and what makes it that way has to be the characters and their interactions with each other

The first season starts with only Bumblebee and Windblade as our primary cast and I really enjoyed their chemistry together. Then you introduce the other characters and it just feels so wholesome watching everyone's bonds to each other and then eventual Autobot and Decepticon friendships. My favorite probably being Hot Rod and Clobber, like bro was basically nice to her and it led to her changing sides THAT'S SO CUTE WHAT

Some characterizations have slightly different takes than previous incarnations, and while I was a little iffy about them at first, I felt like it worked out in the end. For example, Grimlock is smart and sophisticated and at first I was like...nah, but this personality for him really grew on me. And as a dinosaur, his typical Grimlock ways shined through because he lowered his intelligence to increase his strength, which I was okay with

Soundwave also has some significant spotlight in this show post season 1...to the point I think there was a personal bias on the team tbh. He's not just a loyal Megatron follower, the writers tried giving him more of a personality. I don't hate the interpretation, because he really was fun in a lot of the scenes he was in, but it also felt rather different than other Soundwaves I'm used to. It's hard to describe tbh

This is also one of (if not the only) tv show to not include humans into the cast. I didn't mind tbh. I don't hate human characters in Transformers, I think they do add something to the franchise. But this series is first and foremost about the Cybertronians and trying to restore their planet and bring an end to the civil war. I think having humans in the equation would overcomplicate things, so I was fine with them not having any presence

And while we're on characters, the series really goes out of its way to highlight characters less-utilized throughout the franchise's run. Like, we get characters who are mostly prominent in the comics--some of which only appeared briefly in the run, which I think is really cool of them. Yeah I sorely missed the legacy characters like Ironhide and Jazz (and Elita...), but seeing characters like Chromia, Rack n Ruin, and Whirl being main characters was really nice to see

My only complaint about this though is that Cyberverse fell into the problem G1 did. There are so many characters that a lot of them would end up being part of the background, or even forgotten. Hell, Jazz just gets mentioned in a line read but we never see him OTL

Another example of this is Drift/Deadlock. He has one scene in the first season where he leaves the Decepticons, and I thought maybe he would end up being important later on, but then you don't see him again until late in season 2 and I was shocked to actually see him because he came out of nowhere! Then he freaking goes back to being a Decepticon in the third season's premier, which really did come out of nowhere like...bruh I have little investment in you, why should I care that you're a traitor?

So yeah, Cyberverse really did attempt to give us a big cast with memorable personalities and bonds, but unfortunately it had to limit itself. And a lot of that had to do with one of my biggest criticisms of the show...the pacing

Cyberverse is a standard tv show with 62 episodes and 2 tv specials

The problem is, though, other than the specials which are an hour long, all the episodes are 11 minutes long

They do well with what they had to work with, but the length mostly worked with the episodes that focused on either worldbuilding or character interactions. Anything plot-wise suffered a bit because you could tell the writers were on this time-crunch to effectively tell the story they wanted without going over. It ended up with our conflicts resolving rather quickly and we spend the rest of the time with fluff

I'll go over that more with my season breakdowns further below, but in the meantime just wanted to touch base on other aspects of the show

Animation-wise, I thought it was pretty good. It's a simple style, but it had its own flow to it. One thing I do like is how some the Cybertronians transform (Bee and Hot Rod specifically). It's like they do a little front flip before they enter car mode and idk that just really tickled my brain in a good way lol

I also mentioned in a tag on a personal post that I found the voice acting kind of on the meh side. I don't really know any of the these voice actors, but while some did really well (Bee's VA Jeremy Levy basically carried this show with his talent as many characters), others...they got better with time

I've heard Jake Foushee as Optimus before and I don't think he's a terrible pick for the big guy, but the line deliveries would be awkward at times. There were even some moments where I was reminded of William Shatner's Captain Kirk with the almost too long pauses between words

And Hot Rod's voice took the longest for me to adjust to, being given a pitch that was higher than what I'm used to for him, to the point it was almost grating. Sometimes it would be okay and then other times I would just dislike it. Then in season 3 his VA tried changing his tone to be more low and rough (to reflect the more serious tone) but then he switched it back to how it was afterwards, so I'm not really sure what the point was? I don't think he was terrible, but he's definitely not who I'd want voicing Rod again in a future project

I think that takes care of the general feelings on the entire thing. Now I can talk about more personal opinions on each season:

Season 1 aka Amnesia Plot is the Perfect Excuse to Worldbuild

As my fun little title says, season 1 is all about introductions. It uses Bumblebee having amnesia and Windblade fixing his memories as a way to tell the audience who these characters are, what their world is, and the background of the Cybertronian war

As a first season, it's passable, and it does have its cute moments with the character interactions and decent action. The payoff at the end was also nice, even if it is a cliffhanger (that's the thing about this show, it just looooves its cliffhangers)

Season 2 aka Starscream Causes Problems on Purpose...Again

There's a little more plot to this season and gives us more characters to the cast.

The plot centers around the AllSpark mainly and the Autobots trying to obtain it so they can take it back to Cybertron. We're given Cheetor who is baby the guardian of the AllSpark and joins the main cast once our real conflict happens. The conflict, though, isn't really because of Decepticons, but Starscream--who steals the AllSpark and becomes the actual villain

It's not a bad plot, really, but it greatly suffers from the pacing issues the show has due to the limited runtime. Like Starscream is our big bad and has the power of the AllSpark. You would think taking him down would last the entire season. But no, it's actually resolved a little over halfway through (and rather easily if I may add...) and we spend the rest of the season doing breather episodes before ending it as soon as the Autobots get back to Cybertron. It's...certainly a choice?

I think the reason for Starscream being our main villain was meant to be a springboard to the overall goal the show wants: to unite the Autobots and Decepticons. It doesn't really go as planned here, but it's meant to set up the idea before it comes to fruition in the next season

There were some other nitpicks here and there, but overall I do think it was more interesting than season 1, it just needed things ironed out more

Season 3 aka Three Endgame Scenarios in Rapid Succession

Much longer than the previous seasons (going from 18 episodes to a whopping 26), and has a much longer, action packed story arc. While I did enjoy all of it more than previous seasons, it unfortunately had its own issues with, you guessed it, the pacing

The season starts where season 2 left off and tbh I felt like that should have been S2's finale. Not only would it have wrapped up the loose ends from that season, but it could have given us a conclusion that was more open-ended instead of an abrupt cliffhanger. Then season 3 could begin proper with the Quintessons taking over. With the battle for Cybertron being the beginning and then immediately leading to a new but more mysterious storyline, it gave me a lot of whiplash

The Quintesson plotline had a really good conclusion, but we had more story left to tell, which would be the aftermath of that battle. While those episodes weren't bad at all, the endgame episodes they were setting up for the season finale ended up feeling very rushed, much like how S2 rushed Starscream's plot

It's so strange, I know this show can work with shorter-length episodes, but for something larger scaled like the freaking MULTIVERSE coming together, it ends up being kind of clunky

Yeeeah, wasn't too keen on the multiverse stuff if I'm being real. I'm a little burned out on multiverses, so that's part of why I wasn't into it

(Also, side rant, but I much prefer the Matrix when it is an artifact of Primus that chooses who is worthy enough to wield it. Megatron showing up back to his universe with a fully functioning Matrix that he took from a more EVIL version of him just took me tf out like WHAT?! WHY IS THIS WORKING FOR JUST ANYONE??? I WISH IT WAS LIKE G1'S MATRIX WHERE IT GAVE YOU HIVES IF YOU TRIED FORCING IT TO WORK LMAOOOO)

Another minor complaint is the decision to rebrand this season and the next as "Bumblebee Cyberverse Adventures". It's weird because Bee isn't that very prominent for most of the season. He does stuff in the 4 part premier, but afterwards he takes a backseat and Hot Rod becomes our main hero (AS HE SHOULD BE THAT'S MY BOOOOOOOOY) up until about episode 11 when Bee and every other character gets brought back into the plot. Then episode 18 gives him more focus as he goes on a quest to find the parts of Windblade's soul. Not sure if the rebrand was because of a contract, but it feels a little misleading to give Bumblebee a title character credit when hasn't been the main main character since season 1

Season 4 aka Two Special Movies

Part 1 Enter Volcanicus

I think this was a fun special, giving focus to Grimlock and his new Dinobot friends who use the Enigma of Combination (that Grimlock and Arcee basically grave robbed to obtain it but eh details) to become Volcanicus

It also used other underutilized or obscure characters and turned them into Mercenaries under Trypticon of all characters. Yeah...that was certainly a choice. He's not a Titan class Cybertronian in this continuity but an abusive boss. K

As for his employees, I didn't exactly mind them, but I have my hang-ups about some of them

Like I said, they're either underutilized or obscure characters...but they're obvious recolors

Some are smart and make sense like Soundblaster and BugBite, where the former was always meant to be an in-universe recolor of Soundwave, while the latter is a GoBot character who gets turned into a TF bad guy who just happens to look like a silver Bumblebee

The other two I'm meh about. One of them is Afterburner, who is a recolor of the conehead seekers. My problem with this one is...Afterburner was originally a technobot. I think they just chose this name at random, not realizing it was already taken lmao

The last one is Nightbird, who I was excited to learn was in Cyberverse. The problem is that she looks too much like an Arcee recolor for my taste. Comparing her to the G1 design, I get what they were going for. They reused the model because it's easier and cheaper, but gave her her own flare so she looked similar to her G1 counterpart. I'm less mad after comparing the designs, but still...bro I can't unsee the obvious Arcee model jdkfjfk

Bro I totally forgot about Doublecrosser...yeah he's a Rack n Ruin recolor. I don't think they even tried to do like they did when designing Nighbird by giving him traits similar to his comic counterpart, I think they just strait up recolored Rack n Ruin lmao

Like I said, it's fun special. Volcanicus is a delight and the action was pretty good. My big criticism lies in Soundblaster. His motivation for leaving Cybertron and becoming a mercenary...was because Soundwave humiliated him in what I can only describe as a DJ-off

Bro that is so fucking stupid, you are literally murdering people all because you're a sore loser. You deserved your legs getting vaporized!

Part 2 Achieving Peace But For Realz This Time

The series finale is about how Cybertron is finally at peace and the Autobots and Decepticons are united. That gets changed when Tarn--another character from the comics--comes in from the universe with the Super Evil Megatron and tries to take over the multiverse for himself

It's not a bad special. There are some story beats that are pretty typical and obvious (of coooourse Tarn was going to betray them, did we expect anything less?), but it was nice seeing the Autobots and Decepticons actually working together to defeat a common enemy and stay friendly at the end of it. We truly obtained peace and that's kind of nice to see in a franchise where it's always a never-ending war, y'know?

Whether this is a true criticism or just me not liking it for my own personal reason, I'm not sure, but one thing that did bug me was the ending of how Tarn was defeated

I mentioned earlier in this already long-ass review that I thought the writers were biased toward Soundwave. Well, Soundwave is the true hero of the series, sacrificing himself to defeat Tarn. I don't...hate it, but it felt really weird

Mostly because IT WASN'T OPTIMUS TO DO IT

IS THIS THE ONLY SERIES WHERE HE DOESN'T DIE?!?! LIKE MAN I WAS WAITING FOR IT!

I thought this whole thing was going to end with him sacrificing himself and allowing the Cybertronians to continue life without him. He even says at the end, there's no more need for a Prime so he's going to retire. HE COULD HAVE DIED PROTECTING THE PLANET AND WE WOULD HAVE ACHIEVED THIS SAME NOTION! JUST LIKE IN TFP WHERE HE SACRIFICED HIMSELF!

IF ANYTHING, IF HE DID SURVIVE I THOUGHT HE'D PASS THE MATRIX TO HOT ROD TO HELP LEAD THE PLANET!

HOT ROD PROVED HE WAS A WORTHY LEADER, GIVE ME RODIMUS PRIME YOU COWARDS

*ahem*

So yeah...despite whatever hang-ups I have, I did think it was a nice and proper conclusion

If you made it to the end, thanks for reading. I could probably talk more about the show, but it's difficult to organize all the thoughts coherently in one big post. Like I felt like I didn't really talk about Optimus and Megatron much, but with them it's mostly little things. They're done fine, but maybe more could have been done with them...

Cyberverse has its problems, and you kind of have to sit through quite a bit to get to the good parts, but it is a cute and enjoyable series overall imho

I think worth a watch at least one time