About.com Rating

Introduction:

From The Press Release:
Prepare to experience the world of TRANSFORMERS PRIME like never before with perfect picture visuals and the purest digital sound available when the entire first season of the award-winning CGI animated series TRANSFORMERS PRIME arrives in stores everywhere in North America on March 6, 2012 in a deluxe 4-DVD set and a Limited Edition 4-Disc Blu-ray™ collection from Shout! Factory, in collaboration with Hasbro Studios.

Vitals

Title: Transformers Prime Season One Blue Ray Limited Edition with Transformers Prime Graphic Novel
Writer (comic): Mike Johnson
Artists (comic): E.J. Su, Atilio Martin, Allan Jefferson, David Daza, Joe St. Pierre
Covers (comic): Jose Lopez and Augusto Barranco
Colors (comic): Andrew Dalhouse, Andre Dalhouse, Cam Aon, Carlos Aon, Jorge Blanco, Jok
Inks (comic): Jordi Tarragona, Sergio Abad, Juan An Ramirez, David Daza, Jonas Trindale
Letters (comic): Chris Mowry and Robbie Robbins
Content (comic): Transformers Prime (comic) is for all ages. Transformers prime (cartoon) is rated Y7.
Publisher: IDW (comic) Hasbro/Shout Factory (cartoon)
Cost: MSRP $64.99

Story:

With heavy ties to the latest film franchise as it is written by the team who helped pen the feature films, the cartoon Transformers Prime retells the origin of the Autobots and their endless war with the Decepticons. The war that started on Cybertron continues on Earth and the citizens of the planet are caught in the crossfire. Transformers Prime reboots the franchise again for fans young and old.
The Autobots operate in their secret base and try to fend off schemes from Starscream and Megatron.

Their battle is complicated when three youths, Jack, Miko, and Raf find out about the Autobots and therefore become targets of the Decepticons. The Autobots struggle to defend their new charges, protect humanity, and keep their existence a secret.

Review:

Having been a fan of the original cartoon series, and having seen most of the recent iterations of the Tranformers including the frustrating movie franchise, I was actually pretty pleased with this series. The art and animation is quite well done and I felt that enough of the original spirit of the first cartoon series was there. There was obvious tie-ins to the films with Bumblebee again being unable to speak and the Transformers themselves being much more sleek in appearance, but the setup and basic feel of this series pays a lot of homage to the original cartoon.
It feels like what the creators of this series tried to do was to mesh elements of all the cartoons and movies into one new series that will appeal to the original fans as well as capture new interest with young children all over. It was awesome to see that both voice actors of the original series who played Optimus Prime and Megatron were back to helm the characters they helped make famous.

For the cartoon, I would say the thing that was most impressive was the look of series. It looked very professional and you could see the love that the artists put into the animation, cinematics, effects, and emotion that came through in storylines and action sequences. I don’t know about what hardcore fans of Transformers might think, but I felt that the creators did a great job of appealing to the past iterations of the series, but keeping it fresh for a new generation.

Included in the disc set are the complete twenty six episodes, as well as additional material. The real meat of the additional material is the commentaries by the actors, writers, producers, and other workers on the series as the other featurettes were a bit light in time coming in at just over a half an hour. That doesn't take away form their quality, which was very interesting and informative, but more is always wanted.

The graphic novel was a prequel to the series and tells a tale of Cliffjumper and Arcee back on Cybertron. What was interesting to me was how many artists were involved in this comic. There were five pencillers, five inkers, and five colorists attached to this project, but I have to say that it looked fairly seamless in the presentation. The story is pretty simple and seems geared towards young kids, but works as an added part of the package.

Conclusion:

As a person who greatly enjoyed the cartoon series and collected the toys as a kid, it was exciting to me to be able to share some of this series with my kids. The tone is a bit darker than the original cartoon, but my kids really liked the new series and I have to say I did as well. I’m sure there will be some things that fans wish they didn’t bring over to this series from the movie franchise, but I think overall they did a pretty bang up job. The MSRP at $64.99 is pretty high, but many other retailers have it for much less at $39.99 and at that price for over ten hours of material, I think that is worth it.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.