THE STORY
War For Cybertron sets the warring factions on their planet's brink of total breakdown, with many casualties piling up on both factions, especially with the Autobots. Outsiders avoiding the faction are none other than the likes of Bumblebee and Wheeljack, who are mere scavengers looking to profit off of the war. Upon encountering the Seekers, they escape the moment Starscream and Jetfire argue with one another regarding their ranks in the sub-faction. Megatron arrives, sees the two scavengers remaining neutral, and decides to execute them before Autobot leader Optimus Prime saves their skins. After a failed attempt to convince Optimus that they should let Cybertron have peace his way, Megatron decides to kill his foe until Elita-1 shows up and detonates the hidden bombs for the Autobots' escape. Later, they return to the base and Bee talks about his awareness of their need for energon despite not being too convinced to join their faction. Prime talks with Elita and later Magnus, both of whom share their concern regarding their safety and the refusal to reason with Megatron's treaty, respectively.
The latter would later show up to meet the Decepticons, with the intent to collaborate on a peace treaty deal between him, Optimus, and Megatron. As a result of this, the Autobots start to wonder if Magnus is going to reside with the opposing faction or not. The discovery of the Allspark creates a potential plan to reprogram the Autobots with it. A warning is made about the artifact to the Autobots, and they set out to find it before the Decepticons can. However, they fail to realize a trap is made by the Cons, so they won't get near the Allspark. One of the battles gets Fort Max accessory Cog injured and Impactor assumed dead. The Decepticons begin their plan to reformat the Autobots, while the Autobots get new allies in the form of Ratchet and former Decepticon Impactor. Optimus sets out a plan to get the Allspark off-planet, especially now that there's a chance the space bridge Wheeljack discovered can get them off the planet when it's repaired. Meanwhile, Starscream criticizes Megatron for his reformatting idea, saying that the Autobots won't even be true Decepticons until he argues with Jetfire about each other.
When the Decepticons struggle to find the Autobots, Shockwave attempts to use any method he could. Coincidentally, an Autobot named Mirage shows up in a Decepticon disguise, who turns out to be a distraction for the Autobots' ambush as Spinister and Skytread are taken care of. Another argument within the Autobots ensues after finding their next hiding spot, and it revolves around Ratchet not liking Prime's actions and Mirage questioning his repairs on Impactor...who starts arguing with Mirage. After the edgy arguing, the Autobots now set out to start repairs on the space bridge. Meanwhile, Ultra Magnus refuses to give away where the Autobots are hiding, even with the increasing pain Shockwave gives him. Even with an attempt to go after Megatron and Jetfire upon breaking free, he gets locked up just because he refuses to shoot Megatron. At his breaking point, the city commander finally decides to share some Autobot info. Speaking of Autobots, Impactor removes his comm, notifying Skywarp and Jetfire. The latter betrays the former, who runs off after getting shot by the traitor. Megatron grows a lot more devoted to crushing the Autobots, with his faction taking Ultra Magnus to a memorial meant for Alpha Trion. With nothing in the memorial, Magnus is shot by Megatron before energy flows from him.
Bumblebee gets caught up in the energy made from Magnus, he gets knocked offline and later encounters Alpha Trion. While Laserbeak is sent to look for the strange energy flows and Jetfire to take Magnus's corpse to Shockwave, Starscream and his Seekers call out their ally for killing Skywarp. The traitor flies away before getting shot down in a dogfight. The Autobots hear about Magnus's death and learn of the Alpha Trion protocols' activation as a result of his death. Impactor admits that what he's done is nothing that matches up with what Megatron did. Plenty of Autobots are now made to repair the ship, and Optimus later comes up with a plan to not only get the Allspark off the planet but to look for the Guardians before even doing so. With a limited amount of time to get the space bridge repaired, there's so much that the Autobots can do as they hide from the Seekers. Starscream, meanwhile, is made as the new Seeker leader, while Optimus tells the Guardians to help them stop Megatron without avail. After getting nothing but doubt from his inability to do anything with the Guardians, he is later told that they'll get the Ark up and running. Bumblebee then runs in and tells Optimus about Alpha Trion as well as realizing that he's chosen by the protocols within Magnus. They also find out where the Allspark is, but not before running into their newest ally, Jetfire.
The Decepticons go over what happened with the signal Magnus made when he died, and they find out that a code was hidden within the protocols and has the ability to go over Cybertron. Megatron, underwhelmed with his ally's inability to do anything with the protocol, goes with Shockwave's idea of using a virus and using Magnus's body to transmit it, despite it's potential damage to the planet. The Autobots understand that Jetfire's no longer interested in the genocide made by Megatron, while the knowledge Bumblebee received from the ATP surprises them; they all discover that the Allspark is now in the Sea of Rust, which is a dangerous part of Cybertron to visit and escape. Despite the reluctance regarding the locations of the Allspark, Prowl and Jetfire are ordered to go out for it. Now that the space bridge is repaired, they decide to hide it from the Cons with Mirage's hologram powers. Magnus's corpse, on the other hand, is set up to unleash Shockwave's virus., which is darker than Jetfire's proposal to let the Autobots override his brain module. Bumblebee goes out with Arcee and Cog to steal Energon from a black Soundwave named Soundblaster while Optimus Prime and a small group of Autobots set out to the Sea of Rust; Elita-1 stays behind because of the gray areas everyone is in. Bee's team fails to trick the failed Soundwave clone with getting the Energon that they need while Elita finds out that several Autobot outposts are getting knocked out by Shockwave's virus.
With desperation kicking in, Elita now tells all Autobots to report to the Ark; that doesn't even work as the virus now begins to hack into the ship itself. Prime and his Autobots try their best to avoid the vortexes within the SoR, but their encounter with the Allspark warns them of the undead Transformers that begin to outnumber them. Everything seems hopeless, especially now that the Decepticons are beginning to make their final attack on the Autobots. Thankfully, Bee's team escapes Soundblaster's base thanks to the virus, and Optimus later obtains the Allspark and ends the Sparkless' lives. Even still, time's running out, as the hologram cloak wore off and Decepticons everywhere start to make their attack. Wheeljack, however, manages to get the Ark set up thanks to the stolen Energon just in time. Megatron finds out that Optimus is on his way to Sector Seven (not the agency), which pursues his plan to destroy the space bridge and the Ark. The two leaders argue, leading to yet another fight that ends with Jetfire saving Prime and Hound. Now the Ark's ready to launch, and Impactor saves Ratchet from an attack made by Starscream. Prime and Megs fight for the Allspark while Bumblebee takes down the Decepticon leader with a shot. Later, Omega Supreme shows up at the last minute and prevents the Decepticons from getting near the Ark. Prime and Elita-1 say their goodbyes, some Autobots stay behind on the last of their outposts on Cybertron, and the ship blasts into space. The war isn't over yet, as it appears the Decepticons will be after the Ark for the upcoming Earthrise sequel.
WHAT DO I THINK OF THE STORY?
I had to write this section because there was quite a bit to write from the story. As for my thoughts on the story itself, it does seem to work well on paper. While the story of the Autobots and Decepticons taking their planet at the brink of destruction is nothing new, the idea of reformatting the Autobots into Decepticons to unify the two factions under Megatron's leadership is something that feels brand new. And the fact that Megatron grew deeply obsessed with becoming victorious in the war purely for the Autobot genocide and to take down those that oppose him makes him a lot more interesting than the usual G1 Megatron ideology of 80s villain cliches. There are certain parts of the story that just don't feel like they're as committed to making the best execution they could possibly make.
The pacing of it, for example, could work for a 6-episode long show, almost like it could work so well for a movie when combined, yet there are parts that feel either rushed, repetitive, or slow. It's almost like the writers couldn't decide what was the best way to space out the series until they chose to go with 6 just to cut time in actually producing the animation. I didn't personally need there to be 13-26 episodes in a season to tell a good story, but it feels like the cartoon doesn't know how to juggle its short episode total, the buttload of characters crammed into the show, and the pace of the story itself. Thankfully, the episodes are released together rather than one at a time, but it feels like the series was originally longer before it was cut down to make the episode total short and the budget small. To sum up, WFC Siege has an interesting premise that's muddled with writing that feels uninvested in keeping everything steady.
THE CHARACTERS
The characters are another part of the mixed bag I need to mention. I've got a feeling plenty of TF fans were happy to see a huge amount of characters rather than the smaller teams we've gotten in previous shows. I honestly prefer the approach in having smaller teams since it's easier to build up to a larger team as the series goes by rather than making a team with far too many characters to keep track of like in G1, and that's something that Beast Wars, Armada, MV1, Animated, Prime, AOE, RID15, and even Cyberverse to an extent did. Siege itself has a huge cast that feels mostly cramped in the 6 episodes alone. Aside from the generics, the characters in this series comprise of Transformers mostly found in the Siege toyline, with the only ones that are original in design or would get toys later down the line comprise of Arcee, Wheeljack, Bumblebee, Alpha Trion, and Elita-1. Moonracer, a character that had a toy in Power of the Primes, ironically appears here and not in the show that was inspired by her toy. Honestly, the characters chosen in the series don't bother me because they were obviously meant to keep consistency with the line itself, but what I don't like is the way they were handled.
Optimus Prime, for example, feels more like he was in his early days of struggling through the war rather than a fully capable leader. It's almost like the scripts weren't revised to reflect that the show took place at the final moment of the war on the planet itself since the Autobots would leave at the end. It also felt really annoying to have Elita-1 act like a mother hen of sorts and doubt Optimus Prime, and it doesn't help that Magnus didn't have any trust with Optimus Prime whatsoever with that peace treaty. I don't want to hear anyone complain about how Movie Optimus is "too violent" anymore, because Optimus Prime in the WFC cartoon felt like an incapable character that gets talked down upon and struggles at taking down enemies at a relative pace. This isn't his first day on the job taking the mantle of Autobot leadership, so why is he incapable of at least keeping the Decepticons on their feet after years of being involved with the war? I'm not saying that like someone would when they hate how Prime died in the 1986 movie, but I'm saying that as someone that felt this Prime was on-par with TFP Ultra Magnus in terms of competence.
And before anyone says "B-BUT ANIMATED OPTIMUS AND BEAST WARS PRIMAL DIDN'T SEEM LIKE CAPABLE CHARACTERS, WHY AREN'T YOU GIVING THIS SHOW A CHANCE???", let's discuss what situation their characters were put in: Optimus Primal was captain of the Axalon, and he was immediately told to go after the Predacons when they stole a ship, while Animated Optimus willingly left the Elite Guard and later became a space bridge repairman. Both characters were able to prove their competence when their enemies arose and handled large tasks, like with Primal saving prehistoric Earth, the stasis-locked Transformers in the Ark, and Cybertron during his final days in Beast Machines; Animated Optimus Prime learned about what it takes to be a hero and didn't let the glory be what truly mattered, especially when he was able to stop the Decepticons at the end of his show. I love Optimus Prime in just about every appearance he could be in, but Siege treats him like he was an Orion Pax doing his first-ever mission (almost like an older script had that idea). And once again, I don't want to hear any more complaints about Movie Optimus's actions or people forgetting about why Optimus Primal and Animated Optimus succeeded whereas Siege Prime failed.
I've already mentioned Optimus Prime quite a bit, so let's discuss the more prominent characters, shall we? Megatron's one of the few characters that I like in this series. He's obsessed with wiping the Autobots out, even if it means destroying the planet he was forged or constructed cold from. The lengths he took to do so make him feel like the ultimate threat, even if it's no different from the plans his other incarnations had in the past (especially when his Movie, Aligned, and Cyberverse counterparts previously had plans to tap into their universe's respective Allsparks and use the artifacts their way). I've got no real complaints about him aside from his been-there-done-that nature regarding the Allspark. Now we go to Bumblebee, a character that doesn't act like he usually does in the Transformers brand. The same Autobot who would look up to Optimus Prime and see him as a father figure of sorts now acts like one of those "I'm too cool to be involved with you" type of characters. IDK why he'd be that kind of character when someone like Cliffjumper or Sideswipe, but I suppose Hasbro and Rooster Teeth decided to make him interesting because he's also a face of Transformers. I'm also positive normie G1 fans that have only seen recent TF media like the Bumblebee movie won't question why Bee acts differently in Siege, but I digress. He searches for Energon to profit off the war and later helps the Autobots when the Alpha Trion Protocols go to him. Bee's personality in this show feels more like the epitome of this show treating its "G1 but dark and mature" angle as a gimmick.
Moving on, we have Elita-1. Fuck Elita-1 in this cartoon. When she's not fighting in this war, all she does it basically tell Optimus "I question your actions". Again, I feel like her dialogue comes from a script that was made when the writers wanted to have a more inexperienced Optimus from a different time period of the war, but if that had been the case, why not stick with that? It'd make Elita-1's concerns make more sense. And it's annoying too because she hasn't been in a cartoon since G1 itself, and to see her basically talk down to Optimus makes me want to see how she'd handle the war herself, assuming she can turn into Orthia in this show. Ultra Magnus similarly talks down to Optimus's inability to stop the war, but he at least does something about approaching Megatron. He thankfully doesn't turn into Sentinel Prime and betray the Autobots, though he sadly wasn't able to buy the Autobots enough time with winning the war or getting off the planet; they had to do that themselves. He emitted the Alpha Trion Protocols, which went to Bumblebee and helped the scavenger realize his potential as an ally. And then we have the Decepticons-turned Autobots in the form of Jetfire and Impactor, the latter making his debut in a Transformers cartoon after years of remaining as a comic character. Jetfire was a character I did like in the show, especially when he started to like Megatron's actions less and less. Impactor's defection to the Autobots felt somewhat odd given that he said Ratchet saved him, though perhaps it'd also make more sense to add that the Decepticons not saving him would further show his support to the Autobots. Also, it didn't match up with his past as a Wrecker, and I'm positive he's supposed to have a different head design.
Also, some of the characters tend to share nearly the same level of behaviors when they join the Autobots. Wheeljack immediately joined while Bumblebee took some convincing, but Ratchet and Impactor felt like they said the same thing when they mentioned that they're joining to help their own kind and not so much because they really want to be Autobots. Almost like Impactor had to copy Ratchet so he has an excuse to be involved with the faction. At least Jetfire had a better excuse to be involved with the Autobots. As for the Transformers that were involved with the series that didn't really do much of significance, they were more or less what they usually act like. Starscream was Starscream, Soundwave was Soundwave, Chromia was Chromia, and Ironhide was Ironhide.
THE VOICE ACTING, MUSIC, AND SFX
Before we begin, I want to mention that Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, and later Garry Chalk criticized the show regarding the voice acting; specifically, the first two mentioned how offended they were that they weren't even brought in to play their characters while Chalk mentioned how lackluster the voice work was. I'm going to mention that I personally didn't need Siege to have everyone from G1 reprise their roles, nor did I expect them to do anything remotely like that. I do, however, find it odd that either Hasbro or Rooster Teeth decided to go with appealing the G1 normies yet not even hire Peter Cullen and Frank Welker given how much attention they'd garner. It's funny how the last time that was done in a G1-related was Devastation. But what about the voice-acting itself? Yet again, I'm not a fan of it.
The Transformers series was able to give us plenty of unique voices since 1984, from the standards of Optimus and Megatron to the many characters done by Scott McNeil, and from the various Movie characters to even Cyberverse attempting to make its non-union casting pool have its VAs stand out. WFC, on the other hand, has very few good voices, plenty of disappointing ones, and a huge slew of repetitive ones. Jake Tillman and Jason Manorcha come to mind, as they've done better performances in Cyberverse and the Prime Wars Trilogy, respectively. Here, Optimus sounds like a poor attempt at a Peter Cullen impression worse than Jon 3.0 did while Megatron's slow and exhaustive dialogue is on-par with how Jeff Manning voiced him in the Japanese PS2 game, except he's slow because he's an English voice actor residing in Japan that doesn't try to avoid the pitfalls localization dubs face. And the others don't fare any better either. Bumblebee sounds alright given his change in personality, as do characters like Starscream and Soundwave, but Hound's got more in common with his Movie personality; not really a dealbreaker given how weaksauce G1 Hound was, but I feel that his voice would go well with another character (which we'll get to), Wheeljack's fine, Shockwave sounded odd, Red Alert was fine, but most of the voice work was just lackluster.
It's either slow dialogue, characters acting similarly to one another, and there's no real variation to how everyone sounds. It's like they're trying to talk dramatically, yet it's more like some amateur VAs attempted to sound cool and edgy without understanding how to make it NATURAL. Dialogue can generally be seen as either characters making small pauses, heavy tones, and dialogue that tries to make it sound dark and mature. I feel like the characters could be easier to listen to if they weren't speaking quietly or with the same remorseful tone 24/7. And of course, most voices don't sound distinct from one another thanks to the vocoding effect; I get that they're robots and they don't want to sound like they took raw recordings and called it a day, but either it should be removed or it should not be used whatsoever. It's especially infuriating when characters don't even stand out from one another; Impactor comes to mind, as he sounds like someone making a vocoded Shadow the Hedgehog voice impression instead of having that tough miner sound to him. All in all, didn't need them to have the classic VAs (not that I expected them to), but they could have done so much better, especially given what it's made for.
And then there's the audio. Transformers has plenty of great sound effects that are instantly recognizable at the top of my head, from the transformation noises across different shows to the sounds of firepower made from an innumerable amount of guns and even the stomping sound effects in the movies or TFP. Siege is on-par with the Prime Wars Trilogy in terms of not having any distinct sound effects aside from the transformation noises, which could honestly go for an upgrade in terms of how it sounds from robot to robot. The clashes of metal during the fights and the blast effects barely stand out from the setting like the VAs do, and it's just indistinguishable. The background music's nothing to write home about; not that I needed there to be Steve Jablonsky or Vince DiCola levels of greatness in terms of how they write their music but is it hard to ask for BGM that doesn't feel like it's recycled from a royalty-free website? If the music's going to sound serious or epic, can it at least feel engaging to listen to without feeling like a cliche movie trailer snippet?
THE ANIMATION
Alright, I'm going to say this right now: this is in no way an anime. I don't care what Netflix and Rooster Teeth say about the animation; this is in no-way an anime. If you wanted a Transformers show that's an anime, then look at 2001 RID, the Unicron Trilogy, the Japanese G1 sequels, and the Japanese Beast Wars spinoffs. Calling Siege an anime is like calling Avatar: The Last Airbender anime (though in fairness, the influences are stronger here than they are in Siege). Yeah, some Transformers shows used Japanese animation studios from time to time, and I'm positive that there are anime made in Japan that look like Siege, and yes, Polygon Pictures did animate this series, but its writing and voice acting was made in the US. If there is one thing that I can learn from WFC, it's that calling something an anime feels like a gimmick to attract those that think "cartoons" are garbage no matter what. I feel that it's fine for people to like what they like so long as they're not preachy AF about it, but it does a massive disservice to the cartoons that are actually good. Maybe not so much the ones made today, but I know plenty of cartoons that manage to be as good, if not better, than most of the critically acclaimed anime out there. Oh, and it's probably best to not call this an anime and instead say it's anime-inspired. As for the actual animation, it's bleak, grim, and I guess better than the Prime Wars Trilogy in terms of frame-rate. I guess Prime Wars has a better color palette, but Siege doesn't look like it was made on a budget, nor did it suffer from the same framerate issues that Prime Wars had. Sure, there's a good number of scenes that still drag for god knows how long, but an attempt is made. Still, I feel that it's very disappointing how a show made in 2020 doesn't animate as well as Transformers Prime, a TV show made ten years earlier (and by the same studio, no less!); even Beast Wars/Machines have better animation than Siege despite being made from an even older decade.
The weirdest thing is that Siege went with copying the CAD files for the toys, and we get what is possibly the most toy-accurate Transformers show since Cybertron. Seems cool at first glance, but it's more of a curse than a blessing if you ask me. For one thing, the toy accuracy means that things like the 5mm ports, the blast-effect nubs, and the details that would normally not be present on models made from scratch are all intact. Additionally, because the animation models were only meant to work as toys first before they were used in animation, things like the facial expressions and the way their midriffs flex unnaturally end up becoming a bit of a distraction for the way they work. The facial animations are at least a bit better than what Prime Wars and Energon had, but I'd be hard-pressed to say they're a massive improvement. Some facial animations do a decent job of emoting without the dreaded dull-surprise while they would occasionally look more like they're animating as well as Robot Chicken's facial expressions could. There's even the weird shit regarding Megatron's lips, which look more like they're doing that stupid Baka Mitai Deepfake meme instead of looking like they were rigged to animate properly. That's what happens when you're basing your character models off of CAD files that weren't originally made to do additional things like emoting or move certain body-parts in ways that would only work with a newly-made model. And if they're not shooting their guns off or standing still, then their fight animations would come off as convincing as a mid-tier stop motion fight. In other words, making character models before making the toys>making the toys before making the character models.
THE TONE
This will sound fairly hard to stomach to some people, and a bit hypocritical, I might add; the tone for Siege feels like a gimmick. Yes, war is not something full of happiness or bright colors, but if you're going to make something dark or mature, do so naturally! This is what makes Siege fail compared to the other shows that would normally be sneered at for being "light": it doesn't even try to make its tone work past the shitty situation everyone is in. The aforementioned voice acting doesn't make things feel dark and mature in an interesting way because the characters sound about as effective as they would be when grocery-shopping. The setting could be a little more deadly if there was more of that war taking place across other parts of the planet. Instead, the fights feel about as empty as that Civil War airport battle. Perhaps the open areas would work a bit better for some proper guerilla warfare tactics like in Beast Machines, but that requires a bit more thought for the writers. The truly effective part of Siege that feels dark is when the Autobots go to the Sea of Rust, but even that feels pretty weightless when you think about how everything felt undone when the Allspark wiped out the Sparkless.
Characters have a tendency to die in this series, yet it all feels pretty underwhelming considering how most of it feels pretty light in terms of reasons to give a shit about how our heroes could checkmate their foes. The best death, in my opinion, was Impactor's, especially when he saved Ratchet after knowing his dedication in fighting for his people rather than support a faction entirely. Every other death just doesn't feel as impacting otherwise, nor do I get the feeling of "My God, people are dying!"; only other time that honestly happened was in the 1986 movie when the Autobots died, where none of the deaths bar Optimus Prime really made an impact of any kind. There are plenty of dark moments in Transformers history so I decided to choose Cyberverse, a show on a different part of the spectrum, for this quick comparison; it may seem like a generic kiddy show from a distance, but it's actually got more going on with it in plenty of instances in terms of dark moments and even deaths. Let's go over the moments that were dark in that series:
-Optimus Prime and Bumblebee's visit to Megatron's lair
-Bumblebee's encounter with Megatron (where the latter strips the former the ability to speak)
-The death of Blurr and the rest of Velocitron thanks to the rust plague
-Shadow Striker's past
-Shockwave infiltrating Bumblebee's mind
-Grimlock's realization of his dino buddies' deaths
-Teletraan-X's death
-Megatron seemingly killing Starscream
-Starscream's temporary takeover of the Allspark
-The alternate-universe Ark crews disappearing from the multiverse
-Cheetor sacrificing himself to save the Allspark
-The invasion of the Quintessons
-Maccadam's death
I could go on with the moments that were "dark" in Cyberverse, but what makes Cyberverse work with those moments is that they felt tense and even a sense of emotion that is better-conveyed with those characters involved in the series instead of what WFC had, which might as well leave our characters T-posed and speaking through text-to-speech. If a show wanted to be dark and gritty, then I'm perfectly fine with it; all that matters is making sure everything else feels well-written and interesting. And it's pretty funny how nerd culture dictates what stuff that's "dark and mature" gets praised and what doesn't. They're likely to sneer about how Revenge of the Sith, Batman v. Superman, or some Transformers franchises are too violent or serious but they'll go Wojak-open mouth hype mode when they go crazy over seeing stuff like Rogue One, having way more characters than needed fight in Smash Bros (this is coming from someone that likes Smash Bros), and anime where it's way more style over substance. And sadly, nerd culture's more likely to ignore series like Beast Wars, most of the Unicron Trilogy, most of the movies, Animated, Prime, and Cyberverse in favor of stuff that fills their normie geek cards like Bumblebee or Siege; I bet they never even saw Prime Wars (can't blame them if they haven't) or the actual good WFC in the form of the two games made by High Moon Studios.
AND NOW, THE CONCLUSION
Look, I wanted to like Siege and say that it's actually worth watching if you're a fan of the series. I'm sure that the normie TF fan that normally goes "WOAH THEY BROUGHT BACK THE OLD SCHOOL TRANSFORMERS!!! WAIT WHAT ARE THESE INSTANCES OF THEIR RETURNS DO YOU SPEAK OF???" would easily watch them and find nothing wrong with them (which is fine, I guess), but for those that have delved into every other bit of Transformers media and loved them for what they offered, I'm afraid to say that they'll be disappointed with Netflix WFC. It's not, by all means, unwatchable, and there are very few good moments in the series, but I feel that it had a lot more to be desired. Sure, it's nowhere near as lackluster as Prime Wars, but if a series boasts about being on Netflix or appealing to an older fanbase, then I expect more from it than the drab and slowly-paced TV series that they spewed from their rough draft. So far, Netflix War for Cybertron can be best described as a series that looks neat on paper yet doesn't feel properly executed. What keeps it from being a good series is how the writers didn't make the story feel engaging while the voice actors do very little in making their dialogue sound either distinct from one another or at least compelling to listen to.
If the story either had a better pace or more episodes to work with, and if the voice acting was at least more energetic and varied in tone from character to character, I'd be more accepting of Siege; I would even forgive the animation and audio if those things I mentioned were improved. As it stands, what we have is a pretty shallow series with very little to keep me interested in revisiting it. Earthrise and Kingdom could easily improve it, but we'll see if they're either willing to make their stories and dialogue better than they currently are or if we'll get the same thing that Siege has, only on Earth. Alternatively, things wouldn't really be any better and we'll get a repeat of the Prime Wars (which I saw a mile away given how this show initially appeared). All I can say is that this is an example of why making something "dark and mature" to appeal to an older audience without actually making it meaningful is going to make the final product look uninspiring. And now I don't want Hasbro to have some cheap ass company make a Power Rangers series geared to an older audience unless they can take notes from how Marvel and DC once made great direct to video animated films and adapt stuff like Shattered Grid or Soul of the Dragon like that; I'd rather we get that than have the MMPR actors come together and try to act like it's all the 90s when they're actually not interested in wearing the suits and moreso wanting to profit off the reunion.
For an image that really sums up how I feel about Siege, this perfectly does so:
And that about wraps up my review on this mediocre show. While I won't be covering shows, movies, or even comics/novels that often, I will be covering a Transformers show that's actually more worth my time, that being Cyberverse. Once I catch up with the Youtube uploads and give all three seasons a rewatch, then I'll be back with a review for that series. Until next time!
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