On Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 9:29:37 PM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
> On Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 2:28:12 PM UTC-6, I. R. Caughn wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> Hey, you! Nice to see you're still around.
I've been sporadically lurking about for a spell. Whenever a new show hits the airwaves (or should I say stream... tubes?), I get the itch to check in.
> > It *does* feel a bit samey for three of the first six or so toys in this line
> > to be brighty coloured sports cars
>
> I am no authority on the matter (I'm not collecting the toy line... but I guess I should buy at least one of them, because otherwise this will be the first Transformers line in history from which I have bought zero toys) but it seems to me like Hasbro is patterning the toys after Power Rangers to some extent. The multicolored team of heroes, the bad guys with animalistic characteristics... I could be way off base, but that's the impression I've gotten.
Yeah, there's definitely a lot more Sentai-esque design theming going on. I actually don't hate the animalistic Decepticon robot modes as much as I thought I would, now that I'm starting to see them in action. It's hard to put my finger on but there's just something nifty about the way Steeljaw's vehicle mode lines echo the profile of his robot mode wolf head...
... wait, it just dawned on me! He's just like a Battle Beast pull-back chariot! I loved those things! They were completely nonsensical, but for some reason, there's a neuron in the back of my twisted cerebrum that spits out endorphins whenever I see a bipedal Ram (or Decepticon lycanthrope) tooling around in a mechanized version of its own head...
But yeah, cool as it is, it does still bug me on some level that these high-art designs are just being plopped on top of TF:P continuity. They went through so many backstory gymnastics to explain the Predacons... I really can't see how things like Bisk and Hammerstrike make any intuitive sense in that context. Just based on the first four episodes, they really seem to have no interest in even *trying* to explain it, either. Fixit was just flying around in a ship full of crazy crap, apropos of nothing. Sure, it is kinda fun to tune in each week and discover another random chunk of said crap, but I kinda miss rational world-building now and again...
> > Reminds me of the colour theory discussion that came up in Mr. Vor's recent
> > TFTM review.
>
> You read that and yet you did not participate? For shame!
I wanted to, but when I finished reading it, I had less in the way of viable counterpoints and more of just a general appreciation of the review's existence... and then I got distracted by real life for a couple weeks...
Incidentally, for some reason, I remembered there being a whole paragraph devoted to the colour choices for the characters... but when I double-checked it was more like a passing reference in one sentence... it somehow festered in my mind into a full-blown theory in the past month...
> (I had really thought this entire newsgroup was just reduced to me and Gustavo politely arguing with each other.)
Well, it's good to see you're being polite, at least. Almost excessively so-- feel free to start cloning some fake accounts if you wanna stir the pot a little ;-)
J