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The series in general[]

  • Adaptation Displacement: Simply mention "Lugnut" and "Blitzwing" to any Transformers fan. It will inevitably be their Animated depictions that leap to the forefront of the mind.
  • Adaptation Distillation: Most notable is in the character of Starscream, who makes his first bid for leadership in the first episode. He is very literally the distilled character of G1, who took until the movie when Megatron was injured from a battle with Prime. Here he is much more proactive, planting a bomb on Megatron before he goes off to fight the Autobots.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Does Megatron actually not know the Autobots' names or is he just refusing to give them the satisfaction of being Worthy Opponents?
    • Does Blackarchnia/Elita-1 return Optimus' feelings? Or is she very aware that he has feelings for her and can take advantage of that?
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: David Kaye as Optimus Prime.
    • As much a case of "And The Fandom Said WTF!?" for some, since David Kaye was best known in Transformers fandom for voicing Megatron... and Megatron.
  • And You Thought It Would Fail: The initial reaction to this show was comparable to the initial reaction to Beast Wars. And just like Beast Wars, it ended its run being regraded as one of the best Transformers shows.
  • Arc Fatigue: Animated was a show that was planned out long in advance and this worked against it. The show took so long to get its main plot going, and had so many Filler episodes, that a lot of people lost interest.
  • Ass Pull: The Reveal that Bulkhead is the top space bridge technician in the galaxy. Mainly because it makes one wonder why exactly this never came up while the team was repairing space bridges.
  • Badass Decay: The Dinobots, to the point where they were easily beaten by Jetfire and Jetstorm and scared off by post-upgrade Sari by Season 3. Oh, and according to Grimlock's profile, he's as powerful as Megatron.
  • Broken Base: For every dozen or so Transfan that adores the show with full heart, there is usually one that dislikes it with as much hate as their love combined. This being the Transformers fandom, this is unsurprising.
    • Perhaps the biggest divider is having a Younger and Hipper Optimus Prime. Some appreciate the new take on the character, while others think that the creative team should have just made Hot Rod the lead, given that this Optimus has a lot in common with the G1 Hot Rod.
  • Common Knowledge: Many believed that Blurr has died after getting crushed into a cube by Shockwave, though later episodes and comic stories revealed that he had survived (while still cubed) and still intact, as he hasn't been turned grey.
  • Continuity Lock Out: Probably the only two episodes that can be safely skipped are "Black Friday" and "Three's a Crowd". And only because the show was cancelled.
  • Cult Classic: Animated never quite attained the same level of pop culture domination as the other Transformers shows but even a decade after it ended, it remains very popular among the Transformers fandom with desire for a fourth season remaining strong.
  • Damsel Scrappy: Sentinel Prime's sole purpose in the series seems to be getting into trouble or messing something up for Optimus to fix.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Given the show's Black and Gray Morality approach to the Autobot/Decepticon conflict, it's not uncommon to see fanfics where the Decepticons are a legitimately repressed underclass, or at least were one in the past before Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
  • Ear Worm: "ALL I CAN DO, AND ALL YOU CAN DO~". Moreso with the Japanese fans.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Lockdown quickly became a fan favorite. Wreck-Gar too, but what were you expecting with that VA?
    • The character of Lockdown was adopted into the IDW G1-inspired comics and even got a movie-style toy, he was just that well received. In addition, elements of his character was transplanted into Transformers Prime for the character of Airachnid.
    • The Gender Flipped Red Alert is quite a popular character to the point that some fans don't even seem to remember the original.
    • Starscream's clones.
    • Like the female Red Alert, Sunstreaker herself is welcomed by the 2020s LGBT Transformers fans, due to her transition from male-to-female caused by a time travel oddity.
  • Epileptic Trees: The Literal Minded Transformers fanbase has spent years wondering which aspect of Starscream's personality Slipstream represents. It's clearly Starscream's effeminate nature and his competence unhindered by his other quirks but fandom mentality is a funny thing.
  • Evil Is Cool: This Megatron rarely seems to top fan-polls for the best version of the character; that honor goes to his Beast Wars and Transformers Prime counterparts; but he still ranks very highly in the fandom's collective consciousness. A combination of Creepy Monotone and a healthy dose of Adaptational Badass will do that.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Megatron, Starscream (yes, even the voice), Lockdown, Slipstream, the female Starscream, and Blackarachnia of course! Slo-Mo is pretty easy on the eyes as well, being the only female human villain helps.
  • Fan-Disliked Explanation: Defied then played straight. The show denied to explain where the AllSpark came from precisely to avoid this. Then, when Derrick J. Wyatt revealed that however the AllSpark came about, it wasn't through Primus, who didn't exist in this universe, the fandom exploded like Megatron's space bridge.
  • Fandom Rivalry: The art style is not the only reason that some fans look down on Animated. As one of the more radical retellings of Transformers lore, some of the show's more hardcore fans can really look down on other incarnations of the brand; particularly Transformers Prime, the series that replaced Animated; as Cliché Storms. And defenders of other series will fire back at Animated, decrying the Lighter and Softer artstyle and even opining that some characters, most notably Optimus Prime and Skywarp, underwent Character Derailment. It's easily helped by the fact that, aside from the original show, Darrick J. Wyatt seems to hate every other Transformers franchise and gladly threw tonnes of fuel on the fire whenever he had the chance.
  • Fanfic Fuel: The AllSpark Almanac has lots of material for World Building and revealed much about what Season 4 might have shown.
  • Fanon Discontinuity:
    • Some fans love the first two seasons but despise the third because of the tone shift from fun and happy to Anyone Can Die.
      • And of course, there is even a flip side to this opinion as well, with certain fans who weren't as fond of the show suddenly becoming hooked after viewing the third season and its more serious attitude.
    • When the show came out, the Unicron Trilogy had milked the Primus/Unicron mythology for all it was worth, resulting in all Cybertronian mythology being Adapted Out. When the fandom had warmed up to the idea again, Derrick J. Wyatt declared that Unicron existed in this universe but Primus didn't. All the fans proceeded to ignore this, declaring that Primus had to exist.
  • Freud Was Right: In "Three's a Crowd" we see that in robot mode the neck of Scrapper's power shovel comes out of his crotch.
  • Friendly Fandoms: When Ben 10: Omniverse first came out and was subject to "They Changed It, Now It Sucks" from the Ben 10 fandom for the art-style, the same style used here, the Animated fans were quick to defend it, noting that Animated had very mature plot lines despite its more cartoonish art-style, creating a lot of good will between the two shows (rather like the good will between Transformers Prime and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien) before Seasonal Rot set in for Omniverse and Animated fans started pretending that they'd never heard of Ben 10 at all.
  • Growing the Beard: "Thrill of the Hunt" was a strong and mature episode that addresses consequences and regrets during war time and won over the fans who thought this series was just going to be slap-stick comedy.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Safeguard's look reminds many people of Kamen Rider Double. One person even modded their Safeguard into CycloneJoker colours.
    • The casting of Corey Burton, the voice of Shockwave on The Transformers, as Megatron. In Dark of the Moon, the G1 incarnation of Megatron's voice actor, Frank Welker, returned the favor and voiced movie Shockwave.
    • Wasn't there another show where Jeff Bennett and Bill Fagerbakke voiced two characters in a Five-Man Band who were put in stasis? And funnily enough, their roles in the team are even the same.
    • One of TF Wiki's earlier image captions for Lugnut describes him in relation to Shockwave and Omega Supreme. This becomes amusing when Animated Shockwave is introduced and Lugnut feuds with him on who is Megatron's most loyal servant. And then the last episodes have the creation of Lugnut Supreme, based on Omega Supreme, which involved both Lugnut and Shockwave.
  • Hollywood Homely: Blackarachnia, at first. She's supposed to be hideous due her techno-organic status, but both to the viewer and most of the Autobots she's a beautiful Femme Fatale. And then her helmet comes off and this trope is subverted so fast its head spins.
  • Idiot Plot: "Where Is Thy Sting?" Complete with heavy Most Definitely Not a Villain.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Megatron.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Shockwave's difficult to hear and completely out-of-character "LIAR! LYING LIAR!" has become a bit of an in-joke amongst his fans.
    • Sentinel Prime. What a Jerk!
    • The Formspring RPs give us HAT!
    • Season 4 When?/Never.
  • Moe: Sari.
    • A lot of people see Wreck-Gar this way, as well.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • In "Predacons Rising" when Waspinator told Bumblebee that Wasp forgives him for getting him sent to the stockades followed by "But Waspinator never forgive!"
    • Prometheus Black decides to use the child of his "arch-nemesis" as the test subject for making an organic Transformer. This is after he already tried it on two adults and permanently left them in misshapen bestial forms.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: This is the first time the Autobots themselves have mentioned the iconic transforming noise. When the Bots are trying to will themselves back to their normal states in Soundwave's Lotus Eater Machine, Bumblebee suggests that Bulkhead make the noise with his mouth.
  • Rescued From the Scrappy Heap:
    • Unlike most humans in Transformers, Sari has largely avoided being The Scrappy. Of course, there's the Robotic Reveal muddling how biologically human she really is.
    • Captain Fanzone is pretty well-loved by the fans, as well.
    • Not that the characters were ever considered Scrappies, but this show rescued Blitzwing, Lugnut and Bulkhead from being largely forgettable characters to some of the most memorable.
  • Ron the Death Eater: For much the same reasons as Draco in Leather Pants above. Sentinel Prime in particular can get this hard.
  • Running the Asylum: If you played a drinking game with Transformers Generation 1 Mythology Gags, you'd be dead by the third episode.
  • Scapegoat Creator: If any fan wishes to complain about the show's more radical changes to the lore, they went after Derrick J. Wyatt. Some of them quite aggressively given how vitriolic he could be, sometimes prematurely, in defending his changes.
  • Snark Bait: American fans do enjoy mocking the Japanese dub supposedly being a prequel to the Bayverse despite the only major change to the scripts being Bulkhead's Dub Name Change (he's now Ironhide).
  • Squick: Captain Fanzone dangling a loogie towards Rattletrap, and sucking it back in when the latter telling him what he wants. Excuse me for a sec....
  • Strawman Has a Point: Sentinel's a organic-phobe Jerkass and while his approach to the situation is wrong, he makes a good point to Blackarachnia in "Predacons Rising":
Cquote1

"Don't say that name! You don't deserve to say that name! You're not Elita-1, you mutant freak. Elita-1 went off-line a long time ago."

Cquote2
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks:
    • The intial reaction to the series. The Lighter and Softer artstyle raised a lot of eyebrows, but not having Optimus Prime as the leader of the Autobots really lit a fire in the fandom's cap.
    • When Takara Tomy announced that they're tying Animated (well, their handling of the show) with the movie-verse, change in episode order, renaming Bulkhead to Ironhide (even though there was already an "Ironhide")... Well...
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Sari's upgrade, and her backstory in general. The immediate fallout of her upgrade and near-overload, since she vanishes for four episodes afterwards. This may have been addressed in the cancelled fourth season however but Executive Meddling led to a reduction of the human cast in Season 3.
  • Too Cool to Live: While Blurr doesn't die, there's no way that a badass Autobot Elite Guard officer with Super Speed was going to be allowed to be around for more than three episodes.
  • Too Good to Last: Sure, three seasons and 42 episodes doesn't sound too bad... until you realize that the show was on the air for less than a year and a half.
  • Trans Audience Interpretation: Slipstream, since she was cloned from Starscream.
  • Vocal Minority: Like any Cult Classic, all that those people who are very passionate about the show and how great it is end up doing is alienating other people from watching the show and turning away other fans of it.
  • What an Idiot!: "A Bridge Too Close" is not a sterling testament to the Autobots' intelligence. To start off, it apparently never occurred to them that Professor Sumdac, who disappeared during a fight with the Decepticons, might have been captured by the Decepticons. Then Bulkhead, in trying to prove that he's more than just Dumb Muscle, actually helps Megatron build a functioning space bridge. Bumblebee and Professor Sumdac outright call Bulkhead out on this.
    • Mind you Sumdac isn't much better. Starscream was ready to execute Megatron and his Smug Snake attitudes would likely have sabotaged him within an hour. But Sumdac chose to body jack Starscream at that moment to try and get revenge on Megatron. The shock of that breaks Ramjet and Sunstorm's hold on Megatron and Sumdac's inexperience in piloting Starscream's body gets him defeated in a moment.
    • Though as Starscream points out, Megatron's plan is a massive Gambit Roulette, assuming that every Decepticon cell will triumph and seize every space bridge in the galaxy. And as "TransWarped" showed, it apparently never occurred to Megatron that the Autobots could shut down the space bridges if the Decepticons got too close for comfort.
  • The Woobie: Part of the reason Sari has avoided becoming The Scrappy is because her life sucks so much. (Come Season 2, anyway. Omega Supreme can't seem to catch a break either, and Ratchet's had it nearly as bad.)
    • One could just about give this to poor Wasp. A stark contrast to Waspinator of Beast Wars.
    • Blurr instantly became this when he was compacted into a cube by Shockwave in the season three premiere.
    • Arcee has been one in her every appearance.
    • Skywarp, and his predecessor, #3370318. Poor guys; life is scary!
    • Bulkhead has his Woobie moments too.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Blackarachnia and Wasp. For all that they were Jerkasses before they descended into madness, being a jerk is not a crime. They didn't ask for their cruel fates and were nothing more than victims of circumstances that led to them being banished from their society.

The toys[]

  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Some Western/International fans are not fond with most of the Japanese market-exclusive figures being decked out with metallic paint rather than adding more painted/tampographed details like how they did with the previous lines.

Back to Transformers Animated
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