My Review of Transformers: Animated season 2 episode 5-Velocity · 2:46am Jun 6th, 2021
Grading Scale:
A (fantastic episode)
A- (an excellent episode with at least one flaw)
B+ (a great episode with a couple of flaws)
B (a good episode which still could have been better)
B- (a good episode with numerous flaws but still rewatchable)
C+ (a decent episode)
C (eh... it’s not terrible but not good either)
C- (it’s not worth rewatching although it does have good elements)
D+ (a bad episode with a few good things in it)
D (a really bad episode with wasted potential)
D- (a terrible episode with badly written characters and butchered moral)
F (horrible and unwatchable)
Greetings, Transformers fans! This is your Lord of Crossovers back with another Transformers: Animated review! Tonight, I will be talking about what I think of this episode, "Velocity". To be honest, I am not too crazy about it as it obviously has another super-villain as the central antagonist besides featuring Blitzwing as the secondary antagonist. It is a pretty good episode although not that great in my opinion. On the bright side, it did introduce yet another G1 character who likewise debuted in the 1986 film: Blurr.
I won't talk of the mysterious race car yet since he doesn't appear until the season finale with a big surprise, but I want to focus more on this new human character and on this episode itself.
Master Disaster was a decent villain although he wasn't that entertaining, intriguing, or threatening as a villain. Still, I will give him credit for utilizing that Allspark fragment within that device to control those race cars and even the Cybertronians. He was fairly smart, so I'll give him that. Plus, I liked the voice performance Bill Fagerbakke gave as Master Disaster.
As far as this episode is concerned, it taught a valuable lesson of always being honest and upfront whenever you are confronted by those who are looking after you. Additionally, we see Bumblebee learn to not always be so obsessive with racing or with any nocturnal activity that could lead a person to danger. The action scenes were animated well and awesome to watch, the character development was solid, and the dialogue was great.
Other than that, I have nothing else to say about this episode except that it was good for what it is. Thus, I give it a B. Oh, and by the way, we never see Master Disaster ever again after this episode. Yep, you guys know how I feel about characters who show up in one episode and are never seen or mentioned ever again. That makes him even less than memorable and more unimpressive.
Peace.
Illumination through Acceleration!
Alright, it’s this episode. Personally I’m not a huge fan of it really. Would you believe there's no trivia about Master Disaster? But since we’re here, it’s time to talk about the fastest bot on wheels. The one, the only... Bumblebee!!!
1. Bumblebee's arm-mounted shock stingers are very likely inspired by an early weapon concept from the 2007 movie Bumblebee.
2. The character who would become Bumblebee was originally conceived as Hot Shot, but changed to Bumblebee at the insistence of incoming supervising director Matt Youngberg and art director Derrick J. Wyatt. This explains why his character is more like Hot Shot and less like... well, Bumblebee. He also arguably shares personality traits with other, similarly brash characters such as Hot Rod and Cheetor. Cut from the same cloth, at any rate.
3. Bumblebee appears to have a fake car roof on his chest in both his toy and on his character model. Not only does Bumblebee transform like his toy in his drawn-out animated transformation sequences, with his legs forming the top of the vehicle and the rest forming the underside, but his "real" windshield is drawn on the back of his legs, just like the toy. Plus the headlights on Bumblebee's feet are upside-down, just like the toy's. However, Bumblebee's vehicle mode stripe doesn't change sides like on the toy. Cheatsy! In addition to the above, in "The Thrill of the Hunt", Bumblebee reaches under his fake car roof kibble to get out his air freshener and fuzzy dice. This would mean that he had kept them in his back seat or trunk. Interestingly enough, on the Deluxe toy, you can actually store small items in his chest thanks to his opening 'trunk'.
4. He apparently got his name for being a bumbler in Autobot boot camp.
5. On the Transformers Animated Season One DVD set, the "Season Two Sneak Peek" special feature shows Bumblebee's character model colored in the Elite Guard Bumblebee toy's deco. Bumblebee did not actually use that color scheme in Season 2, so its inclusion in a Season Two gallery is puzzling at best. It also matches the Japanese toy rather than the finalized color scheme of Hasbro's version, compounding the puzzlement.
6. Bumblebee's original 65356-9292-346 body-type is apparently quite common on Cybertron — he shares it with many, many others.
And finally...
7. With the airing of the two-part episode "Human Error", an interesting and probably unintentional question has been brought up. Bumblebee's human form seems to be much younger than the others, even Prowl and Bulkhead, putting him somewhere in his early to mid-teens. Everything else about the Automen reflect their bot counterparts spot on, down to a scar on Ratchet's face to represent his broken chevron. So, seeing as human Bumblebee appears so young, does that make him a child soldier? Or is he just really, really short?
BTW, Blitzwing has some funny lines in this episode. NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER! NEVERMIND!