I'm tempted to sit this one out. · 10:02pm Apr 5th, 2019
For the first time since I joined the herd, I am not looking forward to a season opener.
This isn't an OMG abandoning fandom thing for me. This is the stunted child in me who never recovered from watching Transformers: The Movie in theaters, never fully got over the clear-cutting of the cast to make way for a new toy line. Hasbro has a bad track record for violent slate-wiping at generation borders (Dream Valley, anyone?) and all I can feel looking at this last season is a cold nut of dread in my stomach.
Maybe I shouldn't even start until it's all over. I know plenty of y'all aren't frenetically current on each new episode, and it doesn't seem to hurt you that much. It will mean never being able to capitalize on new-episode energy, but maybe I'm safer not letting any of it in until I know whether or not I have to internally decanonize the whole affair.
EDIT: Just because there seems to be some confusion on this point, this isn't grief at the loss of the show; I think it's had its time, and nine seasons seems like a fine enough point to leave it at. My concern is Hasbro's proven track record at breaking their toys as they pack them up and whether or not I want their stamp of canonicity to virally invade my headspace if they pull out some final-season cockup moves, as they demonstrably have in the past with this and their other properties.
Bruh, we only have one more season to enjoy the collective excitement of each episode coming out.
Relish that shit.
Don’t cry because it’s over - smile because it happened.
>.>
<.<
*never got around to watching past a couple episodes of Season 3 and only keeps up with events by what shows up on FiM Fiction and the occasional internet search*
...
...
...
*hides*
also...
That means one season to deal with Grumpy Momma Changebug. If she goes all Skittlebug-on-Prozac, I swear by Tirek's tainted nipple I will murder someone.
It's your chance to say goodbye. Think twice before missing it.
Given I'm feeling right now about the same way I was ahead of the season 8 opener, having seen both trailers, I'm keeping my expectations low.
At this point you already have eight seasons of nostalgia. If that's good enough amount for you, then do what you feel.
I never thought it would happen, but I haven't seen any of season 8, and half of season 7. The show just isn't enjoyable for me to watch anymore. It's become the cliche badly written stuff I feared it would be when I first went to view the pilot eight years ago. That and I get too attached to characters, and hate them being handled poorly.
I envy fans who approach the series in a much more level headed and healthy way.
I'm not happy it's ending, and I fear them knocking off Celestia and Luna via some "transcending to a higher plane" crap to make Twilight the princess of all Equestria. Irrational fear? I hope so.
Long story short, I don't blame you.
5038799 5038811
Exactly! I’m going up to Wisconsin tomorrow to watch in person with friends.
5038837
Wrong.
5038850
Nice, have fun!
Season 9 will likely come in the usual assortment of three subjective basic flavors:
Maybe just wait it out and watch the ones that are recommended by your friends? I don't doubt that there will be at least a few episodes in category #3.
You gotta do what's right for you. But I will say that I've never regretted keeping up with the show.
So, here's the thing.
We're on Season 9.
NINE.
Nine seasons of a little girl's toy commercial cartoon that turned out to be far better than it had any right in being. Hell, the longest any given incarnation of Star Trek has only gotten up to seven. For a cartoon, that's positively ancient-- most only make it to just 65 eps for syndication, and then they're done.
We've been stupidly lucky to have the amount of magical horse show that we've gotten, and the fact is, we all knew it couldn't last forever. And heck, it's probably a GOOD thing it won't last forever (as people have decried pretty much every season past S2). I'm just glad the production team is getting to end the show on their own terms (more or less) as opposed to an ignominious cancellation.
And, if the craziness that was the last EQG is any indication? Shit is gonna get wild. Stops are gonna get pulled out. Will we love all of it? Probably not. But I'm more stoked for NEW PONE than I've been in a long while.
(Also I have some vague fanfic ideas based around the abdication of Celestia & Luna but I gotta see the actual show before I can articulate them correctly).
Hm. I dunno. Best to just give it a shot, maybe? It is the last season..
I dunno..
Well, speaking for myself, there is NO FREAKING WAY I'm missing the return of Sombra as an actual villain and the chance that he will be allowed to be what he should have been the first time.
And not that horrible, horrible, horrible mess the comics made out of him. They might be bloody great in every other regard, but they should NOT have been allowed to play with Sombra.
(Actually, I could level a commentary at the comics for making the only villain out the whole fiendship is magic thing be "redeemable" the only one that was actually a pony....)
Edit, sorry, should spoiler that in case anypony wh has NOT seen the season nine trailer drops by.
Eh, by the time TFtM rolled around, Transformers had been dropping like flies in the (UK) comic for yonks, and it only went on like that for ages. It's telling that the phrase "died more times than Optimus Prime" is a frequent comparative in my lexicon.
Honestly, if I'm not excited for it, it's because it's the last season premiere
Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
If I'm honest, I haven't watched the show at all since season 3, because for me the works that the fans create outpaced the show long ago. And that's alright - even nice, in a way. Because I'm far from alone in that, and it means the lights aren't going to go out on this site any time soon. There are people who write as if the last four years of the show haven't happened - so one season, no matter how bad, won't change things.
5038862
Its a mix of horrible with the occasional awesome. There are still good episodes, but damn they messed up everywhere else...
5038811
Why not both? But there is not much left to mourn.
There are about 2-3 enjoyable episodes out of the 23-26 we get on average.
It is well past time to start over.
5039122
Objectively false.
5039125
Well, I'm sorry you feel that way. I, for one, have found well over half of them to be at least somewhat, if not thoroughly, enjoyable.
I know exactly what you mean.
Well, Skywriter, I can only speak for myself, but I thought
That.
Was.
Awesome!
Ahahahahahahahahahaha!
Don't highlight unless you have watched the episdoes!
I absolutely cannot complain. Sombra might not have been the Grand Admiral Thrawn Pony I might have hoped for, but by the same token he achieved more faster than any of the other villains have and inflicted some losses which can't be recovered! (Rest in pieces, Magic Tree! Ahahahahaha!
Also, Cadance coming back in spoiling for a fight after first getting the most important job done! Heart of the Matter canon confirmed!
Flurry Heart Princess of Destruction confirmed!
Fracking A, 11/10, hope the rest of the season knocks it out of the park as well as this does.
5039860 Yawn, if you think they're not pulling something out of their plothole to bring the talking Tree back, you REALLY don't know this show.
If they could just drag Sombra back from nothing, and then wipe him out with sudden superpowers in the last moment, what makes you think they just won't miraculously pop the Tree back from the same sort of random manner?
5038895 I would partially agree with you... however, look how long "Teen Titans GO" has been around. Or "Spongebob".
Flash cartoons are cheap as hell to make, and the toys were selling pretty well. That's the only reason this has lasted as long as it did. If this had been traditionally-animated, it would've been cancelled after season 4. The audience size has shrunk so low, not a single one of the previous season's episodes made it into the television ratings. And you can also see from the rapid decrease in convention attendance that more than half the core fandom has lost interest.
This show had the potential at first to grow into something grand. But Hasbro never seemed to understand what they had.
5038811 No one smiles because "Lost" happened. A truly awful final season or dreadful climax can completely poison the memory.
This is why it's often better to end on a high note than drag the corpse around until it leaves a reek in everyone's nostrils.
5040032
You might wanna spoiler that for Skywriter, given as this is his bit and all. (And generally for anyone that hasn't seen it yet.)
5040264
It's okay. I'm already more or less spoiled to the plot. No worries on my account. Can't speak for others though.
I'm still waiting on the last season of Transformers: Animated, tbh
5038929
What's TFtM?
5040933
Transformer the Movie (the original animated one from 1986-ish, i.e. the one Skywriter was talking about.)
5041029 Oh god... that movie...
Even as kids we were making fun of how lame it was.
Same with the 80's MLP movie. That was sheer awfulness. The animation was even a step DOWN from the television cartoon.
They brought the witches back in a later episode which drastically fleshed them out and gave them much more interesting powers, as well as the ability to speak with dead family members through pictures of them (MLP did it FIRST, JK Rowling!). Those episodes would have made a much better movie. It even de-Deus Ex'd the Flutterponies and made them vulnerable. See, in that show, for a while at least, the writers recognized when they'd goofed and tried to fix it, sometimes succeeding.
5041055
Personally, I loved it. I watched TFtM to the point I could probably still recite it line-for-line, thirty plus years later. I actually have a version on DVD I've never watched, since I watched it so much on video.
(I'd make the point it was better than Bayformers, but that's not a high bar to pass.)
Also, the soundtrack (all of the music, songs or otherwise) was fracking amazing and it was the first music CD I ever bought (and I have only, like, 21 period) and is probably in my top four, along with Star Fleet, Naruto and Pokémon, all stuff which I still regularly listen to.
5041249 Well, given that the movie bombed big-time in theaters... I'd say you were one of the few who appreciated it.
Come on, they opened the movie with the Decepticons suddenly blowing away half the Autobots, then closed it by having the previously nigh-unstoppable Unicron transforming into a planet-sized robot that instantly had its ass handed to it.
It had terrible structuring. It was as bad as the Flutterponies suddenly appearing and blowing away the Smooze.
5041453
And thus finally, for the first time, mirroring the comics in tone, as opposed to the cartoon, where they rarelt ever got properly hurt.
(Example: the very first Transformer annual had Prowl getting KO'd by a shrapnel grenade, Tracks getting his chest punched in by Rumble and Ravage getting his mind-wiped by Bombshell's errant cerebral shell and the feedback loop it had because Ravage was controlling Bombshell via Bombshell's cerebral shell technology...)
Yeah, but... MLP has used equally dodgy dues ex machina all the time. Hell, I just finished watching the season finalke of Glitterforce, which basically the same level of arse-pull. Come to that, the fracking Death Star being blown up by a couple of fight-mounted torpedos is kinda ridiculous.
But media - hell, even stories period, almost never give you an ending that's not an abrupt reversal. You never get the critical blow and then all the mop-up afterwards. So, yeah "it had just about the most common action ending trope, especially in cartoons and anime" is not really a fair critism I can level at it - or anything else.
Hell, the matrix wasn't EVEN an arse-pull unqiue to the movie, because if, like me, you'd been reading the comics, while the physical structure was new to the movie, it was already long-established that the matrix was the only way to bring Transformers to life or heal and thus had semi-mystical qualities at all.
(For example, sometime before in the comics, the Decepticons had kicked the absolute CRAP out of half of the Autobots, and stolen Prime's head and to prevent Shockwave from spawning a new wave of Decepticons, Prime transferred the Matrix to Buster Witwicky through some some osrt mind-link device, but there was enough residual power to give life the the Constructicons...)
So I have no clue as to how it did in cinemas, I can only speak to the anecdotal results that of my entire circle of friends at that age, everyone loved it.
5041495 But that's the whole problem. The only way people could know what the hell was going on or why they should care is because of the Transformers cartoon, where the Autobots always won and they were fairly evenly matched.
Suddenly, everything familiar is uprooted. It almost became exactly like... a grimdark alt-universe fanfic...
See why it didn't work yet? it couldn't exist on its own terms without the show, but it felt so little like the show it led to a dissonance in the radical tonal contrast. Only people who crave 'grimdark' versions of kids' shows were not put off by it.
And for audiences who didn't know about the show, well they were left totally in the dark as to what the hell was going on or why they should care.
5041899
So rather than try to do something that was, for the time, basically a first for an animated production, they should have made it exactly the same as the cartoon? I can garentee you that it would have done even worse.
(See also, MLP the Movie. I saw THAT at the cinemas, too, but prior to MLP starting back up, I couldn't tell you the first thing about it except a distant recollection of the smooze.)
TFfM at least tried, and by putting the death of Prime upfront and centre, didn't shy away from death as a concept like most of the stuff around that time or later[1]. And given that there is NO gain, EVER, from mollycoddling children from death, I think death absolutely NEEDS to be dealt with in children's media - because it can happen at any time. (Speaking as someone whose middle sister died before her first birthday when he was... Actually round about the age TFtM came out, come to think about it.) That theh just as obviously backed off it with GI Joe/Action Force was unfortunate.
(Would talk more, sorry for typos, fix later, have to go out now!)
[1]See also Marvel's otherwise excellent 1990s cartoons, where they were so obviously not allowed to even SAY the word "die" or "dead" is was painful.
5042054 Showing death in an animated movie was hardly anything new.
"The Last Unicorn" and ESPECIALLY "Watership Down" had it onscreen. In the latter, it was bunnies being slaughtered in a number of bloody ways.
I saw that when I was 3. So, watching robots get 'killed' was nothing to me. I was wondering, "Why don't they just fix them? They're machines and they do that in the show all the time." I always thought about what I was watching.
Frankly, Prime's death was handled BETTER when he came back on the show and was going nuts and sacrificed himself.
Ah, and then there was "Exosquad" in the 90's. So many characters bit the dust.
5042071
Never made it to the UK, as far as I know (unless it was on satelite TV when it was still a minority thing); I only know of it from SFDebris' reviews.
(The death thing wasn't the reason, mind, since in the same time period, stuff like Fantomcat (by the same comapny that dd Dangermouse and Avenger Penguins) was killing people.)
5041249
Late, but you would appreciate this video by hbomberguy. He has a good way of relating why he loved the movie so much and why so many other people who grew up with it still remember it, but he still acknowledges that there's stupidity in it too.
5050697
Yeah, I couldn't resist keeping up. I felt a little blue about a week later and decided I couldn't afford to miss the one thing that has pretty consistently dragged me back into happy for the past eight years.