PrymeStriker wrote:Well, you don't have to spell out that an impending doom is coming for it to be "built up."
Except, if they want us to know that something is coming, they need to actually
let us know that it's coming before it happens, preferably
before the episode immediately before it comes.
This show has tried doing that with Optimus's warnings, but they were so far and few that there needs to be more to them.
PrymeStriker wrote:Viewers made the connection between a crapton of relics gravitating to earth like a magnet
That was all in season 2, not season 1.
PrymeStriker wrote:and Dark Energon's constant use
Constant? It was only used in the pilot and a couple of midseason episodes prior to the last four. Episodes 1-5 and 13-15. That's 8 out of 22 episodes, with a big gap of another 8 episodes in between the two groups, followed then by another gap of 7 episodes before the inale. It was literally only in the very beginning, very middle, and very end of the season that Dark Energon was plot-relevant, with all of the rest of the meat of the season devoted to anything but Dark Energon.
PrymeStriker wrote:The recurring theme of season one, and into the next seasons, is an underlying question of "why is everything here, on Earth?" "Why are Cybertron and Earth so closely bonded?" "What's so important about this planet?" In the end, we find that out without them having to constantly shove the question up our nose.
I don't think we watched the same season 1, since the only questions being asked that the finale answered was "What is Dark Energon doing erupting from Earth when all previous stockpiles of it originated from outer space?"
PrymeStriker wrote:That just gets annoying after a while. For example, Optimus literally showed up last episode to say "oh, by the way, something's coming and I don't know what it is, kkthxbai."
That's a genuine issue I raise in that, while we do get hints from Optimus like that in this show, we need a greater presence to them that what we've gotten so far.
PrymeStriker wrote:I would think that the events that precede it are just as important as those that succeed it, especially depending on if you're hastily wrapping up your story at the last minute or intending on continuing it in the form of a direct segue to the next arc.
Well, I can't talk about the succeeding events right now because I don't know what's to come after the finale, so I'm only going by what's known to come before the finale and am critiquing just the preluding material by itself as is.
As far as Prime was concerned, the stuff we got after the first finale was certainly better than what we got before, but that isn't doing the "before" stuff any favors.
PrymeStriker wrote:I gotta say, though, they don't appear too terribly altered from their original models. I mean, I knew that prior because I read the TFWiki article, but I would assume that if they appeared on the show, there'd be a bit more simplifying to match the change in animation style. That is, if they show up at all.
The artist just drew the Prime models straight up. While the comics and show are going to be set in basically the same continuity, the two aren't going to be so tightly knit as to make us expect something from the comics to affect the cartoon or vice-versa.