Robots in Disguise should be a shame to the franchise as a whole. It is supposed to be a follow up series to the highly acclaimed Transformers Prime, but it failed miserably. As a stand alone series, it also struggles to justify itself. The plot is extremely silly and repetitive: there is a random animal-looking decepticon that is trying to make a mess in the nearby city, the autobots have to capture him, but one of them has to learn a lesson before doing so (a lesson that is gonna be forgotten in the next episode). This happens over and over again. The characters lack deepness and evolution, the main plot line (that holds viewers on the long run) is practically absent. This series survived from toys, nostalgia and fan-service. It is literally garbage.
Reviews
3 Reviews
Transformers Prime
(2010–2013)
The best transformers so far
22 July 2019
Plot-wise, Transformers Prime is the best entry in the Transformers franchise so far. I will please both G1 and young fans and will bring new layers to some of our beloved characters. I used to say that Beast Wars was the best thing that ever happened in the Transformers universe, but Prime is as good as or even better. It is has decent animation, deep characters and an involving plot, and it is not as silly as The Animated Series or Robots in Disguise.
Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya
(2019–2022)
An explosion of american cliche
20 July 2019
Warning: Spoilers
I will try to judge this series as objectively as I can, since I already watched the original Saint Seiya and therefore my conclusion could be biased by that, so let's compare this cartoon (not anime) with other series we know. I will try to stay spoiler free.
Story
The story has inspiration in the well known manga and anime of similar name. This is as far as it goes: just resemblance. Netflix's Kights of the Zodiac is full of the worst kind of american cliches (the same kind of cliches that the Transformers franchise is now known for). The heroes suddenly realize they have super powers, there is no hard training or anything, it happens in a rather anti-climatic way. As usual, the american superhero has to face bullies at the beginning of his career (and this is usually how he/she figures out he/she has super powers, being no different for this series). The protagonists always have something the army wants (super powers, technology, knowledge) and therefore the army has to run after the main heroes (this concept loosely translates to this series). The comedy is as dull and silly as it can go in a silly american cartoon or comedy show (something so out of tone and devoided of intelect that even hurt my brain). The whole ting is so full of one-liners that one completely looses the hype while watching (I know, in America one-liners are considered cool, but I just cannot stand this).
Soundtrack
The whole soundtrack is very generic. The opening is a bit better than the usual american dubbing of an anime opening, but still pretty bad. If one compares it to any of the previous iterations of this song released over the years for different anime of the same franchise, this is by far the very worst. Not only the opening is uninspiring, but the soundtrack as a whole is pretty lame.
Voice acting
The american voice acting is not really good. Sometimes they deliver it with the needed feeling, but most of the time it feels like a robot is reading the script. The animation of the mouth also does not fit the dialogue, and it just looks pretty bad and disturbing (I have seen old CG animations doing way better, like Beast Wars transformers).
Graphics/animation
The first thing that called my attention is that they called it an anime. I was pretty surprised by that, because it is not 2D, there is no anime drawing in it, and overall it lacks quality. Some scenes look like Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. Actually the heroes' faces do resemble the creepy trains' faces in some scenes. The animation is, however, fluid enough. It is by far not as good as Star Wars Clone Wars or Star Wars Rebels, but it is ok, specially for kids below 10 years old.
Battles
Here comes the worst part for something based on a Shounen: the battles are pretty bad. They are short, rushed and generic. Saint Seiya is well know for having very unique characters with very unique techniques and choreographies (each of these techniques having a specific effect, like freezing, poisoning, blinding and so on), but this time they decided to make it closer to a general american super-hero cartoon and have everyone shooting balls of energy. These generic moves just detract the whole beauty of the franchise and really add nothing to an already too-short battle scene. The sound effects during the battles are also pretty unsuitable.
Character development
This is probably the worst part. The series sometimes makes it look like we have the same generic character in different skins. There is not much of personality in any of the main characters, in contrast to the source material. There are a few character that stand out, however, and they are Pegasus and Phoenix. Andromeda, now a girl (in contrast to the efeminate male in the source material), is just a fragile and pacifist girl that does not like to fight. This basically makes the gender bending unjustifiable, she is just a very stereotypical female character that need protection from the males and reinforces the idea that males should be strong and females should be fragile.
I therefore see no point for someone to waste time on this. Maybe it will work for very young kids, but the bits of blood will make parents think twice.
I still think that Saint Seiya Omega, regardless of its failures, is a better introduction for younger fans, and the original animation (which didn't age greatly but still looks decent nowadays) is a much better and entertaining anime if you are older than 10 y.o. and looking for a new anime to watch. If you want a "boy gets superpowers and starts an adventure" cartoon, I would rather recommend Ben 10, it also has lots of cliches, but at least it is well executed.
Story
The story has inspiration in the well known manga and anime of similar name. This is as far as it goes: just resemblance. Netflix's Kights of the Zodiac is full of the worst kind of american cliches (the same kind of cliches that the Transformers franchise is now known for). The heroes suddenly realize they have super powers, there is no hard training or anything, it happens in a rather anti-climatic way. As usual, the american superhero has to face bullies at the beginning of his career (and this is usually how he/she figures out he/she has super powers, being no different for this series). The protagonists always have something the army wants (super powers, technology, knowledge) and therefore the army has to run after the main heroes (this concept loosely translates to this series). The comedy is as dull and silly as it can go in a silly american cartoon or comedy show (something so out of tone and devoided of intelect that even hurt my brain). The whole ting is so full of one-liners that one completely looses the hype while watching (I know, in America one-liners are considered cool, but I just cannot stand this).
Soundtrack
The whole soundtrack is very generic. The opening is a bit better than the usual american dubbing of an anime opening, but still pretty bad. If one compares it to any of the previous iterations of this song released over the years for different anime of the same franchise, this is by far the very worst. Not only the opening is uninspiring, but the soundtrack as a whole is pretty lame.
Voice acting
The american voice acting is not really good. Sometimes they deliver it with the needed feeling, but most of the time it feels like a robot is reading the script. The animation of the mouth also does not fit the dialogue, and it just looks pretty bad and disturbing (I have seen old CG animations doing way better, like Beast Wars transformers).
Graphics/animation
The first thing that called my attention is that they called it an anime. I was pretty surprised by that, because it is not 2D, there is no anime drawing in it, and overall it lacks quality. Some scenes look like Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. Actually the heroes' faces do resemble the creepy trains' faces in some scenes. The animation is, however, fluid enough. It is by far not as good as Star Wars Clone Wars or Star Wars Rebels, but it is ok, specially for kids below 10 years old.
Battles
Here comes the worst part for something based on a Shounen: the battles are pretty bad. They are short, rushed and generic. Saint Seiya is well know for having very unique characters with very unique techniques and choreographies (each of these techniques having a specific effect, like freezing, poisoning, blinding and so on), but this time they decided to make it closer to a general american super-hero cartoon and have everyone shooting balls of energy. These generic moves just detract the whole beauty of the franchise and really add nothing to an already too-short battle scene. The sound effects during the battles are also pretty unsuitable.
Character development
This is probably the worst part. The series sometimes makes it look like we have the same generic character in different skins. There is not much of personality in any of the main characters, in contrast to the source material. There are a few character that stand out, however, and they are Pegasus and Phoenix. Andromeda, now a girl (in contrast to the efeminate male in the source material), is just a fragile and pacifist girl that does not like to fight. This basically makes the gender bending unjustifiable, she is just a very stereotypical female character that need protection from the males and reinforces the idea that males should be strong and females should be fragile.
I therefore see no point for someone to waste time on this. Maybe it will work for very young kids, but the bits of blood will make parents think twice.
I still think that Saint Seiya Omega, regardless of its failures, is a better introduction for younger fans, and the original animation (which didn't age greatly but still looks decent nowadays) is a much better and entertaining anime if you are older than 10 y.o. and looking for a new anime to watch. If you want a "boy gets superpowers and starts an adventure" cartoon, I would rather recommend Ben 10, it also has lots of cliches, but at least it is well executed.
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