By Ned Jordan
If you experienced your childhood before the 1980s, then chances are you’re
not really familiar with the Transformers unless you have kids that were at one
time or another into the toys. If this describes you then there isn’t really
anything here for you in the Transformers: Armada Vol 2 DVD collection. The
animation is of your basic Saturday morning cartoon variety, the stories are
pretty simple and repetitive, and the dialog waffles between annoying and inane.
You’ve basically got a glorified commercial here that’s squarely aimed at
children and designed to feed their frenzy for adding to their Transformers
collections.
That being said, the various incarnations of the Transformers series have
still managed to attract a devote following of true fans and it is to this group
that this DVD collection will appeal to the most (aside from said kiddies). The
Armada series breaks from the original storyline and tells the story of the
struggle between the good Autobots and the evil Decepticons to track down and
acquire the Minicons. Minicons – which not coincidently are also a line of toys
in the Transformers collection – are special robots that can be added to
Transformers to give them new powers. Because of this both sides in the war want
to gain the advantage the Minicons provide while simultaneously prevent their
enemies from doing the same. Gotta catch ‘em all. Oh sorry, wrong product line.
If you’re a Transformers fan without an obsessive loyalty to the original
series’ storyline, then you’ll probably enjoy making your way through the 26
episodes included in this collection. However, it is probably only the true fan
or the under ten set who could watch these episodes over and over again. It’s a
little disappointing that there aren’t any special features included in the
collection. It would have been nice to include some background, storyline, or
historical information that would appeal both to long time fans and those just
getting into the franchise. This is a missed opportunity and leaves us with
basically a collection of twenty minute cartoons.
Final Rating:
for Transformers fans,
for everyone else.
It would be nice if there was more than meets the eye here, but this collection
should still appeal to the Transformers fan.
