When was transformers armada made

We Buy Toys. Browse The Toy Store. McDonald's Happy Meal. Super Class. Supreme Class. This would later be proven to be false. While 's Robots in Disguise was the first to establish the idea of a " reboot " to Western audiences, the first true reboot of the brand as a whole was Armada.

Continuing the trend that would be dubbing Japanese anime, Armada didn't bring a very good start to the Unicron Trilogy for older fans of the Transformers brand, and as such, has earned itself a mixed reputation among fans. On the same note, however, the show gave birth to a new age of fans who hold the series in high regards depite the flaws present. To put it straight, the English dub of Armada was riddled with dubbing errors.

Technical faults on a scripting and production level make it clear that the show was put together in an extremely short timeframe, as a lot of what was produced was not up to modern broadcast standards when it was released.

The most explicit of faults the show suffered from are the repeated instances of characters being referred to with the wrong name, particularly the Mini-Cons. Evidence strongly suggests that many scripts were translated only very roughly, and never given proper re-writes to adapt them for a Western audience, making some instances hard to follow. Supporting this are instances where characters would get referred to by their Japanese names, meaning that some scripts never made it to the point where the English names were added.

Other instances of poor dubbing include: characters giving long, rambling, semi-coherent monologues and characters reacting strangely to one another's dialogue, making for some very disjointed conversations. There were also some minor cases of characters having their voices swapped, leading to them being referred to by the wrong name, or in a couple of instances, Cyclonus's voice being used for Demolishor, showing the latter having out-of-character outbursts of crazy laughter.

Unfortunately, as the English dub is the version of the show most other countries received, a lot of the aforementioned flaws made it into foreign dub scripts as well. Due to Armada 's rushed production schedule, the animation quality was known to fluctuate from scene to scene. Many of its episodes not only received animation errors , but would often have cases where characters were badly-drawn and off-model.

Some of this animation was cleaned up for the show's later broadcast in Japan; the most publicized example being the episode " Linkup ", which featured some significantly altered and corrected animation; specifically the combined form of Optimus Prime and Jetfire.

Smaller alterations were made in many episodes, such as changing incongruous Mini-Con lineups or fixing blatant coloring mistakes, such as Cyclonus being colored as Demolishor for one scene in " Swoop ". However, a lot of the original errors were still present in the Japanese version of the show, despite the extra work put in. As mentioned above, Armada 's flaws mainly stem from a rushed production schedule, something which isn't entirely uncommon for Transformers cartoons , and as such it should be noted that Armada is an English dub of a Japanese series that was not ready to air until six months after the dub premiered.

The cause of this rush job is still under speculation, but there appear to be two primary suspects:. Debuting as a premiere three-part "movie" at the same time as the 21st century reinventions of other '80s properties like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe , the immediately-apparent twin flaws in dubbing and animation led Armada to stumble out of the gate into a torrent of hatred from the internet fandom that stands out as one of the rare moments in fan history when everyone seemed to be on the same page.

Flak continued to pile up as the first quarter of the series proved to be a sequence of repetitive one-shot adventures in which the same small groups of Autobots and Decepticons hunt for Mini-Cons in one episode after another.

The later inclusion of Unicron, as well as the gradually expanding cast, eventually led to more wide-ranging stories, in particular a well-received story arc centering on Starscream, but the consistently poor animation and dubbing, coupled with the fact that by the time these stories came around, the show had been consigned to the 6am "death slot" on Cartoon Network, meant the show never truly recovered in the eyes of adult fans.

Transformers Armada mostly revolves around the Mini-Cons: a race of Transformers smaller than usual about human size or smaller. When linked to one of their larger brethren, they cause a significant boost in power usually resulting in extra guns appearing.

Due to this, the Autobots and Decepticons warred over them until the Mini-Cons ended up leaving to stop the conflict, crash-landing on Earth millions of years in the past and laying dormant until the present day. Most of the episodes revolve around the Autobots trying to gain the support of the Mini-Cons, with the Decepticons after them with the intent to use them to conquer the Autobots, Cybertron, and presumably the universe as usual. It was controversial among fans not only for the focus on Mini-Con collecting leading some to call it ' Pokeformers ' , but for the frequent dubbing errors.

Due to rushed production, there are several conversations that don't flow properly, or clash with what's happening onscreen. Many characters have their names mixed up with other characters,' such as pretty much everyone being referred to as Leader-1 Megatron's Mini-Con at least once. One particularly glaring instance was Optimus saying he'd left Thrust in charge on Cybertron - and the image has "Thrust" kept in shadow because he actually intended to be Jetfire hasn't been introduced yet.

Of course, Thrust is the name of the Decepticon master tactician, with no sign of ever having been an Autobot - a major point of confusion for viewers. But like most things, it had a few redeeming factors in the overall story and the reintroduction of the meta-villain Unicron. It is generally considered to improve substantially in the second half.

In addition to the series, a mini-manga, called Linkage was released with the Japanese DVDs, written by Hirofumi Ichikawa , which told a separate story about a group of Mini-Cons who encounter a woman named Stella Holley, who helps them free the Mini-Cons from Unicron.

The story also features several links to the animated series, and even fills a few plot holes. The series was fan-translated in collaboration with Ichikawa, and can be read online here.