Just a couple of months ago, I was pleased to review the complete Transformers Armada set, which is the first part in the Unicron Trilogy. Soon after that series was ended, Transformers: Energon was started, and it too was produced via the great collaboration of Hasbro and their Japanese counterparts, Takara. Energon ran for two seasons and had fifty-one episodes, all of which are in Shout!’s new seven disc box set. Set ten years after the events of Armada, which saw the Autobots and Decepticons in a constant battle over the powerful Mini-Cons, the galaxy seems to be in some state of relative peace, or so it seems on Earth, with the surviving Decepticons from the battles raged in Armada now serving, reluctantly, under the Autobots. However, moments into the series, we see the introduction of the Terrorcons, numerous animal-like cons sent from the destroyed remains of Unicron. These Terrorcons are seeking Energon to collect, a valuable resource that the Autobots are also seeking in order to help jump start Cybertron. Meanwhile, a teenage boy and friend of the Autobots, Kicker, learns that he has the strange ability to sense the location of Energon, something that the Autobots nor any other entity is able to do.
No Transformers series would feel quite right without Megatron, and so he too is resurrected during the first season, only later to become even more powerful as Galvatron. The awesome Scorponok is one of several new characters to the series, while other characters include the likes of Optimus Prime, Jetfire, Iron Hide, Hot Shot, Tidalwave, Starscream, and Sixshot to name a few. The basic formula for episodes if familiar yet agreeable overall, with the need for transforming and combat almost always becoming necessary after spending time structuring the story and characters. Taken in the twenty-two or so minute chunks that each episode is, like Armada, it’s easy and satisfying viewing in 1-2 hour batches, with some monotony due to set-in after that point. I’m still working my way through the series at the time of this writing, but watching a few episodes every 2-3 days has worked well for me, for example during exercise, but the story and “limitations” of each episode given the target audience (kids) makes this a difficult series to want to binge on. That’s not to say Energon isn’t enjoyable, it’s just a dish best served in small portions for anyone but the most devout Transformers fan.
Energon featured a style of animation that combined traditional Japanese animation with CG to create some impressive 3D effects. This technique is primarily used to depict the Transformers themselves (as opposed to the background art), and while it may seem strange at first look, this style grew on me quickly. As with Armada, the animation is one of the series’ strong points, but the voice-acting and the dialogue of the characters in Energon is more-so borderline or even in the negative per se. This is primarily due to the voice acting for Iron Hide’s character. For whatever reason, the tone and inflections of Iron Hide’s voice seem very much out of place; he sounds like a whinny high schooler or something, and initially his character does have dialogue that exacerbates this even more. Voices of Optimus and Mega/Galvatron are ok, but not the level of the legendary Peter Cullen and Frank Welkers of the world. Different voices aren’t too problematic to get over, but the dialogue is briefly cringe-worthy at times, with statements like Megatron instructing Starscream to tell the other Decepticons to ‘pack their travel bags’ (as they are heading to a new source of Energon that the Autobots revealed). Again, nothing show-breaking going on with the dialogue, but between it and some of the voice-acting, the series’ overall quality is reduced somewhat.
The complete series set from Shout! includes a single, doubly-thick DVD case with seven discs, five of which are placed on ‘pages’ that can be flipped like pages in a book. The artwork for the first two discs, representing season one, are identical to each other, but this design differs from the design used for the five season two discs. Beneath these discs is a simple table of contents reference, showing what episodes are on what disc. In firing up the discs, there are no trailers of any kind to skip through which I appreciate, although the series’ opening title sequence is played everytime, lasting a good twenty seconds, and it’s completely unskippable. Once it’s over, you are at the main menu, which again plays the theme song while you ponder to Play All or select an individual episode. There are no other options whatsoever, thus no subtitles or alternate language tracks or any bonus features either. To be clear, this is a barebones box set that makes no effort to be anything more than a convenient set containing the entirety of one often over-looked Transformers series, and it’s priced to move.
With that, let’s get to the summary…