Transformers: Combiner Wars
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Transformers: Combiner Wars
Laconic: It's pretty Meh.
Combiner Wars is a Transformers series of 8 episodes of only five minutes long each. This means the entire thing is 40 minutes long and apparently, even with that much run time they had to add an awful lot of padding in the form of long, swooping shots, such as an entire minute and a half, a third of an entire episode, spent showing Starscream flying over a city. So needless to say, not a lot happens in this show.
The plot revolves around Windblade, who's apparently had a personality transplant from Grimlock for some reason, and her crusade against the Combiner transformers. And here's what I'd say is the biggest flaw of the series, it has a serious lack of combiners for a show with "Combiner" in the name. We get a couple minutes of Computron vs. Menasor in the first episode and a couple minutes of Devastator and Victorion in the last episode. That's pretty much it, everything else is about Windblade.
The story itself makes relatively little sense and could really have used some of the padding time to better explain what the hell's going on. It's set sometime after the Great War has ended (40 years if you look at some of the supplemental information), Autobots and Decepticons are at peace. But right as the Great War ended, for no given reason, combiners started appearing and fighting each other. Windblade is pissy because she's city-speaker for Caminus and combiners wrecked the place. We're told that combiners are some sort of nigh-unstoppable force more akin to natural disasters but that idea falls kinda flat since Windblade one-shots Menasor within a minute of meeting him in the first episode. Yep, just plain slices him in half in one stroke. It's very hard to take the combiners as an unstoppable threat seriously after that. We also never see any actual combination, or decombination, or really anything about combiners in general. The writers apparently actually forgot that a combiner's arm is actually it's own robot given some of the scenes. Actually I'm not even sure Combiners can separate in this show, it kinda treats them like an entirely different species or something, it's quite vague on what they are and the show contradicts itself a few times on that.
The animation is second-class. It's very apparent they cut a lot of corners to save money, such as having no complex combiners and only one or two transformations in the entire show (Never mind the final boss, apparently glowing spheres take up fewer polys that combiners, who knew?). Metroplex shows up for the finale but all we actually see is his hand, the rest never appears for some reason. The combiners are highly simplified and aside from Devastator don't even look like they're made up of other robots. There's also a grand total of seven (Non-combiner) Cybertronians apparently still alive, only Megatron, Optimus, and Windblade appear on one side and Mistress of Flame, Starscream, and Rodimus on the other. Windblade also has a pal who's a recolor of her that dies a few moments into the first episode, so not much there. The framerate is very low, mouthflaps are limited, and the cg in general about on par with shows ten years older than Combiner Wars. Megatron and Starscream are the only ones who ever have facial expressions beyond basic mouthflaps, which gives them much better characterization than the others.
Overall it's not much of an addition to the Transformers multiverse. The plot is nonsensical, the characters (aside from Megatron) aren't well developed, and the animation was done with more thought to budget that viewer entertainment. On the other hand at only 40 minutes total it's not going to take up too much of your time if you just want to seeWind Grimblade murderblending stuff for a while.
Laconic: It's pretty Meh.
Combiner Wars is a Transformers series of 8 episodes of only five minutes long each. This means the entire thing is 40 minutes long and apparently, even with that much run time they had to add an awful lot of padding in the form of long, swooping shots, such as an entire minute and a half, a third of an entire episode, spent showing Starscream flying over a city. So needless to say, not a lot happens in this show.
The plot revolves around Windblade, who's apparently had a personality transplant from Grimlock for some reason, and her crusade against the Combiner transformers. And here's what I'd say is the biggest flaw of the series, it has a serious lack of combiners for a show with "Combiner" in the name. We get a couple minutes of Computron vs. Menasor in the first episode and a couple minutes of Devastator and Victorion in the last episode. That's pretty much it, everything else is about Windblade.
The story itself makes relatively little sense and could really have used some of the padding time to better explain what the hell's going on. It's set sometime after the Great War has ended (40 years if you look at some of the supplemental information), Autobots and Decepticons are at peace. But right as the Great War ended, for no given reason, combiners started appearing and fighting each other. Windblade is pissy because she's city-speaker for Caminus and combiners wrecked the place. We're told that combiners are some sort of nigh-unstoppable force more akin to natural disasters but that idea falls kinda flat since Windblade one-shots Menasor within a minute of meeting him in the first episode. Yep, just plain slices him in half in one stroke. It's very hard to take the combiners as an unstoppable threat seriously after that. We also never see any actual combination, or decombination, or really anything about combiners in general. The writers apparently actually forgot that a combiner's arm is actually it's own robot given some of the scenes. Actually I'm not even sure Combiners can separate in this show, it kinda treats them like an entirely different species or something, it's quite vague on what they are and the show contradicts itself a few times on that.
I'm also a bit salty about Starscream betraying the council. First because loyal Starscream would actually have been something new and different, but more so because we actually get an internal monologue and hear Starscream's thoughts in a previous episode, and he's thinking loyal thoughts with no betrayal intended to the council. Apparently Starscream knows he's in a cartoon and wants to mislead the viewers who can overhear him think to himself. This is not good storytelling.
They also really, really cheapened out on Starscream's ultimate combiner form. Starscream unites with all the Combiners to become a god... and appears as a glowy floating head atop of a glowing sphere instead of actually being a super massive robot made up of very massive robots made up of massive robots. And he's still small enough to fit in Metroplex's hand.[/quote]
It's not all downhill with the show. The appearance and teamup of Optimus Prime and Megatron is quite good and the scene of the council having a collective meltdown, because Optimus and Megatron working together can pretty much mop the floor with them? That's pretty cool. Megatron has some excellent dialogue, Jason Marnocha does a fine job of emulating Frank Welker and gives a lot of heart to a Megatron who's old and retired and over all this war stuff, but can still snap you over his knee like a twig and don't you forget it. Jon Bailey as Optimus Prime is not quite on the level of Megatron but not terrible either. The voice acting's generally up to snuff with decent emotion and not too much ham.
They also really, really cheapened out on Starscream's ultimate combiner form. Starscream unites with all the Combiners to become a god... and appears as a glowy floating head atop of a glowing sphere instead of actually being a super massive robot made up of very massive robots made up of massive robots. And he's still small enough to fit in Metroplex's hand.[/quote]
It's not all downhill with the show. The appearance and teamup of Optimus Prime and Megatron is quite good and the scene of the council having a collective meltdown, because Optimus and Megatron working together can pretty much mop the floor with them? That's pretty cool. Megatron has some excellent dialogue, Jason Marnocha does a fine job of emulating Frank Welker and gives a lot of heart to a Megatron who's old and retired and over all this war stuff, but can still snap you over his knee like a twig and don't you forget it. Jon Bailey as Optimus Prime is not quite on the level of Megatron but not terrible either. The voice acting's generally up to snuff with decent emotion and not too much ham.
The animation is second-class. It's very apparent they cut a lot of corners to save money, such as having no complex combiners and only one or two transformations in the entire show (Never mind the final boss, apparently glowing spheres take up fewer polys that combiners, who knew?). Metroplex shows up for the finale but all we actually see is his hand, the rest never appears for some reason. The combiners are highly simplified and aside from Devastator don't even look like they're made up of other robots. There's also a grand total of seven (Non-combiner) Cybertronians apparently still alive, only Megatron, Optimus, and Windblade appear on one side and Mistress of Flame, Starscream, and Rodimus on the other. Windblade also has a pal who's a recolor of her that dies a few moments into the first episode, so not much there. The framerate is very low, mouthflaps are limited, and the cg in general about on par with shows ten years older than Combiner Wars. Megatron and Starscream are the only ones who ever have facial expressions beyond basic mouthflaps, which gives them much better characterization than the others.
Overall it's not much of an addition to the Transformers multiverse. The plot is nonsensical, the characters (aside from Megatron) aren't well developed, and the animation was done with more thought to budget that viewer entertainment. On the other hand at only 40 minutes total it's not going to take up too much of your time if you just want to see