TV-Nihon

Has anyone seen it? Any good?

This wasn't that bad, but the experience can be marred by how much better it could have been. Starting with the bad, the show throws around some really interesting ideas but doesn't really do anything with most of them; in one non-spoilery instance, the show starts us off with a Megatron that throws honorable, almost-sympathetic and even diplomatic traits in with his usual brutal and calculative persona, but shortly afterward reverts him to a propaganda-employing leader with "We shouldn't go extinct" as essentially his only reasonable standard*. The themes and moral questions can be similarly dropped, or just not discussed--early on Megatron proposes a treaty that Prime rejects, but we never learn enough about the treaty itself to know what the pseudo-diplomatic Megatron would've been happy with. A couple of other areas similarly feel like they could've used more dialogue before characters take up arms, but I've also had this issue outside the TF series, so some of that may just be me.

With all that said, the show really stands on its footing with Prime and Elita. The two clearly need each other in this iteration; while the show's younger, dumber Prime still has the heart and earnestness to form the Autobots' moral center, Elita's pragmatism makes her a much-needed Tin Man for Prime's Scarecrow (Bumblebee's the lion). Still, the show doesn't reduce either one to those one-dimensional traits, which gives them an impressive authenticity. Loyalty is probably the main motif of the show, and it gets played with a lot, with various members on both sides questioning their leaders' judgement, morality or simply priorities, and their various actions in response to that (including those of characters that start out on no one's side) highlight, strengthen and humanize the cast.

There were a few nice bits beyond that for longer-term Transformers fans; I appreciated a one-line reference to Velocitron from Cybertron (my first TF show), and a new lore element introduced around halfway through will be interesting for future installments to play with. The show's plenty of (dark) fun for what it is, and it does a pretty good job at exploring what it stays determined to explore, but it's always slightly frustrating seeing the show start to lose interest in some of its ideas and prune them in favor of other ones.

I did end up watching it and those are all good points. I did appreciate the more nuanced approach to the Decepticon's evil, even if it does ultimately turn into Decepticons bad guys and Autobots good. I like how grounded and serious most of it felt

Loved the robot designs, though that was amazing

Minor nitpicks of some of the voicing choices. They nail Prime and Starscream, and Megatron is okay (heard there was some controversy about them going for non-union voice actors and Peter Cullen being salty about not being Prime)

As a long time TF fan I had a bunch of nitpicks:
-Why is Skyfire (Jetfire)'s eyes blue and not red?
-Wish Shockwave had a more digital sounding voice
-Ironhide doesn't sound like a cowboy

I was pleasantly surprised by how closely everything resembles G1, but doesn't feel slavishly obligated to adhere to that canon. Characters that you weren't expecting to die just straight up die!

I think the death thing is mostly derived from the comic books that were a lot darker.

I have two main complaints. The first is that other than Megs/Starscream/Soundwave, none of the character either resemble their normal characterisation or don't have a personality. I really don't like Optimus characterisation in this.

The other is that other than the seekers and Megatron, the other characters alt modes still look a little too Earth like.

Still, I have always wanted to see something in this setting. Not the worst Transformers thing I've seen.

All good points. Optimus is very flawed in this, which does lead to some unnecessarily dangerous scenarios that he brings upon the Autobots

It's also weird that amiable Bumblebee is a self-serving merc. There's so many Autobots, you surely could have picked someone else who could match that personality trait

I'm a bit tired with all the Bumblebee pushing in general. Bumblebee was always the 'kid' of the group that got up to whacky adventures with the humans. In this now he gets Alpha Trions data after Magnus bites it.

I had the same issue with the Bumblebee movie. I get you want him to be the mascot of the live actions movies but now he's Primes number two and a combat ace.