>>10926135Yea I getcha; all of the G1/BW anime (incl. Car Robots) very much followed the pattern set by the G1 show, that being "light-hearted action comedies". ML & SL were the only times they really went hard into deep, nuanced character studies.
Personally, I haven't seen any of the G1 anime in full yet, but I actually really like the BW anime trilogy. Now, BWII was lame imo, the animation was really cheap even for the time and I wasn't fond of half the cast for being very generic anime comedy tropes - though I really loved Scuba, Megastorm & Galvatron, and of course Starscream & BB. They were real fun. Lio Convoy was a bit boring too, until Lio Junior showed up and Convoy suddenly began acting like a noncommittal father who doesn't want to pay child support, lmao.
By comparison, BWNeo was a huge improvement: the budget got a boost so they actually knew how to draw animals this time, I found the "new crazy planet every ep" setup fun, and the characters+comedy hit a lot more often than II's. Big Convoy being the edgy lone-wolf warhero who now has to tutor a group of young recruits he gradually grows attached to isn't a new concept, but it was still done well I think. Magmatron was surprisingly refreshing in how calm and levelheaded he was, made him and Big feel like the only adults in the room with how crazy the rest of the Preds were lol; he was pretty memorable for his presence. I also really loved Navi and esp D-Navi, who actually had cute/fun personalities compared to II's Navi.
Car Robots meanwhile was like a huge refinement of everything before: very fast-paced, bombastic action and snappy humor, fun character-based gags, and better art/animation again too.
That's just my feelings though, ultimately how much u like them will depend on your tastes heavily; I know lots who adore II, for example, while it mostly didn't click for me. But I really think Neo's overlooked, personally.
