It's time to finally get down and really look at the 3 large series all made from 80s shows about selling toys and see just what the big deal is.

To begin with, I've decided that instead of giving the story about how my entire apartment ended up watching Ponies, I'd rather do a small comic about it, as the visuals I've been able to come up with caused me to laugh my ass off. Here's hoping the translate well when I put them to paper.
Second, I wrote my initial review for both Prime and Joes after seeing only parts of the show. This time, I'll be talking about them as a whole.

Ok, so let's look at these the usual way and then let me get into a bit more detailed discussion about each of the three.

First off, Transformers Prime.

Every single time I talk about this, I mention that this is what I actually wanted to see from the large screen movies. There's the classic feel of the bots that has been present in just about every cartoon show since, without the same reckless abandon of the previous Animated series (that in fairness was both present in the cartoons of the time and in the original series itself), while maintaining a much more serious approach. Notice I didn't say "dark" here, as while I did compliment that in a previous journal, the idea of something being "dark" shouldn't be a main point of the series. The idea here isn't that we're taking something and pretending it's more mature, but rather giving more weight to the actions and consequences.

Part of the seriousness is also this whole focus on little details to flesh out the world while not outright sitting down and lecturing the viewer. For example, the running theme in the entire franchise has been a conflict over limited resources and the implications of this on both the robotic visitors and the human allies. This is used to justify the way entire fights play out, with the Autobots, who are at the disadvantage in resources in most every way, taking more time to line up shots when they can, leading to less "stormtrooper syndrome" than the villains, who can afford to do so. It also shifts strategy towards more close range combat, which while a pleasure to watch, is just as important towards conserving energy (it's even shown that most of the laser weapons are actually more effective, especially at close range, but that it's too much of a risk to use).

Why am I going on about this? Well it ends up forming insane amounts of detail around how characters play out to compensate for these lacking resources by having styles that match their personality. You have a field mechanic/surgeon who seems to lack guns purely because he focuses on making due with what he has, while another "doctor" focuses on avoiding any unnecessary scars and uses common tools as weapons, while one of the most deadly enemies happens to be one who utilizes the least amount of effort to accomplish whatever he likes, and so on. All of this ends up making the entire cast entirely different from one another and helps reinforce their characters as much as possible in the short amount of time they're given on screen.

All of this ends up making the bots of the show all amazingly distinct and great fun to watch and listen to as they go about adventures that seem oddly reminiscent of old 80s plots (such as melting of icebergs by Decipticons, or ancient Greek ruins housing weapons of alien origin, or using made up science to jump into the mind of Megatron for the cure to a plague) but that all are treated with a proper amount of respect that really sells the show.

In short, this is basically the proper version of the Transformers that I've been waiting to see.

Sadly, there are still some faults here.

First off, the animation doesn't start out so smoothly. This does get turned around, but it takes it awhile to really work properly, especially lip work. This isn't as much of a problem as previous CG Transformers series, as the faces this time around include eyebrows (this might not make a lot of sense on paper, but in practice, it reshapes the eyes and borders of faces in ways you wouldn't believe) meaning that there are less shared facial expressions that gave rise to "dull surprise" (look it up, you'll instantly understand). However, it isn't until they start really messing around with the mouths that you get to really see what they can do. Unfortunately, there's still a bit of a problem with the animation of the humans from time to time.

Speaking of that, the humans themselves remain one of the Transformers franchise's biggest flaws. While they do get better like the animation, certain problems still remain. Namely, this problem is Miko, who has only really had two interventions that weren't horribly stupid, and one of those was getting Jack, the only sane member of the group, to not leave. While Season 2 has started to actually work around this, Miko is perhaps one of the worst parts of the show. Only time will tell if the latest development of season 2 (which came out of nowhere) will try to change this.

There's a bit more on this subject, but it relates to the section at the bottom of this, so let's move on to the Joes.

Most of the criticism I had for the series lasted up until the just after the middle of the season. In fact, after writing the journal, the entire thing seemed to do a 180 in terms of quality and depth, and I could instantly understand why people want a second season.

As I've said, most of the value of this show is in the promise it shows by the various elements making it up. Like Transformers, it's trying for a small cast and simple plot structures all based off of its 80s counterpart, but updated to fit a more modern form of media. While the first half of the series is basically a set of hit-or-meh episodes (only one of them really felt like a miss), and the whole reason for watching up to the point was to see Snake-Eyes be a ninja, the second half takes off with a bang. And then the point arrives where Cobra Commander puts on his mask and the series kicks it up a notch (I'm not kidding, the episode where this happens is the exact episode where things start to pick up, and for good reason).

However, there are still a few things that bare mentioning. While the animation of the Joes does improve, the CG definitely needs to be reworked. The season finale where it combines with Cel-shading to make it less obtrusive seems to work, but it still doesn't help the fact that certain episodes, such as the one focusing on a "sewer monster" or the any of the ones with Destro's mechs in them, look hideous when its put alongside the more fluid animation and rough art style of the cartoon. I know why it was done, especially with the detail on several of the CG'ed items, but it just didn't work, unlike say the van the Joes drive around in (I still can't tell if it switches between drawn and CG'ed).

Ok, I've spent enough time hammering this show. Like I said, it's actually rather good, and the second half of it really works well. Also, the main cast starts to get more heavily defined in this time, diffusing one of my earlier criticisms about it. Honestly, when the second season comes out, I'll be following it more closely this time around.

MLP

Ok, I know you've probably heard more than enough about this show if you've been on the internet for the last couple of years, so let's just get certain things out of the way.

The animation is fluid and probably some of the best flash work I've seen pushed out at the speed and amount needed to create a show. The writing is actually pretty good and it manages to go about the whole "lesson of the day" format of the 80/90s in a non-intrusive and enjoyable way. The dialogue works more than well enough to keep you entertained and engaged enough to forget how ridiculous some of it is (meaning it's right up there with Prime, as I know how hypocritical it would be to say this without acknowledging that Megatron and Optimus Prime coming from Cybertron while fighting over Energon sounds just as weird as Twilight Sparkle and friends used the Elements of Harmony against Nightmare Moon). As for plot lines, the whole show takes itself seriously enough to make the mundane scenarios worthwhile to watch, something that I found nostalgic in that I remember my entire childhood was based around shows like this, though often they would just feature male leads.

Ok, the one thing that really can be mentioned is that when the show gets really serious, it reaches the same sort of level as most other action oriented shows get in their season finales. This isn't just restricted to the three two-parter episodes the show has, as there are certain regular episodes that have brought up conflicts with huge and terrible consequences that you'd expect to see in the short arcs of series where the cast normally saved the world. Basically, it ends up being a more light-hearted version of a superhero cartoon show in these episodes. It's all rather ambitious, aiming for both mundane situational comedies and the suspenseful thrill of Saturday morning cartoons that accomplishes this balancing act by maintaining a light-hearted attitude that makes both half work equally well.

I realized while writing this that G.I. Joe Renegades first half attempted this as well and it really didn't work out as well, which should give you some indication of how dangerous this tightrope walk can be for a show. The problem here was that the Joes focused on trying to use these developing lessons and light hearted downtime to further the plot, they couldn't quite work out how to keep things moving without the losing the charm as the episode progressed. This is why when the series started to buckle down and just focus on what it could work with, it ended up turning itself around. Meanwhile, the Ponies could continue to resume life as normal while having world saving adventures because that was just how their world worked. Think how you could expect characters in Xiaolin Showdown to continue on with a normal routine and go on more mundane missions that took them along the plot while a more focused show dealing with an overall nemesis such as Young Justice can take downtime but never really take time away to focus on how one of the members has to balance two social events as both their secret identity and their hero one without part of the overall plot coming into play.

In the end, MLP just has a lot more freedom to go certain places, but this is just the choice of how the writers want things to play out.

Now let's start to wrap things up with the part I want to talk about with each of these is just how the shows change to accommodate the fans.

This is actually what makes these three shows in particular rather interesting. All of them seem to adapt to better fit the fanbase, a process I don't ever really remember seeing before.

Part of this seems to be dependent on how the shows are made. The slowest to change would have to be Transformers, as the process of actually making it takes a lot of work. Despite this, you can see certain things added in season 2 and late parts of season 1 that seem to be based off of fan response to characters. Characters such as Wheeljack and well... Jack started to see a lot more focus. Requested bits of the franchise started to pop up more often, such as the Insecticons, Nemesis Prime, and, the most recent addition, Scraplets.
As I've mentioned, Renegades also received a change when Cobra Commander put on his mask and you started to see things quickly pick up, as if the fans had finally made it clear they wanted to see things move forward. Heck, a few villains started to return as if by popular demand as things went on. Sadly, the series seems to be more deadlocked than the rest of the shows, and has suffered the most from the Hub (airing out of order episodes, season 2 on hiatus for the movie, etc).
Of course lastly there's the MLP, which has taken fan response to a new level. An animation error was turned into a character, popular little jokes such as the presence of a Time Lord, hints of alcoholism, and an inappropriate joke about wings all got nods, and popular side characters all tend to return. Heck, it seems as if the entire background of the world is dictated by the fans. Due to the fact that the whole thing is done with flash, this show seems tailor made to allow this sort of thing.

Honestly, this is amazing to me that these franchises could be influenced by the people they're being made for. It almost seems to bend the rules and start to remove the line between canon and fanon, which is rather interesting to think about. In the end, these series were made for the fans, and now they're going one step further by actually dipping down into the fandom and really making the group feel connected to the show. At the very least, seeing this happen is rather refreshing, as it shows creators that actually care just as much about the show as the people it's being aimed at. After all, shouldn't creators be fans of their own creations if we want them continually breath new life into them?