Introduction

 

With the first series being a success a second one was commissioned straight away, with the goal being to produce enough episodes to make the show enter syndication -in other words, having it so there'd be episodes broadcast on a daily basis which meant more exposure to the Transformers brand and hopefully meaning more toy and merchandise sales.

With that, we have season 2 of The Transformers - with 49 episodes it is one of the largest seasons in the franchise and is something that many fans see as the highlight of it all. The main reason for this being that it introduced many new, cool characters, some pretty good plots and something that you just can't get in any other season: humour. There are many laugh out loud moments in the season, intentional or not, ranging from drunken Decepticons, Soundwave at the disco, Optimus Prime saying "boobies", the works. It's kind of a shame that future series had to ditch the laughs and concentrate on making everything a lot more serious and darker, but when you have Autobots trying to star in movies you don't really need to care.



That isn't to say that this season is perfect, far from it. Due to the many episodes needed to fill the season there are several lacklustre ones such as "B.O.T." and "Aerial Assault" that are desperately trying to plug toys whilst trying to get across a tacky, nonsensical plot. You can often forget what the Decepticon's grand plan is and if they actually want to conquer Cybertron any more, and there is next to no continuity between episodes -many of the episodes in this season could be taken out and it wouldn't effect the overall story at all. Animation studio AKOM also raised their ugly heads for the first time, producing some poorly animated episodes which don't match up at all with Toei's usual goodness.

But there is a lot more good points than bad, with a few good serious episodes like "War Dawn" along with downright hilarious ones like the one linked to above. The voice acting is once again excellent, with many memorable voices for the new characters that really helped bring them to life thanks to the talents of Buster Jones, Michael McConnohie, Michael Chain and many others. Overall there is a lot to like about this season and I highly recommend it.