Love Transformers, though as 90’s kid I got into it via Beast Wars – So I’ll always have a bit more fondness for Optimus Primal and the Maximal crew. It also made me long for a computer-animated show of the original Transformers, which we finally got through Prime.
Transformers Prime had some of the best backstory made for a cartoon and I appreciated its darker tone as an early-20 something during that time period – It was basically the perfect reinvention of the mythos for a younger generation (I’ll always like the idea of, and even relate to, Optimus and Megatron’s shared history as political revolutionaries against a corrupt, broken, inept system and how they went on two divergent paths in response to it (Optimus wanting to change hearts and minds while Megatron wanted to burn it all to the ground – and build a new system on top of the ashes). Read the Exodus novel; it’s pretty decent). Sadly the show itself wasn’t quite as ambitious as I hoped it would be, but it still has some pretty solid story arcs that made it worthwhile (the Unicron and Orion Pax arc being the best one, IMO).
With 65 episodes and even a TV movie I’d say it’d definitely had a good run, and it is one of the few Transformer continuities to have a proper ending.
Cannot think of a better send-off for Optimus Prime.
