YMMV / Max Steel (2013)

• Broken Base: Starting Team Turbo, many fans started to complain that the series had lost its essence after most of its cast (including Sydney, Kirby, Butch, Ven-Ghan and posteriorly many more in the following films) was removed to introduce new characters, not mentioning that they had left many unanswered questions about The Black Star Council and the Ultralinks. Other fans, however, think that the show is now Growing the Beard by introducing darker storylines and making Max getting more akin to his classic counterpart.
• Bizarro Episode: For most of the fandom, the 2016 (to some extent) films and the 2017 ones, mainly the latter due to the animation change, the green energy and the fact that Steel was permanently unlinked from Max and the show lost its meaning.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Why does Doctor Xander have a robot fish? Cause he's obsessed with cleanliness and a normal fish does things like leaving behind excrement.
  • While harsh, Max does have legit reasons for having dislike or distrust towards N-Tek. For starters, his father was killed by Dredd, a founder of N-Tek, and he learned that Toxzon used to work for N-Tek until he turned evil. It gets even harder to believe N-Tek's goals when their choices to have him and Steel Locked Out of the Loop resulted in Extroyer's creation and her mother's life being jeopardized when she got kidnapped by Water Elementor.
  • It would seem a bit too corny for Steel to have an M-shaped position for Max Steel. That is until you realize by the end of Season 1 that the "M" meant Makino who would be far too eager to flaunt his superiority around the Galaxy.
  • How fitting that Makino first began by killing a humanoid and robot assistant and be ended by a human and his robot ally.
• Fridge Logic:
  • A bit of inconsistent animation, but when Max puts on the heavy clothes to hide the Steel Suit from his mom, he's not wearing gloves to cover his gloved hands and yet his hands are shown bare.
  • There's also the fact that when Max returns Sydney's phone, no mention is ever made of the fact that Sydney had Max's phone as well since the two phones were switched.
    • Well, before going to N-Tek, Max put his phone in the backpack with Steel.
• Jerkass Woobie: You kind of have to feel a little bit of sympathy for Jason Naught. He might be an evil cyborg, but he's trapped working for a Bad Boss, and seems to exist just to get beaten up and abused. Nothing ever goes right for him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A season 2 episode is about a film about Max Steel. And one was released in 2016. The movie in the show was better than what was in our world.
  • In "The Wrath of Makino", Steel mentions that him and Max would never be separated. Skipping to 2017, Mattel decided to separate them to introduce a new green energy to refresh the toy line.
• Memetic Mutation: DUBSTEP!
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: This happens starting with Team Turbo. Fans complained about supporting characters disappearing (such as Sydney and Ven-Ghan) without any clue about where they went and Team Turbo itself, which is more of a knock-off of Power Rangers. Combined with this, few fans also didn't enjoyed the look of the new animation. The 2017 films were also heavily criticized because Max and Steel were separated and probably will never link with each other and the animation.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: "The Truth Hurts" has Max reveal his superhero identity to Sydney...and Sydney's memory is conveniently erased at the episode's end.
  • The Black Star Council also falls under this, as they seemed to be a big thing during the second season yet the producers never explored this idea, especially considering that Ragnok, one of the organization's members, swore revenge on Ven-Ghan for betraying them and that he would come back.

---