YMMV / Transformers: Armada

• Adorkable: Sideswipe's childish personality and being a ditzy genius makes him awkwardly adorable.
• Audience-Coloring Adaptation: While still not without its fans, the English dub of Armada had garnered disapproval and criticism from some dedicated fans of Micron Legend of negatively affecting Micron Legend's reputation due to the various technical and dubbing flaws in Armada that caused more viewers to judge and associate the show as the flawed Armada, instead of the more competently made Micron Legend.
• Awesome Music:
  • The main theme may be among the best in the franchise. The overall soundtrack for the show is also widely considered to be one of the best in Transformers history.
  • Painful War is perhaps, outside of the main theme, one of the most iconic themes from the show. A heavy and tragic tune perfectly sets the stage for Starscreams Last Stand.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The weird time travel/alternate timeline hopping. Happens with no apparent cause, is never mentioned again.
• Broken Base:
  • Fans of the anime vs. the comic. The main points of contention are the kids all but disappearing from the story once Simon Furman took over, as well as the use of G1 Decepticons as Unicron's heralds rather than characters from the Armada toyline.
  • To a lesser extent, something similar also occurs between fans of Armada vs. Micron Legend. Fans of Micron Legend decry the English Armada dub for its Bowdlerization such as the use of incomplete animation, the Dub Induced Plot Holes created by the translation errors, with the blatant scripting and dialogue errors remove nuanced details in dialogue that makes the story and emotional moments less impacting compared to Micron Legend; While some think that despite its dubbing shortcomings, Armada is still a perfectly fine way to watch the show due to its solid English voice cast, its writing is still passable enough to make some of the emotional moments resonate as intended, and handling some of the characterization just as good as the Japanese version.
• Character Perception Evolution: Hot Shot used to be disliked for being the Kid-Appeal Character. However after Bumblebee became a Creator's Pet, fans began to appreciate and like him for not being Bumblebee and actually having a halfway decent character arc.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Starscream, no surprise, given he is this in other franchise entries. While Starscream is far nobler than his other incarnations and ultimately undergoes a Heel–Face Turn, he has fans who act like he is a hero from day one, ignoring that is still a villain for most of the series and that he still betrays the Autobots after first joining them.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: See here
• Epileptic Trees: There are a couple of characters called Sideways throughout the multiverse, and it's definitely been speculated that they're all the same guy.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Carlos is seen as a Hispanic stereotype. Though to be fair the "scrappy" status is shared by all humans in the series sans Alexis, as is usual for this franchise.
  Carlos: "Holy frijoles!"
• Fan Nickname:
  • Thrust was commonly called "Squidhead" among fans, as his peculiar head design makes him resemble a squid.
  • Some fans refer Megatron as "Megamoose", as his head design with the pincers makes him resemble a moose.
  • The smaller Supercon-class Optimus Prime figure from the Armada toyline was commonly called "Bendy Prime" among fans, due to the figure itself having great articulation for its time, and as a nickname to distinguish it from the larger Superbase-class figure of the same character with electronic trailer.
• Growing the Beard: Unicron's beard, specifically. The series becomes much better when the trilogy-namer enters.
  • Starscream's Character Arc is considered the best thing about the show.
  • Specifically, once the kids got Demoted to Extra and the show started focusing on the Transformers (specifically Starscream and Hot Shot) fan response turned positive.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Wheeljack accused Hot Shot of betraying him by leaving him in a fire to die when the latter actually went to get help in Armada. In Micron Legend, however, the same accusation becomes even more painful to swallow as Hot Shot really did abandon Wheeljack to die out of his own cowardice and fear. Hot Shot telling Wheeljack that he was going to get help was just an excuse, and his attempt to rush back into the fire was second thoughts motivated by guilt and the realization that the Autobots weren't going to send someone else in to save Wheeljack. This makes Wheeljack's grudge towards Hot Shot in Micron Legend far more justified.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The little-elaborated-on Overload seems to be a Mini-Con piloting a transformable trailer, Headmasters-style. In Japan, Overload was named "Ultra Magnus" for some reason, and eventually got an Ultra Magnus-themed redeco in the West. Come the IDW Transformers comics, and Ultra Magnus is revealed to be a suit of armor piloted by a Minicon-sized Transformer aptly named Minimus Ambus.
  • In "Crisis" Jetfire shoots down Hot Shot wanting to join him and Optimus in their mission, because he cannot combine with another Autobot like Optimus and Jetfire can. In Transformers: Energon most Autobots not only have the ability to combine together, but the way in which they do combine is identicle to the way Optimus and Jetfire combine in Armada, with one becoming the upper body, and the other becoing the lower body.
    • Furthermore while Jetfire retains the ability to combine in this manner in Energon, Optimus does not, combining first with 4 drones, then Wing Saber and Omega Supreme in a different way, while in Transformers: Cybertron Jetfire looses the ability to combine with other Autobots altogether.
  • All those negative comparisons of Armada to Pokémon seem rather ironic now that David Kaye is starring as the overarching antagonist in Pokémon Horizons: The Series, being another purple-color-associated character who's out to obtain powerful beings for his own ends.
• Ho Yay:
  • Tons of this with Hot Shot and Red Alert and the dialog between Jetfire and Optimus when they're talking about what they used to do and the whole scene where they are explaining why they can link-up after and during the battle with (mainly) Starscream is rife with suggestion, especially when Optimus says its been awhile since they had done it.
  • Demolisher practically melts when Megatron takes a hit for him. When Demolisher expresses concern, Megatron even says "It doesn't matter as long as you're alright". It was an act on Megs' side, but Demolisher was being sincere.
• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Memetic Mutation: Rad wants to tell you about the Transformers. And the JaAm meme.
• Narm
  • How the word "Seimeitai" in the second Japanese opening is pronounced as: "Say-May-Tai".
  • (At least) In the Finnish dub, the transformers are often referred as "it". Even the robots themselves do it. It's a bit jarring to listen Hot Shot being angry at himself after Optimus's death when he says lines like "I yelled at it". It sounds less like he's distraught after losing his leader, and more like he's talking about a pet that ran away after he rose his voice.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The PS2 game. So much so that before War for Cybertron, it was considered by many to be the best Transformers game ever. Its only issues are its difficulty (not because of Fake Difficulty, it's just a hard game) and small roster (only Optimus, Hot Shot, and Red Alert are playable).
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Hot Shot notably becomes less obnoxious after his Break the Haughty moment in Credulous.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The show is infamous (though not to the degree of Transformers Generation 1) for its ropy, often episode-breaking animation quality, especially during its first half. Characters are often miscolored, badly proportioned, and for several scenes in the episode "Decisive Battle"^note considered the worst looking episode of the series, Starscream is represented as nothing but a floating black dot with wings◊! Robot animation in the first few episodes often amounted to static drawings sliding across the scene. At times, you can barely tell what's going on because the animation is just nuts. Luckily, the majority, though not all, of these animation errors were completely fixed by the Japanese Micron Legend run of the show.
  • The very liberal use of After Effects filters for the visual effects. It's easy to tell that those eyecatches of Optimus and Megatron had the metallic effect used on them, and it looks awful◊.
• Signature Scene: The one scene from the comic everyone remembers is the fight between Megatron and G1 Galvatron (introduced as a Herald Of Unicron from another dimension).
• Subbing vs. Dubbing: The English dub of Armada is far more well-known in the Western Transformers fandom, and quite a few fans even ignore that Micron Legend even existed. Despite this, people who had watched the Japanese Micron Legend version of the show tend to prefer it due to its more polished script, the use of finished animation, a more fleshed-out storyline, and dialogues that isn't riddled with translation errors and poor performances.
• The Scrappy: With the exception of Alexis due to her role in Starscream's character arc, the human characters are largely despised. Rad is seen as generic, Carlos is seen as an Ethnic Scrappy, Billy is seen as a generic bully, and Fred is seen as a walking fat joke. The kids' Scrappy status is likely the reason why Simon Furman chose to pretend they didn't exist once he began writing the Armada comic around Issue #6. The one comic that focused on the kids, prior to Furman taking over writing duties, is widely considered the worst issue of the entire run.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Starscream in Energon and Cybertron. Armada reimagined him as a sympathetic, Dinobot-esque Anti-Villain, resulting in easily the most complex characterization that Starscream has ever had. However, the later series then throw all that away. In Energon he basically spends the whole series as Megatron's loyal lackey, while in Cybertron he reverts to the Classic Starscream personality, with both personality shifts being poorly explained.
  • For all of her talk of wanting to become President someday, Alexis never gets a moment to show or develop any leadership skills that'd come in handy in politics. Rad is the children's designated leader, while Alexis gets relegated to merely being the computer whiz and the kid that would later bond with Starscream.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Optimus only stays dead for three episodes. So much more could have been done with his absence.
• Vindicated by History: The show (especially its Japanese counterpart, Micron Legend), while still a polarizing show in some circles, its contributions to the Transformers mythos, unique takes on certain characters such as Starscream have caused many to reevaluate it as a flawed but passable effort - especially when considering the divisive nature of later installments of the Unicron Trilogy.
• The Woobie: Starscream, especially in Armada. His abusive relationship with Megatron is played much straighter than previous incarnations, and episodes like "Rebellion" - where Megatron blames Starscream for their loss against the Autobots, and proceeds to beat and insult him until Starscream is whimpering in terror and pain on the floor - can be pretty difficult to watch. It makes his death that much sadder, because all he wanted was to gain favor with Megatron, and nothing was ever good enough.

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