As said already, Energon is a little better than Armada, which was a mess. However it could have been much better, nowhere near as good as the original show or Beast Wars. Some of the battles/action(more than Armada and much better quality-wise) are epic status- the highlights of the show by some distance-, the rise of Megatron was a good idea and is the best idea the show had, Megatron is still a cool villain and the voice acting from Garry Chalk, David Kaye and Scott McNeill is decent(though all three were better in Beast Wars, where all give some of their best ever voice acting. The animation is not as bad it is in Armada, but it is rather flat and scrappily put together with some overly-saturated CGI. The character designs take some getting used to, never really dug them personally. The music lacks urgency and atmosphere and the theme tune is at best forgettable. The writing is rather stilted and isn't that involving, not giving the voice actors much to do. Pretty much the same with the stories, which are both juvenile and dull, the best ideas they have read of too much of drawn-out-retreads and that is including the rise of Megatron. Not much characterisation to write home about either, the human characters are over-used and annoying, the lead human character is every bit as obnoxious as any of Armada's human characters combined, while with the exception of Megatron the robots lack personality. The voice acting on the whole- Kaye, Challk and McNeill excepted- is not great, as dry, emotionless and stilted as the writing, they also sound like they're recorded in a helium balloon. All in all, a marginal improvement but could have been so much better. 4/10 Bethany Cox
