Musings on Transformers Prime

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I just got through watching Season 2, and for the most part I am pretty stoked about this show.

This is the first Transformers cartoon that I have been excited about since Beast Wars/Beast Machines. This is by no means of the same caliber of the aforementioned shows, but given the large amount of drek that has come out of late, I'm not going to complain. Much.

I am not sure why, but the "vastly outnumbered" angle of this show gets on my nerves. The autobots have been outnumbered before, but not to this degree, and not without something to even the playing field, like Metroplex.

Additionally it really, really irks me that Megatron routinely wipes the floor with Optimus Prime. This is something that was in the recent movies as well, and it burns my biscuits as they say. 

Megatron and Prime are evenly matched in the intelligence and strength department, and always have been. Megatron's edge comes from his willingness to do anything, sacrifice anything, to accomplish his goals.

He uses this tendency against Prime often, to devastating effect.

X-Men #25I have always viewed Prime and Megatron as the Robots in Disguise equivalent of Professor X and Magneto. In the 90's version of the X-Men, Magneto was prone to large displays of his devastating power, where as Prof. X was not. 

We see this clearly in the story arch leading up to Fatal Attractions. Just prior to this devastating issue Xavier uses his telekinetic abilities to hurl the asteroid home of magneto many, many lightyears away.

In this new Transformers reality, Megatron vastly outmatches Prime, unless the fate of a world is on the line. It bugs me. Greatly.

When you remove the ying/yang aspect of their relationship, you remove most of the drama that can be brought to the table. 

The thing that makes Megatron so tragic, is that he could have been a Prime had he set aside his ambition. And Prime could have been Megatron had he set aside his nobility. 

They represent two paths to power, and the struggle worth following is which philosophy is stronger, not which bot.