G1. And yes, I have watched atleast some of each series that came after it.

Beast Wars, easy. Beast machines a close second. Everything else is just shoddy garbage especially all this god awful recent japanese regurgitated stuff. Put some REAL writers behind another mainframe work and I'll pine for every second of TF animation they produce.

 

Beast Wars changed everything in my mind about TFs. I hated the idea at first, I was the biggest anti-BW psychotic you'd have ever met until I watched the show. First I didn't know what to think, I didn't like what I'd just seen, but all that frothing disdain failed to well up inside me when I watched it. So I just kept watching it to see if there was anything worth watching because I was almost through highschool, I wasn't going to be the deciding factor in this, it was up to the kids.

And I was blown away! I whipped out my G1 tapes to compare and contrast and all of a sudden, all those glossed over awesome memories of the G1 show in all its glory melted away next to this brilliantly written, acted and directed masterpiece! It got totally pWn3d by Beast Wars!

 

Beast machines was an acquired taste. While I hear whining from the usual piss 'n moan G1 fanboys about Beast Wars, they absolutely hated BM. And while I feel the basis for the show itself was ludicrous at best, the work done around this nonsense that Hasbro had set up was nothing short of astonishing. Up until BM, I still didn't think of TFs as much more than robots that bonk eachother in order to sell a toyline and achieve their respective goals. BM demonstrated so much more depth for each character and fleshed them out to levels that made mere robots seem so... human. I was sad to see it get cut short, but it managed to hold on to what it did best up until the very end. It make Transformers more than meets the eye and then some. Mind you, at the cost of some very beloved characters and their already well established personalities, but that's another aspect of what made them seem so human! The fact that they didn't stay in some kind of stupid bubble of permanent stasis. They grew, they changed, they evolved. No matter how absurd the concept driving the toyline was, this was an incredible show.

 

In both series characters knew how to aim and SHOOT a target, I can't tell you how much that means to me as I go through the G1 series again and embarassingly remember Armada & Energon episodes that have so many minutes of shooting and no one hitting anything. They both LOOKED phenomenal, which is more than I can say for the puke the japanese are shoving up, not to mention for all the cel animated episodes and their issues. The only shows that drove me to stick with TFs as opposed to pawn them off were the beast saga episodes. They made remember what enjoying TF was like and brought back that magic of the 30 min commercial. *shniffle*

I haven't even seen most of those series. But from what I have seen BW is IMO by far the best series, for all the reasons described in the first post.

 

Everything since BM has been the japanese garbage, with only RiD nice to watch because the humor was acceptable. What I've seen of Energon (the first 14 eps, and then it got cancelled over here) proved to be better than Armada (which was utter crap), but still not good enough to really like.

G1 for me, think its hard to forget where it all started.... :tflaugh

I go with Beastwars for it's humor, good characters and good storyline. I only dislike it due to the beastformers which still are not my favourite type.

 

G1 I love for the good Voice Acting and the realistic alt modes of most, for that reason I don't like season 3 and on. The headmaster and masterforce series are fun, more brutal in nature, but the whole human part is lousy in my opinion.

 

RID is a second best for humor and characters, toys kicked ass, but the grand storyline was one of the lousiest I have ever seen. Most redeemable of it was Omega Prime.

 

Armada I didn't think was good, the minicons and the kids ruined it pretty much. Energon was a lot better, but both Dr Jones and Kicker made it really bad whenever they got in the spotlight. The toys were great as well as most of the G1 references. (And Kicker is just as big an ass in Superlink as in Energon.) Galaxy Force seems good so far, the kids are more comic relief and not to focussed on luckily, also I truly love the evil level of both Megatron and Starscream.

 

The other series I don't know so won't comment on them.

bw just because the characters were so well developed

 

the injokes ("die-cast construction. it's a lost art")

 

the plain silly bits rttrap retrieving sentinal and some brass band music is played cuts to silverbolt hearing it through the comm link looking confused

 

the references and continuation of g1 (starscream & ravage)

 

and lastly because it was so good it was not like a half an hour commercial for the toys

bw just because the characters were so well developed

 

the injokes ("die-cast construction. it's a lost art")

 

the plain silly bits rttrap retrieving sentinal and some brass band music is played cuts to silverbolt hearing it through the comm link looking confused

 

the references and continuation of g1 (starscream & ravage)

 

and lastly because it was so good it was not like a half an hour commercial for the toys

BW for me for most of the reasons already mentioned. What I like the most are the fight scenes. They are more realistic and have a lot hand to hand combat. Character development is great. No annoying kids, only the caveman kids that did not talk and only showed in a few episodes. The G1 references.

 

G1 came in second for me, introduced me to the line. Lot of memorable characters. Like the Dinobots, Soundwave, Starscream, Optimus just to name a few.

 

RID kind of reminds me of an updated G1, was not bad but not great either.

 

No comment on Armada/Energon.

Beast Wars.. got me back in the franchise, for one thing.. which at the time probably wasn't the easiest task. The characters were developed really well, the plot line stayed consistent.. some of the best stuff was the mid section of the series.. it's what I'd expect from a modern TF show... unfortunitly, these expectations haven't really been met these days.. **teh sigh**

G1. Characters are classic. Comic rules. Much room for fandom.