*Resists...the urge...to laugh. Fails, miserably* :rofl

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Then you obviously haven't seen Season 3.  Because I was dead serious. 

I think it's just the competition over there.  They have a long list of other robot lines. 

As for us, robot toys wise, TF is pretty much it.  I'm not including Gundams because the popularity is night and day here and Japan.  They have devoted Gundam shops for crying out loud.

archon, no offense, but I have extreme difficulty taking a show that's supposed to compete with a bunch of other Japan-spawned monster-battling franchises seriously. Sorry if I hit a nerve.

TF's are a Dime-A-Dozen robot franchise in Japan. There are way too many robotic-based toy lines to even give TF's the ability to compete. Gundam has been around since Star Wars. Gundam is one of (if not) the Premier Robot-Based franchise.

 

TF's can't compare to Gundam in any sense. And with the multitude of robot properties there, TF's is just kinda like a flake of snow in a blizzard.

I still prefer TFs. Gundams are just big, lifeless machines that all look similar to one another and are controlled by humans. TFs have, OMG, A PERSONALITY. Which is why they'll always rock over soulless/lifeless mechs.

archon, no offense, but I have extreme difficulty taking a show that's supposed to compete with a bunch of other Japan-spawned monster-battling franchises seriously. Sorry if I hit a nerve.

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Then as I said, you haven't seen Season 3.  Because that is so not what it was about in the end.  That was only the launching point of the series.

 

Things got really messy towards the end.  We had:

 

- Girl's Digimon partner being killed brutally.  The villain drove his hand through his freakin' chest (and out the other side) and sucked the life out of him.

- Main Digimon tamer goes apejive on the villain, fully intent on taking revenge.  What ensues is a brutal mano-a-mano duel to the death, only stopped as the girl steps in and tearfully cries to them that more fighting and killing on her behalf would solve nothing. 

- Villain then goes "soul-searching", to find whether the power he now has is worth the suffering he causes to others.

- And after that whole ordeal, the kids find that the "bad guys" that they've been fighting all along were actually trying to stop their own world from being destroyed.

- Girl is captured by the ultimate enemy.  As attempts to rescue her fail, she begins to lose hope, and wonders whether she is worth all the pain and suffering that her friends are going through.  She begins to lose hope, and at one point, even attempts to commit suicide.

- The aforementioned villain returns, this time as an ally, dead-set on repaying the girl for the atrocities he committed against her.  He almost succeeds in rescueing her, except the only way that he was able to get close was to use the power of the Digimon he killed, which the girl recognizes, and paralyzed with shock, doesn't respond to his rescue attempt.  As such, the rescue fails, and the repentant villain is immediately defeated, his wish to make up for his sins going unanswered (and he never gets a second chance at it, like you'd think)

- One of the Tamer's father has the answer in which to eliminate the major enemy, except the only way to do so would also remove the Digimon from the real world.  But he doesn't tell the kids.  Meaning that they go in to defeat the enemy, only to find that they'll probably never see their best friends again in doing so, only finding this out in their moment of "victory".

 

Add to that some very intelligent writing, some very emotional voice acting, and the series was amazing.  And I was watching the freakin' Fox Kids dub!  It was very much a mature story, wrapped up in the guise of a "kiddy" show.  One of the best Animes I've ever seen, for that matter.

Ah, OK then. Again, I truly apologize for my earlier comment. It's just that the deluge of Pokemon/Monster Rancher/etc. type shows has more or less made me think "Whee, look, another 'gotta catch them all!' nonsense show." Sorry about that.

Hmm... what if they made another mech-based TF line?  Would we Starscream, or accept it?  I think it could work, as long as the drivers weren't kids...

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I'd totally go for that. (I'm a Masterforce geek.)

Ah, OK then. Again, I truly apologize for my earlier comment. It's just that the deluge of Pokemon/Monster Rancher/etc. type shows has more or less made me think "Whee, look, another 'gotta catch them all!' nonsense show." Sorry about that.

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As goes the old adage "don't judge a book by its cover".  I personally wasn't expecting much from Season 3 either when it first started, but I enjoyed the first two seasons as pure entertainment, so I stuck with Season 3 as well.  And damned if I wasn't floored the moment that hand ripped through the guy's chest, and everything that ensued thereafter had me desperately waiting for the next episode.

 

Pokemon, as a TV show, blows, because nothing happens.  It's basic, formulaic, plot-by-plot kid-friendly drivel.  There's no substance behind it.

 

Not so with most of the other "Monster-trainer" Animes.  They have some plot and momentum behind them, something worthwhile to be watching through.

 

Heck, even Medabots, which started out as an intentially light-hearted, comedic series with no real drive kicked up the intensity at the end of its first season. 

OK...thanks for clearing that up, then. I still don't know what Transtech is, though, bleh.