Basically, this is Dobson wanting to talk about how he thinks the show is the greatest thing ever, so he tries to “meme” it so people will talk about how great it is. Which is when when people call it stupid, you can see how mad he’s getting in the responses as opposed to the ones where people point out the “excuse me, Princess” meme.
I facepalm at him comparing the Zelda cartoon favorably over Transformers. Story-wise, Transformers episodes varied (based on the writer of course) in quality but a lot of them were decent, well-put-together stories. A few great ones I can name off the top of my head are:
-"Webworld" (Galvatron Goes to Therapy), written by Len Wein (the comic book pro) and Diane Duane, who had experience as a psychiatric nurse before writing Star Trek novels for a living. Several Decepticons, tired of being bashed around by Galvatron, confront Cyclonus and threaten to "do something" about both him and Galvatron if he does not do something about Galvatron's insanity. A Quintesson (by holo-projection) suggests a psychiatric facility on a planet called Torkulon. Hilarity ensues.
-Traitor, which was an episode about how Cliffjumper didn't trust Mirage for some reason and suspected him of working with the Decepticons, all because the Decepticons' setup for stolen electro-cells were discovered, by Cliffjumper, "in the same area Mirage patrolled YESTERDAY", so he thought Mirage actually HAD seen it, but chose not to report it. Mirage ends up tricking the Insecticons into fighting the Decepticons, but the Insecticons catch him after a stray shrapnel grenade intended for Skywarp hits Mirage instead and reveals him out of his invisibility. They then put a cerebro shell into his noggan, have him fire missiles at the Decepticons and pwn the shit out of them. Then Mirage does betray the Autobots, but Ratchet finds the cerebro shell and concludes it wasn't Mirage's fault because he was under Insecticon control. This episode is notable for being VERY well-animated (along with The Insecticon Syndrome and Enter the Nightbird), making the animation in Zelda cartoon look like dog shit by comparison.
-Cosmic Rust, where Megatron discovers an old and seemingly abandoned Autobot colony on a faraway planet, but on the trip home on Astrotrain a meteor hits them. This meteor has "cosmic rust germs" that feed on metal, and in order to find a cure, he kidnaps the Autobot scientist Perceptor, who has invented a substance called 'Corrostop'.
I can sorta remember a few of the Zelda episodes, which while they were kinda fun, most of the plots were even dumber than the worst TF episode plots, and Zelda was a jerk, the fairy was a bitch, and Link was an asshole. If you want to talk about character characterization, Transformers beats LoZ hands down, even in the worst episodes of TF.
Not that Transformers didn't have its flaws. It had TONS. (Most fans will agree that B.O.T. and Carnage in C Minor are by far the worst in terms of both story and animation quality). But to compare TF and LoZ on a quality-of-animation basis is comparing apples to oranges.
Legend of Zelda ran for ONLY 13 episodes, of 15 minutes each. It was only a small part of the SMBSS, and aired only on Fridays, and no more were made after the first 13 because it was discontinued. Transformers, on the other hand, had a runtime of half an hour (counting commercials of course) and ended up running daily for 3 years (plus reruns for another few years), and when all was said and done was over 100 episodes in total. Not until the Kid Rhino re-releases of the Transformers cartoon did we appreciate just how many errors they actually CAUGHT prior to TV broadcast. Of course even then they didn't catch them all (lol), but there was a serious crunch time involved with so many episodes. With LoZ, this was not really the case. Transformers was animated by Toei but Toei sometimes contracted out to AKOM or other studios if they needed some episodes done in a hurry (with even more errors, and older animation models being used for some characters). Legend of Zelda was animated by DiC, and while DiC was no Toei (or even Filmation rofl), at least the animators weren't in the same kind of ongoing crunch situation as the ones on Transformers were. What's truly abominable is that Dobson, who got a fucking DEGREE in animation, can't figure this out nor even took the time to consider this. Not to mention, Dobson's claimed in the past he doesn't understand Transformers (or CARS, which a lot of TFs are) or why people like them, so I don't think he watched long enough to know what the deal was. I guess he couldn't bend his smoothbrained head around the concept of sentient robots that shapeshift?
I noticed with a few of Dobson's posts that some of the replies were using that newfangled pronoun system, so I guess it's Tumblr's new official "gender neutral pronoun that isn't they", but is at least as awkward both in print and in speaking, though admittedly not as bad as the "Ze/Zir/Zem" or "Xe Xir Xem" variants.
More tomfoolery about the zelda meme lament:
hypocrisyofandrewdobson.tumblr.com
