Energon (anime)

Energon was Armada's direct predecessor, and the first show since Beast Machines not to wholly reboot Transformers continuity. Energon took place ten years after the finale of Armada, at the beginning of a new age of peace on Cybertron and Earth, which was not to last long. Energon featured the return of two major villians thought vanquished at the end of Armada, Megatron and, impressively, Unicron, who, in Armada, made his first actual appearance in Transformers continuity since 1986. Energon, like Armada, was animated in Japan and dubbed for US conception. It was one of the first mass-market cartoons to employ cel-shaded animation, creating a fusion between the CGI of Beast Wars/Machines and the traditional animated look. Many fans found Energon an improvement over Armada in story and writing; still, the lack of English-written Transformer cartoons since Beast Machines indicates a trend of less-than-stellar dialogue that American audiences just has to put up with, a trend which seems to have no end in sight.