YMMV for the 2001 anime Transformers: Robots in Disguise:
- Americans Hate Tingle: By Hasbro's account, Team Bullet Train was such a notoriously slow mover on the toy aisles at the time of the show's release that it convinced the design team to never reissue or reuse the set (despite it being quite well-regarded among collectors). This is believed to have originated from the simple fact that high-speed rail has historically struggled badly in America, compared to Japan's nigh-ubiquitous and practically patriotic shinkansen, which has had similar effects on the country's much smaller Rail Enthusiast fandom.
- Awesome Music:
- The English dub's main theme
sounds like an early 2000s version of a G1 theme. - Honō no Overdrive by Koji Wada (y'know, the guy who also did Butterfly?) is a great Hot-Blooded opening for the Japanese version.
- The English dub's main theme
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In The Decepticons, there's a scene where when it looks like the scanning beam for the protoform that will become Movor is going to hit a bird, Sky-Byte has a brief Imagine Spot of what it would look like. This was cut from the dub due to sheer randomness (though the TFWiki doesn't appear to realize this, saying it's unknown why the edit occurred).
- Broken Base: In contrast to Beast Wars and Beast Machines. Some fans hated Robots in Disguise, seeing the show as juvenile compared to the more mature episodes and themes of the aforementioned shows; with the characters calling their attacks, some even negatively called the show "Pokémon with robots". Others liked the show, seeing it as a return to G1's emphasis on vehicle alt-modes as opposed to animal alt-modes.
- Complete Monster (dub only): Megatron is the leader of the Predacons, who arrived on Earth in search of the Autobot Weapon Fortress Maximus under the pretext of raiding Earth for its energy. Upon arrival, he kidnaps Doctor Kenneth Onishi and probes his mind to find the location of Fortress Maximus. After receiving knowledge of the Autobot Protoforms, Megatron corrupts their sparks in order to create his Decepticons. Although initially A Father to His Men to his minions if they prove themselves worthy of respect, he discards these qualities upon his rebirth as the Decepticon Galvatron—absorbing the energies of the Predacon Brothers against their will to power his new body immediately upon his transformation, and later reducing Scourge and the Decepticons to mindless drones for plotting to overthrow him with the use of Fortress Maximus. Galvatron's worst actions, however, came during the finale when, after surviving a battle with Fortress Maximus, he transforms into bat form and drains Fortress Maximus's energy to power himself. He then unleashes his bat swarm to brainwash human children with the goal of enslaving them and repeating the process from planet to planet until he has conquered the universe, threatening to harm the children if Omega Prime or the Autobots intervene. When the Autobots flee into the Space Bridge, Galvatron sends the Decepticons to pursue with the intention of destroying both groups by collapsing the Space Bridge, not caring if any Predacon gets caught in the collapse, all so he could have the entire planet to himself.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: See here
- Evil Is Cool:
- Despite being the main villain, you gotta admit that Megatron/Galvatron having seemingly 40 different modes, including a giant freaking hand is pretty friggin' cool; they even put it in on the toy!
- The Decepticons also get this treatment to a lesser extent, which is helped by the fact that they are much more competent than the Predacons aside from the leader.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Robots in Disguise is more popular in the USA than Car Robots is in Japan, probably due to the Woolseyisms and Mythology Gags. Of note is that while Takara had a dead period between Car Robots and the next Transformers series due to the toyline underperforming, the huge success of Robots in Disguise led to Hasbro expanding the line beyond its original offerings.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Steve Blum voicing a character named "DarkScream"? Wait a minute...
- In the Japanese-language track, Taiten Kusunoki, who voices Scourge, would go on to voice Optimus Prime in Cybertron and RID's 2015 equivalent.
- Its western counterpart closely mirroring the original Japanese counterpart.
- The dubbed first episode is supposed to be a Scientific Symposium which clashes heavily with the visuals of people partying due to the Japanese version being a millennium celebration. The party/scientific stuff sounds like what Agatha's world would do.
- Memetic Psychopath: In the Japanese fandom, this series' version of Optimus Prime gets similar jokes about being a murderous lunatic to the sort that the Bayverse incarnation gets, due to Car Robots including a bizarrely high number of scenes in which he goes into an Unstoppable Rage against the villains despite the majority of them being rather harmless, something made worse by the fact that they are stated to have once been his childhood friends. Scourge's existence — an evil copy of Optimus that's Eviler than Thou to Megatron — made it even worse, and Japanese fans like to joke that this Optimus isn't an "Autobot Supreme Commander" but an "Autobot Emperor of Destruction". The US fandom doesn't really share this view, largely because of script changes for the dub.
- Moral Event Horizon: See here.
- Robo Ship: While it's not very prevalent there are fans who ship Koji with T-AI; it probably helps that, besides his father, she's the only non transformer character that he interacts with regularly in the show.
- Rooting for the Empire: While the franchise had always had a segment of fans that preferred the Decepticons over The Autobots. RID arguably is this even more so, as evident by the fact that the most popular and remembered characters from this series included the likes of Scourge, Sky-Byte, and this version of Megatron.
- So Okay, It's Average: General consensus is that it isn't the best Transformers series, but it's definitely not the worst.
- Special Effects Failure: The Japanese opening features a few clips with CGI versions of the characters. It really hasn't aged well, especially the very stiff-looking clip of Optimus firing on Megatron.
- Spiritual Successor:
- The show took a lot of cues from the Brave Series, like for example Optimus Prime having a Mid-Season Upgrade formed by combining with another Transformer, the Autobots having two combiner themes of 3 and 4 members respectively, the ever-present train theme in one of the robots (here carried by Railracer)...
- In particular, it takes cues from Brave Exkaiser, in terms of its Lighter and Softer tone and having a group of Laughably Evil minions running around searching for MacGuffins all over the world.
- Superlative Dubbing: Many fans consider the dubbed Robots In Disguise version superior to the original Car Robots, feeling that its funnier, has better scripting, tones down the randomness the original could sometimes get into, and works in a lot of fun ties to other entries in the franchise
- The Woobie: Sky-Byte. All he wanted was to serve and impress his master Megatron but he's repeatedly crapped on by the universe.
- Woolseyism The entire show was rewritten for the English version such as changing the Energon Matrix to the Matrix of Leadership, explaining certain events better (Megatron in the Japanese version of the first episode says he's here to capture all of the scholars. The English version says he's after Dr. Onishi which fits his plans better) and getting rid of the cartoony reaction shots.
