By now, the latest installment in the Transformers saga has arrived on Netflix. With impressive-looking animation and a deeply atmospheric setting, it appeared from the trailers that maybe Transformers: War for Cybertron, Chapter One: Siege was going to be something more than a cartoon about toys.

And it is, but if Siege proves anything, it’s that maybe adult fans should be careful what they wish for.

Spoilers ahead!

The show is as ponderous as its name. There’s no fun. There’s no life. There’s just minute after excruciating minute of literal plodding as the Transformers walk slowly from place to place, droning on in ponderous monotone. There are plenty of firefights, but they too seem oddly sapped of energy.

The animation is annoyingly rigid and unsettlingly fluid at the same time. It’s like various Transformer skins have been applied over block figures, where limbs and heads move (slowly) into place. But instead of realistically animating subsections of those blocks as metal structures, we get weird flexible midsections and lips that look organic. More than once I found myself thinking, “Metal doesn’t move like that!”

There are also surprisingly few character models. For as many crowd scenes as Siege gives us, there are armies of clones. It’s a shame since the toy line the show is based on has such a large cast of characters.

“Slow” seems to be the stand in for “serious” in Siege. Even when characters finally remember they have alt modes, they move at just a fraction of the speed you’d expect them to. That carries over to the voice acting. There’s a moment when Jetfire, responding to Megatron, manages to make a single word (“Under…serious glare…stood”) take a full 30 seconds.

And he’s not the only one. Nearly every character seems to have a disconnect between their brain modules and their vocal processors. There are a couple of exceptions, Shockwave and Soundblaster, but their scenes are, sadly, few and far between.

There are no quips. There’s no banter. There’s just minute after minute of long-winded speeches or angry conversation. More than once, I found myself checking the time, certain that I was near the end of a 22 minute episode, only to find I was barely halfway through.

Storywise, it’s your standard Transformers fare. Civil war has ravaged Cybertron for millennia. There’s a MacGuffin everyone is after (in this case, it’s the Allspark) and Optimus is trying to use it to get off-planet.

Megatron is in full villain mode – torturing prisoners and releasing viruses to harm Cybertron. And even though he conducts rallies where he presents alternate versions of current events (that one is uncomfortably familiar), he’s actually right about the harm Optimus could bring to the planet by absconding with the Allspark. It’s an odd bit of myopia for Prime, a character that claims to have all Cybertronians’ best interests at heart.

There are a few story beats that, in a more vibrant production, would be thrilling. The Guardians and Fortress Maximus are teased with an appearance by Omega Supreme in the final act. It’s an interesting bit of world-building that I’m hoping will be fleshed out in future installments. Soundblaster’s renegade faction and Ratchet’s independent Cybertronians provide relief from the murder-grind that is Autobots vs. Decepticons, but not enough character building is done with either to make you care about them.

The thing that we tend to forget as adult fans of Transformers is that all that “kid stuff” makes the characters more endearing. One of the goofiest series out there – Transformers: Animated – is still one of my favorites, not just because it was so distinct visually but because the character’s antics endeared them to me and made me care when things finally did get serious. There are still episodes I remember fondly and moments I remember wistfully. I can pick up the couple of Animated toys I have and still smile.

With Siege, I struggle to remember anything other than the moments of violence. Personalities blend and, for all of their frequent monologuing, I can’t recall a single quote from anyone. I look over at my Siege toys now and I actually like them a little less.

Here’s hoping that Earthrise fares a little better in the personality department.