Whenever I see incredibly positive reviews of this series online, I cringe. Why?
Well, maybe it's because Victory is by far the weakest of ALL Transformers anime, and not just the G1 ones. Everyone hates Masterforce because it got hyooomans in it, and completely overlook the fact that it has far superior writing than ANY G1 show preceeding it (with the possible exception of many of the season 3 episodes). Victory in the other hand is full of cliches and about as exciting as watching paint dry. Except for the last three episodes or so, every single episode follows a variation of the exact same plot; decepticons cause trouble, autobots come to stop them, Star Saber goes on about how he doesn't forgive, the autobots totally humiliate the decepticons and the episode ends with the narrator telling how the autobots' hearts burn for justice and how they must fight even harder in the future.
It's especially that last bit that annoys me. The decepticons never really succeed as coming up as much of a threat. You know how in some cartoons, the villains never come into close to winning and you end up associating more for the bad guys than the good guys? Well, Victory has that very same problem. The decepticons in the original cartoon never came off as particularily threatening, but at least their opponents weren't such horribly pompous, stuffy and honor-overdosed as Star Saber is. Plus the token human kid is only slightly less annoying than Daniel was.
The only positives I can think of for this series are the superb animation, catchy theme music and an exciting set of finishing episodes. But other than that, I'm afraid I will have to say Victory is actually worse than Headmasters.