Cut and pasted from my weekly comics review column:

     Transformers Armada Cine-Manga "First Encounter" and "The Mystery of the
Missing Mini-Cons": Tokyopop - In format, these are cel books, using stills
from the cartoon and comicbook-style speech bubbles to tell the story.  The
stills are cropped into weird "tech" shapes and set against two-page splashes
that are background paintings from the cartoon.  The panels are all about the
same size, and the flow from panel to panel is...inconsistent.  I mean, it's
not like they just took a frame ever few seconds, the choices themselves are
fairly good.  But it's not always clear, even for someone who has seen the
story told three or four ways already, what's going on.  However, the biggest
flaw is far more serious than some iffy storytelling.  Each of these books
adapts two episodes...of three-episode arcs.  "First Encounter" covers the
first two eps of Armada, stopping before the big fight in ep 3.  "The Mystery
of the Missing Mini-Cons" is another retelling of the Search for the Star
Sabre, but only adapts Ruin and Prehistory, leaving out the actual formation
of the Star Saber.  Gaaaah.  Plus, sadly, it preserves the really bad
dialogue of the episodes (like the "story so far" in ep 2 that has the kids
intuiting the entire history of the Mini-Cons from no evidence at all).  At
least the misnaming doesn't seem to be present, but I can't recall if these
eps had misnames.  Oh, one good thing, the Atlantean name for the Mini-Cons,
"Olyhalcons," is spelled out.  Anyway, as something for a fan who knows the
stories already, they're alright.  But don't get them and expect to get the
end of either story.  Oh, and I probably should mention that these are digest
sized (5" wide, 7.5" tall), with Optimus Prime on the cover of "First
Encounter" and Megatron on the cover of the other one.  Very mildly
recommended.  $7.99

     [Later note: Olyhalcons is probably a reference to Orichalum, the
super-hard metal used in Plato's Atlantis.]

     Transformers Armada CineManga vol 3, The Starsaber Dilemma: Tokyopop -
Well, I ordered all three sight unseen, and never got around to cancelling
this one.  It adapts the episodes Overmatch and Credulous, and for once
doesn't just give the first two parts of a three-part story (like the other
two Cinemanga did).  Of course, it ends on a major downpoint in the season,
so anyone buying these who hasn't already seen the cartoon is once again
getting the shaft.  And I really wish they'd vary the panel sizes, some of
the action sequences would work a LOT better with a smaller number of large
panels, rather than having to squint at the tiny panels.  Don't bother with
this.  $7.99