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Description
Before I tell you my real opinion, I have assembled a list of my pros and cons about All Engines Go! Let’s start with the cons just to get them out of the way:
Cons:
-As of late, Edward and Henry haven’t had speaking roles yet, possibly implying that Mattel were rushing the show too much to get a full cast crew. Either that, or they just don’t even care about them anymore.
-Speaking of Harold, he has only had one appearance so far, and that was in the special Race For The Sodor Cup. Additionally, his face is now a separate grey face rather than his face being merged into his body. While I don't mind this change now, I certainly didn't like it at first! Knowing that they still kept Annie and Clarabel's faces parts of their bodies, I knew this didn't make sense and was just like "Ugh! I hate it!! CHANGE IT BACK!!!"
-Mattel also seems that they were rushing the show too much to physically include Whiff and Farmer McColl in any episode.
-The names on the characters were removed for unknown reasons. The wiki says that this is most likely so that the English names won’t appear in other dubs, but the Spanish dub clearly still has the English Thomas & Friends logo and credits in the beginning and end of each episode! We even saw the normal numbers on the engines, but other countries do use different characters, so they would use different numbers as well! Another reason I read on the wiki as to why the names were removed was because "the show is for 1 year olds and 1 year olds can't read", but to hell with that excuse! 1 year olds can't even SPEAK or UNDERSTAND the English language either! And they wouldn’t be making all those All Engines Go! books if their target audience can’t even read them!
-Thomas and Nia's boilers are too short. This made Nia's smokebox and Thomas's cab longer. This would have made an LB&SCR E2 locomotive even less useful in real life than they already were. Either that or they would just have not worked at all.
-The engines use their wheels AND their buffers as hands despite the crew saying they didn't want them to. This possibly means that they either changed their minds and decided to do it last minute unbeknownst to us, or that they were forced by Mattel to do it even though they didn't want to do it, the latter of which almost makes me feel bad for them.
-The wheel configuration changes are also confusing. I get that some of the engines’s wheels were removed possibly due to the animation style of the show such as Gordon, Hiro, and Nia, but that doesn’t explain why some engines GAINED additional wheels, such as Edward and Kenji! And others were just completely changed like Henry and Carly.
-While we’re on that topic, the changes to Henry and Carly are also confusing. I don’t mind them, but I don’t understand them either. Henry is now a recolor of Gordon with Percy’s color pallet. The only features he retains are his firebox and top feed. Other changes made to him are his dome being yellow and his nose being more sloped than Gordon’s. For Carly, she has had an even bigger overhaul than Henry. Even though she used to work as a crane at the docks, Carly is now a train with a crane. I almost thought she was a completely different character at first, but nope, it's the same Carly from the original show. While I don't necessarily mind this change, I don't understand it either.
-There also seems to be a lack of diesel trains in the show. As far as we know, Diesel, Salty and possibly Sandy seem to be the only diesels currently on Sodor. They have a lot more diesel engines that they need to bring back to the show.
-The show has also been stealing catchphrases from Chuggington and Mighty Express (a train show on Netflix produced by Spin Master Entertainment). These catchphrases include "Traintastic!" (Koko's catchphrase from Chuggington, heard once in Nia's Balloon Blunder), "Absotootly!" (Calley's catchphrase from Chuggington, heard in Thomas Blasts Off and A Quiet Delivery), "Time for a track attack!" (Mechanic Milo's catchphrase from Mighty Express, heard once in A Thomas Promise), and "Chugga chugga, woo-hoo!" (Mechanic Milo's second catchphrase from Mighty Express, heard in A Thomas Promise, A Wide Delivery, Capture The Flag, and No Power, No Problem!). Furthermore, they also stole the design of Cannonball Curve from Corkscrew Curve in Mighty Express! This is, once again, a sign of Mattel's laziness, though this can be justified since Patrick Rieger, a writer for the show, also wrote for Chuggington, Dai Tubachi, the UK voice actor of Hiro and Kenji, also voiced Hanzo in Chuggington, and Meesha Contreras, the US voice actor of Thomas, also voices Nico in Mighty Express.

Now with the cons out of the way, let's get onto the pros, shall we?
Pros:
-Thomas, Edward, Henry, James, and Emily still retain their original whistle sounds.
-Although some of the engines's whistles and horns were changed, they do actually sound fitting. Percy's whistle fits him because he's a more young engine. In the trailer, however, his whistle was less suitable for him and didn't fit. It could have sounded better on a bigger engine. Henry's whistle in Kana Goes Slow, which came from an American steam locomotive named John Bull, sounded a lot like his whistle in a lower pitch, similar to how Nia's whistle does. And although it was confusing that James's new whistle was only used once but immediately changed afterwards, I liked it. But Diesel's horn and Gordon's whistle are S tier hands-down. Diesel's horn is from a truck horn sound effect, and Gordon's whistle sounds the most realistic, more similar to an LNER A3 (his basis) or A4.
-The designs of the characters and the design of the show as a whole are cute.
-I actually like how the smaller engines have children voice actors. Like with their new whistles and horns, they are more fitting.
-Gordon is voiced by Neil Crone again.
-Luke Marty's impression of James is the BEST impression of James I've ever heard in Thomas & Friends history.
-Hiro, Kenji, Annie and Clarabel's voices are also good.
-Most of the characters (except for Hiro, Kenji, and the Troublesome Trucks) sound exactly as I thought they would.
-There are some things about the show that I don't mind, such as the cartoony graphics and physics (the engines bouncing, jumping, running off the tracks, turning their heads, and using their wheels and buffers as hands [sometimes]), the lack of side rods on the engines, the funnels/smokestacks being called chimneys (if you look it up, they are actually called chimneys), the colored eyes on the characters's faces, and Gordon being a father figure.
-It's good to see Bulstrode back after he only had one appearance in Season 5 of Thomas & Friends, and he had a reason to come back because of all the merchandise he has been getting well into the CGI era long after his only appearance.
-The songs are catchy as hell. My personal favorite one is A Partner On The Rails which is also from my favorite episode, A Wide Delivery. The songs are as good as the ones heard in Chuggington: Tales From The Rails.
-I'm glad that Patrick Rieger writes for this show and Chuggington, Dai Tubachi voices Hiro, Kenji, and Hanzo in Chuggington, and Meesha Contreras voices Thomas and Nico in Mighty Express, because it shows both of the other shows have some sort of connection to this show outside of the similar visual acts.

Now for my real opinion on the show.
When the reboot first got announced in late Fall of 2020, I was kind of excited to see it. However, later on, the more information that came out that wasn’t related to the OG Thomas & Friends in the slightest, the more people including me started hating it. Then the trailer was leaked in late Winter of 2021 and the episodes were released in Mexico on Monday, August 23, and then people in the fandom started hating it more. However, I was having second opinions. Considering how much of other shows I've been watching like Mighty Express, Go! Go! Cory Carson, Bluey, Chuggington: Tales From The Rails, VeggieTales: In The House/City, and especially Hello Kitty And Friends: Supercute Adventures (don’t judge a book by its cover), I'm actually ok with All Engines Go. I’ve seen Roll Along Thomas’ reaction to the trailer and I’ve followed through with it. I now see this as another iteration of Thomas and as just another show (or a spinoff) and it should be treated as such and, to be totally honest, I never really even hated the reboot to begin with. I just said I hated it just to blend and fit in with the rest of the fans and respect their opinions. I only really hated it for the fact that Sodor lost its British Heritage not because it took effect (considering Thomas already went pop culture in the BWBA era), but because of the way that Campbell Bryer said it. He said "The Island Of Sodor is off the coast of England. That's not important." It was the quote "That's not important" that made me lose my blocks. I remember a VeggieTales fan once said this about the removal of God in the reboots of VeggieTales (VeggieTales In The House and VeggieTales In The City): "The show is successful BECAUSE of its biblical world view, not IN SPITE OF IT! That's the signature of VeggieTales." For me, it was the same instance here. Thomas & Friends was successful BECAUSE of its British culture, not IN SPITE OF IT! That's the signature of Thomas. But as nothing more than just some other shows, I found the Thomas and VeggieTales reboots to be appealing. I'm actually ok with the engines' looks and them having human actions and the ability to go off the tracks, let alone the rest of the unrealism. As a younger child, I also saw the original Thomas & Friends series as just another show for everyone to enjoy and thus would have big imaginations, even the most unrealistic and unlikely ones, of the trains. I would imagine them doing things like having hands in some form, invisible or not, and going off the tracks. Besides, some of my friends here in the TTTE community, specifically Trainboy 17 and TankEngine99 2021, have made Flipaclip animations with Thomas characters and OCs, sometimes depicting them with buffers as hands. And in some of their shorts, the trains are also seen going off the tracks. I saw potential for the trains being able to travel off the rails in Mighty Express seeing how similar it is to Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go!, and while it hasn't commonly been seen, it has occurred a few times in some episodes. These episodes include Super Nate, Pop Stars, A Mighty Christmas (special/double-length episode), Oink-A-Palooza, and Train Trouble (special/double-length episode). Aside from that, though, many fans believe that this show is the worst era of Thomas & Friends, even worse than BWBA and the Sharon Miller era put together. However, I beg to differ. In my opinion, AEG is better than the Miller era. All of the characters still seem to be in character and the show at least tries better to be a good kids's show. Sure the Miller era still let the trains be themselves and do real railway-related work, but it had a great deal of out-of-character episodes for the engines. Though this started before the Miller era even began and in the early days of the HiT era. Other times it was just dumb to the point where it wasn't even realistic anymore. This can especially be seen in the Season 15 episode, Wonky Whistle. Not only was Thomas so deaf that he couldn't hear that his own whistle was broken, but he also didn't hear the animals escape from his cattle wagon or everyone's attempts to tell him that they escaped. All Engines Go doesn't have anything like that. Jesus Christ I still can't believe that I even enjoyed that episode one bit and I'm ashamed to own the DVD it, along with Up, Up & Away! (the episode the DVD is named after), is included on. I told Yu415 that on the TTTE Wiki in his poll of the worst era of Thomas, and this is what he said to me: "I completely agree with you on that. As much as I hate AEG and BWBA for how unrealistic and weird they are, I can at least appreciate that the writing for both are at least better than Miller. BWBA and AEG made their writing at least enjoyable (in a way where you can laugh into how bad they are) and the characters are still at least themselves, I mean it would make sense Mattel's writing would be better than Miller's considering the fact that they were the ones that got rid of Miller as head writer to begin with. I personally find Miller to be the worst era, even worse than AEG, because the writing is so generic and lazy that I end up falling asleep the next three seconds. The other eras, despite their flaws, at least made their writing as non-sleepy as possible. Miller era just doesn't, I do not enjoy any of the episodes, I'd say the only good things that came out from that era was Hero of the Rails and Blue Mountain Mystery." I couldn't agree more with what he just said. So overall, I think Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go! is basically half Mighty Express and half the VeggieTales reboots and while it is not the best era in Thomas & Friends history, it is also not the worst. My entire point is that it is just another show and it should be treated as such. It was a chance well spent and I will continue watching it.

Overall, I give the show a 7/10.

Description
Before I tell you my real opinion, I have assembled a list of my pros and cons about All Engines Go! Let’s start with the cons just to get them out of the way:
Cons:
-As of late, Edward and Henry haven’t had speaking roles yet, possibly implying that Mattel were rushing the show too much to get a full cast crew. Either that, or they just don’t even care about them anymore.
-Speaking of Harold, he has only had one appearance so far, and that was in the special Race For The Sodor Cup. Additionally, his face is now a separate grey face rather than his face being merged into his body. While I don't mind this change now, I certainly didn't like it at first! Knowing that they still kept Annie and Clarabel's faces parts of their bodies, I knew this didn't make sense and was just like "Ugh! I hate it!! CHANGE IT BACK!!!"
-Mattel also seems that they were rushing the show too much to physically include Whiff and Farmer McColl in any episode.
-The names on the characters were removed for unknown reasons. The wiki says that this is most likely so that the English names won’t appear in other dubs, but the Spanish dub clearly still has the English Thomas & Friends logo and credits in the beginning and end of each episode! We even saw the normal numbers on the engines, but other countries do use different characters, so they would use different numbers as well! Another reason I read on the wiki as to why the names were removed was because "the show is for 1 year olds and 1 year olds can't read", but to hell with that excuse! 1 year olds can't even SPEAK or UNDERSTAND the English language either! And they wouldn’t be making all those All Engines Go! books if their target audience can’t even read them!
-Thomas and Nia's boilers are too short. This made Nia's smokebox and Thomas's cab longer. This would have made an LB&SCR E2 locomotive even less useful in real life than they already were. Either that or they would just have not worked at all.
-The engines use their wheels AND their buffers as hands despite the crew saying they didn't want them to. This possibly means that they either changed their minds and decided to do it last minute unbeknownst to us, or that they were forced by Mattel to do it even though they didn't want to do it, the latter of which almost makes me feel bad for them.
-The wheel configuration changes are also confusing. I get that some of the engines’s wheels were removed possibly due to the animation style of the show such as Gordon, Hiro, and Nia, but that doesn’t explain why some engines GAINED additional wheels, such as Edward and Kenji! And others were just completely changed like Henry and Carly.
-While we’re on that topic, the changes to Henry and Carly are also confusing. I don’t mind them, but I don’t understand them either. Henry is now a recolor of Gordon with Percy’s color pallet. The only features he retains are his firebox and top feed. Other changes made to him are his dome being yellow and his nose being more sloped than Gordon’s. For Carly, she has had an even bigger overhaul than Henry. Even though she used to work as a crane at the docks, Carly is now a train with a crane. I almost thought she was a completely different character at first, but nope, it's the same Carly from the original show. While I don't necessarily mind this change, I don't understand it either.
-There also seems to be a lack of diesel trains in the show. As far as we know, Diesel, Salty and possibly Sandy seem to be the only diesels currently on Sodor. They have a lot more diesel engines that they need to bring back to the show.
-The show has also been stealing catchphrases from Chuggington and Mighty Express (a train show on Netflix produced by Spin Master Entertainment). These catchphrases include "Traintastic!" (Koko's catchphrase from Chuggington, heard once in Nia's Balloon Blunder), "Absotootly!" (Calley's catchphrase from Chuggington, heard in Thomas Blasts Off and A Quiet Delivery), "Time for a track attack!" (Mechanic Milo's catchphrase from Mighty Express, heard once in A Thomas Promise), and "Chugga chugga, woo-hoo!" (Mechanic Milo's second catchphrase from Mighty Express, heard in A Thomas Promise, A Wide Delivery, Capture The Flag, and No Power, No Problem!). Furthermore, they also stole the design of Cannonball Curve from Corkscrew Curve in Mighty Express! This is, once again, a sign of Mattel's laziness, though this can be justified since Patrick Rieger, a writer for the show, also wrote for Chuggington, Dai Tubachi, the UK voice actor of Hiro and Kenji, also voiced Hanzo in Chuggington, and Meesha Contreras, the US voice actor of Thomas, also voices Nico in Mighty Express.

Now with the cons out of the way, let's get onto the pros, shall we?
Pros:
-Thomas, Edward, Henry, James, and Emily still retain their original whistle sounds.
-Although some of the engines's whistles and horns were changed, they do actually sound fitting. Percy's whistle fits him because he's a more young engine. In the trailer, however, his whistle was less suitable for him and didn't fit. It could have sounded better on a bigger engine. Henry's whistle in Kana Goes Slow, which came from an American steam locomotive named John Bull, sounded a lot like his whistle in a lower pitch, similar to how Nia's whistle does. And although it was confusing that James's new whistle was only used once but immediately changed afterwards, I liked it. But Diesel's horn and Gordon's whistle are S tier hands-down. Diesel's horn is from a truck horn sound effect, and Gordon's whistle sounds the most realistic, more similar to an LNER A3 (his basis) or A4.
-The designs of the characters and the design of the show as a whole are cute.
-I actually like how the smaller engines have children voice actors. Like with their new whistles and horns, they are more fitting.
-Gordon is voiced by Neil Crone again.
-Luke Marty's impression of James is the BEST impression of James I've ever heard in Thomas & Friends history.
-Hiro, Kenji, Annie and Clarabel's voices are also good.
-Most of the characters (except for Hiro, Kenji, and the Troublesome Trucks) sound exactly as I thought they would.
-There are some things about the show that I don't mind, such as the cartoony graphics and physics (the engines bouncing, jumping, running off the tracks, turning their heads, and using their wheels and buffers as hands [sometimes]), the lack of side rods on the engines, the funnels/smokestacks being called chimneys (if you look it up, they are actually called chimneys), the colored eyes on the characters's faces, and Gordon being a father figure.
-It's good to see Bulstrode back after he only had one appearance in Season 5 of Thomas & Friends, and he had a reason to come back because of all the merchandise he has been getting well into the CGI era long after his only appearance.
-The songs are catchy as hell. My personal favorite one is A Partner On The Rails which is also from my favorite episode, A Wide Delivery. The songs are as good as the ones heard in Chuggington: Tales From The Rails.
-I'm glad that Patrick Rieger writes for this show and Chuggington, Dai Tubachi voices Hiro, Kenji, and Hanzo in Chuggington, and Meesha Contreras voices Thomas and Nico in Mighty Express, because it shows both of the other shows have some sort of connection to this show outside of the similar visual acts.

Now for my real opinion on the show.
When the reboot first got announced in late Fall of 2020, I was kind of excited to see it. However, later on, the more information that came out that wasn’t related to the OG Thomas & Friends in the slightest, the more people including me started hating it. Then the trailer was leaked in late Winter of 2021 and the episodes were released in Mexico on Monday, August 23, and then people in the fandom started hating it more. However, I was having second opinions. Considering how much of other shows I've been watching like Mighty Express, Go! Go! Cory Carson, Bluey, Chuggington: Tales From The Rails, VeggieTales: In The House/City, and especially Hello Kitty And Friends: Supercute Adventures (don’t judge a book by its cover), I'm actually ok with All Engines Go. I’ve seen Roll Along Thomas’ reaction to the trailer and I’ve followed through with it. I now see this as another iteration of Thomas and as just another show (or a spinoff) and it should be treated as such and, to be totally honest, I never really even hated the reboot to begin with. I just said I hated it just to blend and fit in with the rest of the fans and respect their opinions. I only really hated it for the fact that Sodor lost its British Heritage not because it took effect (considering Thomas already went pop culture in the BWBA era), but because of the way that Campbell Bryer said it. He said "The Island Of Sodor is off the coast of England. That's not important." It was the quote "That's not important" that made me lose my blocks. I remember a VeggieTales fan once said this about the removal of God in the reboots of VeggieTales (VeggieTales In The House and VeggieTales In The City): "The show is successful BECAUSE of its biblical world view, not IN SPITE OF IT! That's the signature of VeggieTales." For me, it was the same instance here. Thomas & Friends was successful BECAUSE of its British culture, not IN SPITE OF IT! That's the signature of Thomas. But as nothing more than just some other shows, I found the Thomas and VeggieTales reboots to be appealing. I'm actually ok with the engines' looks and them having human actions and the ability to go off the tracks, let alone the rest of the unrealism. As a younger child, I also saw the original Thomas & Friends series as just another show for everyone to enjoy and thus would have big imaginations, even the most unrealistic and unlikely ones, of the trains. I would imagine them doing things like having hands in some form, invisible or not, and going off the tracks. Besides, some of my friends here in the TTTE community, specifically Trainboy 17 and TankEngine99 2021, have made Flipaclip animations with Thomas characters and OCs, sometimes depicting them with buffers as hands. And in some of their shorts, the trains are also seen going off the tracks. I saw potential for the trains being able to travel off the rails in Mighty Express seeing how similar it is to Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go!, and while it hasn't commonly been seen, it has occurred a few times in some episodes. These episodes include Super Nate, Pop Stars, A Mighty Christmas (special/double-length episode), Oink-A-Palooza, and Train Trouble (special/double-length episode). Aside from that, though, many fans believe that this show is the worst era of Thomas & Friends, even worse than BWBA and the Sharon Miller era put together. However, I beg to differ. In my opinion, AEG is better than the Miller era. All of the characters still seem to be in character and the show at least tries better to be a good kids's show. Sure the Miller era still let the trains be themselves and do real railway-related work, but it had a great deal of out-of-character episodes for the engines. Though this started before the Miller era even began and in the early days of the HiT era. Other times it was just dumb to the point where it wasn't even realistic anymore. This can especially be seen in the Season 15 episode, Wonky Whistle. Not only was Thomas so deaf that he couldn't hear that his own whistle was broken, but he also didn't hear the animals escape from his cattle wagon or everyone's attempts to tell him that they escaped. All Engines Go doesn't have anything like that. Jesus Christ I still can't believe that I even enjoyed that episode one bit and I'm ashamed to own the DVD it, along with Up, Up & Away! (the episode the DVD is named after), is included on. I told Yu415 that on the TTTE Wiki in his poll of the worst era of Thomas, and this is what he said to me: "I completely agree with you on that. As much as I hate AEG and BWBA for how unrealistic and weird they are, I can at least appreciate that the writing for both are at least better than Miller. BWBA and AEG made their writing at least enjoyable (in a way where you can laugh into how bad they are) and the characters are still at least themselves, I mean it would make sense Mattel's writing would be better than Miller's considering the fact that they were the ones that got rid of Miller as head writer to begin with. I personally find Miller to be the worst era, even worse than AEG, because the writing is so generic and lazy that I end up falling asleep the next three seconds. The other eras, despite their flaws, at least made their writing as non-sleepy as possible. Miller era just doesn't, I do not enjoy any of the episodes, I'd say the only good things that came out from that era was Hero of the Rails and Blue Mountain Mystery." I couldn't agree more with what he just said. So overall, I think Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go! is basically half Mighty Express and half the VeggieTales reboots and while it is not the best era in Thomas & Friends history, it is also not the worst. My entire point is that it is just another show and it should be treated as such. It was a chance well spent and I will continue watching it.

Overall, I give the show a 7/10.