Loved by good, feared by evil.
Form feet and legs! Form arms and body! And I'll form the head!
Combining Mecha cartoon, created in 1984 by combining the
Toei anime shows
GoLion and
Dairugger XV (this was necessary to meet the minimum 65 episodes for syndication). This is still considered
the combining mecha in areas of pop culture (like, for instance, hip-hop) that don't have much crossover with anime fandom, but even anime fans still love it.
There was even supposed to be a third series from a Toei anime,
Albegas, but it was never used. The two Voltron series,
Voltron: Defender of the Far Universe ("Lion" Voltron) and
Voltron: Defender of the Near Universe ("Vehicle" Voltron), occupied completely different story lines.
While not as severe in the editing of
Robotech, there were changes to fit the Voltron series together, such as Zarkon (
Lion Voltron's main villain) being sort of a vassal of the Drule Empire (the bad guys of
Vehicle Voltron), the two short kids being brothers, and the Galaxy Garrison of Dairugger having scenes cut into Lion Voltron, where they would talk about the situation, but never do anything (since there was no 'fight footage' available that featured the conversing characters).
Eventually, additional episodes of
Lion Voltron were made with all new footage from Toei Animation, which were not based on anything from
GoLion. A special called "Fleet of Doom", which featured
both Voltrons, was also produced in this way.
Lion Voltron is better remembered, probably because it aired first, same reason the
Macross part of
Robotech is remembered more than the latter parts, although the other series of both still have fans.
Vehicle Voltron had a whopping 15 characters (essentially three five-man bands who all joined up in the end), so the target audience — children — could barely keep them sorted out then, much less remember them fondly as adults.
In both versions, the
Monster Of The Week was always a Robeast. Some robeasts were huge Mecha. Others were apparently non-robot aliens that grew to gigantic size when hit with a special energy beam (a plot device that would be heavily reused decades later in the first season of
Power Rangers). Both species of robeasts were
always killed by being sliced in half with the
Blazing Sword, upon which they would explode. The explosion footage (like much of the rest of the fight scenes) was recycled for all episodes, so all robeasts die the same (to censor out some of the quite violent deaths in the actual series).
In the United States toy market,
Lion Voltron was sold under the name "Voltron III", while "Vehicle Voltron" was sold as "Voltron I". A third Voltron, "Voltron II" was also available. This "Gladiator" Voltron was based on
Albegas, which was scheduled to be released as another in the US
Voltron saga, but never materialized.
According to legend, World Events Productions originally intended to use
Mirai Robo Daltanious to make
Voltron, but they asked Toei for "the show with the lion" and were sent
GoLion instead, deciding they liked it better. Ironically, Daltanious is made up of one of each of the types of robots used in the
Voltron series: a lion, a vehicle, and a humanoid "gladiator".
In the early 21st century,
Voltron was
revived in the form of
Voltron: The Third Dimension, a completely CGI animated continuation of the
Lion Voltron storyline. In its second season, Voltron was redesigned as a "Cyber Stealth" model. How exactly a robot that big could qualify as "stealth" even when painted black is anyone's guess.
There is talk of a movie, but the rights are apparently in dispute.
You can now watch the original on Youtube
here
or on
Hulu.
This show provides examples of:
Lion Voltron
- Alien Invasion
- All Your Colors Combined
- Ass Kicking Pose
- BFS
- Big Bad
- Bishounen
- The Big Guy (Hunk)
- Caramelldansen Vid
- Cats Are Mean
- Combining Mecha
- Cool Sword
- The Complainer Is Always Wrong (Wonderfully averted when Lance doesn't trust a potential new pilot. Although it was for the wrong reason, Lance was right because the new guy was the Monster Of The Week.)
- Crowning Music Of Awesome
- Draco In Leather Pants (Lotor is so very, very much this. Doesn't help that a lot of his worst acts were edited out.)
- Dub Name Change
- Everythings Better With Princesses (Allura, and her cousin Romelle)
- Everythings Better With Sparkles (Allura does sparkle sometimes)
- Fanfare (Although Voltron's score is a far more explicit one than Golion's which just as parts of a fanfare in its bouncy theme.)
- Fetish Fuel (When Allura wants to pilot the blue lion, her nanny spanks her, and Coran ties her to a chair. In another episode, Lotor ties princess Romelle up with chains. In another episode, Allura is swimming in a bikini, and her top falls off in the water.)
- Five Man Band
- Forgotten Superweapon (Blazing Sword, always the last thing they pulled out in battle)
- For Great Justice (When Keith spouts about Voltron's role)
- Friend To All Living Things (Allura and the mice. She even knows their language.)
- Golion Is Big In America: Voltron is far better known in America than Golion is in Japan. In fact, Golion is almost forgotten there. This is because when Golion premiered in Japan, there were already tons of transforming/combining mecha shows on airwaves, while in America it was pretty much the only show of its kind (not to mention it had to compete with Super Sentai in Japan too, which America didn't get until the early 90s).
- Gladiator Games
- Hey Its That Voice ("The narrator is Optimus Prime?!")
- Homage (It could be unintentional, but Allura's grand dress dress bears a resemblance◊ to Princess Aurora's.)
- Humongous Mecha
- The Lancer (Lance, really)
- Larynx Dissonance: In the US dub, a lot of the female extras voices were done by a guy.
- Leit Motif
- Limited Wardrobe: except possibly Allura, everyone else has exactly two outfits - his uniform, and one set of civvies.
- Allura has three outfits: her uniform and two sets of civvies.
- Macekre (In terms of some of the plot, like making the villains somewhat more one-dimensional, or in terms of Lull Destruction (holy cow the Lull Destruction), but actually improved the show in others, like the music. In general, most people consider the show a "good" Macekre in that while the changes were vast, by and large they were done so that the show would even be airable in the U.S.; the edits don't remove what made the show fun in the first place (e.g., people in combining robot lions having one Big Damn Heroes moment after another).)
- Memetic Mutation: AND I'LL FORM THE HEAD!
- The Merch
- Modest Royalty (Once Allura is a pilot, she usually wears her pink jumpsuit instead of her fancy dress.)
- Mooks
- Mordor
- Name Tron (especially since Golion didn't have that kind of name)
- Notable Original Music
- Overlord Jr — Lotor
- Parental Abandonment (Voltron — both of Allura's parents died years before.)
- Pimped Out Dress (Allura's dress. Oddly enough, Romelle's dress isn't that fancy, but when she wears a battle jumpsuit it fits this trope better.)
- Princess Classic (Even as a pilot, Allura is like this.)
- Princess Curls (Allura/Fala, although they way they are drawn makes them easy to mistake for sideburns.)
- Princesses Prefer Pink (Allura wears pink with everything, even her uniform.)
- Robeast (Trope Namer)
- Royals Who Actually Do Something (Allura as one of the pilots)
- The Short Guy With Glasses (Pidge)
- Standardized Leader (Keith)
- The Starscream
- Stay In The Kitchen (The way Allura's guardians treat her some of the time)
- Stock Footage
- Super Robot
- Super Robot Wars (Golion appears in Super Robot Wars W)
- Take Off Every Zig
- Transformation Is A Free Action (Subverted oh so many times, that's what happens when you get Dangerously Genre Savvy villains.)
- Troper Force
- Unfortunate Implications (How Koran and Nanny basically treated Allura when she wanted to pilot. That episode was one of the least rerun on Toonami.)
- Although Allura is the last of the royal family, so they aren't totally unreasonable to not want her to fly. A better case would be when Nanny volunteers to scout recruits, she puts an emphasis on having a man pilot the Blue Lion.
- Unwilling Suspension (Romelle)
- Warrior Princeess (Allura)
- Wicked Witch
- Woolseyism (Sven ought to be the Woolseyism poster child.)
- To detail: the character that would become "Sven" was killed off early on so that Fala could become a pilot. However, the Japanese rather liked the character and wanted him to return. So the Japanese version has his twin brother show up, which ends up feeling a little ham-fisted an awkward. World Events had a "never say die" policy at the time, so instead of killing Sven early they just glossed it that he had to go off-camera for a bit and then came back.
Vehicle Voltron
- The Battlestar: the Explorer, the space carrier from which the vehicles launched before combining
- Bloodless Carnage: Although Dairugger XV had its fair share of military death, the American re-dubbing took pains to tell the audience that the things being shot up were "robot attack ships" and "android stormtroopers." The next-to-last episode even had a violent Drule lynch mob chanting, "Capture the president! Capture the president!"
- Combining Mecha: two ways! 15 small vehicles could combine into three larger ones, and then if that didn't get the job done, could re-combine into the titular Super Robot
- Dub Name Change
- Forgotten Superweapon: the blazing sword... so similar to the Lion version, but both shows were Toei productions anyway.
- Humongous Mecha: not only Voltron, but also the Robeasts who tended to be piloted vehicles in this version.
- Loads And Loads Of Characters
- Macekre: from what I understand, the entire nature of the conflict between the Galaxy Alliance and the Drule Empire was changed. Also, of course, being forced into the same universe as Lion Voltron.
- The Galaxy Alliance was only in this show, and called the Terran League.
- The two short kids were not brothers.
- The Short Guy With Glasses (Chip)
- Stock Footage
- Considering that both Go Lion and Dairugger XV were Toei productions, it honestly wouldn't surprise me if they shared stock footage between them... but I don't have access to enough clips from both series to prove it.
- Super Robot
- Take Off Every Zig (I think... haven't seen it in a while)
- They Changed It Now It Sucks (the reaction to US fans when the series changed, since they didn't know the whole story)
- Transformation Is A Free Action (see above.)
- Troper Force
- Wagon Train To The Stars
