Netflix's Voltron: Legendary Defender

When is it supposed to take place? Not sure if there are any gaps in the story for it.

That's a good point.

They lifted off right after the Castle siege, and went straight to Balmera right after that with only one incident slowing them down.

Where were they going after that? I know they ran into the deal with the Galra Crystal and Sendak, and the hologram of Alura's father going batty, but that time in-between healing the Balmera and the that incident is the only possible gap I can think of.

That's probably it. I do think they'll clarify it, though, considering the show's writers are also writing the comic.

Ohhh that looks cool.

Haven't finished the show yet, but I'm really enjoying it so far.

Sure, Voltron doesn't show up all the time, but the character interactions really help to keep me hooked.

Speaking of Voltron, I've got Voltron-related news.

The Wait is Over.

Too Vague; Didn't Read: Bandai will reveal (Classic) Voltron as the next addition to their Soul Of Chogokin line of giant robot toys at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con. And judging by the poster's writing, this has been in the works for quite some time.

I do get a little annoyed that my critique that Voltron's battles were the weakest part of the show keeps getting misinterpreted as "Voltron doesn't show up enough", in conjunction with any critique of a fight scene (in any work) being misinterpreted as "you just want the heroes to effortlessly win all the time".

I've been watching it lately. I love the characterization and how funny it gets. The facial expressions are honestly great, and the graphical style still feels like it's a classic cartoon, as in the "quality" isn't as high. It feels like older and rougher sketches. I think it works well. Lance is great, though.

I don't remember if it was Lance or Shiro that wasn't in the original pilot set. I remember Allura being the Blue pilot, and obviously Hunk and Pidge for Yellow and Green. Keith was Red too. Or was he Black? >.<

It was all jumbled up. Keith was the Black Lion pilot "Shiro" or Sven in that one was originally the Blue Lion pilot but then got killed (Or injured in the American version) and the Princess replaced him as the pilot.

So Lance is the new one, then?

I also keep forgetting the name of Allura's partner, who is pretty funny himself. Might've been Sven. And I mean in the new show.

Sven was Shirogane in the original Golion, so "Shiro" is the new Sven.

Go Lion also had the bizarre need to DEFY color coding for the costumes and lions, and while the last two Western Voltron series simply fixed the costume colors, this one takes it a step further and has the pilots keep their original colors, but matches them with their lion.

None of them are really "new" - Lance piloted Red Lion in the original show. Also, the assistant's name is Coran.

edited 3rd Jul '16 7:59:44 PM by KamenRiderOokalf

I need to rewatch the old show, yes. >.<

Thanks for noting that.

In the original Voltron:

• the Black Lion was piloted by Keith Kogane (Dub Name Change of Akira Kogane) who wore a red jumpsuit
• the Red Lion was piloted by Lance McClain (Dub Name Change of Isamu Kurogane) who wore a blue shirt and gray sweats
• the Blue Lion was piloted by Sven Holgersson (Dub Name Change of Takashi Shirogane, remember this for later) who wore a blue changshan, and was injured and replaced by Princess Allura (Dub Name Change of Princess Fala) who wore pink for both her casual dress and her pilot uniform, until Sven came back for a while to pilot again
• the Green Lion was piloted by Darryl "Pidge" Stoker (Dub Name Change of Hiroshi Suzuishi) who wore green buckskins
• the Yellow Lion was piloted by Tsuyoshi "Hunk" Garrett (Dub Name Change of Tsuyoshi Seidou) who wore basically what he does now

In Voltron Legendary Defender:

• the Black Lion is now piloted by Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane (remember what I said earlier) who wears a black shirt and vest with a stripe down the line that makes it resemble the original character's changshan
• the Red Lion is now piloted by Keith -?- who wears a red jacket over a black undershirt and pants (perhaps a throwback to his original position or foreshadowing future plot points)
• the Blue Lion is now piloted by Lance -?- who wears the same outfit as the original character but with the shirt and pants colors switched
• the Green Lion is still piloted by Pidge Gundarsson or Katie Holt who wears a mostly different outfit but still has green on it
• the Yellow Lion is still piloted by Hunk -?-
• Princess Allura now pilots the castle which is a spaceship and wears a blue dress for regular clothes (see Keith right above) and a pink uniform for when she's commanding the castle

Finally watched the show.

It's pretty good. I will admit, the writing made it REALLY hard to like the Paladins. Except Shiro who is sort of bland and cliché leader guy and "guy who was captured by bad guys and doesn't remember what happened during that time" (Say Hi to Commander Sinclair and Dillon among others with the same backstory)

Alluran and Coran are great, and some of the Paladins did grow on me. Except Lance, who feels like Sokka without any of Sokka's positive traits, and is honestly kinda grating. Blue Lion must've been pretty damn desperate.

Keith's also pretty damn boring. Hunk annoyed me at first especially with all the "Hey the fat one can't do things right coz he's fat also fat people obsess about food." but he rapidly became endearing when they stopped playing him as incompetent. Pidge was easily the most interesting of the Paladins even if the whole reveal was sort of obvious from the get go that I was almost more surprised that there we weren't supposed to know from the start. Let's just say everyone but Lance's reaction matched mine.

Plot writing his pretty decent. Not stellar, but I kinda applaud them for wanting to make Voltron and not reinvent the wheel. It's not the most sophisticated writing, but it's not dumbing down itself.

I do agree with The Gunheart's critique of the Voltron battles, that I am not fond of how it revolves so much around a puzzle boss that it makes Voltron seem rather unimpressive. Like, why does Zarkon want this thing? He seems to be doing well, and until the final episode, Voltron had not made much of a showing to justify its reputation. I will give the show the benefit of the doubt in that they seem to be going the Empathic Weapon route and that Voltron will grow in strength with the power of its Paladins. Still it makes for boring battles where Voltron just gets the shit kicked out of it (without even showing any sign of damage or that it's in any actual danger) till they figure out how to beat their foe, which comes in the form of a new weapon. Only happened twice, and I hope it's not a pattern that sticks. That said the individual lions fighting are far more interesting.

All in all I am curious to see where the show goes.

I will also add that this being a Netflix show, where you're likely to watch more than one episode per sitting (As opposed to old Voltron shows where you'd get one episode a week, maybe a day), the stock sequence of Voltron combining gets old FAST. Go through that 2 to 3 times an evening got hard.

edited 3rd Jul '16 10:25:53 PM by Ghilz

Wow, that actually mirrors my experience almost exactly. Only thing really different is I felt Hunk's character kinda snapped back to his archetype as soon as his focus episodes were over. I also feel that, much like his weapon overlaps too much with Lance, his specialty has an engineer overlaps too much with Pidge's general techno wizard status. It really only comes up one episode.

Also, to add to it, I feel another issue with the Puzzle Boss deal is that it robs the Paladins of actually getting to figure it out themselves? Shiro, for example, does figure out how to fight the Gladiator...but it turns out his solution was wrong, so here comes the sword to save the day. Next time, they have an idea of what's needed to beat the Robeast, but no means to until another weapon makes itself known.

And they still couldn't win even when facing that laser turret Robeast.

It's really more just they are still a pretty bad team during the start of the season and need to seriously get their act together to be remotely powerful. I'm not that far in, but I've noticed their horrible teamwork is their downfall the most. Also, Voltron is still a very powerful machine, it's just that they're facing extremely high-powered Robeasts that are more than machine as well, having magic too.

I've noticed that all 5 Paladins are pretty low-level in their skills compared to the enemies, and barely win by the skin of their teeth(at least so far). I find it an interesting take overall. But it is overall neat that it's not simply following some Status Quo and trying to be unique in how the characters are displayed as. They clearly barely trained enough together in the first place to be a legit team, which explains why they haven't gotten their act together just yet(among the early episodes, anyway).

Yeah so far only Pidge and Shiro have shown any real decent combat skills in battle. Shiro has lots of experience plus various Galra augmentations, and Pidge is a Weak, but Skilled Combat Pragmatist who adapts quickly, and they still are both rough around the edges.

I do expect Voltron to grow more powerful as the series goes on and the paladins work better. They haven't even gotten to the Blazing Sword yet so it doesn't surprise me that Voltron is a bit of a jobber this early on.

edited 4th Jul '16 12:38:02 AM by AlleyOop

I dunno, I'm really not feeling "the team sucks" when like, 13 episodes of content go by and the only thing that visibly improves is their ability to pilot the individual Lions. Just because something can be justified or explained doesn't mean it was a good idea in the first place.

Also, I don't know if anyone's brought it up but...they deleted the king too early, I think. That should have been a season 2 at least. It's too early to really have an emotional effect when he appeared in that state like, twice now and didn't get much characterization beyond "kindly old king guy". Plus between wearing herself out saving a living planet, that, and getting kidnapped the following episode, the pacing of "bad things happen to Allura" felt kinda rushed.

I had forgotten the King even existed until the episode where he is deleted. It's ridiculous he only shows up in the pilot and in his final episode.

Isn't that what the red lion's sword is? What's the point of giving Voltron a sword if it has another swordier sword to sword with?

edited 4th Jul '16 4:19:44 AM by Ghilz

Maybe they figured they couldn't think of anything for him to do onscreen at that point. Allura does all her interaction elsewhere. I agree it's pretty dumb to bother with it if he's going to have such little real interaction at that point. At the very least, they could've shown him giving them advice or something.

The original Voltron used King Alfor as a blatant Deus Ex Machina during the entire second season IIRC. I think this was their way of addressing the issue, similar to their reaction to the Pidge reveal purposefully being understated by everyone as a way to show that the Smurfette Principle was stupid

Considering they spent the entire second episode not even sure how to combine Voltron and not knowing how they did it the first time, at the very least a scene asking the king "How do we Voltron?" would've been nice.

But then we'd have been denied the whole "Hunk can't get to his lion easily on the zipline coz he's fat and fat people suck" scene

If it is, it's kind of lame. "In the previous show he was a Deus ex Machina. So here we made the bold move of making him do nothing but still bothering to include him"

edited 4th Jul '16 4:26:14 AM by Ghilz

At least he did something as a DEM, but yeah.

I did like that he outright fought against the corruption at the end, as that was neat.

Also, just saw episode 10. Allura being able to act like a chameleon is badass. Honestly, she's one of the coolest characters in this version.

If you're going to talk overlap, let's talk about Keith

He's an ace pilot. Like Shiro.

He's a talented melee fighter. Like Shiro.

I feel like they are also trying to set him up as the token loner or solo guy, yet it's Pidge who ended up with an episode about how she wants to leave the team for personal reasons but decided to stay.

In fact Keith sort of gets shafted in character development (Or rather, in having a character altogether), and his backstory makes little sense. So he's the hot shot pilot of the academy, but dropped out to... solve some archeological carvings about lions? Oh, and he found out the prophecy about Shiro's prison escape (How does that work anyway?), Basically his entire character revolves around him being the target of Lance's jealousy and bickering, but with Lance being an idiot, Keith usually comes off as the reasonable one.

It almost feel like part of Pidge's backstory somehow ended up Keith's. Coz the writers realized that without it he had nothing.

I liked that they went entirely visual when she revealed her super strength, you just see Shiro going wide eyed, and they don't have the characters actually talk about it, as many shows would have had/

edited 4th Jul '16 6:06:37 AM by CobraPrime

On King Alfor: The problem, one I would expect people who wrote Avatar to deal with VERY quickly, was that Allura in the original series' second season, was USELESS without Ghost Dad showing up to give some sage advice. Here, where she's essentially acting as the team leader, having her rely on Ghost Dad constantly would make her useless.

As for Voltron itself, I want to say now that the first half of the series is over and we've been introduced to the lions and all that the subsequent appearances from the robot will look more impressive, but who knows. A second season hasn't even been announced yet.