Netflix's Voltron: Legendary Defender

I found it a little odd that the first episode seemed to be trying to paint Lotor as less evil than his dad. They kept saying how he was nicer to people he conquered. It felt like they were setting up a Heel–Face Turn.

The US exclusive episode of Voltron tend to paint Lotor as more conflicted than his father about the whole evil thing. He's far from being a gleeful embrace of it the way his Go Lion counterpart was. Heck, he was probably closer to Prince Heinel from Voltes V, where Voltron (this version as well) cribs most of its notes from.

I do kinda wish they kept up the Noble Demon thing instead of making it a facade. The former would've made for an interesting Hidden Agenda Villain that could still be a deadly antagonist. The latter is just another Generic Doomsday Villain the moment his facade broke. Especially with how fast they pulled the bait and switch.

I wouldn't call him a Generic Doomsday Villain that fast, it's also shown that he's close with the women he keeps as generals. Even though that stuff about peace is a facade, he does genuinely care for those in his close circle.

Agreed, it caused him to have the same exact problem I had with Kuvira where the character turned out to be a self-aware Card-Carrying Villain in private. Especially after the last episode reveals that Zarkon, while also not faultless, may not have had any control over his turn to villainy after all.

Even as a zombie filled with evil quintessence his actions were initially responding to a perceived brutal assault by Altea towards Galra by destroying the homeworld.

Also do Galrans and the other Voltron pilot races age at the same rate? We know only Alteans live longer than humans and they remained relatively unchanged in the flashback.

edited 11th Aug '17 6:53:27 PM by OmegaRadiance

I assumed that it was the quintessence that kept the Galrans (and Haggar) to live for such a long time and the Alteans just have Elvish aging and couldn't live forever. Especially with Allura and Coran's debut in the series having them being cryogenically frozen.

Haggar is Altean.

And if Zarkon was unnaturally long lived before becoming a zombie there would have been a comment about it like Haggars cat. Alfor was much younger when they were a team and the rest of the team who weren't involved in the quintessence experiments had been around since before Allura was born, which would easily span a few hundred years.

edited 11th Aug '17 9:17:22 PM by OmegaRadiance

"Haggar is Atlean"

That's why I seperate her from the other Galrans in my orignal comment. I am well aware of her origin and also aware of her being the most exposedto the quintessence.

What I am not aware of is the time span in the flashback chapters as Corran's story didn't really specify the time between the formation of the Paladins and Zarkon's betrayal. So I most likely missed that upon first watching the episode.

Finally got through all of it. I feel like the 7th episode goes a bit too fast over finding Shiro, but otherwise, pretty interesting.

I honestly love what this show is doing, making things far more than black and white compared to the original and Force. There's far more shades of gray and making the various races important also helps to show there's a lot more to the story than meets the eye. It's also neat to see that Quintessance isn't entirely "good" and can be poisonous to people if overused. I find that a neat change that improves upon the whole black and white storytelling, going more into gray territory.

I just can't wait for the next set of episodes. We saw little of the Paladins reactions to learning a ton of backstory.

Yeah, I love the Greying Morality in this show, because in the original GoLion the Galra were portrayed as being Always Chaotic Evil and were pretty one dimensional as an entire group of people. I think Go Lion overplayed the grim darkness, and made them just radiate being evil 100% of the time. I know people get on the dub for censoring things, but I think the original Japanese version was too gore happy and had the Galra be cannibals and blood drinkers.

So apparently Shiro/"Shiro"'s return in season 3 was the result of Executive Meddling over toy sales. Granted I'm puzzled since it happened early enough that I don't think toys were even available at the time the decision was made, but while not originally planned it seems to have been a fairly early decision anyway. Also it indicates that whatever happened to Shiro at the end of season 2 it wasn't going to remove him from the cast permanently.

So it was Executive Meddling that wasted the entire season on Shiro related plots rather than actually developing the others outside of lip service to their ongoing plots, if that.

Yeah, I'm gonna apologize for defending Keith a few pages back. In retrospect, he sucks as a character this season. But to be fair, so does everyone really. The villains are small scale to the point of utter patheticness, and their big climax is yet another fist fight because Lauren wants to do more Avatar. Hunk and Pidge might as well be replaced by cardboard dummies given their contribution to the season is nonexistent. Allura and Lance don't really do anything of their own volition so much as the Lions of Plot Convenience make them. And it's painfully obvious the real Shiro is gonna show and replace the fake, plus given the Executive Meddling, remain a permanent fixture to the suffering of the narrative.

You know who fares the best in all this? Zarkon pre-zombificafion and Honerva. She's driven by a mad quest for knowledge and he by love. Everyone is likable and the end result is sympathy, not hatred for any of them. And their episode actually had a robot vs monster fight.

Suffering? I'd be fucking glad with Keith not being a leader, he fucking sucks. Shiro has always been the best leader of the entire show. Just make it where he's behind the scenes or whatever so Allura can keep her damn lion.

Keith sucks, but everyone else sucks just as much. In particular Shiro who is an albatross on the narrative and should have died so we could have given Hunk and Pidge some actual focus. I hate Shiro at this point.

A hatred that makes no sense. How in the hell is Shiro even holding the narrative back, he's been so far one of the more interesting characters.

edited 24th Aug '17 7:06:04 PM by AdricDePsycho

The most annoying part is arguably that his return is to the detriment of the pacing and doesn't really do much as an action figure commercial. He's not in Paladin gear this season, which is what the toy would be sold as. I think they'd have been better off making his return the stinger for the half-season finale since it's not like air-time is a concern.

That I can understand. Shiro being an albatross across the entire show's neck? I don't understand that.

@Beatman 1

Getting rid of Shiro isn't what would make the story better. Writing the other characters smarter would. Because when Shiro, the guy who's clearly being set up as a Sacrificial Lion figure even if he's ultimately going to subvert it, is still the character who gets fed the most interesting plot hooks, even with Executive Meddling (and given seasons are made about a year in advance, it seems like it happened early enough in development that the potential clone plotline had time to weave itself organically into the overall narrative) then the problem isn't with Shiro specifically but that the writing for the other characters isn't up to par.

It's not a zero-sum game, and removing Shiro wouldn't magically make Pidge or Hunk's quality of writing suddenly shoot up. For example Hunk actually got a lot of screentime in season 2 even with its general problems with atrocious time budgeting. It's just that most of the scenes were garbage and cheap gags or Flanderization. Likewise all the focus on Keith didn't really make him that much better because it was mostly fight scenes or him angsting over his past, which didn't reveal a whole lot of new information that couldn't have already been communicated more quickly via brief snippets of dialogue. On the other hand, Shiro/Kuron having a lot of screentime this season wasn't as much of a problem for me because it was generally used pretty well, being narratively eventful and more informative by comparison.

Anyway your incessant hostility toward Shiro is reaching Hate Dumb levels as your complaints are making less and less sense over time. It seems like you're less upset about the show making bad writing decisions and more about it just not being the exact type of show you want it to be (for example, you keep pointing out all these supposed parallels to classic mecha series the creators probably haven't actually even watched and are purely the result of coincidence).

In which case the problems you keep arguing about sound like they're less with the handling of the show itself and more with its very nature turning out to be different from your original expectations and therefore not to your taste, in which case you should just get out while you can instead of complaining about something that's unlikely to ever actually please you. That's not to put the blame on anyone in particular, but the mismatch is more fundamental than you're willing to admit, and the sooner you realize that, the happier you'll be in the long run.

, Same. I get that his return as an event causes narrative problems on a show that's already got pacing problems, but Shiro as a character is not holding the show back by any means. In fact he's one of the main pillars propping this show up, since the writers are struggling to find an interesting enough plot thread for Keith to sustain it in his stead. There's no reason, including how Shiro is currently portrayed, that they can't give both characters compelling material. And as always I stand by the idea that killing off characters should be viewed as a last resort unless they're designed specifically to die, and that doing so for characters with ongoing storylines is the sign of lazy, hack writing.

If anyone is the albatross on this show it's Keith, whose screentime is so Cliché Storm that he doesn't add a lot of real value to the show until the writers finally get his shit sorted out so they can let him break out of the Vanilla Protagonist mold. Which season 3 gives me hope they're finally on the way to doing, but as of now, their approach to him is so painfully generic that it feels like his presence as the archetypical leader figure (he's far more of one by genre convention than Shiro is) is an obligation holding the show back from delving into bolder material. At this point the most he contributes to the show is in saving and protecting Shiro so Shiro can keep doing more interesting stuff. And that's not Shiro's fault.

edited 24th Aug '17 8:39:13 PM by AlleyOop

@Adric De Psych

Admittedly, bad timing on my post. Frankly I think Shiro is by far the best-written character on the show and a far more compelling protagonist than Keith, and one of the more frustrating things is basically that the show keeps trying to shill Keith as the Main Character.

Keith is, like, the single worst character on this entire show. At least Lance had a fucking personality when he got introduced, how long did it take Keith to get a personality? And hell, as much of a perverted glory hound Lance is, it's obvious he ain't shit. He's not meant to be taken seriously. Keith is shilled to be the new leader so fucking much but he's just a jackass with severe issues with hotheadedness, stubbornness, and anger that nearly leads his entire team to die and just makes him the most unbearable, unpleasant, and annoying person to even fucking deal with. Lance is more tolerable than Keith. Lance. Fuck, at least Season 3 made Lance bearable, Keith's arc is so fucking trite that it's worse than the non-development that made Lance bearable in the first place. An arc that never happened was more bearable than Keith's own arc. He's held this show back for so long that he is a fucking chore to sit through and deal with his bullshit arc.

*meekly* I like all the characters, and I've enjoyed Seasons 1, 2, and the first half of 3 very much. I think that Keith's character arc in Season 3 has been very well handled so far, and I'm curious to see where it goes from here.

Seriously, what is it about this production team that invites such complaining about how they write their characters? Of the three shows they've made, I haven't disliked any major part of any of them and I've really enjoyed all three. I'll admit that there's been some small missteps, but they've still made some of the best western animated tv shows that exist, and the hatred thrown at them is just confusing and scary at times.

My opinion: Avatar The Last Airbender is one of the best shows ever, The Legend Of Korra is almost as good as its predecessor, and Voltron Legendary Defender is just as good as Korra, so far.

edited 24th Aug '17 8:44:50 PM by PushoverMediaCritic

Executive Meddling is not always bad for a show, but...

Yeah, I can see how bringing Shiro back early was a wrong choice. I feel like this half season should have been spent building the new team dynamic, then when the team had stabilized, bring Shiro back to upset it in the second half. Instead, they need to do a lot of time skips and awkward jumps to give the impression that the team now is used to Leader Keith and Shiro's return, while welcomed, drives a wedge in the team.

That said, it's obvious Shiro coming back was a planned thing that was intended for later, it's just badly paced. It's not Shiro's fault that the writing doesn't give Pidge or Hunk enough focus, that goes exclusively to season length not allowing it and the executives pushing for Shiro's return to be earlier than in planning stages. Saying the show would be better without him is disingenous because we don't know how the plot or his story will go.

edited 24th Aug '17 8:47:15 PM by DemonDamian

I am not going to defend Keith as a character because you are absolutely right. He sucks. He comes off this season as nothing more than a jilted girlfriend who lost her boyfriend and doesn't know how to cope in any sort of meaningful way. But the others suck just as badly. Shiro at this point contributes nothing to the ongoing narrative and his presence as a stabilizing force is a hindrance, Lance is still unlikable, and like Allura this season, any development they had was forced on them by the all-powerful Lions deciding such rather than anything of their own volition. Hunk and Pidge, meanwhile, have had no meaningful development, and this season might as well have been mannequins. You can't even call Hunk a walking fat joke this season because he didn't even have that much to him.

x5It would be one thing if Voltron was a sci-fi show that just happened to have giant robots in it and they weren't the focus because plenty of shows do that. Giant Robo does that, using the mecha as a mere backdrop to the people fighting and their actions, and it is one of the best anime ever made.

But Voltron fails no matter what angle you look at it from. From the character perspective, it fails because most of the characters are either unlikeable or complete non-factors. Not to mention major events, such as Shiro reuniting with the Paladins, the team reacting to Keith revealing he was Galra, and others, happen off-screen and we get mere tidbits of dialog to piece together the reactions. From a world building perspective, one of the greatest strengths of the Avatar series, both of them mind you, it fails, because we know virtually nothing about the aliens, their cultures, or their societies other than "Galra bad!" This was stuff Voltes V was doing in the 70's! From the perspective of action it fails because we keep seeing the same set pieces of Voltron vs fighter squadron over and over while the big battles we're meant to look forward to are these small scale man to man fights that don't highlight the thing the show is named after. It doesn't work on any level.

edited 24th Aug '17 9:09:30 PM by Beatman1

While it's got the same animators and some of the writers I think Voltron is its own animal, pretty distinct from either Avatar series. Helps that Bryke aren't overseeing this show, as Montgomery and Dos Santos were junior writers on Korra and not responsible for most of the major plot elements of either show. I do wish this show brought on Aaron Ehasz though, as I think he was a major factor in the original Avatar's success, possibly as much as Bryke.

I don't actively hate Keith like some people do, but he's an individual example of the Eight Deadly Words, and the writers have been playing it so painfully safe around him that the way they're currently handling hiim is actively holding the show back because they're forcing it to go through the most predictable motions and plot beats ever even as far more interesting material is staring it in the face. Ironically for all some would argue that Shiro is too boring, I think he's the character they're willing to take the most creative risks with on a meta level.

I think my frustration with the show is not that I think it's bad, but rather that for its strengths it still suffers from some pretty basic mistakes when it could be so much better. They're not as crippling or deepseated as Korra's faults, some of which are the fault of Executive Meddling, but they're also the kind that really skilled writers can easily avoid. Hence the negativity, because the show is for the most part quite solid but its weaknesses stand out because of how obvious they are.

>Shiro at this point contributes nothing to the ongoing narrative
Whether you personally enjoy this kind of storyline and/or its execution or not is one thing, but that's objectively untrue. The ongoing mystery of what exactly the Galra did to him during his captivity, why Haggar found him so valuable, and his attempts to figure that out, are among the most consistent narrative threads of the show so far.

>Lance is still unlikeable
Your continued hate for Lance is also something I don't really get. I don't know if it will hold but thus far for all of season 3 he's been nothing but supportive and far more mature than Keith has been. There's nothing to hate him for this time around, and if it's because you're letting the fandom control your opinion of the actual show this much then you should stop because you're just making yourself miserable doing this.

I'm willing to forgive the lack of Pidge focus for now because of the change in series release size, but some Korea-exclusive previews for Season 4 aka Season 3.5 show that Pidge will be very involved in upcoming storylines since she'll finally be reunited with Matt. Hunk didn't get much development but the show did at least go back to emphasizing his strengths, and gave him a sweet bonding moment with the Space Mice. Even if he's not being developed, at least it remembered he's supposed to be a round character for what time he did get.

edited 24th Aug '17 9:56:49 PM by AlleyOop