Netflix's Voltron: Legendary Defender

It's fairly light on plot and a lot of plot holes, but really fun if you don't mind turning off your brain for a bit. I had a good time.

Was Voltron able to fight a Robeast in the Galra coliseum?

I'm curious if I was right on the money there.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Nope, total fakeout. The Coliseum was merely a promotional event for the coalition to show off Voltron, except Keith was away doing BOM stuff so they... couldn't. Lotor and his crew never meet the paladins face-to-face, and pretty much all the team action is them running planetside missions alongside the coalition.

Nope.

edited 13th Oct '17 10:27:59 PM by AdricDePsycho

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

Dang I was rather looking forward to that.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Actually, the arena fight from the trailer does happen in the episode The Voltron Show. But it's not a Galra arena, just a stadium they're holding a mock battle in to boost coalition morale. A real monster ends up getting lured in that endangers the audience, but Voltron is able to safely remove it in the end. So yeah...still a fakeout. The only thing the robot gets used for is Beam-Spamming battleships.

And it’s starting to come off as genuine loathing of the thing. They want to do their space ninja adventure, but this thing they have to sell toys of is there, but it gets in the way of their oh so brilliant stories. They try to minimize it whenever possible and it’s one of the many reasons I heavily disliked this season. Then again that begs the question of how bad the Executive Meddling is because you think they’d want to show it more.

edited 13th Oct '17 10:52:37 PM by Beatman1

Honestly I didn't even see the trailers, so I didn't even build up any expectations for that.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

I think it's more the expectation that since it's a giant robot show, and season 1 and 2 had a few battles with things on the same scale as Voltron itself, be it Robeasts or an actual rival giant robot. At the very least, I imagine the expectation for most was "more than zero" for season 3/4.

Yeah that's really the most major flaw of the show.

Overall its pretty good with decent plots & characters but there aren't many epic Kaiju battles. You can pretty much count them on one hand.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Honestly I'm not really that bothered by the lack of giant robot battles. Like, yeah, it's kinda weird that a show about Voltron, a giant robot, doesn't have a lot of giant robot fights, but it just doesn't bother me as much, I guess?

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

The end result are boring, repetitive space combat scenes with a woefully out of place machine.

Not to mention it makes no sense in Universe. If the closest you got to defeating Voltron was a giant robot, wouldn’t it make sense to make more?

Eh the space battles are still pretty fun.

And at least they use Voltron to kill the really big shit.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

The space battles are usually pretty good. The one in the last episode was tense as fuck.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

I've found the Giant Robot fights to be the least interesting battles on the show thus far, so I'm not too miffed that they've cut back on them. The effort put into this show's big sci-fi setpieces are really something.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

I'm mainly bothered because it makes Voltron feel out of place in a show it's supposed to be the star attraction for, and its scenes have become incredibly routine. Block a battleship's Wave-Motion Gun with the shield (which at least isn't breaking whenever someone breaths on it anymore), return fire with the shoulder cannon or the arm guns, against the same battleships. Its power progression has taken most of the fun out by already going through the four and five-bayard combos, each of which just enhance the sword in some way, so if the Blue and Green Bayards are ever used, it's still going to be disappointing since they already revealed its best weapon is...the sword, but on fire.

It's finally finding a groove as a weapons-based, space-bound Avatar spiritual successor, but the robot remains the Elephant in the room and, ironically, the instant victory the showrunners initially promised it wouldn't be.

The ship battles and individual lion fights are generally pretty pretty good, even if the solo robot fights aren't as much. I just wish they would unlock more Voltron weapons besides Hunk and Keith's so they can mix it up more.

Yeah, that's what makes the ship battles so boring to me. Gunbuster also fought what amounted to battleships, but it had an impressive arsenal and moveset to mix things up. Voltron has only a tiny arsenal and not a lot of ways it uses it, so the battles have quickly gotten repetitive.

It's probably my favorite season so far with the exception of The Voltron Show/episode four which doesn't really work. Especially since it comes right after Black Site which handled comedy a lot better. Lance's cow milking scene anyone?

This was a really good season. 3+4, I mean. As a whole, this season was great. I especially love how well they're subverting standard giant robot show tropes.

When Lotor and his crew are introduced, there are obvious parallels between them and the Paladins, from the number of members to their personalities to each of them having a unique design. When it's revealed that Lotor is making giant ships from the same material making up Voltron, you expect them to be the anti-Paladins politing Nega-Voltron. Nope. Lotor kills one of them, only 2 of the 3 ships are made, the remaining three turn on Lotor, and Lotor decides to work with Voltron for next season, leaving it on a really great cliffhanger! Nega-Voltron's still probably going to be a thing at some point, but not in the way everyone expected.

There also the thing with Keith, where he takes over as leader of Voltron for a short time as foreshadowed... only for him to quit because he sucks at leading and go hone his talents with the Blade of Marmora before he feels ready to lead once more.

This show is getting unpredictable as of late, and I LOVE IT. It feels so good to go "okay, yeah, I've seen giant robot shows. I know exactly where this is going- WAIT WHAAAAA???"

edited 14th Oct '17 2:52:49 AM by PushoverMediaCritic

I'm still meh on Lotor but for the most part I enjoyed all the Galra focused subplots this season. They've got much better material this time around and I think the fact that they were more than enemy commander of the week like in Season 2 significantly helped.

x4 Gunbuster also didn’t do it constantly, it had a few scenes so it didn’t overstay its welcome.

Voltron it’s the same thing over and over. And the scenes are boring. If you wanted to do space combat where both sides had equally matched craft and put the focus on the human element in said craft, that's one thing, but only one side has magical robot lions, and the other has jets that might as well be made of tissue paper. It's boring because there's no sense of danger, especially for the main cast.

edited 14th Oct '17 10:44:18 AM by Beatman1

Once again, I'll until until the full production season (26 episodes.) comes out, but I did enjoy this chunk of episodes more than the last.

I can't believe we're halfway through the series already!

Latest blog update (November 5th, 2022).

And now we understand two things:

1) Seeing someone milk a cow is massive traumatizing.

2) The Holt Siblings are massive dorks.

3) This show really needs to remember it's SUPPOSED to be about giant robot battles.

That being said, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Keith's in an interesting spot right now. Whatever happens, when he comes back, he'll hopefully be in a better place to lead again. Lotor's plans fell apart, and now he's forced into an Enemy Mine with the Coalition, but considering what he knows, he'll provided some interesting info, and now we only have Matt and Pidge's father left unaccounted for.

...It's still rough, but I'll wait to see where it goes.

Also, the ship Lotor was on before he was forced to bolt was called the Sincline.

One Strip! One Strip!

I have mixed feelings towards season 3.5/4. As someone who both likes Keith and the Blade of Mamora, I was excited at the concept of of Keith joining the Blade of Mamora, but I found the execution severely lacking. Instead of doing the Voltron collation filler episode, I wish that they did an episode focusing on Keith and the Blade of Mamora instead. I really liked "Space Mall" but wasn't feeling "The Voltron Show!". I think it was because "Space Mall" had plenty of fun character stuff while "Voltron Show" was mostly gags.