Netflix's Voltron: Legendary Defender

And the journey is over... it was a satisfactory, if mediocre, ending. Voltron always felt stronger as a show when dealing with interpersonal relationships, of which we got surprisingly little in this final batch. The "epilogue" seems to be there just to address fan-complaints, and that's never a good thing (even if the response to said complaints was to torch the whole thing down by making sure no fan gets what they wanted). It felt rushed and out of place, but that may just be me. I've seen it compared to the Harry Potter epilogue, but at least I can confidently say that one was to make Rowling happy, not to appease the fans.

Overall, Voltron reminds me of a fish on land: it made some impressive first jumps in the struggle to get to the water, but by the time it got to the end, it felt more like a wiggle. Oh, it tried a final, mighty jump (S6), but it kept living a little more and now it's just depressing.

Edited by DemonDamian on Dec 14th 2018 at 3:33:11 PM

To quote The Joker from Under the Red Hood: "You found a way to win, but everyone still loses!"

Also, I was expecting more from Allura absorbing the Entity. It's weird how her apparent Drunk on the Dark Side moments actually all end up having a positive effect, with the only downside being a fainting spell and a brief moment taken over by Honerva.

How long do we have to wait to give a general reaction trope?

Because if any show deserves to be called So Okay, It's Average it’s this one.

So I guess you could say Allura...

• Puts on shades*

became one with the Quintessence.

...Okay, bad joke, but it helps me cope.

I don't think the show is average though, animation itself is too good for that

The animation and visuals are definitely a strong point in this show and give it an edge over its competitors in the sea of average television shows for children that manage to find a niche. While it's certainly not amazing, it's also not the monstrosity the haters (invariably some kind of character or ship-related Fan Dumb) claim it to be, and have been absolutely tearing into the show for and upholding She-Ra for, just because it refused to canonize Klance.

The CG animation is below par, and the choreography is full of Fight Scene Failure. I mean The big final battle is essentially a shoving match.

This is not So Bad, It's Horrible. Not by a long shot. So Okay, It's Average means just that. That the show had a strong start, above average hand-drawn animation, and likable characters. Unfortunately, the CG animation was below par, many of the fight scenes were just boring, and the overarching plot, while never becoming truly terrible, was never great either. In the end, most critics (who ignored Shipping Wars and other contentious issues) viewed the show as merely average, rather than truly great or truly terrible.

Edited by Beatman1 on Dec 14th 2018 at 2:22:42 PM

I'd say it lands on side of "Pretty good" at least.

Like mistake people make is that "There are only two extremes and in between." Besides horrible, average and great, show could be bad, good, somewhat good, etc

Edited by SpookyMask on Dec 14th 2018 at 9:24:21 PM

I don't agree I liked the journey and ending.

I dunno. Let's cast all the Fan Dumb on both sides of the fence to one side, and just focus on the actual story itself.

It has likable characters, the plot set up a lot of interesting things, but it barely followed through on half of them, the redemption arc at the end felt unearned to say the least, and while the hand-to-hand fights were of fairly good quality, the mecha fights were well below what their Japanese counterparts would be doing, especially when one of the episode directors compared the mecha fights to those in Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, which is like night and day.

There's a lot of energy, a lot of creativity (the D&D parody immediately sticks out) but also a ton of problems with plot and setup. It all adds up to something that is average, essentially the sum of its parts, good and ill.

So, uh...I kinda just realized the parallels between Allura and Madoka.

Did anyone else get the impression The Grudge was hastily rewritten in light of season 7 backlash?

I recall a storyboarder claiming Zethrid survived, so her showing up, with a burned face no less, checks out. But like, for the entire first half of the episode is comes off like she's out for revenge on Keith for killing Ezor. But, at the end, Acxa reveals that Ezor broke up with Zethrid, and suddenly everything starts to feel really...clunky. For one Ezor suddenly having a change of heart when she was the first to suggest torturing a child for information (which also seems to be damage control over the Psycho Lesbian vibe she gave off), she gets only one line the whole season, and her on screen appearances are brief enough to have been inserted in after the fact.

Don't get me wrong, though: I'm glad they did try and undo the damage.

Animation Lead Time makes me think no.

Ezor's voice sounded incredibly off for the one line she had, which makes me think they spent most of the time they had in between season 7 and the ending to redo the episode to put her in. I wish they had the same courtesy to do that for Shiro and Curtis, even if it's just the two flirting wordlessly in the background.

Honestly while still watching the season Lances sis and Axca have pretty good chemistry.

I wanted more of a resolution to the Shiro clone thing, but overall I was happy with the the season and the ending, I got what I wanted, a giant robot fight, and my only real problem was Allura dying for some reason.

I hate to see what the internet looks like right now, I imagine Fan Dumb is burning the place to the ground.

Speaking of the clone arc, 27-52 really kinda span its wheels, plotwise.

The two major arcs, the Shiro clone and Lotor, are both kinda anti-climatically brought to a crashing end (Kuron's constant anxieties, PTSD and headaches ultimately amount to nothing with the reveal he was a Manchurian Agent all along, and Lotor's apparent development was just a ruse undone by the reveal he's Space Hitler). Zarkon might as well have died in episode 26 for all he does during that batch; at least then it would've felt climatic. And Allura learning Altean alchemy ultimately more fed into Honerva's arc than Allura's. Keith's qualifications for being leader were basically "spent two years stranded on a space whale with his mom". Even the Voltron coalition falls out of focus halfway through it when it felt like they were going to be a major focus of the arc.

I think, ultimately, it felt like maybe 13 episodes of plot stretched out far too thin.

I think Broken Base suits this show better than labeling it as just average.

...They really needed to work on those robot battles.

The show did some things well, but we came here to watch Voltron deliver some crazy robot action, and it wasn't too good at that. It never got better either.

What's done is done.

On a completely different note, this inspired me to watch the original GoLion.

Hilariously enough, for all my criticism of this series for having so few robot battles, Go Lion didn't feature any lions until the third episode outside of an Origin Story Flashback for the titular robot, and Voltron itself won't be formed by the pilots until the 4th ep, which I haven't watched yet. So this series actually got to Voltron faster than it's predecessor.

And Shirogane dies in the sixth ep, so he's only a pilot for a grand total of 3 episodes. Damn.

Fandom seems pretty united in at least the finale being mediocre or worse even disregarding shipping. After thinking about it more I can't entirely disagree. The season itself I was OK with, but the conclusion it ends on is rather sloppy and unfulfilling.

Edited by AlleyOop on Dec 16th 2018 at 5:17:44 AM

Japan was right. Voltron / GoLion really isn't anything special.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Dec 16th 2018 at 2:56:38 AM

I completely forgot that s8 released until I saw outraged posts on Tumblr, which is how I got spoiled on Allura dying, and that immediately killed any desire I had to watch the season. Allura was one of my favorite characters so that spoiler bummed me out a lot. But yeah, most people seem to regard the season and series as mediocre, disregarding the shippers who are doing nothing but bashing the show. At least, as far as I've seen.

Technically, if you want to be charitable, she's not exactly "dead", more like she shed her physical form and became one with the universe and the Quintessence to save everyone. One could even say she became a deity.

Like Madoka. Or Ragna. Or Velvet.

Hell, I'm actually toying with the idea of starting up an AU where These characters all hang out in a giant god mansion and do slice of life god things, with the first "arc" involving Allura's introduction to the team and what her new powers/duties are.

The ending reminds me more of a Xeno-game tbh.