Netflix's Voltron: Legendary Defender

No, that was Tim Hederick (sp?). He left to be the showrunner for an animated spinoff of The Fast and the Furious.

It was also implied that by the time S7 was over, WEP knew they had a turkey and let the showrunners have much greater reins.

Edited by Beatman1 on Mar 6th 2019 at 10:01:26 AM

This is all I want to say to the showrunners.

@Beatman 1 And for over the last 10 years the Japanese haven't made a truly good mecha since barring say the most recent Gridman.

So everyone's been fucking it up, not just the Americans.

Also America had made good mechas, they are called Megas XLR & Sym-Bionic Titan.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 6th 2019 at 10:20:10 AM

Really?

What about Gurren Lagann? Or Shin Mazinger? There have probably been a lot of turkeys, but I find it hard to believe there have been no good mecha series from Japan.

I do second Megas XLR being good. Can't comment on Sym-bionic Titan, as I never watched it.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Mar 6th 2019 at 11:40:06 AM

Gurren Lagann was past that 10 years.

And yes while it is an exageration to say no mechas were made but very few have actually reached some level of critical acclaim or popularity barring a couple examples.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 6th 2019 at 10:45:06 AM

Let me correct that, they either stink, or get cancelled after one season like Titan did. Megas didn’t have a much better fate IIRC, rights given up as a tax write off because the CEO didn’t “get it”.

And I can safely say that I probably had more fun with Mazinger Z: Infinity than VLD’s entire run.

And nothing good? Come on, Gundam Unicorn wasn’t THAT bad. I mean, I liked it.

Edited by Beatman1 on Mar 6th 2019 at 1:47:12 PM

I don't count Gundam.

That's its own thing.

> Gundam Unicorn

please tell its about robo unicorns

I'm sorry homes but its not.

Its just more of Gundam's platitudes, pseudo-philosophy & characters going "muh peace" cranked to the max.

Plus massive Continuity Lockout if you haven't watched the other UC Gundam shows.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 6th 2019 at 10:53:25 AM

Hey, I say Knights Of Sidonia was good

Or maybe I'm biased since Tsumugi is the bestest girl

Edited by SpookyMask on Mar 6th 2019 at 8:56:02 PM

That’s why I mentioned Infinity, but that was a movie, so it possibly doesn’t count. Also, Sidonia was pretty good. If only Netflix would release a Season 3. I mean Netflix seems to like the mecha genre, between Pacific Rim getting an anime and mecha set to be part of Yasuke.

Point it, this didn’t go well, and it’s not hard to see the hair pulling at WEP’s corporate offices when they saw their dreams of a live action Voltron trilogy go up in smoke. Especially given the implications in the interview it was WEP that was providing most of the resistance until they essentially threw their hands up in the last season.

I’m wondering what else the showrunners can legally say on that podcast that hasn’t already been said. It’s flat out mentioned in the Afterbuzz interview that NDA’s only let them discuss so much.

Edited by Beatman1 on Mar 6th 2019 at 2:03:39 PM

Unicorn had weak characterization and writing, but pretty, high-budget battles and the appearance of being profound and deep, hence why so many people liked it. I've heard that Iron-Blooded Orphans is quite awful. Makes Voltron look excellent in comparison, since the cast is at least fun.

x 5 The Unicorn◊ Gundam does have a Unicorn horn though.

Orphans had a decent to good first season.

It’s the second season when it all goes to crap including the main characters all horribly dying & the villains getting away with their actions because the director felt the need to punish the MC’s.

But it loses the horn in its assault mode which is the state it’s in for most of the show.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 6th 2019 at 11:35:10 AM

IBO was fine in its first season, but sputters out of control something fierce near the end, especially with its insistence on a tragic ending that gets portrayed as fairly optimistic. My only real issue with the first season was somewhat wonky pacing, especially watching it on Hulu once a week before work.

Sounds kind of familiar actually...

Edited by Beatman1 on Mar 6th 2019 at 2:48:05 PM

I personally didn't find the second half of Voltron all that bad aside from the very last season. Inconsistent, but prior to Season 8 the characters all remained on the likable side for the most part. Had the show simply ended at Season 7, I think people would come away with a very different opinion of this show, Adam's death aside. It's really just 8 that I'd call truly bad (and even then, closer to mediocre than outright terrible until the last episode).

If you don't like those other seasons because you wish they had a different plot for Shiro and Keith, or whatever, then that's purely a matter of opinion. As it is, what it currently needed was better writing, as those plot points were not inherently bad or worse than alternatives. In particular, I see a lot of claims about Season 7's plot being a problem when most of the complaints I see have more to do with the (lack of) character interaction or Bury Your Gays, which lamentably isn't important enough to be particularly plot-relevant.

Speaking of which, apparently the conflict between Keith and Lotor, had Shiro been killed off, would've focused on the conflict of "Keith the good biracial vs. Lotor the bad biracial", for which the premise sounds like it's supremely easy to bungle into Unfortunate Implications unless handled by complete experts (whom these two are clearly not). If that was the original storyline, then I much prefer the unremarkable but otherwise decent Manchurian Agent clone subplot.

Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 6th 2019 at 3:26:40 PM

IBO problem is that it there was some intended, uncomfortable parallels over the course of IBO second season which had the heroes as Imperial Japan to their main opponentd being the Allies. The Director wanted a Kill Em All ending brought about by the heroes folly and joining with the deluded blonde haired/blue eyed manchild who is most definitely not meant to represent Germany trapped in his own delusions versus a man who thrives in corruption and hyprocsy and does what the manchild wanted to do in the first place but in a way that benefit him and his protege-basically adopted kid to be leaders of their organization. But without bwing crazy or trapped in a fantasy when doing it.

It got a Bittersweet ending precisely due to Writer rebellion instead.

Gundam Build Fighters was enjoyable. I didn't care for its next two sequels.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Mar 6th 2019 at 12:25:11 PM

Having seen both, I'm gonna give the point to IBO over VLD. It actually bothered to establish the relationship between Orga and Mikazuki right out the gate and didn't give us a confusing clone arc that dominated the middle of the show, the chubby character is the Voice of Reason and doesn't get a single fat joke thrown his way, the major child abuse victim (not counting all the main cast) at least has some moral complexity, and the robot fights actually kicked ass.

Again, even if IBO was bad and the people who are making this comparison Haven't even watched it I think its kind of an empty "Victory" to compare the awful Gundam series to mitigate the awfulness of VLD. Why not compare it to Gundam Narrative or something else?

Edited by AegisP on Mar 15th 2019 at 2:54:47 AM

And at least they established the Narrative Gundam is an aging prototype with a mediocre pilot that's so shitty the resident Char Clone has a Villainous Breakdown over anyone having the gall to send it against him. (The Phenex conversely may actually be the single most powerful Mobile Suit in the franchise, even taking A Us into account, if you take some lines in the ending at face value.)

Still need to see Narrative, but even examining its considerable faults, IBO is superior to VLD in pretty much every metric that counts.

While the series has ended and the official channels seem done with, the fandom backlash still continues. A group of fans that were upset over Allura’s death sent a petition to World Events Productions asking them what gives, while demanding that Allura be black in all future installments of Voltron.

WEP actually responded, essentially saying that they stood behind their product, that they viewed what happened to Allura as a honor of sorts, that they had no intention of continuing the VLD continuity, and that Allura would return in whatever form the franchise took next.

They didn’t address the “Allura must be black” demand however, so I’m admittedly expecting the next version of Allura to be a blonde again, whenever that may be.

I don't expect a continuation either, but it sounds like once again you are hyperfixated on a particular interpretation and not being able to let go. You have been going on about the Stillborn Franchise thing and reading it into interviews for months. With the number of interviews and staff statements that you've claimed as evidence so far, at least more than a few of them them can't actually have been doing that, which is Not So Different from the fanatical shippers and character stans who scour interviews looking for evidence of shipping or headcanons. The letter is worded in the most generic of PR terms. It's not quite as authoritative of a statement on the matter of whether the show will get a continuation or not as you imply it to be. You may be Right for the Wrong Reasons.

Anyway what is it with the fandom for this show and unnecessary petitions anyway? I hate to complain about fan entitlement, but with all the excessive letter writing campaigns and petitions it seems like this fandom has crossed some kind of line. If they really hate this show that much, then it's just better for them to move on and find something else instead of obsessively coming back to harangue the staff over how much they hate it.

And given the stated difficulties of making Pidge female and Shiro LGBT I don't know why they'd expect WEP to guarantee making Allura specifically "black" again (speaking of which, I haven't seen fans of the former making such demands). Besides, Allura's most vocal fans act as if her sacrifice is inherently objectionable and that there's no circumstance under which she should ever die no matter what, when I've always believed the primary issue with it, as it was with the death of the LGBT characters, had more to do with the execution, which for all we know WEP may have had a role in making less effective than it should've been. At its root it's not much different from the vocal Lotor fans who criticize his Face–Heel Turn not because it was handled questionably but because it happened at all and therefore was a deliberate dig against abuse victims.

There are a lot of things to complain about this show that I agree with, but the quality of the discourse has reached the point where a lot of the non-Character Lover or Mad Matchmaker related brands of criticism are indistinguishable from the criticism that transparently is, and ultimately likely is the latter just in a better disguise, because if there's one thing this fandom is truly good at it's twisting social justice and marketing terminology around to legitimize irrationality as more rational than it is.

Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 16th 2019 at 2:57:37 PM

If there’s one thing that the last few years have taught, it’s you can’t keep a license down forever. I mean, we have official Go Bots comics. Go Bots.

One final interview with the showrunners is up, this time with the Let’s Voltron podcast.

A summary can be found here

The big takeaways are twofold - There is no alternate cut of season 8 like some were claiming, and a happy ending was never in the cards.

Edited by Beatman1 on Mar 28th 2019 at 4:06:58 AM

> They avoided social media due to the backlash of season 8.

Understandable,the fanbase went rapid