Okay, who here is old enough to remember the series Voltron from back in the 80s? And who here, like me, was thrilled when the started re-releasing it a few months ago and has by now purchased the box sets that have come out? Who here even knows what the heck I'm talking about?

Voltron is an old sentai/giant robot show that was extremely successful back in the day and I vaguely remember catching glimpses of it when I was five or six. Of course, back then I lived in Greece and couldn't understand Greek so it didn't attract me as much as it otherwise might have done; I might've started on my anime career much earlier. Ah well. The basic plot of the show is that five space explorers escaping from the evil overlord of the galaxy end up on a war-torn planet where they find an old castle that holds the five robot lions that, when put together, create the great robot Voltron, the most powerful thing in the galaxy. The castle is owned by a princess, who accompanied by her nanny and the palace diplomat have waited for brave people to come along, work the lions, and create Voltron to fight the evil overlord. Oh yeah, and to pilot the lions, one must wear uniforms somewhat resembling an early model of the Power Rangers. They do and spend the rest of the series fighting the overlord and his minions. Needless to say, they always beat the overlord and his minions back, sometimes in rather traditional, cheesy 80s style outcomes.

The leader of the team is Keith; he wears the red uniform and his casual outfit is a red jumpsuit a la Dale Earnhardt, but with white go-go boots. Weird, but he does a good job of commanding while at the same time keeping the respect of everyone else by not being bossy or a punk. He flies the head of Voltron, the black lion. Next is Lance, the cute, occasionally mouthy, yet good-hearted one (kinda like Duo in Gundam Wing, you know the type.) He flies the red lion and wears the blue uniform (why does the one with the blue uniform pilot the red lion? I just don't get it.) The blue lion is first piloted by Sven, a guy who from his name was probably supposed to be Scandanavian but his accent is a horrible attempt at Italian or something. He wore a black uniform and died soon after the first battle in Voltron. Well, he died, but the silly Americans changed it to he got hurt and had to go elsewhere for treatment. He was replaced by the princess, Allura, who is not a dumb blond by any means, but still shrieks in terror at the slightest jolt. She wears a pink uniform. I think there's going to end up being something between her and Keith, but she likes all the guys as friends. The yellow lion is piloted by Hunk, the mandatory giant-with-a-heart, goofball member of the team.

Doggone it, hit the button before I was done. Sorry.

Um, yeah, not much more to say about Hunk than he wears an orange uniform. Then there's Pidge, who pilots the green lion and wears a green uniform. He's the kid of the group, literally; I think he's about twelve or something and probably a bit of a child prodigy to be in his position at his age. Then there's Coran, the castle diplomat who tries to keep the place running smoothly while the team's out fighting; a bit stubborn about some of the guys' new ideas for dealing with situations, but he's okay. Nanny, the princess' governess, is pretty much sheer comic relief; she objects to Allura's flying the blue lion and would rather keep her at a distance from the team because she should be more princess-like . . . whatever that entails.

The evil overlord is Zarkon, who doesn't ever fight, just gives orders to his minions and then blames all the failures on them. He's actually pretty evil, I guess, in the old-school style. He's got a witch named Hagar who comes up with most of the sneaky plots and is quite powerful. And there's his son, Lotor, who is the evil bishonen of the show (hey, there has to be one) and is totally hot for Allura. He always tries so hard to talk her into surrendering to him (total surrender, I mean, give her planet to his father and herself to him, nudge nudge wink wink.) Oh, and since he's an alien, he's got purple skin, white hair and yellow eyes (pretty.) Then there's a whole bunch of evil monsters called Robeasts that Zarkon has around for the purpose of going to attack Voltron, demonstrating somegreat power which Voltron finally overcomes, and getting sliced up by Voltron's great big, fairly cool-looking sword.

Bear in mind that this show is 20 years old, the dub sounds like they could only get about ten VAs to do all the characters, main and background. The lines are extremely cheesy at times to the point that you can't help mocking it mercilessly (especially Sven and his accent . . . oi.) The animation style is not too shabby and Keith, Lance, and Lotor are reasonably bishie (nothing above average, but good enough.) But it's still a good watch when you want some amusement and I can't wait for the next set to come out.

Why does the title "Voltron" sound so familiar?.....Wait.....Is there a certain robot that has chest missiles?

Voltron has a lot of missiles so I'm pretty sure some are stored in its' chest. Its' sword comes from seemingly out of nowhere, must be that warped space pocket clause all animes have (armor space, cloak space, cleaveage space, whatever.)

oh. okay! Thanks. It's just that I saw an article about it in Anime magazine and it looked interesting....:o

Sure, I remember Voltron! My brother and I had a whole bunch of the toys when we were little. We didn't know it was anime at the time, we learned that later; and let me tell you, it explained so much! I agree, it has several weak points (especially Sven's accent), but overall, it still holds up all right. I would like to see some of the original Japanese some time, though.

*~*Nans*~*

WARNING!
Fanboy Rant Incoming!
Kago loves Voltron! As a child of the 80's/ Early 90's, Voltron: Defender of the Universe was awesomeness incarnate to me as a child, and still is. I plan on buying the box sets after Christmas. The only character I didn't really like on the show was the Princess. She had this annoying habit of trusting any prettyboy who walked in off the street (especially the evil ones) as if she'd known him for years, while completely IGNORING HER TEAMMATES, who pretty much explain his entire evil plot to her, yet she falls for it every time. Something about that just bugs me, ya know? And Voltron's Sword is not just any sword, it is THE Sword of Ultimate PWNage. Voltron's Blazing Sword is basically the giant robot equivalent of He-Man's Power Sword, or Lion-O's Sword of Omens. It's a commonly known fact that when you hear the words "Form Blazing Sword", someone is going down and quick. (I believe it only ever failed once, at which point I believe they split it in half and formed blazing Nun-Chucks, or something equally awesome, and pwned whatever enemy they were facing twice as hard as usual.) A while back they tried to make a new 3D Voltron series using CGI, but it didn't fair so well and only lasted about one season.
In closing, "Voltron Force, Represent!"

I vaguely remember the 3D Voltron.

I only know Voltron Lion Force, but that's good enough for me. Yeah, Allura's kinda an airhead in battle, but mess with her friends and she'll turn on you like that. I cannot wait for the third volume to come out. And there is a saber-type weapon Voltron has, one of those things like Darth Maul had in Episode One (don't remember what it's called off the top of my head. But whatever kind of weapons they use, in the end it comes down to "Form Blazing Sword" and the Robeast enemy of the episode has approximately 10 seconds to get its' earthly affairs in order before getting chopped in half. Neat.

Lightsaber.

Recently acquired vol. 3 of the series and things are getting interesting. For one, the team is actually starting to get their butts handed to them more often and almost permanently. But then the series would've ended too soon, so no go. This volume also contain a few episodes with some fanservice moments (for us girls.) The first is an episode where the guys, after having spent the day helping with some construction work, are showering when Allura accidentally walks in on them (oh, and Nanny was with her or it might have been more productive.) Anyway, you get to see Keith and Lance in just towels (didn't care that Pidge and Hunk were also there. Heck, Pidge is a freaking tweve-year-old, for crying out loud.) The other moment is when Hagar creates a Lotor clone. Lotor looks at it and is suitably impressed and so was I at the excellent shading job they did from his lower torso to upper thigh. Boy, how did they get that one past the editors of Saturday morning cartoons back in the 80s? Actually I've sometimes wondered how they passed off Lotor's all-bikini wearing slave harem.

Uh, the series itself is really getting quite good. Oh, and Sven is back, and his bad accent is too. Technically (by which I mean the actual Japanese) it's supposed to be Sven's twin brother, but the Americans changed it to Sven getting taken as a slave while he was recuperating after getting hurt in the first part of the series. At any rate, he'd escaped slavery and was hiding out in the dangerous caves under the castle, conveiniently being there when Princess Romelle, Allura's cousin, is thrown down there by Lotor. The two meet and Romelle recognizes Sven as the former Voltron member (how the heck did she know that? Yo, continuity people, need some help?) The two team up to foil several Zarkon/Lotor plots and looks like they're going to hook up in other ways because the last episode in the set has Sven going off on a near-suicide mission and Romelle's afraid he didn't make it back, but he sneaks up and surprises her. She yells at him for worrying her and he asks if that's the only reward he gets for a job well done, expecting at least maybe a hug (or something) but she does the typical anime girl string-him-along-a-little-more thing and only sticks her tongue out and runs off. It's funny because he looks really confused (and disappointed) and says he doesn't understand women. Ha! No anime male understands women, you fool! Women are the biggest danger to anime males ever; giant robots, demons, and evil overlords go hang!

Wow, this post's rather long for me. Couldn't help it, I guess.