Voltron (TV series)

Last updated
Voltron
Voltron.png
Title screen
Also known asLion Force Voltron(series 1)
Vehicle Team Voltron(series 2)
Genre Sci-fi, action/adventure, mecha, superhero
Created byTed Koplar
Peter Keefe
Saburō Yatsude (original concept)
Based onSeries 1
Beast King Go-Lion
by Toei Animation
Series 2
Armored Fleet Dairugger XV
by Toei Animation
Story byJameson Brewer
Directed byFranklin Cofod
ComposerJohn Petersen
Country of origin United States
Japan (original)
No. of seasons
3 (total)
  • 2 (series 1)
    1 (series 2)
No. of episodes
124 (total)
  • 72 (series 1)
    52 (series 2)
(list of episodes)
Production
ProducersTed Koplar
Peter Keefe
Running time25 minutes
Production companies World Events Productions
Toei Animation
Tokyo Animation (GoLion animation)
Original release
Network First-run syndication
ReleaseSeptember 10, 1984 (1984-09-10) –
November 18, 1985 (1985-11-18)
Related

Voltron is a 1984 American-Japanese animated television series produced by World Events Productions for a total of 124 episodes. [1] The series is an adaptation of the Japanese super robot anime series Beast King Go-Lion , which was dubbed into English and edited to create Voltron episodes. [2] Later episodes also use footage from the mecha anime Armored Fleet Dairugger XV . [3]

Contents

Premise

Lion Voltron

From days of long ago, from uncharted regions of the universe, comes a legend, the legend of Voltron, Defender of the Universe. A mighty robot, loved by good, feared by evil. As Voltron’s legend grew, peace settled across the galaxy. On planet Earth, a galaxy alliance was formed. Together with the good planets of the solar system, they maintained peace throughout the universe. Until a new horrible menace threatened the galaxy. Voltron was needed once more. This is the story of the super force of space explorers, specially trained, and sent by the alliance, to bring back Voltron: Defender of the Universe.

— Narrator during the opening sequence

The first season is about five pilots who command five robot lions which combine to form Voltron. [4] These pilots use these machines to protect the planet Arus from the evil Warlord King Zarkon and witch Haggar who creates monsters called Robeasts to terrorize the planet ruled by Princess Allura. [5]

Vehicle Voltron

From days of long ago, from uncharted regions of the universe, comes a legend, the legend of Voltron, Defender of the Universe. A mighty robot, loved by good, feared by evil. As Voltron’s legend grew, peace settled across the galaxy. On planet Earth, a galaxy alliance was formed. Together with the good planets of the solar system, they maintained peace throughout the universe. Until a new horrible menace threatened the galaxy. Voltron was needed once more. This is the story of a super force of space explorers, entrusted by the alliance with the ancient secret on how to assemble Voltron: Defender of the Universe.

— Narrator during the opening sequence

The second season of the show was called Vehicle Voltron, based on Armored Fleet Dairugger XV , which spawned also a television special called Voltron: Fleet of Doom . [6] The premise of season two is the Galaxy Alliance's home worlds have become overcrowded and search for new planets to colonise. This puts the Alliance in conflict with the Drule empire. [7]

The protagonists are divided into teams. Each team is specialized in gathering data or fighting in their area of expertise. [8] Each squad combines their vehicles into a bigger machine, with each vehicle differing among the three teams. These fighters are:

Voice cast

Production and development

Ted Koplar assembled a team in Los Angeles to transform Go-Lion into what would become Voltron. [9] Peter Keefe was brought aboard as Executive Producer, with Franklin Cofod as the Director. Since they had no means of translating the Japanese series into English, Keefe and Cofod surmised the plots, commissioned writer Jameson Brewer to write all-new dialogue, edited out the more violent scenes, and remixed the audio into stereo format. The series was an immediate hit in the United States, topping the syndication market for children's programs in the mid-1980s. [1]

The Japanese series Future Robot Daltanious was originally planned to be adapted by World Events Productions as part of Voltron. When requesting master tapes from Toei Animation for translation purposes, the World Events Productions producers requested "[the] ones with the lion." Mistakenly, Toei then proceeded to ship World Events copies of Beast King Go-Lion, another "combining-robot" cartoon which featured lion-shaped fighting robot starships. Because the World Events producers greatly preferred Go-Lion to Daltanious, the Go-Lion episodes were adapted instead, going on to become the most popular portion of the original Voltron run. [9] A third version/series of Voltron based on yet another Japanese series, Lightspeed Electroid Albegas , was also in progress, but it was dropped when World Events Productions joined with Toei to make new Go-Lion-based shows, due to that show's popularity over the Dairugger run. [10] [11]

Changes from the Japanese version

Though airing in syndication, which offered other anime shows such as Robotech greater freedom to deal with subject matter such as death that were off-limits in most US network children's programming, WEP's adaptation of Voltron was heavily edited to conform to the more conservative standards of children's television in the United States, as well as the standard name change of characters and concepts in Go-Lion and Dairugger. [12] [13]

Plot changes

Lion Force & Go-Lion

  • In Voltron, the show begins with the five pilots sent by the Galaxy Alliance, whose space-exploration mission takes them to a planet devastated by war. In Voltron, the pilots arrive on Arus and are captured and taken to Planet Doom. They then escape, return to Arus, and become the pilots of the robot lions and Voltron. In Go-Lion, the initial scenes are actually of Earth; the pilots have returned from their mission (in the then-futuristic year of 1999) to find that the entire population of Earth has been killed in a nuclear war. They are then captured and taken to Planet Galra, where the plot proceeds similarly, only the planet they find the lions on is called Altea. [14] In the Voltron version, some footage of the pilots' arrival on Arus was taken from Armored Fleet Dairugger XV . [14]
  • Scenes of torture and atrocities inflicted by the alien conquerors on their slaves (such as a "contest" where alien soldiers would be rewarded according to how many prisoners they managed to decapitate in a given time) and some shots of corpses were removed. [15]
  • In Go-Lion, Takashi 'Shiro' Shirogane (Sven in Voltron), the original pilot of Blue Lion, is killed in a battle with Honerva, and his similar-looking younger brother Ryou appears later in the series to join in the fight against Emperor Daibazaal. In Voltron, dialog was inserted to indicate that Sven is merely injured and has been sent away to a hospital planet to recover, and the character of Ryou was rewritten entirely into Sven being enslaved after said planet was taken over, then escaping and managing to reunite with his friends.
  • In Go-Lion, Hys (Nanny) is fatally shot in the heart while protecting Raible (Coran). This scene was completely removed from Voltron, and later episodes used stock footage from earlier in the series to insert the character into scenes that took place after her original death. [16]
  • In Go-Lion, a slave girl named Lisa was a survivor of the nuclear war. Near the end of her debut episode, Tsuyoshi 'Hothead' Seidou (Hunk in Voltron) urges her to wake up and join in the fight against Emperor Daibazaal (King Zarkon in Voltron), however she is too crushed by her despair to trust even a fellow human (that race being responsible for the destruction of her homeworld) and chooses to step off a cliff the two were standing on, rather than live without her brother. In Voltron, this sequence was removed, and it was explained to the audience that this girl, now named Twyla, had been allowed to go home to her own planet (a planet other than Earth).
  • In episode 21 of Go-Lion, there are implications that Prince Sincline (Prince Lotor in Voltron) sexually enslaved Princess Amue (Romelle in Voltron) when she was his prisoner, due to her physical similarities to Princess Fala. The Voltron dialogues imply that he tortured her instead. [17]

Episodes

Home media

From 1984 to 1985, Sony released some episodes of Voltron on VHS and Betamax in several named but unnumbered volumes, including "Castle of Lions", "Planet Doom", "Planet Arus", "Zarkon's Revenge", "Merla, Queen of Darkness", "Journey to the Lost Planets", "Perils of Princess Allura", "Return of Sven", and "The Blue Robot's Revenge". The packaging for these volumes did not specify which episodes were on them; advertised runtimes varied from 20 to 86 minutes.

Lions Gate Home Entertainment released or re-released some episodes of the show on VHS in four numbered volumes in 2001. Volume 1 included the special "Fleet of Doom" and episode 71, "The Alliance Strikes Back". Volumes 2-4 included the first six episodes of the show in chronological order.

The show was released on DVD by the likes of Media Blasters and Gaiam Vivendi Entertainment, [18] [19] [20] [21] and was released on a Complete Series DVD set by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment with their distribution deal with DreamWorks Animation on September 10, 2019.

Reception

The show was ranked the 76th best animated series by IGN. [22]

Other media

Sequels

A CGI sequel series that takes place five years after the first series that deviated from the original design, the series centers around the Voltron Force reuniting to fight bionic Prince Lotor, while dealing with an artificial intelligence "Amalgamus", a sophisticated computer and a supposedly reformed King Zarkon. Ross, Ward, and Bell were the only cast members to return.

Another sequel series that features the Voltron Force and their three cadets training to be the next Voltron pilots, while battling their old enemy Lotor and corrupt military head intent on destroying the Voltron and its pilots to stage a coup d'état and become president of Galaxy Garrison himself. The series aired on Nicktoons and ended after one season.

Video game

A video game based on the 1984 show was released in 2011 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles. [23] [24]

Reboot

On January 5, 2016, Netflix and DreamWorks Animation announced a new original animated Voltron series to debut in 2016 as a reboot of both the franchise and the GoLion anime. Produced in an anime-influenced style with CGI Voltron action sequences, featuring a whole new cast with Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos, both known for their work on Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel The Legend of Korra , as showrunners. The show debuted on Netflix and ran for 8 seasons with a total of 78 episodes.

Related Research Articles

<i>Voltron</i> American science fiction franchise

Voltron is an American animated television series franchise that features a team of space explorers who pilot a giant super robot known as "Voltron". Produced by Peter Keefe and Ted Koplar through his production company World Events Productions, Voltron was an adaptation of several Japanese anime television series from Toei Animation. The original television series aired in syndication from September 10, 1984, to November 18, 1985. The first season of Voltron, featuring the "Lion Force Voltron", was adapted from the series Beast King GoLion. The second season, featuring the "Vehicle Team Voltron", was adapted from the unrelated series Armored Fleet Dairugger XV.

<i>Armored Fleet Dairugger XV</i> Japanese anime television series

Armored Fleet Dairugger XV is a mecha anime series aired in Japan from 1982 to 1983 for 56 episodes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Events Productions</span> American entertainment company

WEP LLC, doing business as World Events Productions, is an American-based animation and distribution company in St. Louis, Missouri, best known for releasing the anime titles Voltron, Defender of the Universe and Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs, as well as producing the original animated series Denver, the Last Dinosaur.

<i>Lightspeed Electroid Albegas</i> 1983 anime television series

Lightspeed Electroid Albegas is an anime series that aired from 1983 to 1984 in Japan, Latin America, Spain and Italy. There were 45 episodes aired at 25 minutes each. Other loosely translated names are "Arbegas", "Arebegas", "Lightspeed ElectroGod Arbegas" and "Arbegas: El Rayo Custodio".

<i>Voltron: The Third Dimension</i> 1998 animated series

Voltron: The Third Dimension is an American animated television series produced by World Events Productions. It is a sequel to the 1980s animated series Voltron: Defender of the Universe and is set five years after the end of the series. Neil Ross, Michael Bell, and B.J. Ward reprised their roles as Keith, Lance, and Princess Allura for the series. The show was animated by Netter Digital Entertainment, inc. and Mike Young Productions. It departed from the original Voltron's animated look, as well as some character changes, such as the physical appearance of Prince Lotor.

<i>Voltron: Fleet of Doom</i> 1986 television film

Voltron: Fleet of Doom is an American-Japanese television special involving heroes of both Voltron series working together to defeat their sworn enemy, King Zarkon, who aligns with the remnants of Emperor Zeppo's Drule Empire to create a mighty armada called the Fleet of Doom.

<i>Voltron Force</i> TV series or program

Voltron Force is an animated television series that premiered on June 16, 2011, exclusively on Nicktoons. It is a sequel to the 1980s animated series Voltron and the 1999 CGI series Voltron: The Third Dimension. It ended after one season on April 25, 2012, with the planned second season being unproduced.

<i>Voltron: Defender of the Universe</i> (video game) 2011 video game

Voltron: Defender of the Universe is a twin stick shooter adventure game based on the Voltron television series, developed by Behaviour Interactive and published by THQ. The game was released on November 29, 2011 for PlayStation 3 and released on November 30, 2011 for Xbox 360. The game allows players to play as all five lions from the series and to control Voltron, a huge robot formed by combining those lions. The game received mixed reception among critics. Some reviewers were critical of the Voltron robot gameplay sequences, yet others praised the lion sequences. Most critics spoke highly of the fan service given. The game is now delisted and not available for purchase.

Voltron is the name of two past comic book series and one current series published by different companies. Both previous series are based on the television series Voltron. Voltron is the name of the robot that the main characters pilot to fight evil in space. The series stars five young soldiers who are recruited to find the title character in deep space, and to use Voltron to defend the galaxy.

<i>Voltron: Legendary Defender</i> 2016 American animated science fiction television series

Voltron: Legendary Defender is an animated mecha television series produced by American companies DreamWorks Animation Television and World Events Productions and animated by South Korean studio Mir for Netflix. It is a reboot of the Voltron franchise and the Japanese anime series Beast King GoLion. Its animation is a mix of anime-influenced traditional animation for characters and backgrounds and CGI for Voltron action sequences. Voltron: Legendary Defender is set in a science fiction universe where planetary energy called quintessence can be used to power vehicles and magic. The series follows the adventures of the Paladins of Voltron who must learn to work together to form the legendary robot Voltron and use it to defeat the Emperor Zarkon and the Galra Empire. The series ran from June 10, 2016, to December 14, 2018, having released 78 episodes over 8 seasons.

"The Rise of Voltron" is the first three episodes of Voltron: Legendary Defender. It was directed by Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery and written by Tim Hedrick, Joshua Hamilton and May Chan. In this episode, three cadets at the Galaxy Garrison: Lance, Pidge, and Hunk along with Garrison dropout Keith, and Takashi 'Shiro' Shirogane, the leader of the Defenders of the Universe, who was captured by the villainous Galra Empire a year before the events of the series, are tasked by Princess Allura of Altea with finding five robotic lions to form Voltron.

Keith Akira Kogane, known as Chief Akira Kogane in the original Japanese language Beast King GoLion, is a fictional character in the media franchise Voltron and leader of the Voltron Force, who made his debut appearance in Defender of the Universe.

Lance Charles McClain, known as Isamu "Moody" Kurogane in the original Japanese language Beast King GoLion, is a fictional character in the media franchise Voltron and a member of the Voltron Force, who made his first appearance in Voltron: Defender of the Universe.

Princess Allura, known as Princess Farla in the original Japanese language Beast King GoLion, is a fictional character in the media franchise Voltron and member of the Voltron Force, who made her first appearance in Voltron.

Emperor Zarkon, known as Emperor Daibazaal in the original Japanese language Beast King GoLion, is a fictional character in the media franchise Voltron and an antagonist of the Voltron Force, who made his first appearance in Voltron.

Prince Lotor, known as Prince Imperial Sincline in the original Japanese language Beast King GoLion and in the sixth season of Voltron: Legendary Defender, is a fictional character in the media franchise Voltron, and is an antagonist of the Voltron Force who made his first appearance in Voltron.

Sven Holgersson, known as Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane is a fictional character in the media franchise Voltron, and a member of the Voltron Force. The character's first appearance was in Voltron: Defender of the Universe. The character has received a positive critical reception, although his depiction as a gay man in Legendary Defender has been criticised as being poorly written.

Tsuyoshi "Hunk" Garret, known as Tsuyoshi Seidou or by his nickname Hothead in the original Japanese language Beast King GoLion, is a fictional character in the media franchise Voltron, and a member of the Voltron Force. The character's first appearance was in Voltron.

References

  1. 1 2 Koppel, Niko (10 June 2010). "Peter Keefe, Creator of Cartoon 'Voltron,' Dies at 57". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
  2. ↑ Arnold, Willis Ryder (22 June 2016). "Ready to form Voltron! New comic highlights St. Louis connections with beloved cartoon". news.stlpublicradio.org. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  3. ↑ "Watch The Voltron Series That Never Was". Den of Geek. 13 April 2020. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  4. ↑ Ladd, Fred; Deneroff, Harvey (10 January 2014). Astro Boy and Anime Come to the Americas: An Insider's View of the Birth of a Pop Culture Phenomenon. McFarland. ISBN   9780786452576 . Retrieved 22 January 2019– via Google Books.
  5. ↑ "VOLTRON: The Third Dimension". 12 May 2006. Archived from the original on 12 May 2006. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
  6. ↑ "Vehicle Team Voltron / The Fleet of Doom". Otaku USA Magazine. 15 February 2010. Retrieved 8 January 2019.
  7. ↑ "Vehicle Voltron: The Good and Bad About the Forgotten Series". Den of Geek. Archived from the original on 7 January 2019. Retrieved 8 January 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  8. ↑ "VEHICLE VOLTRON". 15 November 2008. Archived from the original on 15 September 2008. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
  9. 1 2 Phillips, Nicholas. "Voltron prepares to recapture the universe from a small office in St. Louis". Riverfront Times. Retrieved 22 January 2019.
  10. ↑ Mtvmovies. "Confused About The 'Voltron' Movie? We've Got Your Answers!". MTV News. Archived from the original on January 7, 2019. Retrieved 8 January 2019.
  11. ↑ Kamen, Matt (7 October 2016). "Voltron: Legendary Defender season two lands on Netflix in January". Wired UK. Retrieved 7 February 2019– via www.wired.co.uk.
  12. ↑ "The 15 Darkest Secrets About Voltron". CBR. 18 March 2018. Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  13. ↑ "Voltron: 10 Hilarious Ways the Original Show Censored Death". Den of Geek. Archived from the original on 28 September 2017. Retrieved 6 January 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  14. 1 2 "Voltron / Go Lion Origin Story". YouTube. 2008-06-02. Archived from the original on 2013-07-27. Retrieved 2008-08-08.
  15. ↑ "Go Lion / Voltron: Phantom Flowers". YouTube. 2008-06-02. Archived from the original on 2013-07-29. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
  16. ↑ "Voltron". Anime News Network. 2002-03-14. Retrieved 2008-10-20.
  17. ↑ "Getting Your Facts Straight: Classic Lotor". February 2018. Archived from the original on 2022-03-28. Retrieved 2019-03-06.
  18. ↑ McCutcheon, David (28 June 2006). "New Voltron DVD Details" . Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  19. ↑ "Madman Releases Vehicle Force Voltron on DVD" . Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  20. ↑ "Voltron - Defender of the Universe - Collection Three". DVD Talk. Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  21. ↑ IGN Staff (3 November 2011). "Voltron: The Final Battle DVD Review" . Retrieved 30 January 2019.
  22. ↑ "Top 100 Animated Series - IGN.com" . Retrieved 15 January 2019– via www.ign.com.
  23. ↑ Goldstein, Hilary (14 February 2011). "Voltron Forms to Create New Video Game" . Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  24. ↑ Gamespot Staff (7 December 2011). "Voltron: Defender of the Universe Review" . Retrieved 29 January 2019.
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