Time for another Viewer Log set. Why
so soon after One-Punch Man? Because I really really need to have this show get
a season 2. What show? Voltron: Legendary
Defender, duh, the title of this post. I really didn’t watch the previous
incarnations of Voltron, though I did have a general knowledge of it. It’s a
sort of Power Rangers set up. Evil forces menace the universe, and are thwarted
by five “TEENAGERS WITH ATTITUDE.” Sorry, Channeled my inner Zordon for a
second. They pilot giant robot Lions that form the titular Voltron. And that’s
about it. Despite not knowing that much about the show, it falls into a genre that
I do like, so I decided to give it a go. Also, while I know this isn't an Anime in that it was created in Japan, it is an Anime in style, tone and just overall feel. Like Avatar, which was produced by the same animation company, it's about as Anime as show can get without actually being from Japan. And yes I know the original show was Japanese, but this version is very much American. Enough rambling, let’s get to it.
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| Not the most confidence inspiring first flight. |
The show starts off simply enough,
with a three-man expedition on Pluto’s moon, Kerberos. The crew consists of Sam
Holt, his son Matt, and their obvious security detail, Shiro. They’re
extracting ice samples for… reasons. Everything is going along swimmingly,
until an alien warship shows up. That’s like the #1 most awesome way to have a
day ruined, just saying. They’re brought on board, Shiro learns that the aliens
speak English for some reason, before being knocked out.
Flash forward one year, don’t worry
that wasn’t a cold opening, to another three-man crew on a mission to Kerberos.
The team consists of Lance, the “ace” pilot, Pidge, the boy genius and science
guy, and Hunk, the engineer that suffers from motion sickness. Why the heck
would you sign up to be an engineer on ANY moving vehicle if that was the case?
Whatever, they get a distress beacon, Lance flies the ship to begin a rescue
mission, despite Hunk and Pidge’s objections, and things just kind of spiral
off from there. Lot of stuff breaking, falling, and Hunk throwing up in places
he shouldn’t. When they crash, it’s revealed to all be a simulation. The trio
are cadets at Galaxy Garrison, a sort of space military thing. They get
reprimanded for sucking, its implied that this isn’t the first time, and then
are dismissed. Oh, and it’s quickly mentioned that Pidge gets really angry when
someone brings up the Kerberos mission, and that Lance was originally a cargo
pilot that was pumped up to Fighter pilot class after the #1 in his class was
dismissed for insubordination. Remember these points, they’ll be important
later.
Lance, feeling like his ‘crew’ need
a pick-me-up after such a lousy day, convinces Hunk to sneak out with him to go
on a night on the town. They sneak off to try and grab Pidge, but discover
their third guy is doing some sneaking of his own. They follow Pidge to the
roof, and learn he’s monitoring signals around Kerberos. He’s discover one that
isn’t originating from Earth in an unknown language. Spooky. The signal appears
to be repeating only one word… Voltron. It’s right when Pidge reveals this that
a big meteor strikes nearby. The trio… well, Lance and a little Pidge, decide
to check it out. And Hunk is dragged along. FYI I think that when they call him
“Hunk” the thought is more a “Hunk of rock/stone/etc.” and less “He is a…” just
a guess.
They arrive at the crash site to
see GG has already set up a perimeter. Pidge is able to hack the security feed,
which lets them learn that the meteor was in fact some sort of alien escape
pod. And it’s one occupant was none other than Shiro of the Kerberos mission.
He hasn’t aged well, having premature white and grey hair, and a large scar
across his nose. Oh, and his right arm’s been replaced by some crazy cybernetic
prostatic. A regular Winter Soldier over here. The three want to go in to get
Shiro, but the armed guards are something of a deterrent. Thankfully, a
distraction comes in the form of an explosion, and a mullet-guy on a flying
motorcycle. Lance gets angry when he notices that said mullet-guy was Keith, that
Ace from his class that left GG that I mentioned earlier. All four sneak in and
bust Shiro out. There’s a chase scene, and then the group gets away.
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| He makes this look good. |
The team learns that Keith had been
tracking a mysterious signal he’d “felt” since around when he left GG and that
Shiro has a serious case of Amnesia from his last year as a prisoner. All he
remembers is the word Voltron, and that the baddies are coming to find it on
Earth. Not a great first day back on Earth for Shiro. Hunk shows off his
engineering prowess when he designs a device that could track Keith’s
mysterious signal. It’s like a Giger Counter, the more Clicking you hear the
closer you are. They discover a secret cavern with cave paintings of a Blue
Lion. When Lance touches the paintings, they’re hit with a torrent of water
that leads them to another secret cavern, this one having a giant mechanical
lion in it. Much better discovery than cave paintings, not going to lie. Lance
touches the force field that enveloped the Lion, causing it to dissipate, and
the group gets a vision of Blue and four other lions merging together to form
Voltron. Best group hallucination ever. They all get into the Lion and take it
for a spin. Hm… a group of teens to twenty somethings flying in the sky aboard
a giant blue lion. One of the weirder sentences I’ve written, not going to lie.
They show off to the new toy to the
Garrison, but then get the attention of the alien Warship. Everyone’s less than
happy that Lance is the one behind the wheel as the Warship starts firing. The
phrases ‘Worst Pilot ever,’ and “this isn’t the simulator!” are shouted once or
twice. To which Lance counters with “That’s good, I always wreck the
simulator.” It’s good to have confidence. They’re able to survive, somehow, and
discover a wormhole. When the choice is stay and be shot at, or fly through a
wormhole to an unknown part of the universe, the choice is obvious. Into The
Wild Blue Yonder!
Blue takes them to a mysterious
castle on a mysterious planet. They’re drawn inside, and discover a pair of
pods with aliens inside. The first one is, ‘shockingly,’ a Princess named
Allura, and the other is her manservant Coran. After Lance makes a very painful
pass at Allura, followed by the princess passing pain to Lance, we get a little
bit about her and Coran’s history. 10,000 years’ prior, their Kingdom of Altea
was at war with the Gulra Empire. The Gulra Emperor, Zarkon, wanted to capture
Voltron, as the giant robot was the only force in the universe capable of stopping
him. Allura wanted to fight, but her father decided it was best to Live to
Fight another day. He knocked Allura out, stuck her and Coran in a sort of
cryogenic stasis, and then hid the Voltron Lions before perishing. Not a great
week.
We get a quick peek at the Gulra
Empire. Somehow, Zarkon is still alive and running the show. His chief advisor
and all around scary witch, Haggar, informs him that she’s felt a disturbance
in the force… I mean a “resurgence of Altean energy.” Realizing that this is
the opportune moment to get all the pieces of Voltron, he sends one of his
commanders, Sendak, to the source of this resurgence.
Team Voltron detects the approaching
Gulra ship, and race to find the other four Lions. Well, three, the Black Lion
is housed within the castle itself but will only be released when the other Lions
are present. Each Lion is connected to one of our heroes, Shiro to Black, Lance
to Blue, Hunk to Yellow, Pidge to Green and Keith to Red. They break into
teams, Shiro and Pidge go after the Green Lion, while Hunk and Lance take Blue
to get Yellow. Keith stayed behind in case they were able to detect the missing
Red Lion. Pidge and Shiro have a lovely little ride down an Amazon-like river
to get the Green Lion, while Hunk and Lance avoid being shot at by Galra troops
while getting Yellow. When everyone regroups back at the castle, they discover
the location of the Red Lion. On board the Gulra cruiser coming to kill them.
Man, those force fields the Lions put up are pretty useless.
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| There, they look much better once they get the matching uniforms |
Pidge and Shiro steal and reprogram
a Gulra robot and then use it to free several alien prisoners. Said aliens
recognize Shiro, referring to him as the Champion. Pidge is disappointed to
learn that his family isn’t present, but deals with the disappointment long
enough to get the aliens to an escape pod. Meanwhile, Keith finds the Red Lion.
He tries to get the big cat to bond with him, but Red doesn’t even seem to take
notice of him. Until Keith is almost sucked out into space. Then Red drops its
forcefield and saves him. Outside, Lance and Hunk are able to smash the Gulra’s
super death laser, which buys them all enough time to escape, and unlock the
Black Lion. Team Voltron pilots their Lions, destroying several Gulra ships before
pulling out their finest trick. The five big cats combine to form Voltron, whom
quickly takes down the warship. High Fives all around.
Whew, that was a lot to cover. Don’t
worry, the rest of these Viewer Logs will be significantly shorter. This first
episode is actually three combined into one series opening movie, essentially.
So, overall impression, this was a solid start to the series. We got to know a
little bit about all the main characters, beyond the archetypal traits they
possess. Shiro is obviously the stoic leader, but he’s obviously shaken up by
his nearly year-long absence and memory loss. Pidge is the science wiz, but
also has the rather important personal mission/obsession with finding said
missing family members. Hunk is a combination of comic relief “fat guy” and
engineering wiz. They make multiple jabs at his motion sickness, again I
question why he signed up for a job in space, but also take time to show off
his skills. The guy built a detector for an element that doesn’t exist on
Earth. Like an hour after discovering said element. That’s some skill. Lance is
your typical cocky “ladies man,” but… not really a but there, that’s pretty
much it for him. Well, in this opening episode. Same with Keith, he’s the
actual pilot ace and seems to have some slight anger management issues, but
that’s about it. To begin with. I do like that in the beginning of the episode Lance
believes that he and Keith are rivals, where in actuality he was so beyond Keith’s
notice that Lance had to remind him who he was. It’s a set up that’s been done
before, “We’re eternal rivals!” “Who are you again?” style set up, but it’s
done very well. Princess Allura is presented as a more “modern” take on the
Princess. She’s a take charge, give orders style of princess. That is always
nice to see. I especially liked the fact that she got Lance in a grapple-hold
about .5 seconds after he attempted to hit on her. You go girl. Coran is the funniest
character on the show, hands down. I can sum him up best with one scene. He and
Allura are trying to get their castle up and running before the Gulra Warship
arrives while Team Voltron buys them time. They hit a major snag when a major
power crystal is out of alignment, and both of them are too large to get at it.
Allura discovers she has developed telepathic connection with some mice that
had been frozen with her. The mice fix the crystal and Allura breathes a sigh
of relief, but questions why Coran is glaring at the mice with his fingers
against his temples. Why is he doing it? “I’m trying to get them to make me a
sandwich!” This got a pretty good chuckle out of me.
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This evil Emperor
is brought to you by vague Immortality.
Vague Immortality, making
reigns of tyranny eternal
since the beginning
of time
|
It’s also really funny. Most of the
best lines are given by Coran or Hunk, but everyone gets at least one chuckle
worthy line. I mentioned my favorites above, but there are plenty more. Don’t
have much in terms of complaints. Just that mentioning that the Lions have
personalities doesn’t really go anywhere. They say that Black is stoic, Yellow
is compassionate, Green is inquisitive, and that Red is temperamental. But Red
is the only one to show any sign of said personality, and I wouldn’t call
ignoring your potential pilot as temperamental. I call that being a dick. And,
having watched this through once, I can tell you that the Lion’s personalities
aren't even brought up again. Heck, the only rational I can give for them having any
level of sentience is for the times when they need to rush in and save their
squishy pilots. But that hardly ruins an otherwise excellent show. Overall
great start, can’t wait to go over the rest of this series for ya’ll.
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