10 August 2016

REVIEW: Voltron: Legendary Defender (cartoon)

Current mood: *throws wet tissue on floor* AGAIN!

I have never heard of Voltron. I grew up watching some Power Rangers and lots of Gundam SEED. I don't even watch mecha all that much. The point is, I never knew Voltron existed. They had anime as old as Gundam but I have never heard of it. Then tumblr burst with gifs and art of the reboot, Voltron: Legendary Defender. The art is so similar to ATLA I can't help but wonder if the producers have anything to do with it. Turns out, YES! Imagine my joy when finally, there is something I can watch that is like anime but is not anime and it's not cartoonish like Steven Universe.


We start with three people on a space mission, but they get sucked by aliens. A year later we are introduced to another three characters: Lance, cocky Sokka lookalike who is piloting; Hunk, big guy with a big heart and big appetite for food and getting motion sick; and Pidge, your average nerdy brains on intel. They fail the piloting simulator, and after complaining, Lance drags Hunk along to sneak out, only to see Pidge dong the same. They tail him to find the nerd tinkering with gadgets. A meteor crashes, and tada! It's one of the missing people, Shiro, of team dad! However he seemed to have some alien prosthetic arm so the other scientists are putting him down. Before Lance, Hunk and Pidge could swoop in to save him, someone comes out of no where and did it. Lance gets all defensive and fights with the person - Keith, a bishonen pilot dropout. They get out of the place and Shiro explains that he can't remember nothin'. Keith in turn tells them that he had been investigating alien signs and they should check it out. They stumble upon a lion robot and Lance activates it, sending them to an unknown space through a wormhole.

They land in an abandoned castle. While the place lights up two pods appear and a woman collapses from one of them. She lands in Lance's arms, and that guy flirts with her moments after she opens her eyes! Jesus! A man with an elaborate mustache comes out of the second pod, and refers to the woman as princess. Apparently both of them have been sleeping for 10000 years! The woman introduces herself as Allura, princess of the now long gone planet of Altea. The mustache guy is Coran, Allura's advisor.

Allura explains the origins of the lion robot and the threat of Zarkon's Galra Empire, which is dead set on destroying/conquering the universe. The empire is seeking the other lion robots because they are the most powerful weapons in the universe, and when the lion robots combine to form Voltron, they (Allura says) can end the Galra Empire. So thus begins our unlikely(?) heroes mission to end Galra rule, once and for all!!!!

While saving the world, more and more of Shiro's memories return to him, and mostly at inconvenient times. Pidge's father and brother were the other two missing people in the space mission, but Shiro has no recollection on where they are. The castle is revealed to be a battleship, Pidge is actually a girl (no wonder he's so tiny...), and the former paladin of the Black Lion (Shiro's lion robot) is not dead, and he is, in fact, Zarkon! That's why while other paladins have their weapons, the Black Paladin doesn't (assumed to be lost). But Shiro can handle himself fine with his Galra tech prosthetic arm. Just that didn't help with his PTSD.

In the end, after saving Allura from Galra, they barely escape through a wormhole and are presumably scattered in different parts of the universe. Waiting for season 2!!!!

Even in adversity... teen dad still looks pretty.

My thoughts: Man, Voltron is awesome! Too bad it only has 11 episodes. I get that it's a Netflix original, but still... Dreamworks is even behind the production! The characters were all likable, appearance and personality wise. Hunk is a cinnamon roll but I love Shiro best!!!

Shiro is literally the hottest person alive. It makes me wanna have his babies god he is THAT sexy. And his eyeliner game! Oh! It's just as good as Axels'! The funniest thing is that the team is referred to as 'unsuspecting teenagers', but this guy here doesn't look like one, and he sure isn't. The Wikia states that he is 25, that's way past the teens. Sorry but you'll have to kink shame me for this.

Pidge is my favourite so far because they're??? Man this girl is so done with everyone. Best thing about them? I didn't even know they are a girl. I never suspected, not even after looking at the photo. I had to rewatch the scene where Shiro says "Katie" before I go WHAAAAAT???? And nobody give a damn about their gender. No pronouns, no changing mannerism, nothing, everybody's like, 'you're a girl, cool! let's form voltron'

Allura=Space Katara. "But Katara is feminine and kicks ass at the same time! Allura can't possibly top that!" How wrong was I. This alien princess is a BEAST! She can change her appearance, she can open wormholes, she can force automatic doors to close, and then grab and throw Shiro, a 25-year-old man who probs weighs around 70~80+ kilos, across the room into an escape pod. And muscle mass is not even in the equation so??? She's so OP???

You see, Voltron is different from the other mecha animes I've watched. I guess I wouldn't even consider picking it up if I hadn't known the creators worked on ATLA and LOK before. The art is amazing, the soundtrack is just god darn sweet! The ambiance! The space! The epic! The *eargasm*!!!! And it made me cry! The show made me cry! This mecha animated series made me cry legit tears of sadness in an episode where Allura has to put an end to the holographic memories of her father. Lots of people die in mecha animes, there are sad ones, meh ones and really really satisfying ones *coughFlayAllstercough* but the destruction of a recorded memory of a dead person, just a recorded memory! Can make me cry tears like the time I watched the Garden of Words! How?! Blame it on BGM I guess.

Previous mecha animes I've seen have a predictable storyline; everything is laid out and you can easily guess what's going to happen next. After seeing Steven Universe I'll never think cartoons as a light pass-time. Everything can go horribly wrong, even in the most cutesy show like SU. So no matter how much fans like Shiro, no matter how good his eyeliner game is, no matter how many of us call him daddy and kink shame ourselves, his chance of dying in season 2 will still be as high as the success rate of catching a Zubat in my area. SPOILERS!!!

I can always wait for the second season. I've waited so long for FFXV and KH3 to come out, now one of them is coming end of September, the other is making me anxious. I can wait 1685864 years for the second season, I'm fine!

Consider what I have said. Watch the trailers. Listen to this playlist. Watch Voltron Legendary Defender. You won't regret it.

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