Voltron, my take on this...
After speaking with the homie Galen on his Cartoon Disassembly series recently guested here on my blog, I mentioned that he had not done one on Voltron, and he explained to me that he had become busy doing other life stuff and never got back to finishing it.
I pushed to see if there would be a chance of talking him back out of retirement and onto it. He offered the chance of the possibility, but promised nothing. What he did, however, grant me was his blessing to make an undoing of the cartoons of my choosing, provided that I leave Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry alone.
Reluctantly, I agreed to leave those to him, as a gracious visitor into his lane.
Without further setup, though I am going in on one of my favorite animated series from my childhood; Voltron... Let the record here show that I am ONLY discussing the Lion series, as everyone to come after it was so egregiously bad that I had to jettison them from my system as if they were a rape of some sort.
One thing that someone will remember from Voltron is the voice of Peter Cullen -- also voice of Optimus Prime then and now -- and the presence of bigass motherfucking robot lions.
One other thing that one remembers, or is reminded of, about this show is consistency. The problem is that this consistency is so extreme and results in repetition that it becomes a bit frustrating.
The Katie and I are now 20+ episodes into the DVD set, I am realizing is the EXACT same thing every episode, someone comes in and plays off on the princess' naivety and/or tries to get her to fall in love with them as a means to either gaining control of one of the lions, incapacitating a member of the force to keep them from forming Voltron or just outright keeping her captive. One would think that sooner or later her suspicions would be higher or they would just give up on the implausible and downright dumb plots, yet it is the same EVERY episode.
One of the members (who is apparently trying to fuck her, save for Pidge who is transgender) gets jealous because someone else might fuck her instead of them and she ignores/defies them and damn near gets EVERYONE killed. Then the initial plot fails and one of the slaves from Doom volunteers to be made into the best robeast ever invented (to that point, at least), only to go to Arus (or however you spell that) and get smoked by Voltron.
EVERY
FUCKING
EPISODE
I mention how comically asinine these 'plots' generally were because no two were ever terribly different. First Zarkon dispatches Yurak to destroy the planet Arus, the reason for which was NEVER explained, and with it Voltron. Yurak NEVER looked directly at Zarkon, ever. Fed up with Yurak's shit, Zarkon started to go to the dumbass planning of the Witch Haggar, only one of which was actually workable, but she blew even that with a bit of hamfisted ignorance. Next comes Zarkon's son, named after a drug for erectile dysfunction, Lotor, who secretly wants to marry the princess and overthrow his father, but forgets minor details like proper planning and competence in completing these tasks.
Again, every single episode features some lame-brained plan hatched by one of them, but always ending with one of Haggar and Lotor's "robeasts" engaging in an impossibly overmatched battle with Voltron, and losing spectacularly. Literally every time.
Oh, speaking of those battles...
It seems that every time, when the lions singularly are having their collective asses handed to them, they take a break and form Voltron to gain the upper hand. During this exchange, they repeat:
During the time that this takes place, a good minute time expires. Being raised by the television, we know that one minute TV time equates to every bit of 5 minutes of real-life time. So, in the grand scheme of things, 5 individual entities have now taken to float into the air to form an insurmountable foe that you KNOW you cannot beat, and all you have to do is stop them from forming, presumably by stopping ONE of them from joining in the little dance, and all you do is stand and watch, waiting on your turn to get splayed with that flaming sword like the dude yesterday?
And what for?
Riiiiight, I can't fathom why either.
Why IS Zarkon so obsessed with Arus? He has already enslaved most of the population and seems to be more out to simply destroy it that benefit from any resource it has.
Why ARE the princes, her advisor and nanny so quick to trust every random person who descends from space onto their planet after it has been destroyed? I mean, it's not like every person to come down hasn't tried to trick them into outing Voltron so they can destroy it... Oh, wait.
At what point does it dawn on either side that they're doing the exact same song and dance EVERY episode?
And most importantly...
Why do I STILL not regret having dropped the coin on the DVD sets?
I pushed to see if there would be a chance of talking him back out of retirement and onto it. He offered the chance of the possibility, but promised nothing. What he did, however, grant me was his blessing to make an undoing of the cartoons of my choosing, provided that I leave Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry alone.
Reluctantly, I agreed to leave those to him, as a gracious visitor into his lane.
Without further setup, though I am going in on one of my favorite animated series from my childhood; Voltron... Let the record here show that I am ONLY discussing the Lion series, as everyone to come after it was so egregiously bad that I had to jettison them from my system as if they were a rape of some sort.
One thing that someone will remember from Voltron is the voice of Peter Cullen -- also voice of Optimus Prime then and now -- and the presence of bigass motherfucking robot lions.
One other thing that one remembers, or is reminded of, about this show is consistency. The problem is that this consistency is so extreme and results in repetition that it becomes a bit frustrating.
The Katie and I are now 20+ episodes into the DVD set, I am realizing is the EXACT same thing every episode, someone comes in and plays off on the princess' naivety and/or tries to get her to fall in love with them as a means to either gaining control of one of the lions, incapacitating a member of the force to keep them from forming Voltron or just outright keeping her captive. One would think that sooner or later her suspicions would be higher or they would just give up on the implausible and downright dumb plots, yet it is the same EVERY episode.
One of the members (who is apparently trying to fuck her, save for Pidge who is transgender) gets jealous because someone else might fuck her instead of them and she ignores/defies them and damn near gets EVERYONE killed. Then the initial plot fails and one of the slaves from Doom volunteers to be made into the best robeast ever invented (to that point, at least), only to go to Arus (or however you spell that) and get smoked by Voltron.
EVERY
FUCKING
EPISODE
I mention how comically asinine these 'plots' generally were because no two were ever terribly different. First Zarkon dispatches Yurak to destroy the planet Arus, the reason for which was NEVER explained, and with it Voltron. Yurak NEVER looked directly at Zarkon, ever. Fed up with Yurak's shit, Zarkon started to go to the dumbass planning of the Witch Haggar, only one of which was actually workable, but she blew even that with a bit of hamfisted ignorance. Next comes Zarkon's son, named after a drug for erectile dysfunction, Lotor, who secretly wants to marry the princess and overthrow his father, but forgets minor details like proper planning and competence in completing these tasks.
Again, every single episode features some lame-brained plan hatched by one of them, but always ending with one of Haggar and Lotor's "robeasts" engaging in an impossibly overmatched battle with Voltron, and losing spectacularly. Literally every time.
Oh, speaking of those battles...
It seems that every time, when the lions singularly are having their collective asses handed to them, they take a break and form Voltron to gain the upper hand. During this exchange, they repeat:
Ready to form Voltron! Activate interlocks! Dyna-therms connected. Infra-cells up; mega-thrusters are go!
Form feet and legs; form arms and body; and I'll form the head!
Let's go, Voltron Force!
Form feet and legs; form arms and body; and I'll form the head!
Let's go, Voltron Force!
During the time that this takes place, a good minute time expires. Being raised by the television, we know that one minute TV time equates to every bit of 5 minutes of real-life time. So, in the grand scheme of things, 5 individual entities have now taken to float into the air to form an insurmountable foe that you KNOW you cannot beat, and all you have to do is stop them from forming, presumably by stopping ONE of them from joining in the little dance, and all you do is stand and watch, waiting on your turn to get splayed with that flaming sword like the dude yesterday?
And what for?
Riiiiight, I can't fathom why either.
Why IS Zarkon so obsessed with Arus? He has already enslaved most of the population and seems to be more out to simply destroy it that benefit from any resource it has.
Why ARE the princes, her advisor and nanny so quick to trust every random person who descends from space onto their planet after it has been destroyed? I mean, it's not like every person to come down hasn't tried to trick them into outing Voltron so they can destroy it... Oh, wait.
At what point does it dawn on either side that they're doing the exact same song and dance EVERY episode?
And most importantly...
Why do I STILL not regret having dropped the coin on the DVD sets?
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