Voltron: Defender of the Universe 84'

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Voltron: Defender of the Universe 84'
Voltron.png
Title screen from the 1985 NBC broadcast
GenreSci-fi, action/adventure, mecha, superhero
Created byTed Koplar
Peter Keefe
Saburō Yatsude (original concept)
Directed byFranklin Cofod
Composer(s)John Petersen
Country of originUnited States
Japan (original)
No. of seasons
No. of episodes (List of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)Ted Koplar
Peter Keefe
Running time25 minutes
Production company(s)World Events Productions
Toei Animation
DistributorNBCUniversal Television Distribution
Broadcast
Original channelFirst-run syndication
Picture formatNTSC
Audio format1.0 monaural (original)
5.1 Dolby surround sound (remaster)
Original runSeptember 10, 1984 (1984-09-10) – November 18, 1985 (1985-11-18)
Chronology
Followed byVoltron: Fleet of Doom (1986)
Voltron: The Third Dimension (1998)
voltron toy

{{{1}}} Voltron is an 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]

Premise[edit]

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.

The first season is about five pilots who command 5 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]

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Vehicle Voltron[edit]

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.

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]

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:

  • The Aqua Fighter (Sea Team)
  • The Turbo Terrain Fighter (Land Team)
  • The Strato Fighter (Air Team)

Voice cast[edit]

Production and development[edit]

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[edit]

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[edit]

Lion Force & Go-Lion[edit]

  • 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[edit]

Home media[edit]

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[edit]

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

Video game[edit]

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

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Koppel, Niko (10 June 2010). "Peter Keefe, Creator of Cartoon 'Voltron,' Dies at 57". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
  2. ^ Willis Ryder Arnold: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". In: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". 22. Juni 2016, abgerufen am 11. Mai 2020 (english).
  3. ^ Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". In: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". 13. April 2020, abgerufen am 11. Mai 2020.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  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. ^ [Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle".] 12. Mai 2006, archiviert vom Original am 2006-05-12; abgerufen am 30. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  6. ^ Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". In: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". 15. Februar 2010, abgerufen am 8. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  7. ^ Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". In: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". Abgerufen am 8. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  8. ^ [Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle".] 15. November 2008, archiviert vom Original am 2008-09-15; abgerufen am 30. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  9. ^ a b Nicholas Phillips: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". In: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". Abgerufen am 22. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  10. ^ Mtvmovies: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". In: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". Abgerufen am 8. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  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. ^ Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". In: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". 18. März 2018, abgerufen am 6. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  13. ^ Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". In: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". Abgerufen am 6. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  14. ^ a b Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". YouTube, 2. Juni 2008, abgerufen am 8. August 2008.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  15. ^ Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". YouTube, 2. Juni 2008, abgerufen am 8. November 2009.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  16. ^ "Voltron". Anime News Network. 2002-03-14. Retrieved 2008-10-20.
  17. ^ Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". Februar 2018;.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  18. ^ David McCutcheon: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". 28. Juni 2006, abgerufen am 6. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  19. ^ Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". Abgerufen am 6. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  20. ^ Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". In: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". Abgerufen am 6. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  21. ^ IGN Staff: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". 3. November 2011, abgerufen am 30. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  22. ^ Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". In: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". Abgerufen am 15. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  23. ^ Hilary Goldstein: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". 14. Februar 2011, abgerufen am 29. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär
  24. ^ Gamespot Staff: Script error: No such module "Vorlage:Internetquelle". 7. Dezember 2011, abgerufen am 29. Januar 2019.Vorlage:Cite web/temporär

External links[edit]

Template:Voltron Template:Toonami Cartoon Network