![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Voltron Legendary Defender: Quite A Catch-up
The last time I commented here about Voltron Legendary Defender was just after I'd finished the fifth block of episodes on Netflix. I'd mentioned "more than an impression" of forward momentum to the story, and overhearing rumours of working towards a conclusion. When the sixth block of episodes showed up in turn, though, I didn't seem to have quite the same drive to watch on a regular schedule. Avoiding what other people are saying about the series because of another impression that "commentary on domestic series inevitably winds up dwelling on the mismatch between what the commentators imagined they'd get and what the creators can actually offer" did get to weigh on me; sometimes, there seems advantages to the limited length of time anime series run for even if a good many of them are just supposed to lead into original sources running to greater length.
As I was plugging through those episodes, though, a seventh block of episodes also became available. Without pausing to summarize the sixth block, I started into their follow-ups. That sixth block, however, had done its own part to start bracing up my interest again. When the protagonists had allied with Lotor and his promises of reforming his family's empire in the fifth block, I'd thought back a bit to the years of the original Voltron, if to a different show. It's possible I only really picked up on the eventual alliance between the protagonists and some honourable antagonists in Robotech reading its novelizations, but that had added a bit more to my conviction there was something more to that series than to "regular Saturday morning/after-school cartoons," and that thought had kept me interested in its story and "mechanics" until at last I managed to figure out there really was more animation "like it" being made (and in a different place than I might have thought at first). It was tempting to connect this much-later turn in Voltron Legendary Defender to Space Battleship Yamato 2199 also moving a bit beyond "the good guys wipe out the bad guys," but I do have to admit to some ambiguous thoughts about whether "replacing the villain in charge but having to work with a still-standing imperial structure" has some problems to it. In the end, though, there was a twist, one that both made Princess Allura and her now-comedic sidekick Corran no longer "the last of their kind" (and brought back the "pink and blonde" that might have seemed a bit more exotic back in the original Golion anime series) and finally answered the anticipation seeded by the oddly flexible fighters Lotor had been building. I'll admit too to taking particular note of the character named "Keith" being separated from everyone else before; now, he was getting back into the fray.
I did happen to notice a comment from someone that sparked a bit of anticipation about the seventh block of episodes, but before I could get to that there was a seemingly lengthy "journey arc." When the characters closed a circle and returned to Earth at last, though, things managed to get a bit more interesting for me with more characters to get involved. The comment had invoked "Robotech without space travel," although I did get to thinking "well, that's just 'The New Generation' instead of the that much more familiar 'The Macross Saga.'" I even indulged myself a bit by remembering a story I'd worked on in high school mixing up the parts of Robotech (before I knew about, or at least had access to, the possibility of "writing for other fans"), even if in later years I recognized all the weaknesses of the story. The ultimately considerable block of episodes closed with some more of the "giant robot versus giant robot" I've seen other people lament this series often avoids, even if an attempt to break away from the feeling of "formula" that might have hovered over the original Voltron, and if Earth technology (which used a "theme colour" everything else in the colour-coded series hadn't quite got around to) hadn't got to the point of building an updated take on "the other Voltron" what they had managed to construct became grandiosely impressive. The next block of episodes to arrive I understand to be the last; at the moment and for me they at least won't start off seeming to "wear towards indifference."
As I was plugging through those episodes, though, a seventh block of episodes also became available. Without pausing to summarize the sixth block, I started into their follow-ups. That sixth block, however, had done its own part to start bracing up my interest again. When the protagonists had allied with Lotor and his promises of reforming his family's empire in the fifth block, I'd thought back a bit to the years of the original Voltron, if to a different show. It's possible I only really picked up on the eventual alliance between the protagonists and some honourable antagonists in Robotech reading its novelizations, but that had added a bit more to my conviction there was something more to that series than to "regular Saturday morning/after-school cartoons," and that thought had kept me interested in its story and "mechanics" until at last I managed to figure out there really was more animation "like it" being made (and in a different place than I might have thought at first). It was tempting to connect this much-later turn in Voltron Legendary Defender to Space Battleship Yamato 2199 also moving a bit beyond "the good guys wipe out the bad guys," but I do have to admit to some ambiguous thoughts about whether "replacing the villain in charge but having to work with a still-standing imperial structure" has some problems to it. In the end, though, there was a twist, one that both made Princess Allura and her now-comedic sidekick Corran no longer "the last of their kind" (and brought back the "pink and blonde" that might have seemed a bit more exotic back in the original Golion anime series) and finally answered the anticipation seeded by the oddly flexible fighters Lotor had been building. I'll admit too to taking particular note of the character named "Keith" being separated from everyone else before; now, he was getting back into the fray.
I did happen to notice a comment from someone that sparked a bit of anticipation about the seventh block of episodes, but before I could get to that there was a seemingly lengthy "journey arc." When the characters closed a circle and returned to Earth at last, though, things managed to get a bit more interesting for me with more characters to get involved. The comment had invoked "Robotech without space travel," although I did get to thinking "well, that's just 'The New Generation' instead of the that much more familiar 'The Macross Saga.'" I even indulged myself a bit by remembering a story I'd worked on in high school mixing up the parts of Robotech (before I knew about, or at least had access to, the possibility of "writing for other fans"), even if in later years I recognized all the weaknesses of the story. The ultimately considerable block of episodes closed with some more of the "giant robot versus giant robot" I've seen other people lament this series often avoids, even if an attempt to break away from the feeling of "formula" that might have hovered over the original Voltron, and if Earth technology (which used a "theme colour" everything else in the colour-coded series hadn't quite got around to) hadn't got to the point of building an updated take on "the other Voltron" what they had managed to construct became grandiosely impressive. The next block of episodes to arrive I understand to be the last; at the moment and for me they at least won't start off seeming to "wear towards indifference."