quote:

Originally posted by Princess Iris:
That's why I hate both Dairugger & Golion. People be getting killed.

quote:

Originally posted by Princess Iris:
That's why I hate both Dairugger & Golion. People be getting killed.

quote:

WEG

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quote:

Originally posted by The Bandsaw Vigilante:
One theory on this:

You had Voltron, whose American distributor was headquartered out of the "family-friendly" Midwest (St. Louis).

And then you had Robotech, whose North American HQ was Los Angeles (Harmony Gold).

The math is fairly doable, at this point. To this very day, I'm strongly of the opinion that WEP's desire for "family" entertainment played at least a partial role in the watering-down of Voltron from its original Japanese components, whereas Harmony Gold took a far more farsighted approach regarding Robotech, and the results speak for themselves.

To be fair, sure -- even shows like G.I. Joe and Transformers (which predated Voltron) sanitized their violence to a large extent, and the American ratings system at the time was quite harsh, but it's very possible that the Los Angeles creative environment fostered a greater sense of risk-taking when Robotech came around, and which ultimately served to push the entire US animation industry's "edginess"-envelope forward more than a bit.

To what degree Ted Koplar and the rest of the WEP execs had a hand or didn't have a hand in quasi-emasculating Voltron (almost a crime equaling the bowdlerization of Lady Chatterley's Lover...almost) and handcuffing the writer staff, we can't say with 100% certainty. But I think that the interviews on the DVDs are quite telling, particularly Marc Handler's comments.