Okay! I haven't watched Voltron since I was 4 or 5... that's over 23 years ago. (Now I feel old!) Anywho, I saw V3D on YouTube and I really wanted a trip down memory lane. I had never seen V3D before, nor did I remember much of the original Voltron series - except that as a child... I LOVED IT! (I used to have both the wired remote-controlled Voltron that lit up, and the action figure robot lions that formed Voltron!)

So, V3D...

So far, I've seen up to ep. 20. The budget for this series was obviously low, which explains the lack of actual characters. Creating a new CG character takes quite a bit of money. This also explains all the "clip shows" they had. I forget the minute-to-dollar ratio, but it's far less expensive to run a poorly thought clip show than it is to put together 30 minutes of new animation.

Onward...

I don't mind the new looks to the characters. I don't mind the plot in the beginning, until Zarkon is shown to be "reformed"... Okay, you have Amalgamus ranting on and on about human behavior, so you're telling me that 900 humanoid leaders of the alliance are all happy and whatnot about their former conquerer being in such a high position? This just kept bothering me and bothering me. I mean, it would be more believable to say that Lotor was reformed, after being nearly fully recronstructed by Alliance doctors.

The magic of the lions is interesting, though they could have worked it better. There's still some major issues here. The original intro of LV shows that Voltron was cursed by Hagar, broken up into 5 lions. This curse isn't mentioned in V3D. Now, I will be watching the entire LV series when I get the time, but the actual origins of Voltron seem so convoluted and disorganized.

Going back to V3D, you can tell when the budget for V3D started running out as the first season progressed. I don't know if they were just trying to be like Power Rangers, but so many times in the series, that's exactly what I swore I was watching. Poor, low-budget entertainment. I'm not even talking about the CG technology. I'm talking about the production and writing.

The writing... now, I'm a hobby writer. What I saw on my screen seemed to represent early ideas that should have been fletched out more before they went to production. I would have loved to see the first season focus entirely on the "secrets of the lions". I can even understand the Alliance being against Voltron - it's common nature for a civilization that wants peace to be ignorant of a threat, and the idea of mobilizing defense against such a threat would shatter the notion of peace. That's what I had in mind at first, when Amalgamus didn't want to mobilize the robot lions - he even said as much in the first episode (I think it was).

It all just went down hill from there. All the way to ... what was it... Stealth Voltron? They looked like flying turds, and it REALLY gave me terrible flashbacks of Power Rangers. Further, SV would have been a good idea - if done differently. Perhaps an "upgrade" of sorts. Instead the team was just like "Huh? Everything's different. Oh neat, new toys!" - If I was riding in a vehicle that suddenly changed, I'd be looking for the eject button. Now, you could defend this with the whole "They just learned to trust their lions" bit, but even still - trust doesn't happen overnight.

One more thing that really made me think of Power Rangers were the terrible one-liners that the bad guys constantly used. Though, Hagar's cover of "What's Love got to do with it" was a novelty, it was out of place. I'll have to rewatch LV, but were all the bad guys in the original series so smitten with terrible humor?

Now, the only major gripe I have with the CG is that in one of the last episodes I watched - they rendered Voltron backwards. The right and left sides were switched. This told me how much care was really put into this series, as if anyone proofed it, they'd have caught it as obviously as I had. Even if they didn't want to reanimate the entire sequence, they could have gone back to prior episodes and reused a squence. (I do recall him summoning the sword in the atmosphere of a planet earlier on).

Overall, I would love if they'd try this one again - only with a lot more plot research and perhaps some actual story boarding. Even if they didn't want to put resources on episodes that ran together, they should still find an anchor - something that this entire series lacked. (Unless you count the disbanding/destruction of VF an anchor).

That's my thoughts. I'm going to finish the rest of the series now, just for the sake of sympathy from the rest of you later. Then, I'm going to look on eBay for one of those old toys I remember having! I'm pushing 30 now.. I need some childhood to cling to!

Greatings!

That's Voltron 3D for you. You'll find that not many fans care much for this incarnation of Voltron. I found it lacking, with some leaps in logic, such as the ones you've pointed out. One thing I liked about the original Voltron series was the theme of rebuilding a civilzation after a devastating attack. Here, Planet Arus seems devoid of life, save for our heros and some fishes.

While I can understand the need to save money, that there were two clips shows in a 26 episode offering strikes as a little ridiculous.

Well, 2 episodes left... and I must say, the biggest complaint is the ordering. Ep. 23 should have come before 22. It was like they made these side episodes to work in and break up larger plot stories, but instead of doing that they just randomly threw them in.

I did find ep. 24 and even 25 to be pretty interesting = That's "Consider the Alternative" and "Mind Games" - mostly because I like the idea of the robot lions being more than machines. (I'm a huge "living machine" fanatic, I've even authored a few short stories with the idea)

I know what you mean about the planets being devoid of "life".. They show shots of huge cities, but the greatest number of people were shown during the Moons episode, at the "Voltron Theme Park"... which was just a bad... bad... ... Yeah

They could've easily reused models and put ... even a random person walking around somewhere...

I also can't help but feel like the writers were writing themselves into a corner, then inventing things to get out on the fly. What I mean is, in the "stealth" episodes, they seem to write themselves out of any situation. The episode "The Hunter" is an example. Pidge just randomly adapts to the stealth technology, with no back story.

Oh! And I did notice that Allure started wearing a dress when not piloting... I wonder why they didn't do that with the rest of the team? Especially with the varied outfits in "Consider the Alternatives"

Ah well. I suppose when I get done with the last two episodes, I'll just write it all off and look forward to reliving the original thing. (I miss Sven!)

I don't know if I'll watch VV... I remember being offended by VV as a kid. Something about the channel I used to watch replacing my favorite LV with VV... and me, with my kid mind thinking, "This isn't Voltron!" :P

Really though, I'd love to see a NEW series that tied more together. It could take what little meat is there in V3D, take from VV and of course LV, and make a mega series that brought the universe into the present day.

Consider the Alternatives was my favorite episode. Honestly, all of V3D should be thrown out the window.

If I remember correctly, around the same time Beast Wars was getting ready to start ( or had started). That animation was better than V3D.

The story lines used in V3D needed a lot of work. My biggest problem though was the CI modeling of the lions and Voltron. The lions looked anorexic. The legs looked like they shouldn't hold the weight of the lions and their heads looked like they had been flattened.

However, Voltron looked like he had been stung by a bee. His face was swollen and it seemed that he put on a few pounds over the years. And to be perfectly frank, there was no reason to change the flight suits of the VF. Look up the opening of the New Adventures of Voltron on youtube. The opening of the show was redone in CGI (prior to V3D). Voltron doesn't look much different than the V3D incarnation but the pilots were animated with their original flight suits and it looked much better than V3D.

By the way, welcome aboard.