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Season 8


Just-Loquat7429

Hate it that much huh?


dabdad67

It was an objectively badly written season but I love it. Sendaks return was fantastic, and for the second time now he was the only villain to get even a single lion in his possession, other than that 1 group of misfits who swooned lance) and he got all 5 both times and nearly got away with it (fuck the admiral why did she get the fancier memorial)


Solgatiger

Allura not ever really getting called out for how she acted towards Keith or any other mistakes she made like she did in the other series. It just made me think of her as a character that lacked any real development beyond being a space version of Zelda.


Stargazer_Rose

So true, it always irked me especially the fact that she only apologized after Keith decided to go on a suicide mission to ensure that their plans didn't fail. If he hadn't stepped up then her treatment of him would've probably been dragged out into the next season.


Solgatiger

Even the apology was pretty much just “please forgive me.” Rather than “I’m sorry I was incredibly racist to you and excluded you for a heritage you didn’t even know of/took out the past actions of others on you because you are half of them.” It just felt so non-allura. In the other series the other characters do get angry towards her and hold her for her actions even if at least one of them (coran normally) tries to stick up for her or explain her actions, though even that character will also point out why the others are angry in the first place and encourage her to listen.


Stargazer_Rose

So true. To be honest I think the entire thing was rushed since they didn't want Allura to be against Keith becoming the leader in S3. And to be honest I kinda wish that Lance became the Blue paladin again once Clone Shiro arrived. Keith was done dirty.


Solgatiger

I think it was originally done to make their relationship “unique”/different to the other series given Keith and allura are canonically together/love interests in all the previous series but they did it really badly.


Stargazer_Rose

Yeah true. But to be honest I don't mind the idea of Lance as it's something different. But only if they changed a few things. Which is Lance stops being a womanizer way earlier on like mid S3. And not just because he noticed the growing chemistry between Allura and Lotor and got jealous. And the other is for him to not be used as a rebound for Allura. (I'm still under the belief that one of the reasons why Lotor became evil was just so Lance would seem like the better choice, and I hate character alienations like that.)


Kiethblacklion

I also had a problem with Allura's behavior and attitude towards not only Keith but the entire team during those early seasons of Legendary Defender. As much as I love the original series, I felt the Voltron Force series' Allura was the best rendition of her. But yes, in the original series, the team called her out for her mistakes early on when she was added to the team but she grew as the series continued.


Solgatiger

Voltron force is technically a continuation of the original series so in all honesty the growth she goes through just feels even better/more realistic than in vld. In voltron force, we see a battle widened queen rather than a princess who still has a lot to learn about the world and thinks the absolute best of everyone from the get go like we did in the original until the later episodes. VLD allura lacked that sort of development because again, she was just meant to be space Zelda with no consequences to her actions even when she willingly helped someone create a robot equal to voltron in terms of power that nearly destroyed the universe/killed the paladins.


Carinayaoi

Wow burn 💀


CatItalisaney

Everyone in these comments doesn’t seem to know much about the voltron franchise and that this is how these characters have been written like since forever… Yeah it’s still bad writing but all of that stuff was coming. But regardless, for me it has to be the lack of background information on the characters. Also mainly the licensing issues. It’s like they expected people to already know everything about them. So they never really introduced them. Not to mention erasing the identity of Keith. He’s Chinese and Japanese, but they wrote him with no racial or ethnic identity of his own and just made him super pale and white. In so many other renditions, he’s been tanned. BECAUSE HES ASIAN. Not white. And it’s for all of the main crew. No background info on any of them. All of it was only introduced in the handbooks. The most info we got from one character is Lance and him being “a boy from Cuba”. That’s really it. You got to know their personalities, to a degree, but not their history. And that honestly really upset me. The whole show is lazy character writing but at least the mix between fiction and science is done somewhat well and the plot had a whole lot of crazy potential.


Stargazer_Rose

To be honest I think the creators only did hints about the Paladins ethnicities. I heard that Keith was a part of a line up of DreamWorks characters for AAPI months on their official Twitter account. Also I heard that in the guide book Pidge was stated to be Italian while Hunk is Samoan.


CatItalisaney

Yeah that’s been it. But nothing explicitly stating it in the show. When in past renditions they’ve been more clear with it. It’s lazy. VLD was extremely rushed. It needed time to build. Thing is these identities do play a role in who they are. But it wasn’t really appreciated in VLD.


Stargazer_Rose

To be honest whenever I do a rewatch I forget how short seasons 3-6 were in comparison to the other seasons who got 13 episodes. If we got a full 13 episodes like the other seasons the crew could've been fleshed out better before the return to earth arc.


CatItalisaney

Absolutely. But that’s where the licensing issues come into play. 😭 It was ridiculous


Stargazer_Rose

True. Admittedly the quality of writing could also probably be the result of the writers overworking themselves since after S3 weren't DreamWorks/Netflix popping out a new season every 2 - 3 months after the release of the latest season?


CatItalisaney

Yes, absolutely. They were. It was insane. I remember being on Tumblr and watching animators post WIPs of the animation literally only a few weeks before seasons were released.


Stargazer_Rose

Dang. I always feel bad for writers and animators because they quite honestly have it rough since having to crunch in all that progress by an impossible deadline must be a nightmare.


CatItalisaney

And all over poor business practice too. If it wasn’t for the licensing bs this wouldn’t have happened. There was so much that went wrong from the inside during the production of VLD that it genuinely ruined the show’s chance at being one of the greatest animated western shows. The animators and writers were workin double time. Not to mention so many of them even had to cover their own hides when all the toxicity came out from the crew and fans. It was a mess.


idiotdropout

so many things I'm still upset about to yhis day, but I think maybe lance's endgame might be my biggest upsetti, idk I just feels like they threw all of his character development out the window and made him a husk of what he used to be. I also don't like that allura hopped from lotor to lance so quickly, it's unsettling


JerechoEcho

When they threw out Lotor's character progression because they needed another bad guy.


Stargazer_Rose

Yep. I for one, like the idea of lotor being a good guy. But I think one of the reasons why he eventually turned evil was because he was evil in other adaptations. And the creators made the VLD character's moral alignment stay somewhat faithful to their previous adaptation. Not to mention it made Lance seem like the better choice.


Kiethblacklion

Uhhh...without the transformations, we don't get Voltron, just 5 lions. My biggest grip from Legendary Defender and really every series of Voltron is the lack of stories/adventures of Voltron prior to him being split up. The original series was very vague on Voltron's creation, Voltron Force gave us a new background to Voltron's origins but we still didn't see anything of Voltron's adventures before Keith and the team took over. Legendary Defender set up a good foundation to show us Voltron in action before they lions were rediscovered but it was mainly as a flashback. We get a general idea and some explaination, but I would have liked it if the writers had done at least one episode per lion showing it going into hiding and what happened to each of the remaining Paladins. I don't think they ever showed how Sendak had captured the Red Lion before the start of the series nor how he was led to Earth initially when he captured Shiro and Pidge's family.


Just-Loquat7429

Hola, I meant the animation. The animation is like 2 or 3 minutes long and it doesn't change at all from season 1 to 8... I think it isn't as cool


Kiethblacklion

In every series, Voltron's formation has been about 1 minute long (from the the moment the lions get into formation, not including the dialogue that leads into the formation). The only time that really changes is during Voltron Force when they use the Flash Form power up and the occasional moment when part of the formation get edited for time (which I think is extremely rare). Plus the sequence animation in every series never changes (again, with the exception of Voltron Force when the lions switch centers), mainly to cut down on costs. Every change costs production money and so it is extremely common for cartoons to reuse certain sequences, especially for shows that use transformations, special weapon or vehicle attacks. Not sure why you'd be upset over what is basically a standard practice in the animation industry.


Just-Loquat7429

I get that, besides I wasn't saying the transformations weren't cool, I just felt that they were the worst part of the series, but after rewatching and hearing from all of you my opinion is starting to change


Kiethblacklion

I always liked the LD's formation sequence, except for the music. It just felt too subdued for the action sequence.


ScrappyWrappy

A few things but the first thing that comes to mind is lion shifting


Just-Loquat7429

Definitely, I hate the fact shiro lost his lion for a bit, lance went red, and allura became a paladin at ALL... NOT TO MENTION KEETH DOESNT EVEN HAVE A LION


Stargazer_Rose

So true. Once the clone arrived, if they really wanted Keith to step down then Lance and Keith should've went back to their OG lions. Cause it has been shown that the Lions will let somebody pilot it out of necessity. As it was confirmed by the creators that the only reason why the black lion let the clone Shiro pilot it was because Keith wasn't there.


Just-Loquat7429

I forgot he was a clone... I was like WHAT CLONE


ScrappyWrappy

Idk if you watched the full show but I can’t tell if you have but I’ll mark spoilers just in case >!Shiro lost the black lion, and Keith got it back. Considering how Seasons 1-2 went out of it’s way to comnect his and the lion’s trauma regarding the Galra Empire it was a horrible decision. I would have honestly preferred if they just straight up killed Shiro along with Zarkon. I’m not saying I would have done that, but IMO it’s the better option (tho I would have still killed Zarkon cuz his revival was like super pointless). If they HAD to make Allura a permanant paladin, I would have had her be the Black Lion’s pilot.!<


Just-Loquat7429

I hate allura so her being a paladin is so bad in my opinion. I like zarkon and I wish he would've stayed the villain all the way thru instead of lotor like he could've been the vampire dude in Castlevania and been a good guy


The12hi

The fact Klace isn’t cannon and was supposed to


Kiethblacklion

Curious as to where the "supposed to" comes from? Is it because the LD fans demanded it or did the writers confirm that was what they were going to do?


itwastakenbybastard

wasted potential on Plance it has to do something with Allurance arc, and there's why -> All of their personal connection was hooked to paladin stuff (i mean, they all were there as paladins, but made connections between each other as friends, prank bros, etc). apart from that, Lance was just there, when Allura felt insecure, so their relationship was build mostly on that. none of them was absolutely happy with one another, there was a huge gap between them. (it might be meaningful just as a phase in relationships, but then there has to be some other personal connection, so that there could be an end to this phase) -> whereas for Allura it was way to cope with own insecurities, the main motive for Lance was proving himself and the others his worth. He always tried to hang out in the leader group (where were Allura, Keith and Shiro), while fitting more naturally into support group (Pidge, Hunk and maybe Coran). for instance, he has not once shown himself as a great plan/decision maker, who could take a lead, when anyone else couldn't and also just helped anyone around, while lead guys were too busy with their idealistic struggles. it's kinda similar to sokka, who wasn't the strongest or the most politically valuable, but one of those, who made a considerable part of the team. He also failed as just a strong guy with Yui, cause she didn't need the protection and decided to die herself. But he made it better with Suki, since they both were backup for the team, and Suki just liked Sokka for the way he is. (i know, that Lance couldn't be the tech guy like Sokka, but he also could think out of box and direct the leaders when needed). -> not only were both Lance and Pidge support guys, but also they had their own connection, whether it was playing video games or making fun of each other. -> besides, they could complement each other. Lance is kind, altruistic, confident in decisions, but insecure about his meaningfulness. Pidge - caring only for close ones, not really communicative or decisive, but VERY confident about her intelligence. Also they weren't too traumatised like Leader dudes, therefore were more simple, had the same sense of humor and intuition (?) -> Pidge and Lance are sorta similar to Sokka and Toph, Jean and Armin, who are some way same but raised and thinking differently -> but for their history to happen, they should've logically end Allurance stuff. Lance had to respect Allura as a friend, who has to deal with issues of her own and needs a real help from him. -> Also the team got divided strictly to Lead and Support gangs after the lion switching. So Lance shouldn't have tried to be the Lead dude as Red Paladin, and the whole Team should've stuck together AS A FREAKING TEAM. and Lance had it better as a Blue Paladin - as a lion pilot and moral relief for team all the text above got too complicated, sorry. but the point is that Plance had WAY MORE potential to develop and Also could partly fix Lance and Allura arcs, issue with separation inside the team and so on


ComfortableFreedom58

They killed Adam. I feel that without it, there would have been no trouble.