Tuesday 11 February 2014

Super Cooperation Defence Force


People have been asking me what a Voltron is. This is no doubt due to some sort of deviation from the mean childhood. Someone isn't normal. It's you. Regardless of whose parents dropped the ball on this one (it was yours), many to all of the previous Voltron related statements made by me were lost on enough of you that it would save me time and effort if I just go over it briefly. I'm not going to be brief. That's not my thing. I could also just give you the link to the Wikipedia article on the subject, but I'm not going to do that.

See what I did there?

You're trapped.

Doing it this way will also most likely stop the late night calls I've been making to your parents about the ball that they've dropped. Some of them. Some will still get calls. They'll know who they are when it happens.

I'm not strictly on top of why it is easier to ask me than google 'what is a voltron', to which the internet would probably reply 'this is a voltron' with pictures and words. You would be done by now.

Some of you might actually know, but are looking for reasons to start conversations with me. If it's for social charity, I don't need your help. I'm a salmon! If it's for you, I'm there for you buddy. Sssshhh. It's going to be okay. Jakey's here.

Moving right along. There were two Voltrons: The less awesome Voltron that was made of stupid cats and driven by colour blind pilots; and the super awesome Voltron that was made of vehicles and was full of teams.

The first Voltron was a giant space defence cooperation robot that was made of robot lions piloted by what appeared to be five colour coded teenagers who lived in a huge space castle. Their colour coding wasn't perfect though, with only two out of five having uniforms that matched their lions. They weren't even the hard colours. It's all preschool art stuff.

The second Volton, which was my favourite Voltron, was also a giant space defence cooperation robot. That's what a Voltron is. Where it differed though was that it was made of vehicles, and had fifteen crew members, and took part in the exploration of space, and it lived on a spaceship.

It lived on a spaceship.

Just like Han Solo!

It had been sent out in search of new habitable planets in an attempt to solve the overpopulation crisis back on Earth. The Earth meanwhile was involved in an interplanetary war with the Drule Empire who were also looking for new habitable planets. It was on a similar space page as Star TrekBattlestar Galactica, and Starblazers (Space Battleship Yamato). There were actual plots and things that happened opposed to the whole thing just being a framing device for the obligatory giant robot battles, which were all Voltron.


As a child I had a great deal of sympathy for the Drule. Their planet was going to explode because of global warming or something. EXPLODE! That is one of the worst kinds of thing. That's what can happen. They pretty much all drove SUVs, even their dolphins, and something about coal and phenylalanine. They never really went into it. They would always show you scenes of the people suffering as they burnt to death though. They went into that. It was pretty hard to hate them when all of this was the situation. I mean, you don't know how much they brought it on themselves with the SUVs. It might've been previous generations.

They don't cover it.

Maybe they do.

It's been a while.


It was also the richer of the two in terms of characters, who actually seemed to have lives and all of that jazz. It just never felt as isolated as the lion one. 

The first half of the show was made from a Japanese show called GoLion which is set on a post apocalyptic Earth, and as a result there isn't a whole lot going on outside the giant robot action. The apocalypse did that. This might've also been global warming. I don't remember if they went into it. A lot of the Earth scenes on the lion side were taken from the other show. The Earth scenes that didn't involve desolate wastelands. It feels a lot like there isn't really much at stake.

By comparison the crew of the other Voltron must continue their mission knowing that their home planet is constantly being attacked by the Drule, which they mostly did by spending a lot of time in the 'cafeteria'. The same way the rest of us deal with our problems.

One super cooperation space vodka at a time.


I'm kind of making it sound like I didn't like the lion one at all. That isn't the case. I was super fond of it, and got ridiculously excited when it was on, but the other one was phenomenal. At the end of the day it comes down to super isolated Power Rangers at the far end of space with a less diverse robotic menagerie, versus Battlestar Galactica with a giant robot. It's kind of hands down for me. At the real end of the day though a giant robot would make a sword out of light and get serious. Really serious. It wasn't super serious. They still did a llittle dance to make their swords, but it was about as serious as dancing gets. It was just the one boy band move, and they got a sword out of it.

You'd make that trade. I know I would. Imagine birthday parties. I'd do a whole dance and end it with the light sword making move and Voltron wreck that cake.

Best birthday ever!

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