I was excited about getting to watch the show again, but I was fully aware that sometimes shows that seemed awesome when you're young don't hold up nearly as well as their nostalgia, so I didn't know what to expect.
First off, the video quality is not as good as I would have hoped. The episodes have been remastered - and some of the video looks pretty good, but certain spots here and there look quite grainy... Then again, the quality of television has come quite a ways since Voltron was first aired.
As for the show, itself, as I had feared, Voltron doesn't hold up well against adult scrutiny, but I found myself enjoying both its original manner (though, perhaps, to a lesser degree) as well as its... well, awkwardness, simplicity and disturbing qualities, now that I'm older. Looking at Voltron with more discerning eyes, it becomes clear that a huge amount of the footage is reused, over and over. The intro lasts a minute and sixteen seconds and tells the back story... at the beginning of every episode. Then, many episodes have a short bit that brings you up to speed on what happened in the previous episode. Then, of course, there is the iconic footage of the five lions flying up into the air and forming into Voltron... which is reused in every episode. Under closer scrutiny, you start to realize that Voltron's signature move - the jump up into the air and descend on the ro-beast and cut them in half finishing move - is also reused footage (at least the up-in-the-air-sword-overhead part). The fighter ships from Planet Doom are of a specific type, so you'll see them often, and that footage is reused, as well. Voltron: The Legend Begins is three hours long, but there is probably less than an hour of unique footage in the cartoon. The funniest thing about that is that I don't recall this bothering me in the least when I was a kid sitting in front of my parents' television. In fact, I remember being excited about "my favorite part" coming up... in episodes I hadn't seen yet. Which, looking back, was sort of strange. (Yes, my favorite parts were when the team rode in the underground transport system to get to the lions and when the lions form Voltron, if you were curious.)
I remember one particular scene from one particular episode from back in my childhood... where the Voltron Force are relaxing after a victory by swimming in a pond and diving off of the Black Lion. Princess Allura dives in, then doesn't surface for long enough for the team to get worried and start looking for signs of her. Pidge innocently lifts her top from the surface of the water and states, "Here's part of her." Princess Allura surfaces almost immediately after that statement, pround of her well-executed dive and, at first, unaware that she had lost her top as the others compliment her on her "form." Nothing was shown, of course, but I found it strange that a children's show would depict a scene where a girl was topless. That episode is not in Voltron: The Legend Begins, but in The Lion Has New Claws, Princess Allura's governess returns to the castle and, in one scene, disciplines her by bending her over and spanking her in front of the Voltron Force and Coran, the caretaker of the Castle of Lions. This seemed a bit awkward... the princess is not a little child. It makes me wonder how many sexual overtones there were in the entire series that I completely missed when I was young.
Voltron: The Legend Begins contains the first seven episodes of the Voltron animated series, which shows how five space explorers from the Galaxy Garrison end up on the planet Arus and decide to help defend it from King Zarkon and his robot warriors from Planet Doom. These space explorers: Keith, Lance, Hunk, Pidge and Sven become the Voltron Force and pilot five robotic lions that can combine to form Voltron, the Defender of the Universe. By the end of these episodes, Princess Allura replaces a badly injured Sven, to arrive at the team I remember from my youth as the Voltron Force.
Back in the day, it didn't occur to me that the alluring Princess Allura was named after that quality, and, while I did catch that the hag-like witch that serves King Zarkon got her name, Haggar, from her appearance, I hadn't seen the early episodes, where King Zarkon clearly pronounces the name with a short "a" sound, as in hag. By the seventh episode, her name is pronounced with a long "a" sound: "Hay-gar." Another interesting thing was that as soon as Princess Allura deigned that the Space Explorers would henceforth be known as the Voltron Force, everyone started (immediately) referring to them as such - both King Zarkon and Hagar as well as the folks at the Galaxy Garrison... without any scene where this name was shared with anyone. As a kid, I wouldn't have given it a second thought, but watching it again, I found it incredibly amusing to see the name immediately adopted by everyone.
I enjoyed seeing the first seven episodes of Voltron in The Legend Begins, as I came in somewhere after that in my childhood. These episodes do a good job of showing what Voltron was all about, and setting the stage, so to speak, for the rest of the series. If you're trying to relive your childhood or introduce someone else to Voltron, I would recommend Voltron: The Legend Begins.
