I think that was the case with Vehicle Voltron.
What’s up with the fascination about Voltron?
- Thread starter Skipper
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Was that actually stated on the show? I haven't seen it since the 1980s. Maybe I was remembering something.
This is the original opening of GoLion. The Goddess of Universe stripped it of free will and split it because it was bad. You don't need to know anything else.
WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION THE GODDESS OF UNIVERSE???
Now let's gather together to honor the Goddess.
(Please Goddess let me keep my legs and arms. I'm quite fond of them)
(BTW, the video is slightly nsfw. And the children that burn and cry in agony in the atomic fire of the WWIII are quite disturbing)
ETA: They said this in an episode of Voltron:
WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION THE GODDESS OF UNIVERSE???
Now let's gather together to honor the Goddess.
(Please Goddess let me keep my legs and arms. I'm quite fond of them)
(BTW, the video is slightly nsfw. And the children that burn and cry in agony in the atomic fire of the WWIII are quite disturbing)
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^ Solar energy actually, and they hesitated to form Voltron because it was only done in an emergency.
In-universe, I always found more logical the concept of transforming robot than combining robot. Anyway, sometime they tried to explain why they have to keep the robot separated. For example, in Robo Combattler V to form the robot and unleash its full energy the pilots must "synchronize" (the power source has some psychic element). It's difficult and exhausting for them and once they failed to form the robot because two pilots had had a fight before.
ETA: sometimes they can not even explain why the robot needs an alternate form. For example, the alternate form of General Daimos is a truck
Well, I assure you that the truck form was virtually never used in any episode. The pilot usually transforms it immediately after the launch from the base.
ETA: sometimes they can not even explain why the robot needs an alternate form. For example, the alternate form of General Daimos is a truck
Well, I assure you that the truck form was virtually never used in any episode. The pilot usually transforms it immediately after the launch from the base.
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Yeah, but as I said, that's all the more reason to have it as a separate construct from the other vehicles, so that they aren't draining that limited power supply by operating independently. Just keep it on standby until it's actually needed. Plus, if you have a limited power supply to start with, it's better if you don't have to waste some of that power on the actual process of combining.
Good grief. That's the darkest, grisliest anime I've seen in ages, and I saw Akira a couple of months ago. It's the sheer gratuitousness of it that gets me. The whole "nuclear destruction of Earth" thing wasn't even relevant to the plot. The five guys (or four guys and an androgynous kid who was inexplicably along with them) were already out in space anyway, and just saw the ruined Earth for, like, 30 seconds before they were captured, so the whole nuclear holocaust could've been left out and the heroes just captured in space.
Aside from that, it was just... really bad. If these guys were captured some time ago, why do they need to lecture each other on their own backstory now? Why did they never decide to escape until now? And if they've been fighting in the savage murder-gore-dismemberment-cannibalism arena long enough to sustain heavy scarring on their arms, why are their clothes still perfectly intact?
Anyway, the supernatural justification for GoLion and the five lions makes a certain amount of narrative sense, regarding the question someone asked earlier of why the combined form is so all-powerful. In the original, it's basically a god that's been humbled by being divinely transformed into a weaker form, and can only briefly regain its full divine power when it's needed. So it's like Thor in older Marvel Comics -- trapped in the powerless human form of Donald Blake except when he calls on the power of his hammer.
Yeah, the Super Sentai/Power Rangers series often have that problem -- the individual Zords are rarely used and more generally they just go straight to Megazord form, which seems like a waste.
Yep. Often, for a Western viewer, watching a Japanese anime is an alienating experience. It is obvious that it is a product for children, which only serves to sell toys. But the Japanese authors use topics such as death, violence or sex that we usually consider only suitable for products aimed at adults.
Anyway this is not the most graphically violent episode of GoLion. This honor goes to GoLion Hunting.
ETA: found the clip. Keep in mind, it is quite violent and bloody
And Zambot 3 is even darkest. Here we see forced migration, refugee camps, suspicion, violence and xenophobia. One of the tactics of the enemy is to capture people at random, turn it into human bombs and release it between the unsuspecting population. You never know if the person next to you could explode at any moment. Many people are lynched by the mob because someone accused them to be a human bomb. And at the end (spoiler) almost all main characters die.
What they do to sell a few more toys!
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I'm sorry. With all the people talking about how much they hated hearing "I'll form the head" over and over, (and because no one else has done it,) I just HAD to make the connection:
I think the ultraviolence of Japanese TV and movies is the best counterargument to the idea that violent entertainment promotes violent behavior. Japanese entertainment is incredibly violent by American standards, but the violent crime rate in Japan is staggeringly low by American standards. If anything, I think that suggests that violent entertainment can be a safe release for aggressive drives rather than something that provokes them.
Even so, the violence in anime and tokusatsu is my least favorite aspect of it. I'd like to see more stories about people who solve problems in ways other than stabbing them, blowing them up, or stabbing them with things that make them blow up.
There are ...conflicting studies about this subject. In my opinion, it's more dangerous a tv show like A-Team which makes you believe you can shoot someone and no one gets hurt, than a Japanese anime which not spare you the terrible consequences of violence.
Detective Conan..?
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I don't think it's ever just about the fiction. It's about how much of an ethical education you get beyond it, in order to put it into context. It's about whether parents and teachers and the community give people a good grounding in right and wrong. If you're raised with the idea that violence is unacceptable, then fantasy violence won't be anything more than a fantasy to you. You'll know it's not meant to apply to the real world. Fantasy can only inspire violence in people who are already predisposed to it due to their real-world upbringing. And blaming the fantasy is just avoiding the real issues.
Although I do think that more positive messages in entertainment can reinforce that kind of real-world moral guidance -- or can help give role models to kids who don't really have them in real life. As a kid, I was drawn to the wholesome, nonviolent heroes of Filmation's Saturday morning cartoons in part because I was bullied in school and thus was inspired by the notion of people who had great power and used it only to help others, never to harm. That's why I wish we had more protagonists like that in the media today.
Of course. It's not the job of the fictions to educate people. In "Bowling for Columbine" you can see how the Americans and Canadians watch exactly the same movies and play the same video games, but the approach to weapons and violence is quite different between the two populations.
Mine was just an academic reasoning. For example, I believe "Murder, She Wrote" is more immoral than "True Detective". In the latter, the death of a human being is not just a logic puzzle and the end of every episode is not a freeze frame where everyone laugh after someone's death..
Yeah, but if you're a viewer with a developed sense of ethics, you can recognize that the "death" in a mystery story like MSW isn't meant to be anything more than a logic puzzle, that it's just a fantasy disconnected from the real thing. Like, nobody would laugh at a Roadrunner cartoon and then go out to the desert and toss a real coyote off a cliff. We laugh because we understand the violence in the cartoon is just a metaphor for failure and frustration. I don't think that's less moral, because it's not even addressing the moral issue. It's detached enough from realism to be abstract.
In the case of mysteries, I think a large part of the reason that so many of them focus on murder is because that's what makes it a mystery -- if the victim survives, then they can just tell what happened. True, you can do mysteries about theft, or about apparent monsters that turn out to be the creepy groundskeeper in a rubber mask, but the stakes are lower and less dramatic. Murder mystery series may make death seem routine or casual, but at the same time, they reinforce society's moral strictures against killing, because the killers are always brought to justice. I mean, to me, a story where the hero catches killers through the nonviolent means of detective work and deductive reasoning is preferable to one where the hero is the one killing people. I'll take Columbo over Dirty Harry any day. (Although that can be a moot point in mysteries set in places and times where the death penalty is in effect.)
I had a vague fondness for it in my teen years, but I recall the vehicle Voltron being a more "sci-fi" oriented story, and better animated. I glanced at the new series on Netflix for about 5 minutes then watched something else.
We had Battle of the Planets(Gatchaman) and Starblazers(Yamato). In the mid-80s we had Robotech, which I thought was a revelation at the time, but now looks really crude. We never got Gundam on TV here if I recall correctly. All my late 80s early 90s anime were VHS bootlegs that friends or acquaintances made for me..as well as a few from the handful of conventions I went to. I coveted my copy of Akira in '90 and Lensman in '92.
RAMA
We had Battle of the Planets(Gatchaman) and Starblazers(Yamato). In the mid-80s we had Robotech, which I thought was a revelation at the time, but now looks really crude. We never got Gundam on TV here if I recall correctly. All my late 80s early 90s anime were VHS bootlegs that friends or acquaintances made for me..as well as a few from the handful of conventions I went to. I coveted my copy of Akira in '90 and Lensman in '92.
RAMA
(I really wanted add this question to a Voltron-themed thread but I didn't find a recent one)
Hi everyone!
I'm really fascinated(?) by the fact that Voltron is such a cornerstone of the American pop culture. It's constantly mentioned in memes, by comedians, it had a Netflix remake. I just want to understand why.
I'll give a little context to the question.
My first assumption was that the American audience had never seen other Japanese cartoons and then it had no touchstone. Nope. I was wrong.
So, anyone care to enlighten me? Thanks
I can't really argue with that. Like I said, it's a handwave, not an explanation. However:
On the one hand: on a show like Lion Voltron, you'd have to deal with the characters towing around this inert object most of the time and only using it in the last few minutes of every episode. It seems a little clunky. (This assumes they don't have a mothership close by. I haven't seen that much of Lion Voltron. Feel free to correct me.)
On the other hand: having the characters race to get into the robot ahead of (or in the middle of) enemy fire would generate some excitement.
On the other other hand: on a show like Vehicle Voltron, those problems wouldn't arise in the first place. They did have a mothership, the Explorer (or whatever the name was). It could just be stored there and have a separate crew.
Which is another reason why, in real life, we not only have separate vehicles for separate purposes, but separate operators/crews as well.
The main title sequence to GoLion/Voltron, with the lions each coming out of a different environment (e.g. lava, water, forest, etc.), reminded me very much of the Zord summoning sequence in Zyuranger/Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 1. I always found that sequence hilarious, because you have the TyrannoZord coming out of a crack in the earth, the Mastodon coming out of the frozen wastes, the Triceratops coming out of the desert, the Sabertooth Tiger coming out of the forest, and the Pterodactyl coming out of an erupting volcano, and apparently the rampaging giant monster just sits there twiddling its thumbs for the six or eight hours it would take for them all to come together from such disparate climatic regions.
Lion Voltron had the great look , had the great opening along with the great opening music, was a robot that broke into 5 lions that had scifi and magic and Voltron slicing other creatures in half with a cool ass sword. What kid in the 80's would turn that off?
Plus it had 5 main characters that in most part where very well liked and story was pretty simple. Plus the princess was cute too.
Outside of Transformers, to see 5 robots combine to a bigger/stronger robot was something new and made it stand out to me atleast.
Guessing no one here has read Voltron: Devil's Due
The mini-series showed Voltron existing as a single construct created by sorcerers and scientists, resembling a knight. During its battle with the first Drule Empire, Voltron was tricked by Haggar into landing on a black comet with the gravitational attraction of a singularity. Voltron was then attacked by Haggar, and blown into five pieces. However, the intervention of a sorcerer resulted in the five pieces becoming the five lions as they descended onto Arus.
Plus it had 5 main characters that in most part where very well liked and story was pretty simple. Plus the princess was cute too.
Outside of Transformers, to see 5 robots combine to a bigger/stronger robot was something new and made it stand out to me atleast.
Guessing no one here has read Voltron: Devil's Due
The mini-series showed Voltron existing as a single construct created by sorcerers and scientists, resembling a knight. During its battle with the first Drule Empire, Voltron was tricked by Haggar into landing on a black comet with the gravitational attraction of a singularity. Voltron was then attacked by Haggar, and blown into five pieces. However, the intervention of a sorcerer resulted in the five pieces becoming the five lions as they descended onto Arus.
6 Things Only Divorce Lawyers Know About American Marriages
In many states, you can get an easy no-fault divorce. When you got married, you didn't know his favorite Voltron was the crappy vehicle one -- you are, and will die, a lion girl. Those are irreconcilable differences, plain as day.
This is the backbone of any healthy relationship, and damned if we'll listen to a single word otherwise.
Forgot to add in my thoughts on the Original Post...
but I think the fascination with Voltron is that it is a bridge that connects a lot of interests...
So it for those who started with Battle of the Planets, Voltron continues the 5 person team (with Leader, The Cool Guy, The Girl, The Geek/Kid, & the Fat Guy).
For younger people, it led into the Power Rangers, starting the 5 color team member trend (in the young viewers' mind)
Also, it brought together a bunch of "cool" stuff in one show -- sci-fi, magic, robots, castles, big alien monsters and Lions
(The more mature kids liked the 15 piece Voltron
)
but I think the fascination with Voltron is that it is a bridge that connects a lot of interests...
So it for those who started with Battle of the Planets, Voltron continues the 5 person team (with Leader, The Cool Guy, The Girl, The Geek/Kid, & the Fat Guy).
For younger people, it led into the Power Rangers, starting the 5 color team member trend (in the young viewers' mind)
Also, it brought together a bunch of "cool" stuff in one show -- sci-fi, magic, robots, castles, big alien monsters and Lions
(The more mature kids liked the 15 piece Voltron
)
