#beast king golion
one of the only thibgs i remember about watchung voltron was being PISSED that they didn’t change armour colours. why was lance, the new pilot of the redlion, wearing the blue paladin’s armour still??? and why was allura PINK
While it does kind of seem unusual, there IS actually a reason for this! The 80s version of the show, Voltron: Defender of the Universe (DotU), had canonically mismatched suits. There was actually no explanation in that show, but as the assets from Toei Animation’s BeastKing GoLion, they were a little limited on what they could do. (Until the last season where they commissioned a studio to create new episodes before the show was cancelled, but that’s another thing.)
In DotU, it seemed to be even more out of nowhere. Keith just… got a red suit and was the pilot of the Black Lion. Sven (think: Proto-Shiro) had a black suit and was the pilot of Blue Lion. When he was injured by the witch Haggar and knocked out of commission, Princess Allura popped up in a pink suit.
These colors in this era are not unintentional - @nomadicism is really the expert on this field, but GoLion seems to have used sentai-themed colors, which was not at all unusual for this era. From a post talking about a a different show:
(For those unfamiliar with super sentai, I’m going to use Power Rangers terms here) Typically, the Red Ranger is the leader, with the Black Ranger being the next likely leader. Sometimes it’s the Green and White Rangers.
There’s a great deal more to this, covering all the colors, their meaning, the role they play on the team - all is independent of the actual ship they fly, but suffice it to say, the armor colors are a conscious choice made in GoLion. The armor is about the person wearing it and their role in the narrative, not about the vehicle they use. And when the assets were adapted by Defender of the Universe for the Western Audience - there wasn’t an easy way around it, so it just was brought along.
Moreover, in Voltron: Legendary Defender, we are actually given a reason for why Allura’s suit is pink! Lance questions her about it when she shows up in her suit, and she responds that essentially, pink is the color of honor and mourning – she wears pink to honor those fallen warriors that have come before her.
From a strictly Western standpoint, VLD actually gives us more canonical explanation for the suits that any other (DotU) iteration. While they ultimately pay homage to the original formation, they give us a reason for this mismatch by having them switch ships in the narrative. (I personally found this to be a brilliant bridge between the old universe colors and the modern audience now.)
(As a side note, Voltron: The Third Dimension actually has suits that match the lions, but we don’t talk about that show.)
Serious post bros
I don’t get why people call voltron a ripoff of other mecha anime all that much, when you look at stuff that Voltron “ripped off” like Voltes V and botp it seems less ripped off, more inspired (even heavily in some aspects) by that material.
Sure, Voltron (or Go Lion?) has almost the same team comp as both of those but the characters are still written pretty differently and are in much different settings. A ripoff is defined as “an act or instance of ripping off another or others; a theft, cheat, or swindle.” And obviously Go Lion wasn’t trying to directly steal from either of those, it was trying to do its own thing while using some of the tropes of the time like most other mecha anime! You could really call any mecha anime a ripoff of Voltes V or Gatchaman and it’d pretty much have the same weight. I bet you can come up with better reasons that Go Lion (or Voltron) isn’t a ripoff then I did, but a ripoff is just too much of a stretch.
i put some captions with extra info above so people don’t have to go through jp golion and voltron sources looking for basic canon details the same way i did
(may update this post over time)
last updated: apr 24
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loose wip for a golion / vld comic
golion ep6 scene redraw, with vld lance keith and shiro (blood)
vld shiro (25 yrs old)/golion shirogane takashi 銀貴 (nickname: danmari だんまり, quiet) a.k.a. 80s sven (~21-23 yrs old)
[follower locked shiro/shiro/shiro/shiro/shiro, including golion shirogane:
https://twitter.com/watercups/status/836753263496204288]
vld lance (~17 yrs old) + golion kurogane isamu 黒鉄勇 (nickname: otenkiya お天気屋, moody) a.k.a. 80s lance (21-23 yrs old) sketches
vld keith (~17 yrs old) + golion kogane akira 黄金旭 (nickname: chief チーフ) a.k.a. 80s keith (21-23 yrs old) sketches
golion seidou tsuyoshi 青銅強 (nickname: mukoukki 向こうっ気, hothead) a.k.a. 80s hunk (22-24 yrs old) sketches
akira/isamu/tsuyoshi (80s H/K/L; 80s klunk; akitsuyosamu; chief/moody/hothead)
akira/takashi (80s K/S; 80s sveith; akitaka; chief/quiet)
isamu/takashi (80s L/S; 80s svance; isakashi; quiet/moody)
+ akira/isamu (80s K/L; akisamu; chief/moody)
some general golions:
suzuishi hiroshi 錫石宏 (nickname: chibi ちび, shorty) a.k.a. 80s pidge (12 yrs old)
…+ seidou + kurogane + shirogane + kogane
…+ akira/tsuyoshi (80s H/K; 80s heith; akiyoshi; chief/hothead)
akira/isamu (akisamu), loosely based off this fic:
http://archiveofourown.org/works/10704414
http://finelyagedlemons.tumblr.com/post/159884623694/sugar-sweet-and-stuff-finelyagedlemons …thank you alex
more general golions
hothead and shorty
shorty and quiet
moody and chief
sketch) akira in flight suit concept+style by lacktwo
(http://lacktwo.tumblr.com/post/159325935036 …thank you ven for letting me do this)
isamu in crop top + short shorts (based off an outfit in one of the voltron comics) …thank you golion cluster for the refs
akira/takashi (akitaka)
tsuyoshi/takashi (80s H/S; 80s svunk; quiet/hothead; takayoshi, takatsuyo)
…+ cat ears
isamu/takashi (isakashi)
tsuyoshi/isamu (80s H/L; 80s hance; moody/hothead; tsuyosamu)
akira/tsuyoshi (akiyoshi)
wip, cropped) akira/tsuyoshi/isamu/takashi