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.)
