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It plays best as a nostalgia piece. |
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The biggest differences come in the first episode. Voltron established a human-friendly universe where the peaceable, advanced Galaxy Garrison ruled over space. In the original Japanese version of the story, five space explorers return to Earth and find it devastated; World War III has wiped out virtually everyone. Before the carnage sinks in, they're captured by an alien spacecraft and taken to the heart of the Galra Empire, where Emperor Zaibazaal rules over a planet of slaves and monstrous creatures called Deathblack Beastmen, which he has fight to the death in his gladiator pits.
Before the five space explorers can be thrown into the pit, they escape to the nearby devastated planet Altea, where they learn of the legend of the giant robot Golion. Supposedly this robot was so powerful and arrogant that it challenged the "goddess of the galaxy" to fight, and she split it into five lion robots as punishment. The five explorers find and claim the lions and use them to fight Zaibazaal's forces, which keep coming to try to recapture them. From there, Beast King Golion proceeds much like Voltron, but with much more swearing, and a bit more crudely animated but surprisingly graphic violence.
Stereotypes and sexism
Possibly the biggest surprise in the original edit of the series is the offhanded sexism. In Voltron, the five explorers (Keith, Lance, Sven, Hunk and Pidge) joined forces with the 16-year-old princess of the planet where they crash-landed, and while she was often the weakest link in their chain, they all seemed to admire her beauty and courage. In Golion, they snap at her ("Shut up! Just keep quiet and pray or something!") and frequently mock her girly incompetence. When she tries to become a pilot, the court's first lady publicly spanks her; the explorers laugh and comment that she's really "a handful." And she is, too--a dim bulb who, when the skies rain blood, chirps that "it's so pretty and red, like strawberry juice." Nor is the stereotyping entirely against women; when two rivals fight and the princess is horrified, the same court lady laughs, "Why not? They're both men."Broad stereotypes abound in other, funnier places, too. The five protagonists all have Japanese names (Akira, Isamu, Takashi, Tsuyoshi, and Hiroshi, respectively), but they refer to each other solely as Chief, Moody, Quiet, Hothead and Shorty. Which makes for some oddly informal moments, as when everyone thinks Pidge/Hiroshi is dead, and they all wail, "Shorty! Oh, Shorty!"
Most of the differences between the later episodes are trivial; for instance, Golion features a jaunty theme song whenever the five robot lions merge, where Voltron featured a lengthy mechanical checklist ("Infracells up! Megathrusters are go!") and a character description of the merging process. ("And I'll form the head!") A few of the differences are more telling, though. In Voltron, Sven/Tahashi/Quiet was badly wounded in one episode and disappeared from the show for a while; in the Japanese version, he's killed and given an extensive funeral. (The character later seen as him in the American series was his brother in the Japanese version.) The characters' foul mouths and the minor bloody violence in the original version point to a slightly more adult aesthetic. But overall, Golion is just Voltron in slightly different form, with all its flaws and pleasures intact, and again, it plays best as a nostalgia piece.
The animation in this series still looks really old and dated, and the stiff dialogue comes across that way too, but it's actually pretty charming in its ridiculousness, as when "Shorty" offhandedly says that he'll go scout ahead because "I'm descended from ninjas!" or a routed adversary announces "I feel chagrined!" --Tasha
