JuneNephthys

Go Lion, localized in English as Voltron, is a bottom tier imitation of Mobile Suit Gundam, Robotech, and Space Battleship Yamato that somehow became a hoot among the science fiction community in North America. • Every single aspect of this series, seems to be like a Korean bootleg of what should be considered good. There's even the same stereotypes, much like Sayla Mass in the original Gundam (even though her brother is one of the most powerful Newtypes, she can't even pilot a Gundam), there’s the stereotype that women can't pilot robots because, y'know, they're women. Go Lion is definitely a period piece, if youwant to call it that. • First, the characters are literally just empty stereotypical husks that talk. The original Saint Seiya isn't a show know for anything more that two-dimensional character writing, but Go Lion makes it look like it's some kind of next-level psychological Neon Genesis Evangelion shit. It stands to reason that my favorite character is this entire series is Buffalon. The giant buffalo alien, hell yeah! • My love of kaiju aside. The story is forgettable. It's just another tyrannical, alien ruler and his asshole son. You're not going to find a Dessler or Gihran in this series. The story was pretty discombobulated because of the episodic nature, but what was more jarring was that there is little to no continuity, except for multi-parted episodes, and the characters don't grow and aren’t affected by anything at all. • Even though, on some planets, the bargain bin Zendradi are, I don’t know, mass-murdering and enslaving people. But, hey, who gives a fuck about that, this is a kid's show and we have combining robots. • With that description out of the way, this series is more of a Power Rangers thing than shows that actually have heavy political messages like Space Battleship Yamato. If you want some silly mecha shows that's retro and aimed at mentally-challenged children, I'm sure you could find a better one. I give this series a super scathing rating of 2/10.

Aqua_Burst

GoLion is the subbed verison of what would be later localized into 80s Voltron. I'll keep this spoiler free. Story: The overarching story is okay, but nothing super original or anything to write home about. Pretty much your standard "heroes need to overthrow a tyrannical, alien ruler" story. Most of the episodes are formulaic with a few exceptions that hint at the overall plot. But I still wish that there was more continuity in this series and it had a serialized structure like a lot of modern shows. Now is a good of a time as any to bring this up. This series hassome dark elements such as: excessive gore, people drinking the blood of the dead, decapitation, cannibalism, off screen rape, suicide, animal death and things like that. This didn't both me as much, since I'm a fan of a lot of darker animes and tv shows. But if you're squeamish, this is something to keep in mind before watching this. Characters: This is pretty scattered across the board. The heroes, outside of a couple exceptions, are pretty meh. They're aren't hateable. But they're rather sterotypical and nothing to write home about. Amue are my favourites in the cast, being the most fleshed out of the core cast. The villains, for the most part, were completely one dimensional. Outside of doing disturbing actions, they had very little character and lacked any motivation for their actions. They came off like pieces of cardboard for the heroes to fight more so than anything else. The only exception to this was Sincline. While his character concept was rather interesting and he was the most complex out of the main three villains, he's nothing to write home about. Parts of his backstory also make no sense when you think about it. (Not gonna get into why, because spoilers) Hys and Raible, who are both more heroic characters, were flat out unlikable. Not in a "love to hate them sense" like a villain. But they were such unlikable douchebags that it made me want to launch them into the sun. Hys was very condensing to the main characters and super sexist. And Raible was pretty sexist himself. The side characters were okay, but nothing to write home about either. Art/Sound: Voice acting was decent. Nothing amazing, but nothing super horrible either. I could always make out what the actors were saying and what the sound effects were. Character designs are were decent as well. Although, I question some of the character's fashion choices. Same can't be said for the art and animation, which shifted back and forth being okay to being pretty bad. Characters like Sincline would often go off model a lot of the time. Even the OP animation wasn't the greatest. Some of the backgrounds and shots were good, but those were a rarity in this series. Enjoyment: This a decent anime with a bunch of good, bad and outright terrible aspects. It was interesting to see where elements of the reboot originated. I had fun predicting where the reboot might go by what went down in this series while it was still airing. Over all: If you're a fan of any of the Voltron series, including the reboot, you should be able to get this through this fine. For everyone else, however, I recommend giving this series a pass. Because there are far better mecha series that are worth your time over this. Story: 6 Art: 3 Sound: 4 Character: 4 Enjoyment: 5 Overall: 5