The subject: Voltron. First hit the air in 1984.

Plot in two sentences: A team of space explorers journey to distant planet Arus, where they unlock the secret of forming Voltron: Defender of the Universe, "a mighty robot, loved by good, feared by evil." They then spend the rest of the series handing the evil King Zarkon and Prince Lotor of planet Doom their asses whenever the forces of Doom attack -- which is every episode.

***

I need to be up front with you -- when I started the project of examining cartoons from my formative years, the idea of being able to go back and watch Voltron was pretty much my Holy Grail. It had been years since I'd last gotten a substantive look, possibly as far back as the original airings. Aside from a few rebroadcasts that I never managed to follow, the first time I've had full access to the show was in September of 2006 when the first DVD set was released. So it's been a little more than 20 years since I've had any kind of serious Voltron immersion.

My Voltron back-story is notable primarily because there IS a back-story -- something that I assume many people don't have in relation to cartoons. The giant robot came into my life when I was in elementary school; my mother (a teacher) always had to leave for work well before the bus came to pick me up, and as I was still too young to adopt the lifestyle of a latchkey kid, I was dropped off at my friend Brandon’s house each morning to wait for the bus. There was always a substantial layover before we had to take to the street, so we either played or watched television. Guess what started airing one day during this layover period?

Voltron immediately became a morning ritual bordering on addiction. We would hover in the vicinity of the TV each morning and wait for the first sign of the fade-in to a space background followed by a serious voice intoning the "In days of long ago…" narration that opened each episode of the show that featured the Voltron made up of five robot lions. There were other days when we'd get the stars and then suddenly be dealt a cruel blow -- the narration for the series with the Voltron made out of cars would begin. We'd howl and complain about this tragedy ("Awwwww… it's the stupid CARS!") and then turn off the TV in disgust to go play in another room, because if there was one universal truth that Brandon and I understood at the time, it was that the Voltron with the cars sucked. It had to be the lions or nothing. We'd check in every morning to watch for a return of the lion credits, but otherwise the TV was ignored, brought down by the incredible crapitude of the cool Voltron's lame-ass cousin.

Now THOSE are the days of long ago, and I'm sitting here, pushing 30, having just finished watching the first 15 episodes of Voltron on DVD. If this was my Holy Grail, then suddenly I feel like there's a Knight of the Crusades standing over me murmuring, "He chose poorly."

Okay, I immediately feel that I've perhaps overstated my initial disappointment -- I knew what I was getting into, and there was no way that Voltron the series was going to hold up to my personal "Legend of Voltron." Perhaps it would be fairer to claim that I was more surprised at what I was watching rather than disappointed.

First of all, I now feel extremely confident that I really don't have adult attention deficit disorder, because otherwise I probably wouldn't have noticed anything unusual while watching the show. The fact is, Voltron is not a cartoon meant for people who are able to absorb and retain information, as evident during the continuous story arc of the first four episodes, where one is left with a feeling of having no concept of the timeline of events… did planet Arus just get attacked by the evil Zarkon for the first time, like we were just shown? Then why in the hell are the characters talking about Voltron being defeated and broken into the five lion robots, consequently being hidden around Arus, and only the King knows how to reassemble him? Oh, but wait, the King's dead, and obviously HAS been dead for a while, since he's got a right flashy tomb in the castle. Which, incidentally, is where the keys to the five lions are hidden, because the King wanted them buried with him in order to protect the secret of Voltron. Oh, except that when the five space explorers that become the Voltron force show up, they can't use Voltron because the keys were buried with the King and they've got to go and root them out. That's some brilliant planning on the part of a guy who was smart enough to build a giant freaking robot. I wonder if he also habitually locked his keys in his car so nobody would steal it.

That's an example of some of the continuity issues in the initial story arc. Thankfully, once the series gets down to business, it quickly becomes a case of taking a formula for an episode and plugging material into it:

Opening Act: King Zarkon decides to attack planet Arus, laments the presence of Volton, damns his staff for not being more competent, then tells someone to come up with a brilliant plan. This is usually the job of his evil witch, Hagar, who decides to do something devious to incapacitate one of the members of the Voltron force, thus taking away their ability to join their robot lions together into the mighty robot.

Middle Act: The plan goes into action, is consistently detected by one of the good guys, and consequently ignored by everyone else. Zarkon's forces attack, the lone guy that was suspicious of a trap manages to come up with an amazing solution to the problem of the day, and five lions go into action, battling whatever giant robot monster ("Robeast," you'll recall) is attacking them after being flown in from planet Doom in a giant space coffin.

End Act: The lions unite to form Voltron, who eventually defeats the Robeast by using his Blazing Sword, which isn't at all like a lightsaber from Star Wars despite the fact that the producers use the same sound effect for it. The Blazing Sword is not only wholly badass and cool looking, but it's the only way of hurting one of the giant monsters, as evidenced by the fact that the Voltron force will try every other weapon they have against a Robeast with no success before using the Blazing Sword. Everyone celebrates and talks about the lessons they learned, swearing they'll never be that oblivious to an evil plan again. Until tomorrow.

Now, there is an additional caveat to writing an episode:

If there is ever a deviation from the standard "attack Arus" formula, the team must be given a reason to form Voltron at some point in every episode, possibly because it's in his contract, but more likely because recycling the same minute of the "forming Voltron" animation is a great way to save money. This is also where the cartoon will start to remind you of looking through a fashion magazine, because if there's one thing that big V does well besides killing giant monsters, it's posing like a catalog model. Perhaps we missed the part of the storyline where we find out that Voltron was the college roommate of Derek Zoolander.

What this requirement does, however, is paint the heroes as being just a tad inconsistent when it comes to reacting to the day's bad news. For example, when faced with fighting the biggest, baddest Robeast ever, the Voltron force will inevitably wait for as long as possible before uniting to form the robot, often at the cost of their own health and the welfare of those around them as the monsters kick the crap out of them during the battle. Then, when the casualties and property damage have reached a sufficient level, they finally unite to bring Voltron into action. This makes no sense at all when the next day, at breakfast in the Castle of Lions, someone discovers that they're out of milk…

"Quick, gang! We NEED that milk -- we've got to form Voltron and go to the store!"

It sounds like someone's got some issues with their priorities.

There are many other questions that can be asked, like "Why can a civilization build an unbeatable robot and then only make the tunnels used to reach him accessible via something that looks like a trapeze?" To be perfectly fair, though, it may be best to approach a modern viewing of Voltron in the same way that you'd go through your childhood artwork. Appreciate it for what it is. Use it to remember what it was like back in the day. Just never, ever try to figure out what the hell you meant to depict back when you set crayon to paper.