Hello, friends! I’m back from my month-long hiatus, which was fantastic and a much-needed break, but now it’s time to get back into the swing of things.

I thought I’d do something a little fun today, which is a comparison and breakdown of two animated shows that involve kids in space: Bravest Warriors (2012-present) and Voltron: Legendary Defender (2016-2018). We can discuss their parallels, their mistakes, and what we can learn from them (there will be spoilers).

Let’s do this.

 

 

Bravest Warriors

Bravest Warriors is a show created by Pendleton Ward (also known as the creator of Adventure Time) surrounding four teens — Chris, Beth, Danny, and Wallow — who travel around in space helping out various aliens and planets. Currently spanning four seasons, the show was originally a webseries, but the fourth season was moved to VRV and Teletoon as a television series. I’ve seen the first three seasons and the first episode of season 4.

 

Voltron: Legendary Defender

Voltron: Legendary Defender is the most recent reboot of the Voltron franchise, which was originally created in the early 1980’s. It centers around a cast of characters known as the Paladins, who pilot five robotic lions that form a singular giant robot, Voltron. Shiro, Lance, Hunk, Pidge, Keith, and Allura (and Coran?) are set up as the universe’s last hope against an alien enemy, the Galra. The show is produced by DreamWorks and animated by the renowned Studio Mir, and it combines traditional animation with CGI for action sequences involving the robots. I’ve only seen the first episode and a couple of clips here and there, but am mostly familiar with the overarching plot. You can currently find it on Netflix.

 

 

Color schemes for characters

Let’s start with something fun and look at pretty pictures. The main casts from both shows have similar color themes and I thought it’d be interesting to point them out:

 

 

Beth & Pidge: green

Wallow & Hunk: yellow / orange

Danny & Keith: red

Chris & Lance: blue

Plum & Allura: pink

 

It’s a color combination that works very well visually, and I think that it’s likely a coincidence that they’re so similar. If you have heard otherwise, though, let me know in the comments.

 

Concept

Next, let’s talk about the concept. If you think about it from a conceptual basis, Bravest Warriors and Voltron: Legendary Defender are very similar. It’s a one sentence pitch: a group of teens in space save the universe (I know VLD’s Shiro doesn’t really count as a teen, but we’re going to sneak him into the label anyway for comparison purposes).

In a sense, it’s the found family aspect that appeals to me (and I’m sure many others) — but we’re not talking about that now. Both shows follow the “next generation” of heroes: in Bravest Warriors, the group’s parents are trapped inside the See Through Zone, so the kids have to take over their responsibilities. In Voltron: Legendary Defender, the team makes up the newest generation of heroes who form and pilot the giant robot, Voltron.

But despite the fact that they have similar concepts, the execution is extremely different. Bravest Warriors — the first three seasons, at the very least; I can’t speak for the fourth season — is more of a slice-of-life show, or at least the most slice-of-life you can get in space. The further you get through the show, the more hints you pick up that imply a greater overarching plot — although said overarching plot is still unclear. Major elements include interference with timelines, rescuing the Warriors’ parents from the See Through Zone, and dealing with Chris’ potential as an Emotion Lord (someone who can harness great power tied to their emotions).

 

 

Voltron: Legendary Defender, however, makes it clear that they’re diving right away into the story. The central cast of characters, the robot Voltron, and main mission are all introduced in the one-hour pilot episode. While Bravest Warriors focuses on the power of emotion, Voltron: Legendary Defender has a higher emphasis on friendship, with the bonds between the Paladins and their robot lions stressed as crucial to their success and ability as heroes. There is arguably deeper lore and history woven into the world of Voltron: Legendary Defender than Bravest Warriors simply because it has significantly more run time.

 

Shipping / Romance

Okay, here’s where things start to get bad. If you saw Voltron: Legendary Defender when it was first released, I am so sorry for bringing up bad memories.

Both shows have a number of flaws, but one especially stands out for both: the shipping.

I’m going to start with Bravest Warriors first. Bravest Warriors has set up at least two love triangles between their small cast over the course of the show: Chris trying to decide between Beth and Plum, and Beth deciding between Chris and Danny. Where the show starts to go wrong for me personally is when they start leaning more heavily on the will-they-won’t-they romance rather than the strong friendship the group already has with each other.

 

 

However, there are some saving factors to this. First, it is heavily implied that the Chris/Beth/Plum triangle is relevant to the overarching story. Plum is implied to be a time traveler who is determined not to let Chris and Beth get together because it’ll result in the end of the world (or something). Additionally, in season three, in an episode where Beth is debating between Chris and Danny, she realizes that choosing one would be disastrous for the Warriors’ stable friendship — “whichever decision I make, it could tear the group apart” (S3E3). As a result, she chooses “to be alone” (S3E3). This still does not resolve any of the love triangles, though.

Now onto Voltron: Legendary Defender. If there’s anything that tore the fandom apart, it was the shipping. I was fortunate to not have heard of Voltron: Legendary Defender when it was still running, so I’m able to look back with hindsight at what I missed during those two years. I’m not going to go into each individual ship, because there are honestly too many, but I will say that from what I have seen and heard, the final, canon romantic relationships were not well received. Lance and Allura get together in season eight, but there was no buildup to this — if any, it was a one-sided thing. Additionally, Allura had just gone through a devastating loss, so she and Lance felt like a rebound relationship to many fans.

 

 

To add to this, while I was not there to see this firsthand, I’ve gathered that the overall fandom was extremely toxic during the show’s run, divided between factions of romantic ships. Voice actors received death threats from toxic shippers (here’s a tweet from Bex Taylor-Klaus, who voiced Pidge) and it was likely a rough time for those on the creative team as well (I’d also like to note that there were many fans who were non-toxic and gained a bad rap under the umbrella of the VLD fandom). I’d go as far as to say that the romance was one of the main factors that contributed to the decline of the show.

 

Decline in quality

Linking back to my previous point, a broad commonality both shows have is a decline in quality.

Romantic tragedies aside, Voltron: Legendary Defender failed in its establishment of found family and strong friendships. Many fans argue that the first two seasons were the best at displaying the Paladins’ friendship, but there is a divide between whether the series worsened at season three or season six. Either way, there is a consensus towards a decline in quality as the series went on.

This is disastrous because it affects the core of the show: friendship. If the link between the Paladins as well as their bond with their lions is established to be crucial to their success as heroes, then surely the found family aspect has to be well done. Yet I’ve heard reviewers describe the Paladins in the later seasons to act as coworkers rather than friends. I’ve also read a comment noting that Pidge and Keith never interact after season 2. The writers sacrificed character arcs for the sake of plot, and as a result, the Paladins’ claim to be “family” in the series finale doesn’t ring true for the viewer. The viewer is left with a few good scenes scattered throughout the series, but not enough to save the show as a whole.

 

 

As for the Bravest Warriors friendships, there is a noticeable tension between Chris, Beth, and Danny by the end of season 3, but I blame that on the romantic drama.

Now, I want to quickly go over the visual decline of Bravest Warriors. The fourth season of Bravest Warriors is animated using Toon Boom Harmony, animation software that is known to be able to create episodes more quickly, but ends up sacrificing quality. As a result, the series is no longer animated with frame-by-frame animation, and there’s a significant difference that definitely added to its decline in popularity.

There is one more thing I’d like to tackle in this section, and that’s the runtime of both shows. Whether it’s the visual difference, the focus on shipping over everything else, or the vague and all-over-the-place overarching plot, it’s clear that Bravest Warriors has decreased in quality over time. Yet the show has been going on since 2012 and has yet to be concluded, despite being much shorter than Voltron: Legendary Defender. I’m doubtful that a season 5 will be made after its shift from webseries to television series lost fans, but if it does happen, it means Bravest Warriors still has a chance to pick itself up. Voltron: Legendary Defender, however, is eight seasons long, but was produced over the course of two years. That sounds like rushed work in pursue of too-quick deadlines. While it was promising, it ultimately failed in its execution, and now there’s no going back.

 

What can we learn?

There are a few things we can take away from these two shows.

First, just because two works have similar premises does not mean that they will be executed in the same way. Take fairytale retellings, for example. They are all inspired by the same source material, but each author puts their own twist on it and spins it into something that’s their own.

Second, character arcs matter. Voltron: Legendary Defender suffered with their character development, and some fans even argue that no one really had a happy ending. When we are attached to a character, we will root for them to the end. We expect them to make mistakes, but learn and grow from them. I can’t confirm this myself, but I have heard that some of the characters in Voltron: Legendary Defender would learn a lesson in one episode, but promptly forget it in the next (which is something that you would see in an episodic show). So unless you’re writing a more episodic show or series of books (Bravest Warriors actually starts off very episodic), character consistency matters, especially if the characters have an arc over the course of the series.

 

 

To add to this, the promises that a creator makes about their story or characters should be fulfilled. I didn’t discuss this before, but in the pilot episode of Voltron: Legendary Defender, Lance is heavily implied to be the main protagonist, or at the very least, the chosen one. There is a huge focus on him in the first few minutes, and he is also the first person to find and bond with his lion. Yet this spotlight fades over the course of the show, and as a result, it feels as if his character is pushed aside. Due to the attention he has in the first episode, one would naturally expect a decent character arc from him (perhaps even a conventional but satisfying hero’s journey). Yet he never receives this, and the way his story ends feels hollow and bleak. In the end, promises were not fulfilled.

Linking this to the romance point, if you do write romances in your stories, there has to be buildup. Romances between main characters that spring up from seemingly nowhere are not satisfying, but if there have been hints planted over the course of the story, everything comes together in a way that makes sense.

And finally, there’s a market for found family (that’s me, haha). We love seeing beautiful, strong friendships onscreen and in books. There’s something so wholesome about people who come together and grow to consider each other as family. We like it when groups of people who have a common goal become a family. Look at some of the most popular franchises: the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Percy Jackson, My Little Pony, Avatar: the Last Airbender… these all have the found family trope. It’s a beautiful trope, and I’m glad it exists in both Bravest Warriors and Voltron: Legendary Defender, no matter how flawed its execution was.

 

 

That’s all for now!

What did you think about this analysis? Let me know if you’ve seen or heard of Bravest Warriors and/or Voltron: Legendary Defender, and let me know your thoughts on them!

Make your mark,

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