(Animesque Review) Voltron: Legendary Defenders Part 2

I can honestly say that I loved this part a little more than the first offering we were given. It solved some of the problems that I had with the first part, but left some of the blanks completely open still. More on that later. I’m not going to call this a second season, because that if these two parts were combinbed together, it would make a complete season of this show on any television station. So obviously, you should watch the “first season” before this one because this follows directly after it. Netflix seems to have a special way of doing things that when a show is split up like this, they are separate seasons. I don’t think that’s right, but nothing can be done about that. That is how they roll and is a matter that is beyond or control. Okay. Let’s talk about Voltron and not some of the streaming rights and issues from Netflix.

Some spoilers. Last time, our heroes were separated across after nearly being destroyed by the evil Zarkon. Somehow, they must reunite, make new allies, and work together to stop him. That’s about it from a narrative perspective. This is an episode show with a different sort of space adventure each week. They go to new planets, destinations, and interact with the people in them. Sometimes they create new allies. The main driving force of this episodic series is the drive to defeat Zarkon. Some episodes even follow classic space tropes like being thrown around in an endless worm hole or the broken ship episode. One episode even reminded me of the episode “33” from the rebooted Battlestar Galactica series (I love this show to death). If you know what happens in that episode, I may have given something away.

Since this is a second season, you already know about these characters. There is the leader of the black lion shiro who does his best to keep the group together, Keith in the red lion who is a bit of a hot head and an ace pilot, Lance in the blue lion who is the resident comedy expert, Hunk in the yellow lion who likes food and is a brilliant engineer, and Pidge in the green lion who is the tech expert. The other two characters are Princess Allura who is with Coran, is the last of the Altean people. That’s about it really. While other characters do show up from time to time, not many of them are well developed. Even the main villains Zarkon and Haggar aren’t explored that much either. It was completely disappointing to see that.

Once again, the art and animation were fantastic. The character designs are great, the hand to hand fight scenes are still incredible, and the CG robot fights were great. I still think that using CG is a short cut, but I didn’t care about it in this series. It’s not like it was perfectly merged in it, but I cared so much about the setting and the characters and the fight scenes were choreographed so well that I didn’t care. As you can expect from a space adventure story, there were so many great backgrounds presented here. Each one is new and refreshing and I’m glad, because that is something that needs to happen.  The visuals were A+. Like usual.

So I talked about this flaw once, but it needs to be brought up again. While my complaint about is gone because this section gave him an arc, almost every character besides the main Voltron cast are still very one dimensional. Every single one of them. I mean yes, each one does have their own personality, but we don’t learn anything about them. Zarkon barely gets any new development in this season. Hagger has something revealed about her in the end, but otherwise there is nothing new about her. Other characters get the same treatment or worse because they aren’t given any distinctive personality. That’s a major flaw of this show. Please give the villains and side characters more character. Please, I’m begging you.

I still give this show my recommendation. There are a lot of great things about it, but this is something that is holding it back. Please this show a watch though. It deserves more attention, even with the attention that it’s been getting. So may call this a kid’s show, but that is no excuse. Even kid’s shows can improve and flesh out all sorts of characters. Look at Avatar: The Last Airbender.

TLDR:

Good:
+Main Characters are decently fleshed out
+Animation is Fantastic
+Art Design is Incredible
+Fight Scenes are Great

Eh:
~Robot CG

Bad:
-Side Characters aren’t fleshed out enough
-Villains are boring because they aren’t developed enough.

Verdict: Watch it.