Welcome to the world of Voltron!

Lion · Vehicle · Sven · Gladiator

When I was a kid, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was it. My mother got very tired of my constant barrage of He-Man this, and He-Man that. So she looked in the TV Guide, and found a show called Voltron. She suggested I watch that instead thinking she could get a break. Well, she got a break from He-Man, but I went off the deep end for Voltron.  Haven't looked back since.

For most American fans, this legend began in the fall of 1984, when a company called World Events Productions unleashed Voltron: Defender of the Universe in syndication. The series was actually two separate storylines, thinly connected, and each with it's own set of characters and it's own version of "Voltron". One was an invincible robot formed by merging 15 smaller space vehicles. The other, and by far the more popular, was the "Lion Voltron" which was created when five robot lions combined into a larger super-bot. The true legend of Voltron, however, began in Japan.  

In 1981, the Toei company, one of the leaders in the Japanese animation market, premiered King of One Hundred Beasts Golion. At that time in the post Star Wars era, most Nipponese SF animation was more concerned with space opera motifs than giant robots.  Golion, however, belonged to a small but popular sub-genre: the "combo" giant robot, a mechanical warrior who was formed when several smaller vehicles or robots linked together.

Golion's 52 episodes told the story of how most of the known universe had fallen under the evil Galra Empire, headed by Emperor Daibazaal and his equally power-hungry son Prince Sincline. Five survivors of a devastated Earth escape Daibazaal and encounter Princess Farla of the planet Altea, currently under attack by the Galra forces. It's there that they learn of the legendary robot Golion.

Golion stood 60 meters, flew at mach 10 and possessed an impressive array of weapons, the most powerful being a laser sword that nothing could withstand. It was long ago split into five separate units, which were hidden throughout Altea. Naturally, the five heroes succeed in bringing Golion back.

The other Voltron story arc would be made up from Toei's  Armored Squadron DairuggerXV, which featured the 15-member "Rugger" squad and their struggle against the evil Galbeston Empire. The squad was broken into three teams of five: Air, Ground, and Marine. Each team member piloted his own vehicle, and could link up with the other four vehicles in his or her unit to produce an even larger war machine. When things got really tough, all 15 vehicles would combine into the giant warrior robot Dairugger XV. 

Combining the two shows went relatively smoothly. When the series began in 1984, the re-named Golion was Voltron of the Far Universe, protecting the planet Arus from evil King Zarkon and his son Prince

Lotor. The five pilots, Keith, Lance, Sven, Pidge, and Hunk, were now agents of the Galaxy Alliance sent to aide Princess Allura of Arus. Closer to home, Dairugger XV became the Voltron of the Near Universe, fighting to save Earth and her allies from the nasty alien Drules. One of the pilots of this Voltron Force, while at a later episode of the "Lion" series reveals that King Zarkon is a renegade Drule, who set out to make his own conquests!

Voltron: Defender of the Universe (well, Lion Voltron, anyway) was such a runaway hit that WEP requested a second season from Toei, so for the first time, a Japanese anime was created exclusively for the American market. Unfortunately, Toei farmed out the 20-episode sequel to a Korean animation company, and the end product was of a lower caliber. Voltron stuck around in reruns for the remainder of the 80's, and then, in 1989, WEP had Toei piece together a one-hour "original" movie. Titled Voltron: The Fleet of Doom, it united both the Lion and Vehicle robots against the combined attack of the Drule super-fleet and a new super ro-beast, piloted by Prince Lotor. Thrown together quickly by Toei, much of the footage was from various Golion and Dairugger episodes, with the new scenes of a quality even below that of Voltron's second season. It turned out to be a disappointing wrap-up to the saga.

Voltron: Defender of the Universe itself refused to die, however. In 1997, the Cartoon Network re-ran the first season, and then showed the second season under the title  The New Adventures of Voltron. This generated enough interest for WEP to dust off the property and produce an all-new totally CGI series called Voltron: The Third Dimension in 1998. All three titles can still be found in reruns, with shouts of "I'll form the head!" being heard in homes across the

country.

The truth about Voltron Force's lost member:
Everyone knows the story of Sven, right? He was the original pilot of the Blue Lion, fighting alongside Keith and the others until a battle injury forced him to turn over his duties to Princess Allura. By the end of the series, his wounds had healed and he returned for the final battles, even going man-to-man with Lotor. Well, that's the story if you've only seen the Americanized Voltron: Defender of the Universe. Things went a little differently in Golion, the Japanese original. In Japan, the Sven characters name was Takashi Shirogane, and he wasn't just injured in that early episode. He was killed. That's right, dead as a doornail. It's his younger brother Sho who's in the final episodes, and he's the one who beats the crap out of Sinclaine (Lotor) in the climactic battle. And by the way, they both die in the original (Voltron has them fall into water and survive). In this case, the American version is probably preferable. I mean, who do you respect more: A guy who gets injured and later returns for some payback, or has to be avenged by his kid brother?

The Lost Series: Albegas: The Voltron that never was.
Most Voltron fanatics know there were, in fact, two Voltron's. Some are even familiar with the Japanese shows that spawned them. But not everyone knows that Voltron: Defender of the Universe came close to being a trilogy. WEP had considered adding a "Gladiator Voltron" to their line up. This Voltron's adventures would have been culled from Toei's 1983 series Luminous Flux-God Albegas. While it's not clear how it would have been worked into the Voltron mythos over here, Albegas' Japanese exploits went as follows: Professor Mizuki modifies three giant robots to protect the Earth from the invading insect-like Derinja aliens.

Called Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, they can unite into a variety of combination robots and vehicles, the most powerful being a huge, Gladiator-type warrior called Super Albegas. Alpha, Beta and Gamma are piloted by Daisaku Enjoji, Tetsuya Jin, Hotaru Mizuki, whom also created the robots originally for a scholastic competition.  Following Professor Mizuki's modifications, Albegas was born.

The reasons why WEP scrapped this idea remain vague. Perhaps, with "Lion Voltron" already out performing it's Vehicle counterpart in the states, it was felt a third Voltron would be even less popular, or not needed at all. Strangely, though, some Albegas toys ended up in the Matchbox assortment, offering at least a glimpse of "the Voltron that never was".  Some of these, as well as even Vehicle Voltron toys ended up as toy car donations to charity, unlike the Lions which are the more sought after toy of the Voltron Dynasty.

**The above is taken from an article written by Bob Marshall in the Wizard Anime Invasion magazine August 2002.  Revisions to this have been made by myself to add more depth.