Anything that was popular during the eighties, even for a niche audience, always makes a comeback now. This is the case of Voltro: Defender of the Universe, an anime that premiered in the eighties, when anime (Japanese style animation) was really starting to get a following. Although the concept of robots that merge together to become one big robot has been done to death thanks to Transformers and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Netflix is counting on a whole new generation of animated fans to watch Voltron: Legendary Defender. This is what is known about the Release Date with its new trailer.
Voltron: Legendary Defender is the product of Dreamworks Animation, and it is essentially a reboot or revisiting of the original 1984 cartoon exported from Japan called Beast King GoLion. Like many anime series, it was translated with American actors, and the second season was a completely unrelated series known as Armored Fleet Dairugger XV, about a fleet of spaceships that could merge into the Voltron robot.
This new series for Netflix was made by American animators Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery, who just finished Avatar: The Legend of Korra. If you are familiar with its predecessor, then you are probably familiar with one of the greatest and most well-received animated shows of all time with Avatar: The Last Airbender. This is a plus for this version of Voltron: Legendary Defender, which is good and competent hands.
The new trailer, which can be seen below, shows that Voltron: Legendary Defender interjects a lot of humor in its epic space story. According to Ubergizmo, showrunner Laruen Montgomery has stated that "we wanted to make it closer to what we remember the show being versus what it actually ends up being when you go back and watch it."
It is pretty clear that the animation style is the 2D type that was seen on both the Avatar series, but it looks like when the robot lions take the stage, it goes into 3D territory. It is actually a pretty good blending, and the shot of Voltron walking away from an explosion shows how awesome the character will be.
Nerdist reports that the cast for Voltron: Legendary Defender includes Jeremy Shada (Adventure Time) as Lance, Bex Taylor-Klaus (Arrow) as Pidge, Josh Keaton (Green Lantern: The Animated Series) as Shiro, Taylor Labine (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil) as Hunk, Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead) as Keith, Kimberly Brooks (Mass Effect) as Princess Allura, and Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords) as Coran.
According to Engadget, Voltron: Legendary Defender will be coming to Netflix on June 10 with an hour-long pilot/premiere episode and then followed by ten 22-minute episodes that lovers of animation can lovingly binge-watch. At this point, I want to just declare that this show is a hit and it will have a Season 2.
