Voltron: Legendary Defender Comes With Some Assembly Required

[dropcap1]J[/dropcap1]une 10th the team behind the epic Avatar: The Last Airbender and the even more awesom-er Avatar: The Legend of Korra (KorrAsami 4 Lyfe) took a new generation to Arus with Voltron: Legendary Defender. As a fan of the old dubbed series and the CGI sequel, I was pretty amped for this one. I binged all 11 episodes one Saturday and…it was…a thing that happened. 11 episodes of origin story including an hour plus for the pilot episode was three much. And tedious. And enjoyable? I don’t know, I’m still not sold on that last bit.

I’ve endured both epically bad and epically good media in this year of our Lord 2016, so I have a pretty solid internal rating system. But this show has me flummoxed. I can’t say Voltron was bad but, at the same time, I couldn’t say it was good either. Voltron: Legendary Defender has its moments of each but carries an overall sense of mediocrity. At times, I completely forgot I was watching the show and had to rewind 10 or so minutes. A fruitless precaution as I usually missed nothing of note in my moments of inattention. Allura’s new character design is fire. She’s always been one of my favorites so I’m all the way here for making her look more like me. This version of her also looks and acts more battle-ready than her original incarnation. When Allura gets in on the action, she’s great and her featured episode is also one of the best of the season and has some truly heartbreaking moments. But she never gets to pilot a lion. Why y’…