#ask spifty

My reply to the other ask was more about my grievances with the show on a broader level rather than Sheith itself but since we're on the subject I'd say it's the biggest and most confusing casualty of the bunch. I had no illusions of the ship being canon, even now on the cusp of 2022 we're not yet at the point where you can have the two leading men of a cartoon action series end up together. But that doesn't mean an attempt wasn't made. I still go back and forth on the creative intent behind them; there are scenes that can be read platonically but there are also some scenes that are extremely difficult to interpret as anything but romantic. I think there were crew with control over story who shipped them but I think there were also crew with control over who didn't. I think it was a very complicated thing which is why we'll probably never get a proper answer or closure on what the heck the goal was.

But what did matter, what was canon, was that Shiro and Keith were best friends who loved each other and were each other's most important person and that affection and respect were what we fell in love with. If that relationship had stayed as strong and kind as it it had been in the past, I don't think anyone would even remember the epilogue except to clown it. But they were strangers, to each other and to us as we had come to know them over 7 seasons. That's the heartbreaking part, at least in my opinion. If it was just them and all the other relationships remained intact we could chalk it up to executives getting antsy about ppl reading too much into things. But the baffling thing is that iirc, no relationships, not even platonic ones, survived and neither did anyone's 7-season character arc.

What probably happened with Adam and Shiro, is that JDS/LM went ahead and storyboarded the scene with the idea that they were boyfriends. They probably even threw it onto a leica (storyboard video timed out properly with dialogue) and added a scratch track (non-voice actors recording placeholder lines). And thus, they presented it to DW….. who had a moment of Puritanical Panic and said, “this scene is fine, but they absolutely cannot be boyfriends because THINK OF THE CHILDREN, so change the dialogue to make them roommates.”

Aaaaand that’s where the endless fights meetings with higherups on multiple levels would have begun. Actually I’m sure Shiro being gay had been discussed at length before. The introduction of Adam would have been a major catalyst into the more serious talks because it was JDS/LM saying listen, we are dead serious about this and we’re gonna THROW. DOWN. At NYCC’17 when asked about LGBT content in the show, JDS carefully assured the audience that“we’re fighting to create as open and as broad a spectrum of characters as we can” and the timing lines up pretty nicely with where production would have been on s6/s7.

The thing that probably finally won over higherups was JDS/LM coming up with a dialogue that makes it clear to the older audience who Adam is to Shiro, while keeping younger audiences completely in the dark. In case you didn’t see the episode, here’s their dialogue:

Adam: Maybe you shouldn’t go on the mission. You’ll only be putting yourself at risk.Shiro: You know how important this is to me. It’s worth the risk.Adam: Takashi. How important am I to you? […] This is your life at stake.Shiro: Don’t start that again, Adam! You don’t need to protect me!Adam: I won’t stop you. But I won’t go through this again. So if you decide to go… don’t expect to be here when I get back. 

We don’t see them kiss or touch. They don’t exchange I Love Yous, or pet names or refer to their relationship explicitly. Yet it’s beyond obvious that they’re in a serious relationship based on the way they speak to each other. It’s bloody brilliant, and a pretty clever option to present to a higherup. Dreamworks gets the glory of having the first-ever openly gay cartoon hero and kids can just think Adam and Shiro are really good friends (like brothers, even!).

It’s hard to say how far along this scene was in production by the time DW caved and let Adam be Shiro’s boyfriend. Some of the shots may have functioned fine for a roommates scenario but overall the scene is a little too intimate in its lingering shots. I mean was avoiding spoilers like the plague but a friend assured me the trailer was safe…

….it really, really wasn’t. These shots are intimate and on first glance I thought it was Shiro working up the nerve to talk to a fellow officer he was into. 

To answer your question anon, if the boards and maybe a few BGs needed to be redone, and entirely new animation added, this batch of 12 scenes (shots) was probably completed in a few days or less. The entire scene is pretty conservative on animation which makes things easier. Time would have been set aside for this scene from the get-go and it was probably one of the last ones animated on s6 while they waited for DW to weigh the decision. I can’t see them having spent much more or less time on it than any other scene so there wasn’t a lot of sacrifice here. There was also probably zero extra cost on making it if it hadn’t yet been animated but even if it had…Animation is actually really, really cheap to produce.

So no, I don’t think we need to brace ourselves for quality drops. The show is running on a crazy schedule and is pretty excellent at knowing where to put the money/time and where not to and in such a way that most casual observers won’t notice. Such as

vs

Important scenes get love; less important ones get passed off to junior animators and/or get shorter timeframes. More importantly, as JDS/LM mention in Form Podcast, the quality of the art improves as animators get more familiar and comfortable drawing the characters. The quality of s6 is likely something we can look forward to for much of 7&8 as well. So really I wouldn’t worry about quality dipping.

Every show has client retakes. Some are small, some are big, “reanimate this scene” style changes. It’s par for the course and many studios have entire departments just for handling those types of calls. Allowing time for those changes are built into the production schedule of every show. 

Voltron is a special bird though, its potential for changes are a liittle different than most cartoons because it’s a serialized story that needs to be plotted out in advance but there are Things that might end up being the result of some last minute decisions and allowances.