#freevlds8

WHAT IN THE DAMN HELL IS HAPPENING ON THE VOLTRON INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT

Lauren liking posts??? Teasing some big reveal???? ACKNOWLEDGING AND CELEBRATING LOTOR?!

Could it be

Dare I hope

Listen, I said I wasn’t going to write any more VLD metas, but this one is borderline fanfic, so I have an excuse. My theory is a bit stretched, like a thin rubber band ready to snap, but hey, it’s always fun to theorize. I’m just throwing it out here for funsies.

So, first off, what are the easiest and fastest ways to change the course of an already animated story?

— Static images are easy to alter - Lotor’s cOrpSe comes to mind. Easy to draw a bunch of purple spaghetti over his body.

— If there are changes in the script, calling voice actors back to record new dialogue is also cheaper (and faster) than applying major changes to the animation itself (re-recording dialogue is called ADR and it’s used in the industry on a regular basis).

With that in mind, here’s where I’m applying my theory:

I’m not the best at spatial thinking in art, but a particular scene in VLD intrigued me since the first time watching it.

During the Allurance kiss moment, Beezer zooms towards the center of the park and we clearly see the robot slowing down right next to them - in the center, facing the big old tree. Notice the surrounding landscape: a brown fence all around the small park. Purple tulips behind the fence. The very large tree in the middle, circled by a small blue flower garden, bordered by a curb. Smaller trees all around the park, in the background.

Also, notice: Allura is on the right side, Lance is on the left.

Immediately after that frame, comes this one (whooshing sound of moving robot still on):

Beezer enters the scene from the right side of the screen, and we can clearly see, behind the robot:

- the fence (lower-right corner)

- the big old tree (I adjusted the brightness and contrast so you can see the thick branches better). No other tree in the scene is this voluminous.

So Beezer is now facing the purple tulips, back against the big tree and against Allura & Lance, squealing a robotic “Wooow” in reaction to their kiss, but Beezer’s not really looking at them, it’s admiring the purple flowers (purple, huh?).

How… did that happen? A millisecond ago it was slowing down right in front of them.

Going past this awkward cinematic moment, here’s the scene right after:

Allura and Lance interrupt their kiss to look at the noisy intruder, Beezer. Notice the tree bark pattern behind them.

Allura is now on the left and Lance is on the right. How… did that happen?

On to the very next screenshot:

We see Beezer for a very split-second retracting its mechanical hands, after collecting a purple tulip. So now you can clearly notice the spatial relationship to Lance and Allura. Beezer obviously did not stop in front of them, it went to one of the yard sides to collect a flower (for Holt’s lab? LOL, working so late at night?).

From the angle of the shot, it looks like we (the audience) are watching from somewhere in the old tree’s vicinity.

After this, Beezer walks over to them and offers to take a picture. Here it goes:

So Allura and Lance’s positions correspond to the previous frames - but not to the initial scene (check out the very first screenshot - Allura was on the right, now she’s on the left).

Bizarre, isn’t it, Beezer?

- Is this just a random succession of animation errors or… did this scene look differently in the #realS8?

- Why purple tulips?

- Which side of the park did Beezer go to? Did it really go to the middle? To the left? To the right? 😅

- Who was Beezer “wow”-ing to?

There absolutely are. 

And before I go any further, I have no clue if you already know who Bob Koplar is, but if you do, then this little explanation will just be for anyone reading this who doesn’t: Bob Koplar is the current head of WEP (World Events Productions), the company that made the original show in the 80s and owns the Voltron brand. Dreamworks at the time of the Netflix Voltron series’ production only had the rights to adapt the existing Voltron material and did not own the brand outright. All scripts/episodes for VLD had to go through Bob for approval (by his own admission, although the video where he acknowledges this has sadly been deleted from Youtube). 

So with that explanation out of the way, the reason the final season of Voltron is so bad was because the showrunners and writers at Dreamworks had a very specific story they were trying to tell, while based on comments made by cast, crew, and Koplar himself over the years, Bob wanted 1) a glorified toy commercial to sell toys to 6 year old boys, and 2) a successor to the previous Voltron series, Voltron Force. 

Based on all the evidence found in and around Seasons 7 and 8, the crew’s plans for the final seasons would have involved revealing that Lotor was still alive in the Rift, that he was innocent of the crimes he had been condemned for, and that he would reconcile with Allura and Team Voltron before joining them in the final battle against Honerva. 

Bob found out about this while the crew was making Season 7 and ordered them to change it. Based on interview comments and the history of the Voltron brand, the most likely reason was because he wanted Lotor to remain a villain so he could be reused as the antagonist of a sequel series. The crew complied and removed much of the content surrounding this plotline from Season 7, but then reworked it into Season 8 and tried to push for their planned ending anyway, banking on the hope that by the time Bob found out they’d defied him it would be too late for him to do anything. Instead, the showrunners were forced to cut out multiple episodes’ worth of footage and then rearrange what was left in order to have the number of episodes their contract with Netflix obligated them to release. (A summary of the most notable evidence of changes within the season itself, along with a rough outline of what the final season should’ve looked like based on what was removed, can be found here)

And this all happened after production was already completed, as even the animators and most of the voice actors were surprised by the version of the final season we got. 

Bob has also been implicated by multiple interviews with cast and crew as pushing back against the crew’s desire to include queer characters and relationships in the show, and prevented them from including any same-gender romance between the paladins. 

So, here’s a little detective work I did on some (suspected) altered scenes in the last episode of Voltron Legendary Defender. I’m very new to this show (yep, years later… I know… facepalms, better later than never) - I watched it for the first time a couple of months ago and since then I’m obsessed with finding out more about the true finale of the show.

Before I start doing a little slideshow proof of altered animation in S8 last episode, I’d like to give a little intro into my journey here.

- I come from being a fan of an 80’s anime called Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs (my avatar name here pays tribute to one of its characters), to being an even bigger fan of VLD. Not by pure coincidence. SRatSS is owned by WEP, and going down the Netflix “suggested” shows, DotU sent me to VLD. It grew on me really fast. Like binge-watch fast. Unfortunately, the ending completely clipped my wings.

- The first reason why I started feeling (first it was a feeling) that something was wrong was the complete mismatch between the tragic finale of Allura, a goddess leaving the show with the saddest drawn face (and a missing in action Lotor, for that matter) and the super-cheesy optimistic, last minute slapped ending slides showing the ‘successful’ future lives of the Paladins, completely at odds with their previous careers (Keith, a rebellious half-Galra now running a humanitarian relief organization? Lance the sharpshooter with a rake in his hand?? What the heck, man? Shiro, the larger than life figure in the show, marrying some random guy we never learned about before? Seriously, I kept saying at the end: “Is this a joke??” It felt insulting on so many levels, rushed, like “let’s end this and get over with it” )

- Another big reason why I felt this was not supposed to be the real finale was my absolute gut feeling that a kids’ show needs a different kind of moral closure, based on classic arcs that would fit stories I’ve been used to reading in my childhood. After all, it’s rated 7+ . In my opinion, from the perspective of a 7 year old kid, S8 is a horror story, glossed over with a ‘happy’ ending. Thus, it should not be rated 7+. But hey, maybe I’m just too old-fashioned.

- In my frantic googling about VLD, I stumbled upon TeamPurpleLion’s website, which completely opened a new level of information and confirmation for me. The first article I read was the one about the The Dark Youth and Heroine’s Arc, which went straight to my pain point, confirming my intuitions about how a well-written story for children and teens should look like. Then, the ‘Seek Truth’ article about all the animation edits totally solidified my beliefs. Then followed the analysis about the Feud episode, the Clear Day episode and the ‘meta within a meta’ stuff going on there… All the foreshadowing, the purple lion toys, the parallels between different heroes’ arcs… The VLD staff tweets and instagram posts in total contradiction with the release of the season… The last nails that hit the coffin were the interviews with LM and JDS and their own “feud” with the inter-dimensional beings at the top of the ladder, which were absolutely eye-opening. It made total sense now, and I immensely appreciate the work that TPL has done unearthing all these facts. I feel like the EP’s need so much more recognition for the work and love they poured into this show. Not to mention the animation, which is a work. of. art. Studio Mir forever.

- Anyways, here’s me, 4 years later, rocking a boat that has long sailed away… Being so late (I usually am late to a lot of new things haha) I feel like I’m sort of lonely in my quest.

—————

But recently, I found out that the FreeVLDS8 party is still alive and kicking, so I’m emboldened to throw in some of my own discoveries as well. If this stuff has already been unearthed, disregard my little detective work that I did here. But if it’s useful new stuff, I hope it will benefit somehow in the grand puzzle you guys have set about to solve.

In the past couple of months, I’ve read tons of articles and metas, interviews, videos. Pros and cons about the EP’s, about the animation, interviews with actors, tweets, etc etc. All the good stuff piled up in the past 4 years that I completely missed. My head is spinning right now.

So rewatching the last episode and being aware of all the edits discovered so far, I stumbled upon some animation flaws that I believe Studio Mir would not let out their door. Disclaimer: I am a professional artist myself. I do not work in animation, but I did illustrate kids books for a while, and being a graduate of an Art School, I believe I have a bit of knowledge about the laws of perspective, proportions and character design. Keep a pin in each of these three, because there are flaws about every one of them in the next two screencaps. Plus more flaws on top of these three. Whew!

________

Let’s look at a couple of screen shots I did from S8 final episode, when Allura and the Palladins talk to Honerva. Go to the scene where Allura starts saying “there is beauty in their flaws” (first screenshot below - I will call it Screenshot A)

And now take a look, a minute later, when she is doing her mind meld with Honerva (Screenshot B). It’s supposed to be the same scene, but the image is terribly zoomed in, with Lance almost completely cropped out. There is a slight camera tilt effect, but the image remains zoomed with a piece of Lance on the left. Who would do that in cinematography?

So I tried to see what will happen if I “un-zoom” and add Lance back into the picture. I approximated where the original shot was relative to the whole image by keeping Honerva in the center line of the image, to make sense compositionally. And voila (Screenshot B zoomed out below)

Here’s Screenshot A, also zoomed out, below:

Now, in both recreations, Honerva is right in the center. Before, the center of the image was somewhere between Allura and Honerva. Doesn’t it make more sense now, with Honerva in the middle? It makes sense compositionally, but also from a storytelling point of view. We, the watchers are positioned right behind Honerva, at her eye level, seeing the Paladins “through her perspective”. A very empathetic way of making the viewer feel closer to her character.

And now, of course, you’ve all noticed the big red ‘elephant’ in the room, in the newly created space to the right. I am not making any speculations who it might be, because things are actually more complicated than they seem. Wait, Hunk wants to say something:

“Uh, guys, did you notice Pidge next to me looks shorter in B than in A? And what’s up with her not standing up straight in A? Draw a line from her nose to her belt clip. Since she’s facing you full front, it should be vertical, right? Um, well, it’s not.”

Hunk is right. Pidge tilts towards right, she looks like a crooked sticker, plastered on a wall.

———

OK, let’s move on to the next issue. The “Alluras”. Here’s where proportions, character design and perspective come into play. I will call them Allura A and Allura B, from their corresponding screencaptures.

Let’s start with proportions. First, scroll back up to the first two image captures, take a look at them, and then come back and look at this:

I juxtaposed the two Alluras, rescaled so that both of them have the same shoulder width, so X is equal to Y. The desaturated Allura is B, and the colorful one is A.

I placed both of them with their belts at the same horizontal line. Behold, what do we have here? Z is not equal to T, so Allura B has a longer upper body than Allura A. Also, look at the hips, and where the crotch starts.

Now, some of you might argue that this is a perspective distortion, because Allura B is the one that just walked forward a few steps, toward the viewer, so she should grow taller and the proportions might get warped a bit. Well, if it were a forced perspective, from a very close angle, I’d partially agree. But this is not the case. There are tons of forced perspective shots in VLD (especially fight scenes), but this is not one of them. So in this case, if Allura comes forward, she does indeed grow taller, but she should keep her proportions, so X/Z =Y/T (Pidge just confirmed, my math is solid). (and no, please don’t tell me that Allura shapeshifted, just because she’s Altean and decided to do that, without reason).

Moving on to the next issue within the same image above: character design. Compare the two Allura faces… One is round, one is more elongated. Why this sudden transformation, when this is supposed to be one continuous scene? I doubt the studio animators would do something like this. Which one looks more like Allura? I’d argue that the Allura A (the colored one) does. She has a more round, feminine face, with a sweetness in her features. Then who’s that guy in B? Oops, I said guy. Because the whole physical appearance is that of a man. Tall and slim. Wondering who he might be? I’d humbly guess Lotor, but if you find me a more important tall and slim Galra or Altean character that would get access to the Connected Consciousness, then go ahead and write a fanfic story about it.

A little thing I just noticed: Allura B’s neck is crooked, not going up straight from the shoulders into the head. Drawn in a rush? Drawn over Lotor in a rush?

The third issue with the Alluras, and with the other Paladins as well, is perspective. Here’s a little sketch I did over Screenshot B, to understand what I’m talking about:

The horizontal red line is the horizon line. That is the line where our (the viewer’s) eyes are . At the same level with Honerva’s. The vanishing point should be right in the middle of the line. On the right side, in red, I sketched the paladin suits, with their collars as they should look if properly following the laws of perspective. Anything below the horizon line should look like the collar below, anything above should look like the one above, in perspective. Check out which ones match… And then check below if Allura A fairs better:

Indeed she does! And doesn’t she look so natural? Coincidentally, she is Allura A, the real one, not the redrawn Lotor. But oh, wait, Lance, Shiro, and Hunk don’t have correctly drawn collars. What a mess! (this reminds me of Slav saying: did you wear the right socks today?) Let’s play a game: how many of them are wearing the right ‘socks’ in these images?

Again, some of you might say, “c’mon, such a tiny detail, the illustrators and animators probably didn’t even think about this kind of stuff.” Oh no, no, no. This is basic skill. Like, the ABC of drawing. You don’t mess up basic perspective drawing, if this is your daily job. Again, I am convinced that Studio Mir did not release this version. It was altered post production. If I’d have to guess, because this is one of the last animated scenes of the show, they were getting very close to the deadline. They were tired, overworked, most likely dissatisfied that they had to butcher a wonderfully crafted show that everyone worked so hard on. I can even imagine some red-eyed employee with a big cup of coffee, at midnight, in an empty office, tracing over Lotor’s drawing.

Whew, are you ready for another weird flaw?

Look at their eyes. Where is each of them looking, both in A and in B? Well, some of them are looking up, some of them at Honerva. What is up there, that Shiro and Keith seem to watch intently in shot A? Another mishap during animation? Or, they’re just stock images plastered like Pidge? Not sure. Although, at a closer look, Keith in image A is wearing the right socks - his collar is drawn in the right perspective. I’m just speculating, but it seems they’re looking at a tall structure. At that point in the plot, it’s probably Honerva’s mech or Voltron. Who knows.

Honestly, this puzzle is missing so many pieces. Are all these Paladin drawings basically reshuffles of a scene that evolved from us looking down at the Paladins from a higher vantage point (probably Honerva in her mech) and then gradually descending until she is on her knees and we’re looking up at the Paladins? Because judging from the perspective of their collars and the fact that their eyes are either looking up or down, it might seem so. And, as per previous analysis articles, someone said the transition from their fight for realities to them all being in the Connected Consciousness plane looks very abrupt, so there must have been some other action going on there. This seems like the most reshuffled muppet show of the S8, down to the last character on the screen.

Also, a few more things and I promise I’ll wrap up.

If we assume that Allura B was actually Lotor, then it makes sense that Lotor goes and does the little “mind meld” with Honerva (forgive my nerdy Star-Trekky reference). He did say, somewhere in S6, that when the time will come, he might have pity on her. This would beautifully close the circle of that arc, but would also mirror Allura’s mind-meld with Zarkon, when she did her little trip into Honerva’s mind, I can’t remember which episode. This would also not look cheap at all, because right before the mind meld, after each Paladin does their own plea, Honerva says: “You think your words mean anything to me?” No, their words don’t, but Lotor’s words and touch DO. And knowing how vitriolic she can be, I bet she won’t accept Allura touching her so easily, but coming from her son… I bet she would. She looks surprised and not irritated at all. Would she be like that with Allura, after she just fought them almost to death and told them that their words mean nothing to her? But Lotor touching his mother, it makes more sense, doesn’t it? The wayward daughter of Altea heals the father, and the lost son of Daibazaal heals the mother. How beautiful. Psychology at its best. Oh, but these are just my speculations…

I’m not sure if Allura’s VA was called to record more lines back in 2018. If she was, then the lines she said about Lotor who may have been misguided but ultimately wanted to preserve life might be just a way through which the creators left the door a little open to interpretation about Lotor. But if that was the actual original, unaltered line, then Allura is talking about him in the past tense. So then… was the Lotor behind Allura B just a ghost, like Zarkon and the old Paladins in the other episodes? So, just a supposition, completely unsupported by any palpable facts, but it’s fun to explore: Lotor lost his body, but Allura rescued and redeemed his consciousness, not from the Sincline, but actually from Honerva’s mind (I’ll explain in just a sec); and then together they fight through all realities and defeat Honerva. And then Allura rejoins him in the afterlife. And this is the end of a coherent story. If I remember correctly from a previous episode, when we saw Honerva standing in front of Lotor’s melted corpse (which makes no sense to throw in there from a narrative standpoint unless something else happens further along), didn’t she say something like “soon, we’ll be together, my son”. What was that all about? Did she actually trap his consciousness into her own mind like she did with the old paladins? Was that her possessive way of being “together” with someone? And then Allura goes on and frees him from the trap and THAT’S when Honerva goes ballistic looking for another Lotor in another reality, because she lost the object of her obsession. And that would explain why they ended up in the Connected Consciousness in the last episode, to heal her of her vicious possessiveness. Just a weird thought, I might be completely wrong.

If anyone has the patience to untangle who is who and who goes where in these two images, go on, give it a shot. I know I’m too tired. But nevertheless, have fun!

I noticed these glitches but wasn’t convinced that anyone is still out there to read my ramblings, after so many years. Now I believe there are still people that care, so I decided to go forward with my little analysis.

You're not the first to ask if I'll do more than one video, and while I admit it IS a potential solution, it's also a LOT more work than I am prepared to commit to at this time. It's a two-part problem, the first being, making videos is HARD work, like, deceptively hard. And I've got MDD to contend with. It's not a manageable project for me to plan for a multiple-video series.

The second part is that, from a marketing perspective, it's much neater and tidier to have one video that can be sent to people encapsulating the best of our arguments. And I AM hoping that this video catches peoples' eyes. It's still my goal to do what I can to FREEVLDS8 and clear the reputations of the Executive Producers of VLD, regardless of how much time has passed. That said, if by chance I miss covering something important in this video I would do my best to rectify that with a second. It's only the responsible thing to do.