Voltron: Fleet of Doom

Genre: Action/Adventure
Format: 1 Movie
Allegiance: Toei Animation
Director: Franklin Cofod
Vintage: 1986
Intelligence Agency Report by: Drake
Planet Arus and the Near Universe have been enjoying peace ever since the Voltron Lion Force defeated King Zarkon. However, this peace was short lived. King Zarkon and Viceroy Throk of the Drule High Command have joined forces and brought forth a deadly armada. The only way to stop the combined forces of Zarkon and Throk is to unite both the Vehicle and Lion Voltron units. But can the combined might of both Voltron forces defeat this threat, or has the end of life as we know it finally come?

Field Agent Report by: Drake 
Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio
7.00
8.50
9.75
7.00
9.50
Overall 8.00

Growing up, there was always one anime that I will never forget: Voltron. I’ve been a fan of this show for as far back as I can recall, and remember coming home from school just to see it on Cartoon Network, then recreating the scenes in a game with some friends from school.

Fleet of Doom was originally created to act as a bridge between the Lion and Vehicle Team Voltron seasons and was created around the same time that Toei was forced to create twenty more episodes of Voltronstrictly for Western audiences due to popular demand. The story itself was simple enough. Take both seasons of Voltron, create two alliances of protagonists and antagonists respectively, and let them battle. Such a plot sounds pretty dull and uncreative, but it sparked an interest for myself. After all, it promised to be the battle to end all battles. The only major problem was that the Vehicle Force gets very little screen time, and is mentioned in passing while the Lion Force takes center stage for most of the movie. This lack of screen time for the Vehicle Force members made them comparatively underdeveloped.

Upon reading a few articles and posing questions at various web forums, I learned the movie borrows heavily on footage from the TV show and added in whatever scenes are needed to connect all of them, though there were no detrimental effects for me since I didn’t even notice it aside from theVoltron formation sequence (which is pretty standard for all episodes). One of the best technical aspects of the movie lays in the OST. Even after countless years of watching Voltron, the music still stirred excitement in me.

Many people may not appreciate a classic like Fleet of Doom and may prefer to watch some of the newer mecha shows like Gundam Seed. Despite some of the negatives, I strongly urge everyone to give this movie a chance. Old fans shouldn’t expect a lot of new stuff, but rather should just watch it for the sake of nostalgia. It really brings back a lot of old memories.