Series Breakdown: Voltron

Or as I would like to call this, a cautionary tale for if you want to handle a complex story with an atmosphere you want to tell your audience feel.

Let me start off with a disclaimer, before I continue this, though: 

I finished the entirety of Voltron. I watched through all eight seasons, without skipping, and not only that, I bingedwatched it too, so what I'm going to be breaking down is what I've seen from the series. I also don't hate Voltron, but I don't like it either. I am also going to only be talking about the show, and only about the show, because I'm trying to get to what it does wrong in regards to writing, and how this can be avoided, or tackled, in other pieces. I didn't exactly follow Voltron during its runtime, so I'm not qualified to talk about all the stuff in regards to its advertising that affected fan reception to certain things in the show.

With that out of the way, let's start the series breakdown, and why Voltron...sort of fell flat on its ass despite having a time-tested plot formula.

CHARACTER RELATIONSHIPS

Right off the bat, we're introduced to several characters at once. Of course, we as an audience assume that our focal point is Lance, but that's another point I'll get to later, so I'll talk about the part where we're introduced to several characters from the very beginning, and characters which are, obviously, a unit. From the first episode, we immediately get a feel for what the characters' relationship to each other is going to be - not necessarily where it already is, but where it's going, and it's going to be The Team.

The Team as a trope is common in media. It's right next to the Power Trio. And TVtrope's definition of The Team is this:

Most importantly, the Team has to have teamwork as its basic modus operandi; that is, they would seek to tackle any problems that any of their group encounters together, unless circumstances dictate otherwise. 

They can sometimes be a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits. They may eventually become True Companions, if they are not in the first place.

(Also, I'm still laughing that Voltron's lead cast literally fits Five-Man Band, although considering Legendary Defender is a remake, that's to be expected.)

Now, let's take a look at that definition.

TEAMWORK

This is literally what they spend like an episode and a half doing in the first season, which is very fine by me. Why? Narrative integrity. We have characters who either barely know each other, or don't get along well. For example, Keith and Shiro know each other well, but Shiro and the rest of the group do not. Lance and Keith don't like each other, but it's mostly a one-sided rivalry from Lance's point of view. Voltron's source of power, and I say this with utmost confidence because of the amount of Deus Ex Machinas this show has given me with "Our true power is our bond!!!!", is their teamwork, and without it, they're absolutely useless.

This, of course, is then handled very poorly in later seasons, but in the first season, and especially during this episode where they were still building and training to be used to each other in order to form Voltron, to the point where they would be frustrated, was very realistic within the universe's narrative structure.

However, that appears to be the extent of their 'teamwork'. They work well together...in with their jobs. But not with each other as friends. Which starts to poke a hole through the series' narrative integrity - and by that I mean, does Voltron's source of power, the Power of Friendship, or I guess the clinical term in this case is Teamwork, stem only from the fact that the Paladins work well together, being able to have quick response time, being able to predict the others' movements, and being able to quickly cover the others when they are in danger? Or does Voltron's power stem from a bone-deep, familial, perhaps even essential understanding of each other, where they all know the bads and the goods of the person and yet still are patient, are willing to work with them during missions and during the times where they need personal support, where they stand by each other and try to understand each other when there are misunderstanding, and are also just content to be with each other during downtimes because they're that comfortable with each other?

Because I'm seeing the former, but not the latter. And that, sadly, has an incredible impact on the atmosphere of the show.

RAGTAG BUNCH OF MISFITS

They have that pretty pat down. It's easy to create a ragtag bunch of misfits once you've gotten the hang of character creation and haven't just copy-pasted the main character onto everyone else, so they have this done.

TRUE COMPANIONS

Imagine the skeleton dooting a trumpet meme here, but it's playing the Wii music.

Let's take a look at TVtropes' definition of True Companions:

True Companions are just like a real family – they may not necessarily like each other, or actually have liked each other at first, but they know they can depend upon each other in a crisis. It is a relationship considered to be deeper than mere friendship but more innocent than romance.

'Like a real family'.

Like a real family, everyone, and you may think - oh, Angel, you're basing this on TVtropes. I am, but also - look me in the eye and tell me that this isn't what the writers were aiming for when they wrote the Voltron group. Even the fans picked up on it, in earlier seasons, and they weren't in the wrong to expect the group to feel like a real family! There were more seasons to come. These kids weren't just expected to suddenly know everything about each other in one season, but they were at least expected to gain basic respect of each other and knowing a few things that would help them in combat because their lives depend on it. And for the most part, the show sort of delivered. The group respected Shiro. 

And even if it wasn't marketed that way, the show literally has that bond as the magic space robot's greatest power. The characters (Keith, actually, comes to mind immediately) say again, and again, and again, that their bond together (and with their lions, but during times of extreme duress, 'our bond as a team' is thrown around a whole lot) is their strongest weapon, and then bam, new Voltron power that was never foreshadowed in the earlier episodes and will never appear again in the show! Or they just straight-up break the show's inner logic. 

And you may be thinking...well they fought through a war together, so logically, they'd feel like a family, right?

Well, not quite. Not the way they're written.

Imagine this, although this might be a poor example considering the example is taken from my experiences and I form little to poor attachments. Imagine you're in school, and you're usually distant from your classmates. You only talk during projects, sometimes during small conversations, but you go through tests together, and you go to events together (it's mandatory after all), and you spend like, five to six years with them. But you've been distant. After that, you go to college and never have to see them again.

If you've only connected to them in a situation where it's nearly business-like, where you needed to get something done so you interacted with them, that's not exactly the same as feeling like a family. At most, you feel like co-workers.

Then take that interaction, and put it in media. What's shown in media, whether it is hinted at, or it's fully shown through pagetime or screentime or airtime, that is what the audience is going to observe, connect and draw conclusions from. If you have two characters who barely talk and don't even look at each other and then twelve episodes later, the writer is like, oh, they're best friends, and five episodes before, one of them didn't even talk to the other, and there was no hint that they were friends, then the viewer would be confused. It's not insulting your viewer, it's just downright scamming them. 

How does this apply to Voltron? Let me get to that.

See, with a trope like this, you either let the group feel like an actual family in the end, or if you've already made them feel that in the middle of the series, test their bonds and let them reforge stronger that ever. 

When your show runs for 8 seasons, 4 or so of which are the length of how the seasons are supposed to plan to run (miss me with that chopped down season 3 and 4), and an episode is like 20 minutes, that's plenty of time. There's shows with shorter episodes and shorter seasons that do it, and do it well (CAN I HEAR A GRAVITY FALLS, AND OVER THE GARDEN WALL IN THIS FORSAKEN HOUSEHOLD) . 

Voltron?

If the point was to make the characters feel like family and that point was the Blue Lion, and the show was Black Lion? Yeah, their positions on the magic space furrybot would be how Voltron missed the point. It was there, it was trying, it made it 1/4 of the way through, but then it also just...missed.

In season one, we see the characters and we see where they come from, and where they stand with each other. We get an episode, and then a few supplementary scenes, which are so, so important, where they try to forge a bond enough to control Voltron. They get it eventually, and they get it rather early, so I guess the base level of controlling Voltron is 'we tolerate each other' (again...the narrative integrity of this show is in shambles because the scale of what is what is just...wow), which at that time I was willing to excuse as 'eh, it's a kid's show'.

In season two, the saga continues. The first season is decent with its relationship building, and it's going through the growing pains most shows go through. In season two I was more hopeful, and I was even beginning to see signs that maybe this show really will tackle and embrace what the characters are really meant to forge together considering it powers their galactic furrybot savior. Lance and Keith had a scene where they had to do the thing in The Emperor's New Groove where they were back to back and climbing up walls (that scene was iconic, by the way, in ENG and that was a good example of relationship building!). Keith turned out to be half Galra and he had a few moments with Allura where she learns to accept that half Galra or not, Keith is still Keith (which the writers then milked). 

There was one scene, though, which planted itself in my mind, because when I saw it, I though, "Oh, I would have loved to see that, that would have progressed their onscreen relationship and made the audience feel like the group really might be forming relationships with each other and thus they're going to grow stronger as a team!". But it turned out, that scene was a warning, as it would show what the series was going to keep doing in the future, but my curious brain did not heed this warning.

That scene was, "We had a bonding moment! I cradled you in my arms!" by Keith, to Lance.

Except.

They didn't show this scene.

So unless my Netflix stream messed up somehow, it was just...oh, yeah, we're going to hint at this, never bring it up, and never let it have any lasting impact in the show.

And this was how the show handled the relationships of the characters in the show for the rest of its run.

In Voltron, we see the characters work together, but they work together as, well, Paladins. Not as friends. They're co-workers, not family. They battle together, but at most, in the earlier seasons I've only seen Allura and Coran bond, which is already understandable since their history, and then Shiro and Keith kind of had this dynamic that, now that I think about it wasn't really in the forefront, and the Lance and Hunk in the beginning...which the show then decided to yeet in favor of Pidge and Hunk bonding and Hunk just for some reason stops treating Lance like his best friend??? Even Shiro and Keith have the same problem; Keith saves him, and then suddenly just somehow stops acknowledging him and all their interactions are strangely very distant.

In the show, we are led to believe that the characters have started to become closer as the show continue. However, based on what the show actually, well, shows, that doesn't happen to be the case. The most glaring example of this is the characters' treatment of Lance. 

Lance is, again and again, over the course of the show, belittled and ridiculed. Even during the later seasons, when you expect characters to be a bit closer, they continue to treat him poorly, and Lance even voices it out ("I don't like being called the dumb one.") but it's never really addressed. It's not that characters can't have banter that's teasing. In fact, one of the most fun things to see between characters is when they're messing with each other. But the difference between this friendly banter and the treatment of Lance in Voltron is that the latter is actually hurtful. 

Like I've said, Lance has voiced out that he doesn't want to be seen as the dumb one, during an episode where the group has already had enough time that they should have bonded, and in a scene where the characters were supposed to prove where they cared for each other. Other characters voiced out that they thought this person was worthy of getting out of some hell show because of this good quality - but Lance was only chosen because Keith doesn't want to be stuck with him. 

Lance has shown a lot of insecurity in the show, but this was never really addressed either, and instead what happened was this was currently reinforced by the characters either yelling at him, not listening to him, or outright being mean to him. In a scene where he was worried about Allura because he was jealous of her and Lotor, he tries to talk to Pidge and Hunk, both of whom ignore him and talk over him, to the point where he thinks their answers are answers to what he's saying, and Pidge yells, "We're not talking to you, Lance!". Obviously, this was written as comedic, but it sadly doesn't come off that way, not with how the characters have been treating Lance ever since the show started. And it's never even addressed. Lance is rarely affirmed, or if he is, it's quickly forgotten in the next few episodes for another 'Lance is the dumb one' gag. Lance is just overall poorly treated by his teammates.

And then, the writers throw in scenes like the one where he asks Keith for advice, and Keith says something to the effect of Just be yourself, the Lance who's always had my back. Which, one, where? We've never seen that, that went bye bye after season four or so. Two, Lance as himself barely really had actual progress with his insecurity, at least with how the show handled it.

Another example of this disjointed portrayal of camaraderie is the constant shifting and forgetting of established relationships. Like I pointed out earlier, Shiro and Keith, and Hunk and Lance. In the beginning of the series, Shiro and Keith already have an established relationship, which is then explained later in the series as Shiro raised Keith, somewhat. Around season 7 and 8, after Keith saves Shiro and puts his consciousness into his clone's body (that was wild to type), they just..stop talking to each other? After Keith constantly going "WHERE'S SHIRO" over and over for seasons, they just stop talking, and act like workmates.

Hunk and Lance were shown to be close friends. However, a few seasons in, the same seasons where the characters should, again, be closer, the dynamic shifts to Hunk and Pidge - which isn't a problem, except Hunk barely interacts with Lance and ignores him Pidge at times. I love that Hunk has become good friends with Pidge, however, the fact that Lance got shifted to the side kind of breaks the goal that the characters become a family unit instead of having cliques. 

And yet, this is what is supposed to be taken as The Team.

Even outside of the show, during one of the video diary specials, Keith cries on camera after he opens up about his abandonment issues. He says he might have a problem trusting people because his mother left him, and then he cries, and leaves. The editing crew, which is supposed to be the team, puts sad music over this footage that comes off as...you know how people put sad violin over things that are a bit upsetting as a joke? Kinda like that.

Voltron wants you to see these characters as a team, but sadly, they don't actually show these characters being a team. 

So, what could have been done in order to make this actually have audience impact? 

One, stop making the characters treat each other poorly. Make them understand that they are different, they have their insecurities, and don't make fun of those insecurities. Stop bullying Lance. Don't laugh at Keith crying on camera. Have the characters listens to each other when someone talks. Let them establish boundaries, and let them respect each other's boundaries. Teasing happens, and teasing can be done, but maybe...be a bit more respectful about it, and let the characters build trust enough to know that the teasing is teasing? And for heaven's sake don't tease about something the character clearly is still uncomfortable with.

Two, actually show us them being a family and a team! They can have duos that are closer to each other than the rest of the team, that happens, but don't forget pre-established relationships or have those characters just straight up shift their approach to another character with no reason. The most we see of the team is them on missions, but...well, not much aside from that. Let them bond in small ways, talk about small stuff, and even open up slowly. Let them have inside jokes that actually last, because those are actually good things to let the audience get attached to, because it's like they're in on the joke too. And it's good for character interaction.

Three, proper pacing. The bread and butter - okay maybe just the butter - of every piece of media is pacing. Let the characters grow, but give it time, and time it well. This is a problem in that Voltron's characters don't feel like a family even seven seasons in. Seven seasons and about to face a big bad with a friendship-powered furrymecha should probably have characters at closer than most people are.

Which brings me to my next point:

PACING

What I have to say about this is just one thing, so I'll point at Voltron and just say, "What the hell was that?"

Voltron has a hell of a lot of pacing problems, some of which could be attributed to the fact that it's a kid's show, kinda, but the sort of pacing problem I will be talking about here is the one where the characters go through something that's so traumatic, that's so stressful, that nearly killed them, and then in the next episode just forget about it, move on, maybe do a parody of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. And also the one where they hype up a battle in the first five minutes of one episode but not in the other episodes so the viewer has to sit there and be like, oh, wait so something intense is going to happen and I'm supposed to be invested.

For the first part, they lampshaded it. The show itself pointed this out, but this does not make it okay. This doesn't automatically fix the show's problem, because they only lampshaded it, they didn't actually fix the pacing. In Voltron, characters have no time to work through trauma, or process things that just happen or even anticipate for things that have happened. At least, not on screen, because the writers never show it to us, and the show, tonally, suffers for it. 

In a setting like Voltron, where the characters are plunged into a war they have no idea about, you'd think a couple of earthlings would freak out more especially when they've had zero time to prepare for this. You'd also think they'd cope with it rather awfully, because they have had no experience with this whatsoever and war is not fun, but because they have each other, they'd have a support system. This doesn't appear to be the case in Voltron, but it's a kid's show, so eh. The problem, however, becomes more apparent, when there's never time to address things that have happened, and the impact of these things on the characters, so when it comes up again in later episodes when it was never addressed, it's just sudden and out of place. 

Let's take Over The Garden Wall as an example. In the series, we see Wirt slowly lose hope of getting out of The Unknown. And this happens slowly, because it's spread out over the episodes, because Wirt is actually reacting to what he's been going through, even in small ways at first because he's trying to hide it internally. And then it breaks when he decides it's just hopeless trying to get out of The Unknown. Beatrice, in OTGW, slowly reacts to her building a friendship with the boys by being guilty and trying to convince the boys not to stay and not to go to Adelaide's. These characters are given time to process things however little, and the progress is small, but it's steady and consistent! In Voltron, the character can react and then forget it immediately an episode later.

How would this have been addressed? Build-up. Let the characters actually just address something and let it have more gravity on what's going on. Letting them stay detached makes it feel like they're an audience member in their own show too. 

This is how to address the parts where the show tries to make you care about something but not building up to it as well. If there's no build-up, there's no suspense, if there's no suspense, your audience isn't going to be at the edge of their seat, invested and terrified for your characters. That's not to say sudden surprises aren't good; they're amazing when they're done well, but in a show like Voltron where we're supposed to be invested in something that we should have seen the build-up to (aka rebels rising, that's not really a surprise, that's what Voltron literally is in the show, a rebel robot) build-up always makes everything better, and it makes the stakes feel more real too. 

STAKES, OR THE LACK OF IT

The lack of stakes in Voltron can be summed up in one trope: Deus Ex Machina. 

Now, Deus Ex Machina is not always a bad trope, even if it can make audiences feel miffed sometimes because something just comes along to randomly fix things. But when handled well, DEM can be a good trope, particularly if the DEM is set off by something that makes sense within the story's logic and doesn't take a sledgehammer to its integrity. 

Unfortunately, Voltron did not pull this off very well. 

Let's examine why. 

In one episode, Lotor and Allura go to Oriande. This is a place where Alteans studied Alchemy (the show still called it Altean Alchemy, at the time, but it was Altean Tech prior, and then Altean Magic after Alchemy). Allura, through the power of sacrifice, learns the secrets of Oriande, and thus gives the team a huge power boost because she has knowledge! It's new weapons under their repertoire. Neat right?

Not really, because the show only ever uses these powers for Deus Ex, and it became Deus Ex because it was never explained, and thus seems to follow no system.

Someone once looked me in the discord eye and said, when I was talking about magical systems, "It's magic. It doesn't have to have a system." and I nearly had an aneurysm from trying to stop myself as to why even magic needed a system. It needs a system in order for there to be power distribution, power logic, and thus mechanics. These are the tools the writers must use in order to stack up the deck between the protagonist and the antagonist, and thus, build up not only the world, but the stakes, and making the stakes sensical instead of nonsensical at that. 

If your magic system had no stakes, you can have an underdog protag who just stomps three times and the antagonist dies. It's magic. There's no system. 

Let's look at simple ways where there have been examples of magical systems. Fairy Tail, the manga I haven't finished yet but plan to. There's magic users who use tools, like Lucy Heartfilia, and magic users who don't need to use tools, like Gray Fullbuster. There's even a subset of these users who don't use tools as aids, who are raised by dragons, and have been taught dragon magic, called the Dragon Slayers, like Natsu Dragneel. This is a system, because that means that as Lucy (as far as I know, I haven't finished it yet because depression) isn't a Dragon Slayer, she can't just use Dragon Slaying magic. She can't use non-tool magic either. If someone, a Dragon Slayer like Natsu, used her Zodiac Keys, he wouldn't be able to use it, because he's not a magic user who uses tools. 

It makes sense, right?

Let's get to something a bit closer to what Voltron has, with Altean Alchemy. 

Let's take Homestuck's Aspect system as an example. There's twelve aspects in Homestuck, and each aspect grants its Hero the ability to control that aspect depending on their class. However, we all know, regardless of class, that Time Heroes have time abilities, Space Heroes have space abilities, Breath Heroes have breath abilities, Light Heroes have light abilities, so on and so forth. We know what they can do. 

So, then, if time travel was required for a story to progress, then it would make sense if a time player did it, if it was in their skill set. It doesn't feel out of place, because in the story's logic, time players controlled time, or a degree of it. 

However, if it was someone who was not a time player, or was never hinted at, or shown to have the abilities of a time player, and they suddenly time travelled, and this is never addressed, it would be confusing. Especially if what a 'time player' is, is never really explained.

Let's go with something even vaguer, because Voltron is vague, but still makes sense. 

Undertale. In Undertale, Red Souls reset, or can jump back in time (I see you, Toby, I see you) as long as they saved. It's literally a thing in universe. We don't know (so far, at least to me) how this is possible, but it's a mechanic in the universe. But we know what we can do, and we know the requirement for it. It makes sense. Be a Red Soul, save, jump back in time.

Altean Alchemy doesn't get this treatment. Like, what is it? Does anyone actually know what it is? If it was just Allura reviving people, I can understand and connect things, I can conclude that Altean Alchemy is just life-giving. But then you have Allura literally pulling Shiro's ghost out of the black lion and putting it into his clone, Allura giving Lance Altean marks, Allura embedding quintessence into robots, and you start to get lost because you have no idea how this works and what the extent of it is. It's constantly pulled out to save the day, with no system, and no explanation, and that's how it becomes a Deux Ex Machina.

And it could have been easily remedied too, like, firstly - what is Altean Alchemy, and what does it do? What is its range? What boundaries can it push? Does Allura just have to touch things for it to work? What is its power, or source of it? 

Turning something from a healing force to something that can pull ghosts out of haunted objects and into bodies is a drastic shift.

And the fusions. God, the fusions. Honerva once fused two mechas together, without engineering. Just magic. She lowered the opacity on both mechas, put them in the same space, hit up the opacity to 100% and bam, somehow, new robot. Which confuses me to no end because it's still a metal robot so engineering would have to be taken account for? And how does she even know how it's going to turn out, like for all she knows it could have like two heads and no legs. 

And she even knows this because of Altean Alchemy, so...what is Altean Alchemy really supposed to be?  Without knowing these things, we never know what's in the character's repertoire, so we don't know if they're outnumbered or outpowered, so we don't feel the stakes.

Aside from Altean Alchemy being a DEM device, there is, of course, Voltron's infinite source of power. The robot never really takes any damage. At all. Even when the characters say their lions are down, you know they'll be up and running any second as long as the characters believe in themselves, which, okay, fine, but what happened when the lions get torn to shreds? Which never happens despite the characters taking hits. If the lions really are indestructible, why do the characters constantly say they can't take hits anymore? The power meter of the robot itself is already confusing.

The Atlas-Voltron (Altron? Voltas? VOLTES FIVE) fusion is even more confusing when you think about how you don't see any other member of the Atlas on board after the fusion. You just see Shiro. So what happened to everyone else, did the robot just eat them? 

Another problem similar to this is that, not only does the Altron fusion also need engineering, so does the mecha Atlas. That's right, shocker, isn't it, that you need a ship that doesn't have the excuse of being built from quintessence transform into a robot and it would still need engineering so things can go where they need to go, especially if extra stuff is needed. If the Crystal of Lions (the Castle of Lions was crystallized, sue me for the joke) is used as an excuse to be able to let Atlas transform, then what is the crystal aside from a collapsed black hole? Is it also quintessence, because I don't think it is, unless I haven't been paying attention to the part where they said that. And if it could do this all along, why didn't the Castle, when it was still a Castle, do this before?

Oh, and the Altron was also a DEM because it just happens with no explanation as to how it's even possible to help Voltron. Which, again, lowers the stakes. 

See, the more DEMs you throw in, the less invested the audience feels in the danger that the characters face, because they know something is going to happen to save the day and fix things. They stop trying to formulate ways the characters can get out of situations, in some cases they stop considering the characters' contributions to the team in terms of skillset and input because everything is going to be DEM'ed anyway. It lowers the stakes, and makes for less effective storytelling.

Make a system and stick to it, let the characters solve the problem within that system, and let the audience feel engaged with the world because they know the system and they can think about how the characters can still make it with what they have and how the system works. Don't cheat your audience with DEMs because risks are, well, too risky. 

Now, this next point of mine isn't really a massive problem in the story, but it does make the show take a hit with its tone. And this problem is: 

FOCAL POINT, AND THE LACK OF IT

A complaint my sibling approached me with - and they watched the show when it was still running, instead of binging it months after it ended - was that they felt like Lance, despite feeling like he should have been the main character, didn't really have an arc, or didn't get enough attention to his arc. They also introduced me to their friends who felt the same way, and when I watched the series, I think I can pinpoint why exactly they felt this way.

In the beginning, Voltron was told from the point of view from Lance, who finds the first lion we are introduced to and pilots it. We see that he has a close friend named Hunk and a classmate named Pidge and a rival named Keith. He finds the primary lion and it even responds to him! He's the chosen hero!

At least, to the audience, who are still getting used to the series. The audience is then attached to Lance, and is invested in his adventures, because he's the MC of the MCs, similar to how in some animes, even the MC group has the one really main MC. 

As the series progresses, of course, this doesn't appear to be the case. Lance is often sidelined, and as I've said earlier, treated poorly. His insecurities aren't even addressed, and he barely had any internal growth as a character, aside from ceasing his casanova ways because he was a bit flirty in the early seasons but not really in an over the top way. The series focuses more on Shiro, or Keith, or Allura, or Pidge, but rarely of Lance and even Hunk, although Hunk even has a few good eps centered on him (the one where he learns Galra history was cool but never really addressed again).

It's funny though, that the parting shot of the series was of Lance smiling and looking up at the skies as the lions flew away. It's not the last shot, but it's the one where we, as the audience, feel that goodbye to the show, because it's ending, and so our main hero looks at us and smiles and it's a nice goodbye. 

Sadly, we didn't even get that time with Lance, so it's just a callback with little impact, which is...sad. 

Voltron isn't all that bad, though. Like I said, I don't hate it, but I don't like it, and for a number of reasons that are more than just a handful of its writing problems. If it's watched casually though, and not for a bit of an essay and a study like I did because I just wanted to know why people didn't like the writing so much, it's fine. The animation is stunning (even if the characters sometimes just say things with a blank face), the music is amazing, and the characters have a lot of potential - which hopefully the fic community explored. Dreamworks owes me an explanation for why a bayard that only responds to its paladin or former paladin responded to Lotor of all people, and why the Black Lion, which was supposed to have a bond with Shiro (all the lions were supposed to have bonds with their paladins which was built and forged in the first season but it was ignored in the later seasons lmao of course) chose the damn clone when it should have known it was a clone.

At the very least, we can learn from the show, and we can try to built things from the lessons we learn from it. No piece of media is going to be perfect, but we can damn well try.