DXV Introduction

While some of the connection of Dairugger XV, the original Japanese animation done by TOEI on which the VV series was based, is in the site's FAQ, not everyone reads FAQs. So this page will serve as a quick overview of this series, and how it relates/differs from the dubbed product.



In 1982 in Japan, a show called Dairugger XV aired and it was one among many with a space opera/mecha kind of theme. It ran for a standard season there, 52 episodes in all. I have unsubbed copies of all the episodes, and can tell you that some images and violence was cut from the original, it is harder to tell at this time the extent of plot changes that happened in the course of dubbing to English. Not even the names stayed the same.
I do know, thanks to information in the extras in the DVD sets that are out now, that WEP apparently didn't do any direct translating anyway. They simply wrote a story line based on the action on the screen, less what they cut out that was deemed too harsh for US children at the time. A lot of scenes in Voltron, you'll notice, get recycled. In the case of VV, for instance, the ending where Jeff and his fellow team captains are made to eat something icky as some sort of punishment shows up several times. This, presumably, is to make up for chunks of time cut out of the original eps where battle scenes got bloody, a character died, or there was just something too risque - drinking booze or naked painting in the background - going on.



I also learned from the DVD extras, that WEP originally sought out three seperate anime shows to dub and market to the US, and that it was ironically DXV that caught their attention first. This might explain why it seems the Drules at times are more influential than those in the LV show, and how the Galaxy Alliance was so central to plot points in both shows - the GA originated in DXV and was not a part of GoLion (LV's parent anime series) originally. Those scenes were spliced in to blend the two series, that were of course seperate and unrelated in Japan, into a cohesive story line. Given how similar a lot of toons were in Japan at the time, it was actually pretty easy to do what WEP did, and tweak a few things to make both shows feel 'connected'.



Also, you can note on the toy boxes of the time, that VV toys declared it "Voltron I", and LV was actually "Voltron III" - wild to think the wildly popular version was darn near a last-minute after thought!
However, history showed that kids responded to Lion Voltron much more than they did the Vehicle version, and so, VV has not seen an extended second season, a new series, or much else since then. Production stopped where the Japanese series ended - at Ep 52. Although it seems WEP left the story line more open than the original was, leaving a door open for a second season if warranted. Or so I assume.

Once WEP had license to do with these series as they would, LV and VV both debuted in the fall of 1984 - looking like their Japanese counterparts, but tamed and given different story lines. The third series WEP gained was supposed to be a third "Voltron" installment, presumably weaved into the other stories, but ultimately got shelved - perhaps due to the uneven response between LV and VV. It's unclear whether there was even a English dub pilot made of that, but I do remember toys coming out for it. Go figure.

When the promised subtitled originals are released from Media Blasters, I plan to do a DXV ep guide that more closely compares and contrasts the differences in the two shows. Until then, what little I do know is already noted in this site's Episode Guide and Review. Already I can tell that they are different enough, to consider the shows canonically quite different. Just the simple fact that many characters die in DXV, that are said to have somehow survived in Voltron, that changes things dramatically between the two series.
Of course, under the Dairugger tab on this site you can view cut scenes from the original, and hear some of the original audio, too.

So go discover Vehicle Voltron - as you'd maybe never seen or heard him before!

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