Journeying to the friendly planet Arus, a five-man team of "space explorers" arrives just in time to see Arus' cities being razed by the "space pirate" King Zarkon of Planet Doom. Captured by Zarkon and marked for the gladiator pits, the explorers escape, fight their way to a ship, leave Doom and crash on Arus, where they go looking for Voltron, a legendary giant robot "loved by all good people, and feared by evil."

Instead, they find a dilapidated castle inhabited by a weary diplomat, a beautiful princess and a family of pastel-furred "space mice." And they learn the whereabouts of five robot lions that, with the proper keys, can merge to form Voltron. After several trials, they revive the robot and begin thwarting Zarkon's efforts to destroy Arus and the Voltron legacy. In Zarkon's most successful ploy, his pet witch Haggar journeys to Arus and manages to all but kill one of the original five space explorers, but the princess stands in for him, piloting his robot lion and becoming one of the Voltron Force.

From there, the series hits a more predictable episodic pattern. Haggar comes up with a plan to destroy Voltron or the pilots, often by sending someone to infiltrate the castle or set a trap. Ultimately, these plans almost always end with the activation of a giant menacing "ro-beast." If time permits, the pilots attack ineffectively in their lion-ships, then merge their craft into the giant robot Voltron and attack with one or more of their many ineffective weapons. Finally, they whip out their one invincible weapon and defeat their enemy, by speaking the catch phrase that defined kids' programming back in 1984: "Form blazing sword!"

It's all about the nostalgia

Voltron: Defender of the Universe wasn't Japan's first transforming-robot cartoon by a long shot, but it was the first such cartoon to make a splash in America; introduced to the U.S. via Saturday-morning TV in 1984, it rapidly became the most popular show in children's programming, and a wave of ancillary merchandise followed. So did other animated imports, including the "Vehicle Voltron" series, which featured another team of space pilots whose vehicles merged to form a giant robot. For a generation of anime addicts and future animators, Voltron was Fandom Ground Zero, the first glimpse they had into a world of episodic animation that was far richer and more sophisticated than anything American kids' cartoons were trying at the time.

Like so many nostalgia-courting products, Voltron probably plays better in the memory than it does on DVD. The animation is flat, unsophisticated and heavily recycled from one episode to the next. The American voice-over actors (including Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime on The Transformers and Venger on Dungeons & Dragons) are flat, strident and unnuanced. The whole program shows a notable disregard for continuity, physics and story logic. And the dialogue can be painfully repetitive, especially during the period before Voltron reactivates, during which time the characters feel compelled to describe him often, using the same catch phrases over and over.

But still ... there's an awful lot to like in these opening Voltron episodes, from the slow-burn plot arc to the careful establishment of five iconic characters: Keith (the dashing, blandly perfect leader), Hunk (the big, slowish but good-hearted one), Lance (the "edgy" smartass), Pidge (the brains-over-brawn kid) and Princess Allura (the obligatory girl, and often the team's weakest link, in emotions and skills alike). These five characters became prototypes, often imitated and often shorthanded, in part because they were established so well here, with episodes focusing on each of them in turn. The setting was similarly well established; one of the things Voltron did best was build an entire richly detailed universe, one that remains memorable to this day, at least for those who were around when the magic first happened.