Voltron vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

How one team feels like close friends, while the other feels like family

I’m sure anyone who has watched Voltron past season 3 understands that there is a severe lack of meaningful interactions between the paladins as the show goes on. The Voltron paladins often call themselves a family, even all the way back in season 1, but there is something that’s so obviously wrong with that wording. Team Voltron isn’t a family, not because they aren’t blood related, but because they don’t feel like one.

This oddity always confused me. I mean, the Voltron paladins sort of act like a family sometimes, but other times they act like they’re just barely acquaintances.

And it didn’t hit me why the paladins calling themselves “family” felt so weird to me, until I began rewatching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Now, for the people who haven’t watch TMNT, the characters have surprisingly similar dynamics with Voltron. Rise of the TMNT actually has an INCREDIBLE amount of similarities with Voltron, but that’s actually not the only TMNT show I’m gonna be talking about.

Now, the main difference between Voltron and TMNT in my mind, is that the Voltron team feels like close friends, while the TMNT team feels like genuine family. There are 2 main reasons for why Voltron just utterly fails at trying to create a familial relationship between the paladins (not including Allura) and I’m gonna try my best to explain them:

1. The paladins didn’t all know each other before the show starts. Now this usually wouldn’t be a big deal when trying to establish something like found family, but what really destroys the whole “family” idea, is that you have Lance, Hunk, and Pidge, who know each other as friends, and Keith and Shiro, who are very very close. So already, the show is giving two characters a HUGE head start over the others, and this automatically makes these characters stand out from the “family” the show is trying to push. In turn, this makes Lance, Hunk, and Pidge less important in the eyes of the audience. To remedy this, the writers tried to give each of these characters families that they cared about/wanted to get back to, so they’d all have the sort of “head start” Keith and Shiro had, but it just doesn’t work. Mostly because Keith and Shiro are both paladins and therefore both apart of the Voltron “family”. What I’m trying to say is that the show automatically makes the audience view Keith and Shiro as “the important ones who are much closer”, which makes incorporating them into a found family just not work.

Looking over at TMNT, they don’t have this problem, and that’s mainly because ALL of the turtles have a strong bond with their mentor figure, Splinter, and they all are close to each other. Every TMNT show goes out of its way to show this. Sure, Splinter may talk to Leo more, or Raph may get mad at Mikey more than the others, but it’s very clear that they all care for one another the same amount. I mean, you don’t see TMNT fans thinking that Leo cared about Splinter more than Raph or Mikey or Donnie. No, they all care, and the audience is able to understand this even with limited screen time between Splinter and the turtles, because the TMNT shows set a precedent that the TMNT and Splinter not only knew, but already loved each other before the show began. Now, I’m not saying that the Voltron team should’ve know each other and already have been close with one another before the show started. Found family is often with people who have just met. The problem arose when they had Keith and Shiro be much closer to each other before the show started, than to the other paladins. You can’t do that when you’re making found family. You have to have them all know each other before hand, or not. Because if you do what Voltron did, then you just end up with a relationship that feels like a dad favoring one child over the others. This obviously leaves a bad taste in many people’s mouths, so people decide to ignore it and focus more on a “friend” dynamic, as someone liking one friend more than the others is much more palatable to watch than a father liking one child over the other.

2. Voltron just doesn’t SHOW the paladins being a family. The Voltron writers fell into a pretty deep “tell, don’t show” hole when they started to refer to the paladins as family. They tell and tell and tell you that the paladins are family, but there isn’t any displays of it; subtle or otherwise. It just makes the audience clock out on the whole “family” idea. Like, characters bickering with each other once in a blue moon isn’t them “acting like a family”.

Looking back to TMNT, it is very clearly shown from the first few episode of every iteration that these characters are family. Again, this doesn’t need to be the case, as found family tropes usually take a while to establish the main family, but you’d expect Voltron to start doing it by season 3. Now, what do I mean by “very clearly shown”? Well, first of all, characters argue, but not the mean spirited arguing that Voltron characters participate in, in the guise of ‘teasing’. No, they just genuinely banter with each other. They also care about each other in small ways. I mean, look up any “Leo being a mom” compilation on YouTube and you’ll know what I mean. Often you’ll see the turtles making food for each other, or messing around with skateboards in the lair together. When characters talk, it’s like they know each other better than the audience knows them. They mess with each other, but when things go south, they help each other out and, most importantly, APOLOGIZE/MAKE UP FOR IT (This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine when it comes to Voltron). An example of this is in the TMNT 2012 episode where Mikey becomes friends with Chris Bradford. Raph, Leo, and Donnie (mostly Raph) kinda make fun of him for it, but when Bradford nearly kills Mikey, they are all there to make sure he’s safe. Raph even talks to Mikey directly at the end, letting him know he’s a great guy, who Bradford didn’t deserve to even be friends with.

The utter lack of “show” in Voltron makes characters look like absolute jerks when the writers try to make them bicker the way the turtles (aka siblings) do. For example, that one scene when Lance is upset that Allura and Lotor are hanging out together. Pidge and Hunk make fun of him for it, and it feels so wrong. And it’s because they didn’t earn that teasing. It also feels wrong because even siblings wouldn’t go that far. I mean, compare this to TMNT 2012, in which even Raph eases up on Donnie about having a crush on April, after he teased him. Like, ya, some teasing may happen, but it, firstly, has to feel like it’s actual sibling banter, and, secondly, has to have the ones teasing make up for it later. Pidge and Hunk don’t do this. They leave Lance absolutely destitute, and they couldn’t care less. I honestly don’t think any of the paladins apologize to Lance for all the times they shit on him, except for Shiro. This approach in turn makes the paladins feel like friends that are kind of jerks, rather than family that occasionally goes too far.

These 2 main points come together to create a relationship between the paladins that feels like good friends at best, and bitter acquaintances at worst.

Anyway, I just needed to get this off my chest and put it into words. Because it has been BUGGING me. Let me know if you agree, or have any points you’d like to add! I’m sure there are other reasons the paladins don’t feel like family

The amount of time I’ve spent on this au is ridiculous. Anyway ya I talked about this voltron tmnt crossover au before on my page but I was hyper fixating so hard I HAD to draw something about it. This is also one of the very few drawings I’ve done with two people in it! Cause I’m not good at it lol.

Anyway yes the only reason Im obsessed with this au is because the other paladins other than Keith actually get plot points and focus on them!1!!

(And by other paladins I mean Lance because voltron did him so wrong)

(If anyone knows how to post a fucking picture on this site WITHOUT it getting blurry as fuck please tell me)