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Written by Arus   
Thursday, 28 July 2005

So, what is exactly this site about? Well shall we start? I know, let's start from the beginning.

My Introduction to this great series...

I remember it clearly because of "other" events surrounding my first glimpse of this series. It was a Tuesday afternoon (I remember it was a Tuesday afternoon, because it was Aikido night, and we had gone to the beach that weekend and I suffered a major sunburn - Now, rolling around in a gi with a sunburn is torture) my grandfather had just put a new tv set in their parlor, and we were helping him to make sure the cable was feeding correctly to the new cable box. First time we had cable. Before this, our tv could only catch up to channel 13.

So sitting in this parlor, my grandfather is attaching the cable to the cable box, and it just so happened the box was tuned into Channel 21, which was the local channel that aired Voltron here. The episode that was playing: "Lotor's Clone".

My sister and I were "What cartoon is this?". Being that this was the first time we got a channel over 13, we sat there glued to the screen as we watched a blue skinned, white haired guy standing completely naked on the screen before us ( of course the image was .....not as revealing, but to 10 year old girls....). We knew it couldn't be StarBlazers (another cartoon series that aired around the same time) since that was on a different channel. So we sat there, watching, wondering, just what the heck is this show.

Sadly, the episode ended and we were off to our torture in Aikido.

Happily, now that we knew a cartoon aired "after" the normal weekday afternoon cartoon block ( here in Hawaii, that was between 2:30 pm and 5:00 pm since our news would start at 5:00 pm ). So we had an hour extension to our cartoon viewing pleasure. The "extra" hour consisted of "The Berenstein Bears" and Voltron (but throughout the years, "The Berenstein Bears" got switched out with "Inspector Gadget", and "Denver the Last Dinosaur"). Soon, Voltron became the phenomenon, and took over the hour long block, so we had double the pleasure. 2 episodes to watch every weekday, then expanded into the weekend.

Thus began my...little obsession over this series.

Fast Forward to 1996...

I graduated in 1992 and I went off to college. Okay, found out quickly that college isn't a lot like High school. I took my courses, that I wanted, focusing on getting my lib arts classes out of the way and taking classes that would help me toward my major...Oceanography.

My dreams were dashed for various reasons, and I chose to not continue college for a few years, so I could let myself settle down a bit. In 1995, I started up again, where I left off, and decided to change my major to art.

This was also the year, I was introduced to the World Wide Web. Back then, the only thing that was interesting was Yahoo!. At that time, it was just a fledgling little site, I didn't even know it was  'search' engine, so I plugged in some "terms" and was presented with links to various sites about the subject that I had just searched.

And, no, the first term I searched wasn't Voltron. Voltron was far from my mind at this point in time. In fact, it was for Street Fighter II.

But it was on a Street Fighter II page that I somehow was linked to Shannon Muir's Voltron site. This was the beginning of my reintroduction to a series that I had worshipped when I was a kid.

Plugging Voltron into a search engine, I was severley disappointed to find that you could COUNT the amount of sites that was dedicated to this series on two hands (less than 10). At this point, I knew that I had to contribute to helping Voltron get noticed on the World Wide Web.

Thus on 0ct 3, 1996, The Unofficial Voltron Force Hompage joined the WWW. Its original home was at Geopages.com ( http://www.geopages.com/Tokyo/2007 - now defunct ). It was used as a personal website with links to all over creation, but soon became my little site about this great Series.

Then Geopages turned to Geocities and thus TUVFHP joined the ranks of one the fastest growing Free websites on the net.

Time to get my own domain....

The site was growing, and soon, other fansites were popping up. Geocities was becoming too much of a hassle to deal with, so I paid for my own domain and moved from Geocities over to this domain that you are at now. TUVFHP got a redesign, and once again provided fans with a site where they could learn more about this great series. I was more than happy to provide what information I had, concerning the series, and of course accepted help from other fans as well.

Revival....

As 1997 drew closer, news concerning the revival of Voltron was exciting everyone. Cartoon Network was revamping their schedule to include a new block of programming called TOONAMI. Robotech and Voltron would once again be shown on American TV.

I redesigned my website yet again, and prepared for the new interest that the cartoon series would provide. Again, fans and visitors flocked to my website and many others, for information. I was more than happy to see that the site had become a resource for other fans to help create their own websites.

In 1998, fans were treated to news that a new series was in development, moving Voltron to the realm of 3D animation. Voltron The 3rd Dimension. The new series debuted in syndication on Sept. 12, 1998. It continued where the Lion Force series left off, introducing new characters as well as a new twist.

Much as I like the new incarnation, some fans were not happy with the results. Some didn't like that the characters were different than their "2d animated" counterparts, and others didn't like the stories. I remained neutral, as I like what the series had to offer.

Programming change on Cartoon Network also meant that Voltron and Robotech would leave the small screen, and be delegated back to the blackhole they came from. Voltron The 3rd Dimenion lasted all of 2 seasons, ending its run in April of 2000.

Though fans were not totally left in the dark. Devil's Due Publishing licensed to do a comic series, that proved to be quite entertaning and moving, but due to lack of sales, they discontinued the title after only 17 issues, with Book 2 Issue 12 being the last.

After some unsuccessful relaunches...

I tried and tried, but I couldn't keep up with my website due to various reasons. My interest waned a bit for a time, and I didn't want to touch anything that had to do with website design, but recenlty, I was able to get myself to start this site up again, and relaunch it.

Why the sudden interest again?
Well, it did help that Voltron has been recently in the news:
 'Voltron' morphs into movie
 Voltron Zooms To Theaters
"Voltron" Is Back & Bigger Than Ever

And what better time than to get a resource site back up and running?

In the end however, this series has been a big part of my life, influencing me in some of the real life activities I do. If it weren't for Voltron, I wouldn't be designing websites, nor would have I made many friends over the years on the net. I owe everything to World Events Productions, for bringing us a great series that fans all over the world have enjoyed, these past 21 years. For a series to have such a lasting impression, it goes to show that Voltron shall never disappear, and its appeal goes for generations.

 



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