YMMV / Voltes V

YMMV Tropes with Their Own Pages

• Common Knowledge
• Woobie

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A-M

• Accidental Innuendo:
  Ippei: Megumi, I'd like to rest. You're welcome to stare if you'd like. (slaps his shirtless, bare chest)
  Megumi: I'm more interested in hearing about your mother! ^ContextMegumi wanted to know why Ippei hated his mother so much.
  • Gohl's father is called Oral.
  • Modern audiences may giggle at hearing the word "Sodom"^note Slang for anal sex. To make it even better, in the anime it refers to one half of two balls.
• Awesome Music:
  • The opening theme's melody is so versatile that it can be arranged in various ways (fast for epic ass-kicking; and slow, melodramatic strings for Tear Jerker moments) and still sound as fitting to the scene as can be. And awesome.
  • "Looking for Father" by Ichiro Mizuki. Cue Manly Tears.
• Broken Base: The sequel manga, Victory Five. Some fans love it for the renewal of Heinel as a reformed villain who helps the Voltes team, while others despise it for the excessive amounts of fanservice (i.e. many naked girls and Megumi being reduced to a Damsel in Distress who needs the male characters to save her). Heinel being Alive All Along is also considered fanservice, as he's a fan favorite character depicted as ridiculously cool compared to the other members of the cast. Another portion of the fandom didn't like how even though he was alive again, his body was plagued by an unknown disease after he was revived, meaning that he spends most of his existence suffering. As a result, a large portion of the fandom would rather pretend it doesn't exist.
• Common Knowledge: Has it's own page.
• Complete Monster: Emperor Zu Zambajil is the ruler of the Boazanian Empire, where the horned upper classes are the rulers and the hornless are little better than slaves. Zambajil engineered the overthrow of good-hearted cousin La Gohl when he discovered the latter was actually hornless, and proceeded to hold Boazan in his grip with the Fantastic Caste System, manipulating his cousin's son Prince Heinel into becoming his pawn and puppet. By manipulating Heinel, Zambajil is responsible for his actions, including his war of conquest on Earth with all the atrocities and death that resulted, all so that the Boazan Empire could gain more slaves. Eventually fearing Heinel's potential, Zambajil tried to have him killed. When Boazan is taken in the war and the hornless have won their revolt, Zambajil tries to flee and when confronted by the Voltes team, he tries to pin everything on Heinel and let his nephew take the fall for his own war crimes.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Prince Heinel is this big time. In spite of his long list of heinous actions^note animal abuse for religious rituals, attacking un-armed civilians, attacking refugees, blackmail, capital punishment, colonialism, conspiracy, forced imprisonment, forced labor, killing children, maltreating prisoners of war, slavery, taking hostages, torture and unethical experimentation, attacking and imprisoning his own comrades, and fighting to uphold a Fantastic Caste System where anyone who isn't a Horned Boazanian is meant to live as a slave, Fanon highlights his Woobie and Pretty Boy status, and many fanfictions and fanart portray him in a positive manner. The Grand Finale also elicited a huge amount of Cry for the Devil for him, furthering this trope.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Voltron. Particularly infamous in some corners of fandom, where Voltes V proponents will slam it as a rip-off and dedicate fanfiction and videos to the characters being slaughtered or made out to be villains threatening the Voltes V team. Flamewars will spark over which giant robot would wipe the floor with the other, and whether or not the "Voltron" title plagiarized the "Volt" in Voltes (fans who point out that the original title was GoLion tend to get ignored in the shuffle). The arguments all boil down to which Five-Man Band series is the legitimate and superior title, whether or not the latter was plagiarism, and if it's possible for fans of either to enjoy both. Not helping matters is the fact that Voltes V was released first and enjoys more popularity in Japan than GoLion, furthering the They Copied It, So It Sucks! allegations.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Many fics explore the idea of Kenichi, Daijiro and Hiyoshi being born with horns due to their Boazanian heritage. A common theme is that Kentaro and Mitsuyo had them cut off to hide it.
  • How was Heinel's life like growing up in Boazania as Lozaria and the Prince's son?
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Heinel/Katherine was popular long before it became canon, mainly because many enjoyed Katherine's status as a Morality Pet bringing out another side of Heinel.
  • Kenichi/Megumi has a lot of fanart and fanfiction despite the two not showing any romantic interest in each other. The Philippine live action adaptation indulges this and makes it canon.
• Fan Nickname: To the surprise of no one, Boazania is nicknamed Space France.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Good luck finding a Voltes V fan who acknowledges, or even likes, the sequel manga. There's a reason why most prefer the Super Robot Wars endings to it. However, this could be a case of Americans Hate Tingle as in Japan, the manga was received rather positively, despite being loathed worldwide.
• Fan Wank:
  • As noted in Wikipedia, there has been speculation among fan circles that possible research prior to Nagahama's then-upcoming stint as director of the The Rose of Versailles anime may have influenced some themes and plot ideas for this show, such as those of revolution, social class upheaval, the medieval-esque setting of Boazan, the dramatic approach and the frilly dresses. Some Super Robot Genre fans, who watched this show expecting pure Hot-Blooded action and are openly put-off with what they deem as excessive melodrama and angst, took things further by holding this theory to be the only explanation on why Nagahama would dare try to write "shojo sensibilities" into a super robot show that's supposed to be for young boys.
  • And also, this fanfic. The only English language fanfic involving Voltes V that features one of the worst Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny style fan wanks ever.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Many fans of Voltes V are also fans of Daimos.
  • In Cuba, many children of The '70s who grew up watching Voltes V are also fans of Hello! Sandybell because they aired around the same time slots on the channel Cubavisión.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Voltes V achieved notability among Humongous Mecha and Combining Mecha fans in the West as The French Revolution IN SPACE! or The Rose of Versailles WITH COMBINING MECHA!. Or it's mostly known by westerners as being part of the Robot Romance Trilogy by director Tadao Nagahama.
    • It's also notable how western fans love the invading Boazans more than the heroes, particularly all their backstabbing shenanigans and aristocratic intrigue. Noble Demon Heinel particularly stands out to them as a prototypical Char Clone before there was even a Char Aznable. Or perhaps Heinel reminds them of the similarly angsty Prince Vegeta vs. Ken'ichi's Son Goku.
  • The show has a decent old-school following in Japan, but it's virtually worshiped in the Philippines. In fact, ask any Filipino who was a seventies kid what was their favorite show on TV, more often than not, they will say Voltes V, and the Voltes V theme song is so iconic and well-known in the country it has jokingly been called by Filipinos the "unofficial second national anthem". It has become an adopted cultural icon in the Philippines for multiple generations of Filipinos.
    • In Real Life, when Voltes V became incredibly popular in the Philippines, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos banned the show in its final stretch of episodes, saying that it had a "subversive message" that taught children to rebel against the established order. The message of the show quickly struck with the hearts of the youth who loved the show, and increasing corruption within the régime led to his overthrow in 1986, making his words a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
    • Due to Voltes V's popularity, several Super Robot shows that aired alongside and after it also did well in the Philippines. For example, youths of the era also fondly remember Mazinger Z^note (Yes, Voltes V is more popular than Mazinger Z in the Philippines) and Daimos^note taking its Star-Crossed Lovers ("RICHAAARD!!!!" "ERIKAAAA!!!!") premise into consideration. However, other shows that aired with Voltes V and even after like UFO Robo Grendizer, Mechander Robo and even Combattler V ended up falling through the cracks and becoming forgotten anime in the country.
    • Voltes V is to the Philippines as Gundam is to Japan, what with it getting re-aired on Philippine television from the 1980s to 2010s after it was cut short during the 1970s.^note It was even re-dubbed (twice) in Tagalog in the 2000s. It even got the last four unaired episodes finally released as Voltes V: The Liberation in Philippine theaters in 1999. This then culminated in GMA Network^note (the station that brought the anime to the country in the first place) funding their own original production and live-action remake, Voltes V: Legacy, in the 2020s, which received high audience ratings and was praised for its production value and special effects, the CGI quality previously unseen in a local production, making the trope even occur in its native Japan by people who watched it.
  • Less so than the Filipinos, Voltes V is also popular in Indonesia, especially among Generation X people. It was distributed by using Betamax tapes in the '80s, and it also spawned many unofficial merchandise and fan creations. The series is looked upon highly, being one of the few mecha anime series that hit the national television station and aired to the end, giving it nostalgia factor.
  • The Compilation Movie is so popular in Cuba that the official Twitter account of the Cuban Embassy to Japan tweeted about it.
  • It also has a loyal following in Italy due to the Italian dub. Many kids of The '80s recall grew up with the story of Michel and his team fighting the evil Prince Sirius. In fact, this very wiki features an Italian version of this very page.
• Genius Bonus:
  • For those familiar with Japanese naval history, it's Hiyoshi naming his battleship Mikasa.
  • When Katherine deconstructs the inner workings of the Mechanical Eagle to Heinel and his aides, she explains the process behind the Ion thruster, a Real Life plasma application used to propel spacecraft.
  • In episode 30, the team perform the Missing Man Formation in honor of Dange and Girion's deaths.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Look closely in the first episode where the Boazanian invasion armada was laying waste to the world's military forces and key cities... among the casualties and damage is a pair of conspicuously familiar twin towers. What's more disturbing is that this image was flashed right after the montage of the Statue of Liberty getting blown up.
  • The plot of Episode 5, Battleship Mikasa Calls For Crisis. While the episode originally aired on July 2, 1977, it has uncanny similarities with The 2023 Titan submersible incident.^ExplanationIn the start of the episode, Kenichi and Hiyoshi are arguing because Hiyoshi wants to go the annual ship racing competition but Kenichi orders him to stay in case the Boazanians attack again. Despite being warned of the risk, Hiyoshi attends the competition anyway. Coincidentally, a Beast Knight attacks during the race, which results in Hiyoshi's vehicle sinking into the ocean after taking heavy damage, while the Big Falcon personnel desperately try to regain contact with it. Luckily, Ippei finds Hiyoshi and sends him underwater so that he can repair the Volt Frigate.
  • In episode 13, Heinel, Jangal, and Katherine burst out laughing when Zuhl tells them humans are capable of love. Even though they don't believe him at first, Zuhl insists that they can use humans' ability to love against them. In the next episode, Heinel holds a little girl hostage and threatens to kill her if her father doesn't pose as a slave and sabotage Voltes V. It turns out he did comprehend that humans are capable of love.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Beast Knight from the second episode is called Baizanga.^note *laugh track*
  • In episode 13, the Boazanians attempt to trick the Go brothers by creating "A voice-changing machine", a device that can imitate the voice of anyone they desire. The idea may have seemed whimsical in the 1970s, but with the rise of deepfake AI technology in the 2020s, it's not that far out there.
  • The events of episodes 8, 22, and 24 involve Katherine trying to suss out a potential assassin from her allies within the spaceship.
  • Katherine's "disguise" as Jane. Notice anything familiar?^note This becomes even funnier when you know the context is that Katherine is trying to blend in with the humans, just like the titular Coneheads.
  • Kenichi/Megumi being the Fan-Preferred Couple of the Voltes V fanbase, after this piece of dialogue from Super Robot Wars 30.
  • The Reveal regarding Prince Heinel in the final episode becomes even funnier when you remember that in the Korean dub, he has the same voice actor as Darth Vader.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The entire scene where Heinel and his aides refuse to believe that humans are intelligent enough to know what love is, while Zuhl tries to convince them otherwise. Even Gekiganger 3 parodied it.
  • For obvious reasons, equating Boazania to France.
  • Hornless! Hornless!^ExplanationThis scene from Final Fantasy X, out of context, is linked to how the Horned Boazanians treat the Hornless ones.
  • Heinel's handlebars.^ExplanationHeinel has a pair of thick horns on his head, leading to many jokes regarding sexual positions
• Misaimed Fandom: Not a few people who watched this show are in it mainly for the back-stabbing and high drama of the Boazan nobility, going as far as to say that Heinel and the other villains own the story and not the boring goody-two shoes heroes and the Earthlings; conveniently ignoring the fact that the Earthlings aren't exactly portrayed idealistically either, as they were just as predisposed to prejudice and petty bickering as the villains.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • You will see the incident where Heinel takes a little girl hostage so her father would be forced to cooperate in his schemes against the Voltes Team; only to find out later that he has already killed off the said girl afterward as the former if you think that the said action cements his status as a villain that is NOT to be liked; or the latter for simply being a way of the authors of telling the audience to be wary of how screwed up he became from the culture that he has been brought up in.
  • Zambajil crosses it when he has Gohl exposed, humiliated and enslaved, all while laughing maniacally has he has him separated from his wife. His orchestration of these events were why Heinel grew up to be a sad, broken man filled with endless pain over something that wasn't his fault.
  • For many, Dr. Sakonji crossed it when he threw out the Voltes team's belongings and maintained a general Drill Sergeant Nasty attitude towards them even though their previous mentor, Professor Hamaguchi, had just died. Sakonji was received as cruel and callous, with many fans favoring Hamaguchi over him.
  • Belgan broke it when he showed Nakamura his parents' corpses to stoke the flames of hatred towards the Go brothers. He broke it again when he had Bernard tortured, with the poor man succumbing to his injuries afterwards. Him and Gurul really jump over it when they use a Magmite Bomb to blow up the Earth.
• Movement Mascot: The series is big in the Philippines not only due to nostalgia, but also because it was banned there by the since-ousted dictator president Ferdinand Marcos, who is often claimed to have found its themes threatening - Wikipedia has more details. Thus after Marcos was ousted, the anime and especially the mecha itself were later unofficially adopted as symbols for life under the dictatorship period, particularly the sociopolitical resistance/dissent that led to his ousting, and the continuing legacy of that period. Emphasis on "symbolic", since the ban of the anime may not have directly led to the increase in protests and the eventual ousting of the dictator some years later, but it was one way the generation of Filipino kids growing up then felt the impact of the times.
  • The sudden ban, when the anime was in its last few episodes with the heroes about to liberate Boazan, naturally led to speculation that it was because the situation had hit too close to home for Marcos. Both Marcos's son and one of the Filipino dub actors have since claimed that it was actually parents' groups or a Catholic women's group that pressured him to ban the show. But to this day, many find the timing suspicious. And regardless of motive, the point remains that the show was banned by and in context of the Marcos dictatorship in any case.

N-Z

• Narm Charm:
  • The Filipino-made English dub. For anyone who probably hasn't grown up watching this in the Philippines, first you'll be like, "Wha...?" after watching one episode in English and then you'll be tolerating it the next instance.
    And I shall die eating beans!
  • Heinel's name in the said dub however, is straight-up cheese: Prince Zardoz. Other Filipino fans better not get their hands on the movie where the dubbers/translators got the name from if they want to save their sanity and/or not die from laughing. (Really, try picturing Heinel saying "The gun is good! The penis is evil!" and you'll get the context.)
• One True Threesome: There is a small (emphasis: small) minority of the Voltes V fandom that ships Kenichi x Megumi x Ippei.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • Ippegumi for Ippei/Megumi. However, many fanart pieces of Ippei and Megumi also use the tag "#Mamie", combining their names from the English dub, Mark Gordon and Jamie Robinson.
  • In a similar vein, fanart of Kenichi and Megumi often use the tag "#Stemie". Those who prefer to use their original names call the ship Kengumi/Kenigumi.
  • Heinel/Katherine is known as "Heinkath" or "Heinarine". Their dub names Zardoz and Zandra have fans know it as "Zarzan".
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Amongst the main cast, one of them had staying power throughout the years. And it's not Kenichi, it's Daijirou, voiced by Tesshō Genda, nowadays known as the dub voice of Optimus Prime and Batman. To Filipinos, he's known as the voice of Younger Toguro. Indeed, Tessho is the go-to guy to voice anime big guys (mostly older ones).
  • Ippei is voiced by Kazuyuki Sogabe, a.k.a. Psycho Mantis.
  • Hiyoshi and Katherine are voiced by Noriko Ohara; who went to play her most iconic and longest role, Nobita in the second Doraemon anime, the following year after this series ended.
  • Jangal is voiced by Shōzō Iizuka, who voiced Nappa from Dragon Ball Z. Hilariously, both are hulking brutes who serve a much shorter Conquering Alien Prince.
• Sacred Cow: Do not disparage this show, unless you are ready to fight World War 3 with Filipinos with Firearms.
• Special Effects Failure: The show has quite a few animation errors and Off-Model moments that result in unintentional amusement:
  • Episode 4: After Gardo pledges allegiance to the Boazanian Empire, Prince Heinel grants him two horns. However in the episode's first shot, he already has two horns, which suddenly disappeared during his duel with Gladiator.
  • Episode 8: Someone in the animation team forgot to shade Jangal Rui's body, resulting in this shot, which makes him look like he's naked from the upper half.
  • The ending theme and credits sequence has Kenichi running towards his brothers and... himself. It's likely meant to be Kentaro, but the animation directors didn't bother to correct the error.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: In some episodes, the characters go into detail about physics-related concepts including Warp Theory.
• Values Resonance: Two times.
  • As the Trivia page notes, the anime was widely popular in dictator-ruled countries, likely due to the main story being about the toppling of the corrupt Planet Baron Emperor Zambajil.
  • In the modern day, the themes of anti-racial prejudice and anti-war hold up well. Impressive for an anime from The '70s.
• The Woobie: Enough woobies to warrant its own page.

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