by: S. Scott Stanikmas – Senior Staff Writer

Back in January Netflix made the official announcement of a new Voltron series that would be available on the streaming entertainment provider. Fans of the original series might have approached this with some trepidation, fearing that their beloved cartoon might be butchered beyond recognition or made into some jokey nonsense.

Well the first image has arrived and I gotta say it looks pretty good. This first look at Voltron: Legendary Defender was revealed by USA Today and shows the five mini-lion bots coming together to form one super robot (my thanks to Ryan Reynolds for that line):

USA Today also provided us with a brief description of the series overview:

Legendary Defender centers on five Earth teenagers — Keith, Lance, Hunk, Pidge and Shiro — who are thrown into the middle of an intergalactic battle and become the last line of defense for Arus and other planets against an evil alien force led by King Zarkon.

I’m happy with this, but I’ll wait until the series premieres before passing final judgement.

And for fans of the original series worrying about this being too far a departure from the source material (DreamWorks Animation revealed that they were allowed to tweak the mythology as they saw fit), executive producer Lauren Montgomery assuaged fears:

We’re trying to keep as much of that classic feel to it as we can, because ultimately we have huge amounts of nostalgia for (the original) show.

The show will feature 13 22-minute episodes that will unfold the Voltron legend for a new generation. No concrete premiere date was given, only that we should expect to see Voltron: Legendary Defender later this year.