* Items below may differ depending on the release. Shiro Discography Price Guide Recently Listed Email Alerts. Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for Can We Talk - Shiro on AllMusic - 1995. * Items below may differ depending on the release. Shiro Discography Price Guide Recently Listed Email Alerts.
Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for Can We Talk - Shiro on AllMusic - 1995 Can We Talk - Shiro| Songs, Reviews, Credits| AllMusic AllMusic relies heavily on JavaScript. Shiro - Can We Talk - 1995 01 Feel the Funk 02 Tell Me (Would You) 03 Good Lovin' 04 Can We Talk 05 U Don't Hear Me 06 After the Sex. RARE FUNKY GROOVE (8) VA.
Alright. Time to talk Keith and Shiro. The two of them have probably the biggest, most visually and emotionally gut punching moments of this, or any, season. It was epic and I loved every second of it. (Holy shit, this got long. o.O)
At first it looks like Keith is getting the shaft, storywise. He doesn't even appear until we're four episodes into season 5. And that's basically to remind us he's still working with the Blades and he's a good fighter and he'd prefer Shiro to not die or anything. Oh, and also Acxa doesn't want him to die at the hands of some random Galra officer. But then the next episode arrives and the mom-bomb drops and Keith's story (in an unexpected echo of Pidge's) kicks into gear.
I adored, for so many reasons, the whole space whale setup. I loved that it's by following the clue of his inherited knife that leads him to his mother's people and eventually to his mom. I love that it's by following the unusually pure quintessence that Keith and his mom get stranded on the space whale. I love that the purposely difficult journey involves time shenanigans. It provides them both with a long, peaceful pause with bonus time-blast conversation starters. They're given the space to get to know each other. And also a cosmic wolf.
It's organic and efficient storytelling and basically a love letter to Keith. They camp out together. They train together (per s7). They create a cozy little home together. And Keith doesn't even have to take his mom's word on what all happened to make her leave him. He gets to experience it. And I love to think that she gets to experience chunks of his life as well. By the time they arrive on Lotor's Pleasantville Planet for Lost Alteans (do not peek behind the curtain!), Keith has a mom who loves him and knows him.
Which is good, because come s6, Keith enters hell. (And you know, I'll almost say literally. That scene where he's following Shiro's footsteps down into the bowels of the cloning factory seems like something out of a Greek myth: Orpheus pursuing his Eurydice. It's gorgeous and unsettling; the calm before the shitstorm.)
I think it's because of his time with his mom that Keith is able to keep hold of Shiro throughout their battle. Shiro says some vicious things absolutely barbed to hurt. But they don't, because Keith has been healed of those wounds. He doesn't feel abandoned by his parents anymore. He doesn't feel like a lost and angry little boy anymore. He knows who he is and he knows who Shiro is and he refuses to let him go.
Which means Keith rescues Shiro (the Shiro Haggar is trying to destroy) and he reveals Shiro (the Shiro safeguarded in Black). And in doing so, he becomes the Black Paladin.
Because we're also shown that Keith has learned during his time with the Blade. In the initial dash after Shiro in the 'The Black Paladins,' Keith pulls back to go help out his team when they're struggling with the Sincline ships. And part of bonding with Black is bonding with each of his teammates (seeing them through his lion's eyes), which enables him to unlock Black's wings and get back to the fight in 'All Good Things.' By season end he is comfortable in Black's cockpit and comfortable in his own skin. The mantle of Black Paladin is well and truly passed and it didn't require Shiro's death (all hail Voltron's creative team!). It was a hell of a journey and a hell of a fight, but Keith won all the things.
Which brings us to our boy, Shiro.
This is where the tale gets a bit complicated and depends a lot on how you view what happened to Shiro from season two's finale to season six's finale. My take is that clone!Shiro and astral plane!Shiro are the same guy. One is Shiro's essence plopped into a cloned body by Haggar, with her little sleeper virus along for the ride. The other is Shiro's essence pulled into Black's consciousness. But they are both Shiro and neither of them are evil.
However, clone!Shiro has a headache. He's had a headache from s3's 'The Journey,' onward. So when Pidge looses her mind and starts insisting they trust Zarkon and turn over Lotor in exchange for her father, Shiro doesn't have the patience to talk her down. Instead, he gives Lotor the black bayard and plans everything else accordingly.
And of course it works, because Shiro is a strategic genius (as shown from 'The Belly of the Weblum,' onwards). But it's in the middle of all that excitement that Haggar turns on her nanny-cam. Shiro's persistent headache gets worse. It hurts him whenever Haggar is watching through his eyes. And when he's strategizing, especially with Lotor, Haggar tends to be watching. So his temper gets shorter and his patience gets thinner.
It's not an entirely new side to Shiro. We've seen him snappy and impatient all the way back in s1's 'The Black Paladin' when he was angry at himself for losing Allura. But the intensity and persistence is definitely new and his teammates all remark on it. I will say, I don't think any of the choices he makes are wrong... (The idea of not putting their guy --and at this point Lotor was understood to be on their guy-- into power was an odd one. I honestly didn't understand Allura's reluctance there.) ...But Shiro doesn't take the time to explain his reasoning and he's pissy about being questioned.
Even Shiro begins to realize something isn't right with these persistent headaches and he talks to Lance about it and Lance, unfortunately, doesn't follow through. A mistake Lance apologizes for later. A mistake everyone is shown making. In 'Omega Shield' Haggar either turns up her nanny-cam to eleven and pulls on Shiro's energy to get through the trials of Oriande, or Shiro's energy somehow bleeds over into Haggar's experience without her awareness. Either way, it notably affects him, compromising the mission and... no one follows through.
[Side note: Okay, honestly I think this was a rare show-runners flub. Shiro has a headache so bad he can no longer function and no one comments on it? At all?! That the episode ender is a warm joke towards Hunk without any worried comments towards Shiro was... illogical in my opinion. And kind of out of character for all involved.
Shiro Can We Talk
I head-canon that part of the reason Coran set up that Monsters & Mana game was to actively help Shiro take a mental break. Because after 'Omega Shield,' Coran gave Shiro a full physical and couldn't find a cause for Shiro's persistent and strengthening headaches and they both assume it's the stress of his job and past experiences and such and hey, how about a nice distracting game? But that really is a personal head-canon and a few lines of script stating something along those lines would've been nice. As it is, it feels like Shiro was hurting and no one did any kind of due diligence on the issue.]
And then Keith comes back and Lotor's backstory is revealed and Shiro gets thrown into hell.
There's a part during his fight with Keith where Shiro begs him to give up. When Shiro tells him that everyone back at the castle is dead (I took care of it myself). I think that throughout the battle with Keith there was still a portion of Shiro in there. He wasn't an empty Haggar puppet anymore. (Probably because by this point she'd set him on his mission and was busy skedaddling off to some other diabolical plot place.) Shiro had her programing driving him, but he was there. His remarks were too on point to come from Haggar. And he sounded too wrecked by the time he was begging Keith to give up and die. He knew everyone else was dead. He knew he'd killed them. At this point, I think Shiro had given up and he wanted Keith to do the same.
Of course, Keith doesn't. Instead he throws the, 'I love you,' bomb and Shiro hesitates. Then Keith cuts off the arm that sourced Haggar's power over Shiro and Shiro has that one word, 'Keith,' that lets you know it's him. Shiro is still in there. But it's been a hell of a battle and at that point, Shiro begins to die.
Of course, neither Keith nor Black are having that, and Shiro gets rescued by Black, rescued by Allura, and finally in s7, rescued by Keith. His two essences rejoined in one body, Shiro is fully back. He's been to the depths and they marked him, but he made it back. And all the lions rejoice.
Shiro Can We Talk Rarest Cars
Random Thoughts:
Those fight scenes though!
The music was gorgeous and evocative and just all over perfect.
The artwork was amazing. The backgrounds, the coloring, the way they used rough lines to indicate Shiro's level of brutality. They way Shiro's body slams into the 'camera' when he's sliding across the catwalk. The way they used light and shadow. The way Keith has never looked more beautiful and Shiro never more vicious. It took my breath away the first viewing and it still does with each rewatch.
And the voice acting! Josh Keaton and Steven Yeun were... I mean, they made it feel real and personal and my heart just bled.
I also loved the way they drew that final battle with Lotor -- the way all the Paladins were getting more and more haggard, pinched and lined, as they fought until Allura pulled them out of it. The use of blue and red lines to show how deeply Lotor was tearing himself apart as he turned himself into a horrifying echo of Haggar. (Which incredibly apt name for the witch version of Honerva.)
That last goodbye to the Castle of Lions. I get a little teary every single time I watch it.